June 11, 2015

Finest Hour 101, Winter 1998-99

Page 46

By Christopher Ford


Imagine: The Club, exclusive, immemorial, resonant with the noises of gentlemen dining. Imagine, though, two splendid braggadocios, quite thinly disguised under the pseudonyms of Churchill and F. E. Smith. Our heroes suspect the pitter-patter of black balls. So what do they do? They start The Other Club. Here, too, gentlemen may dine, insulated from hoi polloi; and, if the members seem to be mainly of a political or military vocation, then where else would you look for gentlemen except landed on the grouse-moor?

This, then, is the backcloth, nay, the stage itself, for Sir Colin Coote’s latest literary adventure. And with such gusto does he ring up the curtain: “Nineteen Hundred and Eleven! What a year in which to be born! The Edwardian era, so like the Second Empire in France, was lying in the ashtray of history, like the last cigar puffed on his deathbed by its founder…”

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Sir Colin was ever a fantasist, except perhaps in his days as managing editor of the Daily Telegraph. He personally wrote a book called Sir Winston Churchill: A Self-Portrait“; and he is a sort of Coalition Liberal. But now, at last, Sir Colin has found a subject worthy of a former Times leader-writer. How like matadors do his characters bestride their political ring. Modestly he keeps on denying that his Other Club is merely a group of Churchillian sycophants; but the great man, together with that Smith among Smiths, are here as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger.

Their coruscating wit shines through these pages of history. Here’s Churchill replying to a speech by Smuts: “I have known him long, very long; I remember the first time I saw him. It was in the Colonial Office in 1906.” (Factually, remarks a footnote, this happens to be wrong.) Smith— who once, when a judge called him offensive, said, “As a matter of fact we both are; the difference is that I’m trying to be and you can’t help it”—is given personal credit for The Other Club’s twelfth and final rule: “nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics.” It was once said of a famous England cricketer that there was only one bigger head in the North: Birkenhead.

Where Sir Colin most excels is in his character-drawing. With how deft a twitch of the pen does he describe Lord Goddard, who was “as forthright about hooligans as about port.” (Coote can’t have been an ignorant tippler himself, in the great days. The Club ran short of brandy during the War: “After considerable research, I discovered an excellent 1875, a passable 1904, and an undated concoction with a kick like a mule. Churchill unhesitatingly chose the mule.”)

Like a sack of marbles on a hot tin roof the names drop. There was “Lord Tweedmuir, better known” (surely not?) “as John Buchan, who wrote tremendous adventure stories… with the pen of an angel,” and Alfred Munnings, “whose portrayal of horses was divine.” Don’t think, though, that the club isn’t democratic. “One of the distinctions which his command in Iraq won for Sir John Salmond was a membership of The Other Club.” J. H. Thomas, railwayman turned Cabinet Minister, was a member, too, even if “he was rather inclined to call mere acquaintances ‘real pals.'”

Rejections? “The only candidate I recall being repulsed was Sir Samuel Hoare, who shared with Sir John Simon an extraordinary capacity for getting himself disliked, coupled with a fervent desire to get himself beloved. But he probably did not know that he had been a candidate.” Only two Prime Ministers, Baldwin and MacDonald, were not Members. Neither was ever proposed. Harold Wilson, though elected, never attended: “He is an agreeable table companion. He was not kept out, nor did he deliberately stay out.”

Oswald Mosley joined, proposed by Churchill and the Hon. Esmond Harmsworth. The profession of letters has been decently represented, not least by the author and by P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote to Sir Colin: “It must have been at my first dinner that I sat next to F. E. Smith. Conversation was a bit sticky at first, but when I asked him why he didn’t get his Rugger Blue in 1893, he never stopped talking and we got on splendidly.”

Sir Colin was ever a man of fine sensibility and delicate feelings. His sketch of Frederick Lonsdale is of one “who wrote Wildish plays without having Wilde’s habits.” One is allowed to suspect a telescope to a Nelsonian eye when he writes of a distinguished member: “Another problem is why he never married…probably he was not really interested in women as women and acutely disliked the prospect of sharing his privacy with anybody. In life, as in grammar, there is a neuter gender.” And, indeed, in literature.

Brendan Bracken’s lively imagination of himself is affectionately regarded: “Most of us when children played a game of ‘Let’s pretend.’ We fancy ourselves to be Horatius, or Leonardo, or Napoleon. It does nobody any harm, and is less pitiable than fancying in our second childhood that we are a poached egg.” It’s the author’s one slight error of tact, maybe, that Churchill gets mentioned three times on that page.

Sir Colin’s own final words can safely be left to speak for this rich panoply, this veritable “War and Peace” of our time: “And if even the trappings of companionship, the cadence of good talk, the contacts of fine minds, the clash of verbal conflicts, should be temporarily swamped by banality or brutishness, the theme and refrain of civilization will break through again and be heard. For the song was wordless, the singing will never be done.”

Books for Young People

Thank you for sending a Churchill poster to my son David for his history class report at Fork Union Military Academy. L’ll enroll him as a student member. Would you have some book title suggestions he might find at the local library? Due to time constraints he will need to look there first.
-Billy Belcher

Among Churchill’s works the first one I always recommend to young people is My Early Life, primarily because it remains so relevant. Churchill had a tough time growing up. Few believed in him and he had to earn everything he received. Besides that, it’s a great read.

Also of possible interest, depending on your son’s interest in history, is The Gathering Storm, the first volume of the Second World War memoirs. Unlike the later volumes of this six-volume work, this is a combination of highly personal experience and broad-sweep history, showing how the Western democracies went from complete triumph in 1918 to the greatest threat to their existence in just twenty years—a lot of lessons for today. As to biographies for young people, Robert Severance’s Soldier, Statesman, Artist is a nicely illustrated, well-written work for young people recommended by Churchill’s daughter Lady Soames. If not available in libraries, the Churchill Center new book service sells it for $15.
-Editor

If your son is interested in World War II, but not enough to take on The Second World War, consider Step by Step: 1936-1939. This is a collection of “fortnightly letters” written for newspapers by Churchill in the years leading up to the War, which compresses many of the ideas of The Gathering Storm (the first book of that volume, at least) into far fewer words.
-Graham Taylor, Toronto

As to Churchill’s own books I certainly concur with My Early Life as a start. It would be hard to write fiction this exciting and full of adventures. Also, while some of it is covered in My Early Life, I would also recommend The Story of the Malakand Field Force. And My African Journey gives us another adventure not covered in My Early Life.
-Rob Curry, Listserv Winston

One of my very earliest TV memories was Churchill’s funeral. It made an impression on me, though I’m sure I had no idea who Churchill was. Then in my mid-teens I read Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which led me to Churchill, and I read The Second World War. But I’m not sure either of those could be recommended to the very young reader as places to start.
-Evan Quenon, Austin, Texas

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