Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/340

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Kitchener
D.N.B. 1912–1921

sailed from England. He had planned that the British armies in France should be at their greatest strength in the third year of the War, and he hoped that victory would be achieved in that year. He adhered to that plan with the same resolution which had brought him to Khartoum, and had ended the South African War. The British armies in France did reach their highest strength in 1917, and it is at least within the bounds of probability that had he lived he would have prevented some of those divided councils and divergences of purpose which contributed to the prolongation of the War into 1918.

Kitchener never married, and, in accordance with the special remainder, his brother, Colonel Henry Elliott Chevallier Kitchener, succeeded as second Earl.

A portrait of Kitchener was painted by Sir H. von Herkomer in 1891 against a background of Egyptian architecture executed by F. Goodall; this picture was presented to the National Portrait Gallery by Mr. Pandeli Ralli in 1916. There is also in the same gallery a portrait in pastel executed by C. Horsfall in 1899, and presented in 1916 by Sir Lees Knowles. There are other portraits by Sir A. S. Cope (1900) and the Hon. John Collier. A bronze bust by Sir William Goscombe John, is placed in the Gordon Memorial College at Khartoum; another, in marble, by Sir Hamo Thornycroft, was sculptured in 1917. The full-length effigy in marble executed in 1923 for the monument in St. Paul's Cathedral is by W. Read Dick. A statue by John Tweed was erected on the Horse Guards Parade in 1926. (See Royal Academy Pictures 1891, 1900, 1917, and 1923).

[W. S. Churchill, The River War, 1899; Sir J. F. Maurice and M. H. Grant, (Official) History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, 1906–1910; Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 1920.]

F. M.


KITCHIN, GEORGE WILLIAM (1827–1912), dean of Winchester and of Durham, was born at Naughton, Suffolk, 7 December 1827, the fifth child of the Rev. Isaac Kitchin, rector of St. Stephen's, Ipswich, by his wife, Mary, daughter of the Rev. J. Bardgett, rector of Melmerby, Cumberland. He went to Ipswich grammar school and King's College School, London, and in 1846 was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1850 he graduated, with first classes in classics and mathematics; two years later he took orders and became a tutor of his college. In 1861, after some years as head master of a preparatory school at Twyford, Hampshire, he was appointed censor of Christ Church, a post which he held until 1863, when he married. During the next twenty years he lectured for several colleges, mainly on history. He also did good work for the University Press; he was secretary from 1866 to 1868 to the board of delegates, and for many years to the school-books committee; in the latter capacity he organized the first Clarendon Press editions of English classics, which did much to promote the serious study, if not the sympathetic appreciation, of English literature in schools. It was, however, as the first censor of non-collegiate students that Kitchin rendered his greatest services to Oxford. He held the position from 1868 to 1883; the organization which he established has been little altered, and it is largely due to his energy and tact that the experiment of admitting such students to the university has proved successful.

In 1883 Kitchin was appointed to the deanery of Winchester, and eleven years later to that of Durham. In both places he threw himself with characteristic ardour into the duties of his office, but he seems to have found Durham the more congenial, partly because of the close association of the cathedral and the university. Kitchin was ex-officio warden of University College, Durham, and after 1908 he was chancellor of the university. He died 13 October 1912.

Kitchin was a man of handsome presence and much charm of manner. His habitual zeal in the performance of the daily task was doubtless in part responsible for his failure to produce a great work of learning. His most ambitious literary undertaking—a History of France, in three volumes (1873–1877)—is interesting and still useful, but too slight in texture to be placed in the highest class of historical writings. While at Oxford he also wrote a Life of Pope Pius II (1881). At Winchester and Durham he busied himself largely with local history and archaeology. Among his later writings were a history of Winchester (1890) and a Life of E. Harold Browne, Bishop of Winchester (1895); he also edited several volumes of records for the Hampshire Record Society and the Surtees Society. Kitchin was a strong liberal in politics, and incurred much public disfavour by his outspoken support of the Boers during the South African War.

Kitchin married in 1863 Alice Maud, daughter of Bridges Taylor, British consul

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