Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell Totally Explained

Everything about Robert Baden-powell 1st Baron Baden-powell totally explained

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB (22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B-P, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement.
After having been educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the city in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. Based on those earlier books, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Pearson, for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas through a camping trip on Brownsea Island that began on 1 August 1907, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.
After his marriage with Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell and notably his wife actively gave guidance to the Scouting Movement and the Girl Guides Movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died in 1941.

Early life

Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell, or more familiarly as Stephe Powell, at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington in London, England, UK on 22 February 1857. His father Reverend Baden Powell, a Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, already had four teenage children from the second of his two previous marriages. On 10 March 1846 at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, Reverend Powell married Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824 – 13 October 1914), eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth and 28 years his junior. Quickly they'd Warington (early 1847), George (late 1847), Augustus (1849) and Francis (1850). After three further children who died when very young, they'd Stephe, Agnes (1858) and Baden (1860). The three youngest children and the often ill Augustus were close friends. Reverend Powell died when Stephe was three, and as tribute to his father and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, the mother changed the family name to Baden-Powell. Subsequently, Stephe was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. Baden-Powell would say of her in 1933 "The whole secret of my getting on lay with my mother."
   After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, during which his favourite brother Augustus died, Stephe Baden-Powell was awarded a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school. His first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds. He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.
   Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896 to aid the British South Africa Company colonials under siege in Bulawayo during the Second Matabele War. This was a formative experience for him not only because he'd the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in Matobo Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here. It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to the American Old West and woodcraft (for example, scoutcraft), and here that he wore his signature Stetson campaign hat and kerchief for the first time. A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled Aids to Scouting, a summary of lectures he'd given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.
   He returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in further military actions against the Zulus. By this time, he'd been promoted to be the youngest colonel in the British Army. He was responsible for the organisation of a force of frontiersmen to assist the regular army. While arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers were ordered to simulate avoiding non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.
   Contrary views of Baden-Powell's actions during the Siege of Mafeking pointed out that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham stated that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the natives' garrison. However, Pakenham decidedly retreated from this position. After organising the South African Constabulary, the national police force, he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903.
   In 1910 lieutenant-general Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.
   On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Baden-Powell put himself at the disposal of the War Office. No command, however, was given him, for, as Lord Kitchener said: "he could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts." It was widely rumoured that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to the myth.

Scouting Movement

Pronunciation of Baden-Powell
['beɪdʌn 'pəʊəl]

Man, Nation, Maiden
Please call it Baden.
Further, for Powell
Rhyme it with Noel

Verse by B-P

On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations. Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys of mixed social background to test out the applicability of his ideas. Baden-Powell was also influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians and they met in 1906. Scouting for Boys was subsequently published in six instalments in 1908.
   Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops and the Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as a national, and soon an international obsession. The Scouting Movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guide Movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend, Juliette Gordon Low, was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to America, where she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA.
   In 1920, the 1st World Scout Jamboree took place in Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World. Baden-Powell was created a Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours and Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, in the County of Essex, on 17 September 1929, Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre. After receiving this honour, Baden-Powell mostly styled himself "Baden-Powell of Gilwell".
   In 1929, during the 3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new Rolls-Royce car and an Eccles Caravan. This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education. Under his dedicated command the world Scouting Movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.
   At the 5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937, Baden-Powell gave his farewell to Scouting, and retired from public Scouting life. 22 February, the joint birthday of Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, continues to be marked as Founder's Day by Scouts and Thinking Day by Guides to remember and celebrate the work of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide of the World.
   In his final letter to the Scouts, Baden-Powell wrote: � ...I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you're a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you're a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you've got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you've not wasted your time but have done your best. 'Be Prepared' in this way, to live happy and to die happy - stick to your Scout Promise always - even after you've ceased to be a boy - and God help you to do it.

