Niv: The Authorized Biography of David Niven (6 page)

Three

Sandhurst and the Hairy-Legged Irish
1928–1933

D
avid was one of five young men from Stowe who joined more than 400 other Gentlemen Cadets at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst on 31 August 1928 to be trained for fifteen months to become officers in the British army. The college’s buildings were not nearly as stylish as those of Stowe but they were old and elegant, and the grounds extremely spacious, with acres of woodland, a lake and a river. The course cost £300, the equivalent of about £9000 in 2003, but Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt may have had to pay only £45 (£1400 today), the fee for the son of a dead officer. David was assigned to the junior platoon of No. 1 Company, where the senior cadet in charge was called Wright – ‘a shifty-looking customer’, he wrote in
The Moon’s a Balloon
, ‘a singularly unattractive piece of work’ – who later changed his name to Baillie-Stewart and was imprisoned for selling military secrets to the Germans.

On his second Sunday at the college David and the other newcomers, all smartly dressed in traditional Sandhurst tweed caps, were inspected by the seventy-eight-year-old Field Marshal Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria, and for ten weeks they were drilled ferociously by the Company Sergeant Major, ‘Robbo’ Robinson of the Grenadier Guards. They were paraded, shouted at, marched, yelled at, made to run, bawled at, exercised, sworn at, inspected, bellowed at, drilled again and shouted at again. They were taught to salute, climb ropes, use a bayonet and ride horses, and they polished everything in sight, over and over again:
rifles, bayonets, boots, buttons. If they failed to be perfect at any of their tasks they were arrested and locked in the guardroom or made to drill yet again in full battle order at the end of the day when everyone else had collapsed, exhausted. A cadet who was caught pilfering was tarred and feathered by his fellows, horsewhipped across a vast field and thrown into the freezing lake. An unpopular chap might have his room smashed up, his moustache shaved off, or be thrown into the lake after dinner – a regular retribution. David was popular right from the start, but those first ten weeks were ‘sheer, undiluted hell’, he wrote. ‘Life at Sandhurst was tough but it was exhilarating and the cadets were a dedicated
corps d’élite
.’

John Masters, who joined Sandhurst as a cadet three years later and went on to become a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian army and the author of bestselling novels such as
Nightrunners of Bengal
and
Bhowani Junction
in the 1950s, reckoned that the college was ‘undoubtedly brutal’. Of his first weeks there he wrote in his autobiography
Bugles and a Tiger
: ‘The drill step increased from 120 to 150, 160, 170 paces a minute – anything, just as fast as our legs would carry us. Faster. The sergeants twinkled along beside us like demented sheepdogs, their pace sticks twirling, their mouths baying and yapping an endless series of commands, threats and objurgations’ – bull-necked sergeants who were technically inferior in rank to the Gentlemen Cadets and would call David ‘Mr Niven, sir’ before bawling at him, though according to an old Sandhurst maxim a Gentleman Cadet was almost an officer and not quite a gentleman. When King George V’s third son, Henry Duke of Gloucester, had been a Sandhurst cadet just after the First World War an infuriated sergeant had bellowed at him: ‘Mr Prince ’Enry, if I was your father, I’d – I’d – I’d
habdicate
– sir!’

For those first ten weeks the new cadets were not allowed to leave the college, but the exhausting routine did not diminish Niv’s sparky sense of fun. ‘In the life-saving exercises in the
pool he would grab people round the shoulders when it was his turn to be saved and shout “Save me! Save me! Save me!” ’ his contemporary General Sir Charles Harington told me, ‘and once when we were doing mock court-martials and Niven wasn’t paying any attention as usual and the commanding officer said, “What do you think the sentence should be in this case, Niven?” he said, “Death, sir!” The CO said, “But he’s only been late coming back to barracks!” and Niven said, “All right: confined to barracks for two weeks”.’ General Harington also recalled that ‘Niven lived a Walter Mitty life at Sandhurst and would make things up, as he did all his life.’

