France he entered into cordial relations with many French officers and especially with Colonel Huguet, who in 1905 became military attaché in London. Between them these two men laid the foundations of co-operation between the British and French armies, and when Grierson went to command the first division at Aldershot in 1906, a post which he held till 1910, his work was carried on by his successors, Sir Spencer Ewart and (Sir) Henry Wilson. For the next eight years, with an interval on half-pay during which he took part in the coronation mission to Siam (1911) and in the official tour of Prince Henry of Prussia (1911), he was employed first at Aldershot and then (1912) as general officer commanding-in-chief, Eastern Command. In both capacities his energies were directed towards the training of troops for field warfare and especially towards securing rapidity of mobilization. The clash with Germany, which had long been foreseen by Grierson and by many other soldiers, sailors, and diplomatists, grew clearly more imminent. Had war with Germany come about as the result of the Agadir crisis (July 1911), it had been proposed that Grierson should be chief of the general staff of a British expeditionary force: but in 1914, when war was declared, he was appointed to command the second Army Corps. He only lived to land in France. He reached Havre on 16 August, and the day after his arrival he died suddenly in the train, near Amiens, of aneurism of the heart He was buried at Glasgow.
Grierson’s great knowledge of languages, his strength, energy, capacity for work, and extraordinary memory, enabled him to acquire a vast store of knowledge of his profession. One of the outstanding features of his character was his admiration of the British private soldier. He was beloved by his troops, for though strict as regards training, he spared them unnecessary duties by thinking out his problems in advance and making provision for all reasonable comfort and relaxation. His early service was chiefly on the staff, and he was in advance of his times in knowledge of staff work; but this was not his predilection. ‘I would rather command a battalion in war than be C.G.S.’, he wrote in 1914. He was of a cheerful disposition, a good musician, an amateur actor, fond of travel and society; but he really lived for his profession, and no officer was more wholeheartedly devoted to the army. He was created K.C.B. on the occasion of the coronation of George V in 1911, when he was in attendance on the German crown prince, and he was an aide-de-camp general to the King, knight of grace of St. John of Jerusalem, a commander of the legion of honour, and holder of many other foreign decorations. He was unmarried.
[The Times, 18 August 1914; War Office records; Annual Register; ‘The Times’ History of the War in South Africa, 1900–1909; D. S. Macdiarmid, Life of Sir James Moncrieff Grierson, 1928; private information.]
GROSSMITH, GEORGE (1847–1912), entertainer and singer in light opera, was born in London 9 December 1847, the elder son of George Grossmith, a lecturer and police-court reporter to The Times and other journals, by his wife, Emmeline Weedon. His uncle, William Robert Grossmith, of Reading, had been a well-known child-actor. At seventeen, while still a pupil at the North London Collegiate School, Grossmith began to act as deputy for his father at the Bow Street police court, and from 1866 to 1869 this was his only profession. He gave it up for a time in 1877, on being engaged at the Opera Comique, but resumed it for a short period on his father’s death in 1880. In boyhood he had entertained his friends by singing comic songs to his own accompaniment on the piano. Modelling his work on that of John Orlando Parry [q.v.], he began in 1864 to give performances at ‘penny readings’ of songs and sketches of contemporary life, most of which he composed and wrote. In 1870 he was engaged by John Henry Pepper [q.v.] to perform in his entertainment at the Polytechnic in Regent Street. Other engagements of this kind followed; and until 1877 he was much occupied in touring with his father, with Mrs. Howard Paul [q.v.], with Florence Marryat [q.v.], oralone. For performance with Miss Marryat he wrote and composed in 1876 the satirical sketch Cups and Saucers.
In the autumn of 1877 he was engaged by Richard D’Oyly Carte [q.v.] to take the part of John Wellington Wells in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, The Sorcerer, produced at the Opera Comique 17 November 1877; and for the next twelve years he was regularly employed in this series of operas. He ‘created’ the parts of Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore (Opera Comique, 28 May 1878), Major- General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance (Opera Comique, 3 April 1880), Reginald Bunthorne in Patience (Opera Comique, 23 April 1881, transferred to the newly built Savoy Theatre, 10 October 1881),
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