August 23, 2013

Finest Hour 110, Spring 2001

Page 39


MORE CATS

Further to Lynda Presley’s request for a roster of Churchill cats in this space last issue, Lady Soames informs us that Number Ten had a resident cat when her father moved in as Prime Minister. A leftover from the Chamberlain administration, he was named “Munich Mouser.” His replacement was a black cat named “Smokey.” Next in succession came “Nelson,” whom we mentioned. At Chartwell, in addition to “Cat” and the three “Jocks,” there were two earlier inhabitants: “Tango,” a marmalade tom said to be Winston’s; and “Mickey,” a tabby cat. The last two are mentioned in the prologue to Volume II of William Manchester’s The Last Lion.

Q: Were Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill Related?

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

A: According to Cornelius Mann’s “Two Famous Descendants of John Cooke and Sarah Warren,” NY Genealogical and Biographical Record LXIII:3, July 1942, pp. 159-66, Churchill and Roosevelt were eighth cousins, once removed. More recent research has shown that WSC was not descended from their daughter, Elizabeth Cooke (second wife of Daniel Wilcox), but from Daniel Wilcox’s first wife. So it’s not true.

Q:I was reading Manchester’s 1995 introduction to the recent edition Early Life and saw with delight and admiration his reference to your research on Churchill’s relations with his mother. Has this been published?

A: Manchester asked me to vet his intro to My Early Life—which is er, interesting. I suggested he tone down the point that Winston was ignored by his parents. I believe it was no worse for WSC than for most upper-class Victorian children, though Winston’s sensitive nature reacted more strongly to it. WSC’s nephew Peregrine has all of Jennie’s diaries and showed me numerous entries recording how she read to, played with, took walks with, and was concerned about, Winston and Jack. Some of this appeared in our “Jennie” number, #98, and all will appear when the Jennie diaries are put up on the Internet by Southampton
University. —Ed.

Q: Lord Randolph Churchill was a peer who served in the House of Commons? I thought peers could not serve in the Commons, and that this was why Winston Churchill refused a peerage.

A: Lord Randolph was not a peer. Later sons of Dukes are called “Lord” as a courtesy title, but they are still commoners.

Q: Was Lord Randolph Churchill technically Lord Randolph Spencer Churchill, in the same way in which his son was really Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, as his school records attest (and as he admits in My Early Life)? And was it remarked at the time, to either Winston or Randolph, that it was pretentious to drop the Spencer in order to highlight the descent from John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough?

A: His full name was Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill but Winston says in his biography of his father that he was “commonly called” Lord Randolph Churchill. Winston moved the “Spencer” to his middle name so that he would appear higher up in the alphabetical Harrow rolls. If anything, the double-barreled “Spencer-Churchill” was more pretentious than the plain “Churchill.”

Q: My mother has an English bust of Churchill with a cigar in his mouth, given as a gift to her in 1971. She was told it was one of only two made. Markings include “Tallent” on the back of base and “vbvpl” on the shoulder. The finish is gold on a bronze base.

A: The common Tallent bust is an elaborate cigarette lighter made of plaster. The head is full of cotton wadding which is soaked with lighter fluid through a metal screw cap in the back. The “cigar” is removed and struck against a horizontal flint mounted in the front of the base. Yours is clearly of a different order but we don’t know how many were made.

Q: Can you identify this quotation, ‘from the Gallipoli campaign of 19157 “I hear Winston [Churchill] has arrived, and suppose we will see him in the next few days. He certainly is a plucky fellow, and I think ought to be given a VC and then taken out and shot. I wonder what sort of reception he will get if he comes among the troops, and whether they will cheer, or shoot him. I think the former.”

A: The statement comes from a letter written by Major-General Sir Alexander Godley to Ronald Graham, the New Zealand Minster of the Interior, in July 1915. It is cited by Nicholas Boyack in his book about New Zealanders at Gallipoli. Godley commanded the Anzacs. —Rafal Heydel-Mankoo

Q: I own a set of medallions, each depicting an event or phase in Churchill’s life, with a short narrative on the reverse. The medallions are sterling silver covered in gold foil. What are they?

A: If they’re round and 24 in number they are probably the Pinches Mint Churchill Centenary Medals, produced in 1974 to mark his 100th birthday. Each measured 44mm and had 720 grains of solid sterling silver. Yours sounds like the limited Vermeil edition, coated in 24 ct. gold, a process developed centuries ago for French kings. The medals usually came in a bookholder, with a text by Martin Gilbert. The last set we know of was a Vermeil edition which recently sold for $750/£540. 

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.