At the end of ten nightmarish weeks the new cadets suddenly realised that they were as fit as they would ever be, and although the drilling was now a part of their lives they were able at last to think sometimes and to study military law, tactics, administration and man management. They even had time for leisure. They could buy tea, buns and cigarettes in the Fancy Goods Store, which was known for some reason as Jesus, or beer and port with their meals, and they could raise extra money by leaving their bicycles, watches or suits with the local pawnbroker, Mrs Hart, otherwise known as the Duchess of Camberley. The nearest pub in bounds to cadets was at Frimley Green, Aldershot had a cinema and Camberley two prostitutes. Two other favourite amusements were bicycle polo and throwing bicycles off the roof on Sunday evenings. They were allowed out of bounds on Saturday nights and Sundays, a bus was provided to take them to London if they wished, and those in their senior year were allowed to have cars and raced them to London at night, though the privilege was removed, according to Masters, after ‘too many civilians had been killed’. Generally the cadets’ favourite method of relaxation was to drink too much. One Gentleman Cadet contemporary of David’s told Alan Shepperd for his history of Sandhurst that ‘some GCs found signing in after a weekend leave rather an ordeal. The orderly officer sat at a table at the
entrance of the Old Building. Many would not have passed a breathalyser test, but as long as some sort of a signature was attempted and the GC remained upright most orderly officers were satisfied; if not, a charge of drunkenness was treated very seriously by the Commandant!’ Also forbidden were the mid-week late-night expeditions when a cadet might meet a girl even though he could be expelled if he was caught. He would climb out of a window after lights-out, dodging the college policemen, the ‘Bluebottles’, and run across an open sports field before being picked up in a hired car.

Young Niven made an immediate impact at Sandhurst. He was soon selected to play in the scrum for the rugby 1st XV, and after just five weeks he appeared on stage at the college theatre in a variety show in which he performed a duologue entitled ‘Searching for the Supernatural’ with the college’s reigning star actor and comic, R. E. Osborne-Smith. ‘A valuable recruit, who deservedly made the hit of the evening, was David Niven,’ said the college’s
R. M. C. Magazine and Record
. ‘He is a great find, with the most exquisite meandering manner.’

At the end of David’s first ten weeks of purgatory he was made a lance-corporal, one of six promoted in No. 1 Company, and a week later he had a large part in his first Sandhurst play,
The Creaking Chair
, a three-act murder mystery in which he played a Fleet Street crime reporter and was praised by the college magazine as ‘an irresistible hero’. At the end of November he was awarded a rugby Blue and wrote a proud six-page letter to Roxburgh to list his string of successes but also to report ruefully: ‘I met the R.M.C. champion heavyweight in the Boxing Competition. Altogether eight blows were struck. I struck the first two, he struck the next six – I went down six times!!’ There were now nine Old Stoics at Sandhurst, and his pride in Stowe and loyalty to Roxburgh shone through his letter. ‘When the King and Queen come down to Stowe for the opening of the chapel,’ he suggested, ‘if there are enough of us, do you
think the Sandhurst contingent could form an extra guard of honour behind the O.T.C. one?’ and he concluded, ‘Everybody here has a very high opinion of Stowe, as of course they should, and we will see that that is kept up.’ On 8 March he was deeply touched to receive a letter from Roxburgh wishing him a happy birthday.

He learned to play the bagpipes and was chosen to be one of the commandant’s two orderlies that term, a post that provided a huge breakfast with the commandant every Sunday and allowed Niv to be excused the drill parade every Saturday morning so that he could go up to London early for the whole day. On Sunday mornings he and his fellow orderly would escort the CO to parade, chapel and a full inspection of the whole college, slow-marching and carrying silver sticks and beautiful embossed silver Victorian message boxes attached to their belts. As a joke Niv kept in his box a roll of lavatory paper and a dozen condoms, and to his horror one morning the commandant, Major-General Eric Girdwood, decided that he ought to inspect his orderlies and their message boxes. He opened Niven’s box and gazed at its contents. There was a long silence. ‘Niven,’ he said eventually. ‘Thank you very much. You are very considerate.’

David’s dream after Sandhurst was to join the glamorous Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and in March he wrote to Roxburgh: ‘I have just heard definitely that I am
certain
to get either the Argylls or the Blackwatch, I only pray that it is true.’ His mother – ‘whom I had finally grown to love and to appreciate,’ he wrote in
The Moon’s a Balloon
– had been pulling every possible string with influential Scottish friends to get him into the regiment, though her and David’s motives were not quite as basic as those of the drunk middle-aged major of a Highland regiment who once remarked to John Masters as he propped himself up in a public lavatory, ‘Join a Highland regiment, me boy. The kilt is an unrivalled garment for fornication and diarrhoea.’ Lady Comyn-Platt had even managed to wangle an introduction to the colonel
of the Argylls, the McClean of Loch Buie, who had taken a shine to David and introduced him to the regiment’s honorary colonel, the sixty-two-year-old Princess Royal, Princess Louise, George V’s sister, who became fond of him too. David spent a day with the officers of the regiment, who were about to sail off to the West Indies, and got on so well with them that they told him he was certain to be offered a commission in the Argylls and would soon be joining them in the Caribbean. He took this so much for granted that when he had to fill in a War Office form listing in order of preference the three regiments for which he would like to be considered, he wrote ‘1. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; 2. The Black Watch’ and then added cheekily, ‘3. Anything but the Highland Light Infantry.’ It was to prove one joke too many.

