The appointment of a new Padre to the Legion recently has led us to look at just a few of the past Legion Padres. Far from being boring people who have led boring lives, these men have proved to have enjoyed colourful experiences and we will concentrate mainly on one with a name as colourful as his life, Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave.

The first Legion Padre was Bishop H.H. Montgomery, who we will know mostly as being the father of the famous Montgomery of Alamein. In the 1930s, the enthusiastic Padre was the Revd. William Pennington-Bickford, well-known in London. Although not a Frontiersman traveller, as he had spent his whole career as Rector of St Clement Danes, he was an outstanding publicist and his Church was central to many Frontiersmen parades in the capital. In 1919 he had restored the church bells and 1920 he used the carillon to play the tune of “Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St Clement”. Other London churches have claimed that they were the original St. Clement but Pennington-Bickford made the rhyme his own, holding an annual service when fruit, the gift of the London Danish community, was handed out to children. On May 10th 1941 St Clement burned down as the result of a German incendiary bomb. Pennington-Bickford was so broken-hearted that he died a month later and it is believed that he took his own life. His wife fell from an attic window shortly afterwards and this was also believed to be suicide because she could not face life without her husband.

The best-known Canadian Padre was Legion Major Harry Leigh-Pink. He wrote many lively western and adventure books under the name of Hal Pink, as well as the biography of a man whose name will be familiar to Canadian Frontiersmen, Bill Guppy, King of the Woodsmen Life – long friend and tutor of ‘Grey Owl’. One of his more lurid books was The Screaming Plant. “Flower-shaped suckers there were indeed, opening and shutting like so many mouths waiting for food…” The plant’s first victim is the cat, the plant sucking all the blood out of the poor animal. Leigh-Pink was a good friend of the Legion Founder, Roger Pocock, and told the story of Christmas 1930 when Leigh-Pink worked for London General Press.

Strong tea was his tipple in those days – he was 63 (actually 65) – and usually he managed to arrive in my office just when the typist had made a steaming brew. Off would come his trench-coat and hat, dripping wet from the London rain; he would plump in the captain’s chair beside my desk, I would push a packet of Gold Flakes towards him, down went the tea, up went the smokes, and some chance comment of mine would set him off on a chain of reminiscence. ¹

Leigh-Pink interviewed many Frontiersmen and wrote excellent accounts of some of the events they had experienced in East Africa.

However, the strangest and most adventurous of the Legion padres has to be Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave. Born in 1869, his escapades caused his family many problems. His father sent him to a training ship of the Royal Naval Reserve, but after 6 months his father was told to “take the little devil home”. The boy wanted a life at sea so his father apprenticed him to serve on the sailing ships sailing to Australia. Still causing problems he signed on in the 13th Hussars claiming to be 18 instead of 16½ becoming one of Kipling’s “gentleman rankers”. As we have seen in earlier pages, it was not only Buffalo Bill who ran a Wild West Circus and the young man became involved with “Mexican Joe’s” Wild West Show. This made him determined to become a cowboy. After service in India he bought himself out of the army. He spent some time wandering and working in Burma, Australia, America and Greenland and finally made his way “out west” in America to become a cowboy. He soon became an expert both with a lariat and with a gun. First of all known as “English” his nickname changed to “Kit”, short for Kitty. For the amusing story of how that came about the reader will have to find a copy of his very rare autobiography From Cowboy to Pulpit ² Other stories tell of how the westerners found their way round prohibition. He served in the Spanish American War of 1898. He would have liked to have served in the Boer War but instead found himself on a ship going to China. Even then he was unable to get into action in the Boxer Rebellion as he was could find no way to leave his ship. He returned to his cowboy life in the West of America. What he said about the life there confirms everything Roger Pocock wrote about it.³ He told some fascinating stories.

One fine old judge that I remember was coroner as well, but he had only two formulas for the death certificates – that is to say, when he remembered to fill them in. One of them was that the deceased died from lead poisoning – that was when he was shot; the other was that he had died from lack of breath, which was when he was hanged.

It was a boisterous life and the brotherhood of the cowboy never left any man. This explains why so many men who had worked in the American west joined the early Legion. Eventually his father died and “Kit of the Circle Dot ranch” became an English Baronet, although he continued to work as a cowboy when he could escape the press who plagued him on his visits to and from England. Being an expert with the lariat, he was called upon to help Wild West Shows touring Britain. One day by chance he attended a Salvation Army meeting in New York and became a converted Christian and left his cowboy life to work in the Ministry.

At the beginning of the War in 1914 he tried to gain acceptance as an army chaplain but was too old. Eventually he got taken on by the C.E.F. and served in England as a corporal. On demobilisation he was ordained in the Church of England, married and settled down, becoming in the 1920s until his death the Frontiersmen Padre who had lived a life as adventurous as any other Frontiersman.

Will any of the Legion’s recent Padres be able to tell of such an adventurous life story as their predecessors? We will have to wait until after they have departed this world and then future historians will be able to record their lives as part of the Legion’s long history.

Notes:

¹ “Canadian Frontiersman” Oct-Nov-Dec 1964. More about this is to be found in the new Outrider of Empire: the life and adventures of Roger Pocock , by Geoffrey A Pocock
² From Cowboy to Pulpit by Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave (London, Herbert Jenkins, n.d.)
³ Outrider of Empire tells much of Roger Pocock’s experiences as a cowboy and with cowboys, particularly when he rode the “Outlaw Trail” from Canada to Mexico in 1899

© Copyright 2002-2008 Geoffrey A. Pocock. All rights reserved.