Personal life

In January 1912, Baden-Powell met the woman who would be his future wife, Olave St Clair Soames, on the ocean liner, Arcadian, heading for New York to start one of his Scouting World Tours. She was a young woman of 23, while he was 55, a not uncommon age difference in that time, and they shared the same birthday. They became engaged in September of the same year, causing a media sensation due to Baden-Powell's fame. To avoid press intrusion, they married in secret on 30 October 1912. The Scouts of England each donated a penny to buy Baden-Powell a wedding gift, a car (note that this isn't the Rolls-Royce they were presented with in 1929). There is a monument to their marriage inside St Mary's Church, Brownsea Island.
   Baden-Powell and Olave lived in Pax Hill near Bentley, Hampshire and Chapel Farm, Ripley, Surrey from about 1919 until 1939. The Bentley house was a gift of her father. Directly after he'd married, Baden-Powell had begun to have problems with his health, suffering bouts of illness. He complained of persistent headaches, which were considered by his doctor to be of psychosomatic origin and treated with dream analysis. He also admired Mussolini, and some early Scouting badges had a swastika symbol on them. According to his biographer Rosenthal, Baden-Powell used the swastika because he was a Nazi sympathizer. Jeal, however, argues that Baden-Powell was naïve of the symbol's growing association with fascism and maintained that his use of the symbol related to its earlier, original meaning of "good luck" in Sanskrit, for which purpose the symbol had been used for centuries prior to the rise of fascism. Despite these early sympathies, Baden-Powell was a target of the Nazi regime in the Black Book, which listed individuals which were to be arrested during and after an invasion of Great Britain as part of Operation Sealion. Scouting was regarded as a dangerous spy organization by the Nazis.
   Baden-Powell died on 8 January 1941 and is buried in Nyeri, in St. Peter's Cemetery . His gravestone bears a circle with a dot in the centre, which is the trail sign for "Going home", or "I have gone home": When his wife Olave died, her ashes were sent to Kenya and interred beside her husband. Kenya has declared Baden-Powell's grave a national monument.
   The Baden-Powells had three children, one son and two daughters, who all acquired the courtesy title of "The Honourable" in 1929 as children of a baron. The son succeeded his father in 1941 to the Baden-Powell Baronetcy and the title of Baron Baden-Powell.

Arthur Robert Peter (Peter), later 2nd Baron Baden-Powell (1913–1962). He married Carine Crause-Boardman in 1936, and had three children: Robert Crause, later 3rd Baron Baden-Powell; David Michael (Michael), current heir to the titles, and Wendy.
Heather (1915–1986), who married John King and had two children: Michael and Timothy,
Betty (1917–2004), who married Gervase Charles Robert Clay in 1936 and had three sons and one daughter: Robin, Chispin, Gillian and Nigel.

Artist and writer

Baden-Powell made paintings and drawings, almost every day of his life. Most have a humorous or informative character. who have concluded that Baden-Powell was attracted to youthful men and to boys. After an extensive review of the available material, Jeal presents the case that Baden-Powell was a "repressed homosexual." Jeal admits that there's no documentary evidence that he ever acted on his sexual orientation. Baden-Powell is thought to always have remained chaste with his scouts, and he didn't tolerate Scoutmasters who indulged in sexual 'escapades' with their charges.

Works

Military books

1884: Reconnaissance and Scouting

1885: Cavalry Instruction

1889: Pigsticking or Hoghunting

1896: The Downfall of Prempeh

1897: The Matabele Campaign

1899: Aids to Scouting for N.-C.Os and Men

1900: Sport in War

1901: Notes and Instructions for the South African Constabulary

1914: Quick Training for War

Scouting books

1908: Scouting for Boys

1909: Yarns for Boy Scouts

1912: Handbook for Girl Guides (co-authored with Agnes Baden-Powell)

1913: Boy Scouts Beyond The Sea: My World Tour

1916: The Wolf Cub's handbook

1918: Girl Guiding

1919: Aids To Scoutmastership

1921: What Scouts Can Do: More Yarns

1922: Rovering to Success

1929: Scouting and Youth Movements

1935: Scouting Round the World

est 1939:

Other books

1905: Ambidexterity (co-authored with John Jackson)

1915: Indian Memories

1915: My Adventures as a Spy

1916: Young Knights of the Empire: Their Code, and Further Scout Yarns

1921: An Old Wolf's Favourites

1927: Life's Snags and How to Meet Them

1933: Lessons From the Varsity of Life

1934: Adventures and Accidents

1936: Adventuring to Manhood

1937: African Adventures

1938: Birds and beasts of Africa

1939: Paddle Your Own Canoe

1940: More Sketches Of Kenya

Sculpture

1905 John Smith

Awards

In 1937 Baden-Powell was appointed to the Order of Merit, one of the most exclusive awards in the British honours system, and he was also awarded 28 decorations by foreign states.
   The Silver Wolf worn by Robert Baden-Powell is handed down the line of his successors, with the current Chief Scout, Peter Duncan wearing this original award.
   The Bronze Wolf, the only distinction of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, awarded by the World Scout Committee for exceptional services to world Scouting, was first awarded to Baden-Powell by a unanimous decision of the then International Committee on the day of the institution of the Bronze Wolf in Stockholm in 1935. He was also the first recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award in 1926, the highest award conferred by the Boy Scouts of America.
   In 1931, Major Frederick Russell Burnham dedicated Mount Baden-Powell in California to his old Scouting friend from forty years before. Today their friendship is honoured in perpetuity with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham .
   Baden-Powell was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on numerous occasions, including 10 separate nominations in 1928.
   As part of the Scouting 2007 Centenary, Nepal renamed Urkema Peak to Baden-Powell Peak.

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