During that term his stage career blossomed. At the end of February 1929 he appeared in another Sandhurst variety show in an item he had written himself entitled ‘Why Every Married G. C. Should Have a Wife’, of which the local paper reported, ‘Mr J. D. G. Niven’s witty talk … was, perhaps, the most popular item of the evening.’ The
R.M.C. Magazine and Record
was equally impressed and said, ‘Niven biffled away so delightfully that one wondered whether any institution provides a richer store for humour than the R. M. C.’ A month later he performed what the local paper said was ‘a very amusing sketch’ of ‘sparkling wit’ as well as delivering a duologue with another cadet, both of whom were ‘excellent’ according to the college magazine. Three weeks later he was back again on stage in his first starring part – for two nights at the RMC theatre and then for a third at the Drill Hall in Camberley – in a three-act farce,
It Pays to Advertise
, in which he was the only cadet in the cast and played the lead opposite Mrs Barkas, the wife of one of the officers. His role was that of a charming, layabout, twenty-four-year-old son of a millionaire businessman – precisely the sort of light, charming, comic part that was to make him famous in Hollywood – and the local paper reported that ‘Gentleman Cadet
David Niven kept the audience continually in laughter’ although ‘his acting at times was a trifle exuberant’. The college magazine was enthusiastic too. This was ‘quite the best show we have enjoyed for a long while’, it reported, and ‘the part of Rodney Martin exactly suited David Niven with his very attractive, easy manner. One feels so completely “at home” with him, so sympathetic when his troubles overwhelm him; proud of him when he keeps his flag flying; delighted when he wins through. He can make you “emote” … one minute and laugh with him the next. That is acting … He and Capt. Teversham together are a joy.’

That week Niv took part in an inter-company sports contest in No. 1 Company’s shot-put team and five weeks later he was promoted to the rank of corporal. In June he had yet another cause for celebration. Comyn-Platt – who now had living with him and Etta at 110 Sloane Street both twenty-nine-year-old Joyce and twenty-two-year-old Grizel – stood for Parliament for the third time in a general election and was beaten by his biggest margin yet even though his seat at Portsmouth Central had previously had a 3503 Tory majority. Once again the Conservatives were losing all over the country to Labour, whose leader Ramsay MacDonald was again about to replace Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister.

In June David invited a girl – he said she was Nessie – to the annual Sandhurst Ball and they danced in the big, beautifully decorated gymnasium to the strains of the college’s military band. The ball ‘was probably the most colourful function in prewar England’, said John Masters, ‘and was annually attended by about two thousand people … The cadets and the women acted as a backdrop for the brilliance of nearly every mess kit of the British Empire – scarlet and gold, chocolate and French grey, royal blue and silver, dark green and light blue, white and crimson; kilts and trews; sporrans and aiguillettes and shoulder chains – and then the naval officers in their boat cloaks! The sight of the officers gathering was intoxicating but awe-inspiring.’

David had also found himself a new girlfriend: the beautiful, blonde, twenty-year-old English actress Ann Todd, who was soon to make the first of her thirty-seven films, to become one of Britain’s most popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s, and to marry the director David Lean. Niv first saw her in a play in Portsmouth, bought a programme, drew two hearts on it with an arrow piercing both, and had it delivered to her. She decided immediately to have nothing to do with such an impertinent young man, but he started turning up at the theatre every night and sending her more programmes with hearts drawn beside her name. ‘I got very uptight about that because it seemed so childish,’ she told Sheridan Morley, but on the last night David wangled his way into her dressing room by persuading the playwright, Ian Hay, to introduce him. ‘He was very cocky,’ she said years later. ‘
Very
cocky. Very full of himself but now, thinking it over, I suspect very insecure inside.’ Every Saturday night he would cadge a lift to London to see her, and although she said they never became lovers ‘he was just a lovely person. People adored him even when he was very young,’ and they developed a lifelong brother-and-sister relationship, the first of many platonic friendships that Niv was to have with beautiful women.