Indiscretions of a Young Man

From the dust-jacket:

The author of this remarkable autobiography is Major R. V. C. Bodley, son of J. E. C. Bodley, who will be remembered as the brilliant author of " France." He is also a direct descendant of Miles Bodley, the founder of the " Bodleian."

The book opens with memories of a childhood spent in France, in a home that gave hospitality to some of this country's most illustrious personalities, as well as Europeans distinguished in the world of art, diplomacy and letters. Thence to Eton, Sandhurst and India. The chapters on his life at this period are enlivened with many amusing anecdotes which throw light on the future careers of great statesmen, soldiers and sailors, figures renowned in the worlds of finance, of art and of letters. Sandhurst he disposes of in a cynically amusing fashion, while he gives a perfect pen-picture of army life In India, with that social background which is peculiarly its own. From here he comes to the Great War. His contribution to this sorely-tried subject is original in focus, full of sanity and notably free from heroics. But perhaps his most interesting achievement in this book of varied and manifold interest is his story of the Peace Conference, Major Bodley was invalided from the War zone early in 1918, and after his convalescence was appointed Military Attache at the British Embassy in Paris. From this excellent vantage point he gives us an intimate history in miniature. After this short period of gilded officialdom, we find him sitting at a clerk's desk at the Paris branch of Cox's Bank, from whence he graduated to the position of a Bank sub-manager in Algiers. How he later became a sheep farmer in the company of Arab nomads, adopting the Arab dress, learning the language, and spending his nights in a camel-hair tent among his shepherds, reads like the most exotic novel, but all the time, as through the entire book, he has merely set down facts and thrown scene after scene before the reader like some super-cinematograph operator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biographical Information

 

 

 

Bodley was born, the eldest of three children, in Paris on 3 March 1892 to Civil Servant and Writer John Edward Courtenay Bodley and Evelyn Frances Bodley (née Bell); his parents divorced in 1908. Bodley was a descendant of Diplomat and Scholar Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, and was, through his mother, a cousin of Gertrude Bell, the writer and archaeologist who helped establish the Hashemite dynasties. He lived in France with his parents until he was nine.

Bodley was educated at a Lycée in Paris before he was sent to Eton College and then to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. From Sandhurst he was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps as a Second Lieutenant in September 1911; he spent three years serving in the Regiment (4th Battalion) in India.

 

Bodley  happened to be in England in August 1914 and was appointed Adjutant of the 10th (S) Battalion, 20th (Light) Division, going to France in July 1915. He was wounded several times (including being gassed) and, at the age of 26, was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel in command of a Battalion.

 

Invalided out, he was appointed Assistant Military Attaché to Paris on 15 August 1918, and attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. What he heard there reportedly made him feel that he and the millions of other soldiers had fought for nothing; he wrote later that "selfish politicians [were] laying the groundwork for the Second World War – each country grabbing all it could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret."

Gertrude Bell had introduced Bodley to T. E. Lawrence. Bodley met Lawrence one day outside the Paris Peace Conference and told him of his intent to move into politics. Lawrence responded furiously, calling him a moron and a traitor. When he replied that he had no other prospects now that the war was over and asked what he should do, Lawrence suggested "Go live with the Arabs." Bodley said his conversation with Lawrence, which lasted "less than 200 seconds", proved to be life-changing. He promptly sorted his affairs, and with a total of £300 and no prospects of further income, went to live in the Sahara. His bemused friends held him a farewell party. They all agreed he would be back in six weeks; he stayed in the Sahara for seven years.