Born on 15 February 1884, Francis Arthur was a restless individual who had evolved a healthy and well-developed disrespect for authority and the confines of a conventional lifestyle. As a junior member of the family, he was expected to seek his fortune in the wider world — and one that he, in his own words, he “was destined to pass through only once”. The following is a series of extracts from his autobiography.
“I was born in England in 1884 of a North Lincolnshire family. My grandfather was what is known in England as a Squarson — a Squire Parson (the Rev Robert Sutton). He owned some ten thousand acres. He preached, baptized, buried, managed his estates, and rode to hounds. I went to Eton and afterwards took an engineering course at University College, London.
I lived in a suburb called Acton and caught the eight-ten to Paddington every morning. The idea of becoming one of that army of season-ticket holders terrified me. Thousands of them, exactly alike: top hat, well-brushed clothes, umbrella to protect the topper, and galoshes to protect the boots, the Daily Mail, a knotted handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket, as a reminder to bring home a reel of cotton thread — and there you have him!
Every morning his multiple image hurried along the station platforms, crowded into the carriages, sat unthinking and unseeing, behind steamy smoky windows until the train disgorged him into the City. On the nine-ten he was a professional man, lawyer, doctor, architect, engineer. On the ten-ten he was bloated, pompous, self-satisfied man of affairs whose topper outshone all the other toppers, and who read The Times. He grew fatter and wheezier, until, driven to the station in a fine carriage, the most successful of him caught the eleven-ten.
This was the ultimate achievement, the splendid, shining goal toward which my companions of the eight-ten were striving. I could not share their enthusiasm, nor could I understand it. The prospect of spending a lifetime to achieve this end filled me with loathing.”
By the age of twenty he was in Paraguay, building a railway line through swamps and forests. Despite the physical hardships he looked back on those days as the happiest of his life. Following his marriage to Carina Chester back in England in 1909, he then set off for Mexico to work for Lord Cowdray on the construction of an oil refinery.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, he returned to England, partly out of a sense of duty and partly for the adventure. His first posting was to Malta where he was put in charge of searchlights. “Life was pleasant, the polo was first-rate and everyone’s boots were nicely polished”.
