June 23, 2015

Finest Hour 114, Spring 2002

Page 20

PRECIS BY ROBERT COURTS

Sir Martin Gilbert Recalls the Women Who Made the Man

“I am a pretty dull and paltry scribbler, but my stick as I write carries my heart along with it.”
—Sir Winston to Lady Churchill, 1963

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Last October 23rd, hundreds gathered in a marquee in the Royal Geographical Society’s grounds to hear the official biographer speak of the women who mattered in Winston Churchill’s life. Churchill, we were told during the introduction, is a subject that arouses strong passions. Indeed, no sooner than the day after the announcement of Sir Martin’s lecture, an indignant answer-phone message was left with the RGS claiming that the title of the talk was an “insult to the great man”!

The indignant caller need not have worried: where Churchill is concerned, such a title carries no puerile implications, particularly given the speaker, and the presence of Sir Winston’s daughter, Lady Soames. As we have come to expect from Sir Martin, the session was gripping, frequently funny, and filled with fascinating glimpses into the human side of Churchill.

Of the women in Churchill’s early life, the first was of course his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill. Winston, she wrote, was a “demanding son,” and Sir Martin gave plenty of examples to show what she meant.

Even at the early age of twelve, Winston was a great letter-writer, possessed of a precocious talent, who wrote to get others to do what he wanted them to do. In addition to frequent appeals for visits, he wrote to his mother at the time of Queen Victorias Jubilee, explaining how much he wanted to see Buffalo Bill.

Unfortunately, this would require that he leave Brighton, where he was at school with the Thompson sisters. He wanted his parents to demand that he be released to the Jubilee, and went so far as to draft their proposed letter. The request did not, unsurprisingly, cite Buffalo Bill as a reason! Winston followed up by saying he was “in torment” over the delay in his mother’s reply. Needless to say, he got his way.

Churchill unashamedly used his mother’s influence well into his twenties. His letters are full of phrases like “please exert yourself,” “it is no use to preach the gospel of patience,” and “leave no stone unturned.” It was Lady Randolph to whom he turned to in order to further his career. On his plans to go to Egypt as part of the Omdurman campaign, he exhorted her to “strike while the iron is hot” and to leave “no cutlet uncooked.”

A major influence in Churchill’s young life was his great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough. While considering Winston “affectionate, not naughty,” she also felt that he was too “excitable,” which he made worse by going out too much. His school reports frequently disagreed with this generous appraisal, and his parents suggested the idea of a tutor for the school holidays, an idea which was greeted with opprobrium. “Some enemy has sown fears in your mind,” he wrote to his mother: “please give me a chance [to acquit myself] of the evil of which I am accused.” He wrote to the woman he called his “deputy mother,” Lady Wilton (a friend of his parents), “my mother is incensed against me.”

His true “deputy mother” was probably his nanny, Elizabeth Everest, the dominant female influence of his youth. He held her in affection long after boys were supposed to leave their nannies behind. Sir Martin quoted an occasion when he asked for help with his teeth, which were giving him trouble. Mrs. Everest replied with a number of well-intentioned but bizarre remedies, including pulling socks over his head when he went to sleep. His mother replied more practically, telling him that he should brush them!

Once the prima facie reason for her employment was past, Mrs. Everest was peremptorily dismissed as the Churchills’ nanny. Aghast, Winston wrote to his parents appealing for her better treatment. His appeal was in vain: she was dismissed by letter, without even the customary courtesy of an interview with her employer. The fate of Mrs. Everest, and so many of her class, had a great effect on Winston, and influenced him during his radical years as a crusading Liberal MP. It was through Mrs. Everest that he saw the working class, with whom he would otherwise have had no contact.

To the women in his life Churchill confided, amongst other things, the realities of warfare. He was critical of the new dum-dum bullets which caused such horrific injuries. These, he said, were “not [to be] alluded to in print.” To his grandmother he explained his disgust, but his mother was not wholly impressed by his letters, which she felt were too boastful. Not for the first time, he had to apologize.

Perhaps one of the most profound influences on Churchill, albeit not one of the most obvious, came from Lady Gwendoline (“Goonie”), his sister-in-law. It was she who in 1915 introduced him to painting, which would provide him with so much solace and enjoyment for the rest of his life. Another woman, Lady Lavery, taught him how to attack a canvas. “Wallop, smash, clean no longer” was her approach, and Winston wholeheartedly adopted it: “I fell upon my victim with berserk fury,” as he characteristically put it.

Churchill had a number of lady friends before he married Clementine, the first being Molly Hackett, a relationship cut off when she married someone else. Next was Muriel Wilson, who tried to help Churchill cure himself of his lisp, the speech impediment that caused him much irritation. Repeatedly she practiced with him the line, “The Spanish ships I cannot see for they are not in sight.” Engagement was discussed, but Muriel wanted someone with good financial prospects, and this Winston could not offer. Actress Ethel Barrymore also turned him down.

Pamela Plowden, whom Winston held “the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen,” was the most serious early love, and they had a lifelong friendship: fifty years later he was to write to her, “I cherish your signal across the years….I was a freak, but you saw some qualities.” Their relationship did not work: in 1900 Pamela complained hat he was “incapable of affection.” Churchill responded: “Perish the thought. I love one above all others. And I shall be constant. I am no fickle gallant capriciously following the fancy of the hour. My love is deep and strong….Who is this that I love. Listen—as the French say—over the page I will tell you.” Over the page he wrote: “Yours vy sincerely, Winston S. Churchill.”

Ultimately, of course, as Sir Martin continued, his wife Clementine was the “rock for his career.” Their relationship had an odd start: when they first met he was too shy to speak to her. A few weeks after this meeting, the young Assistant Secretary for the Colonies was present at a colonial states meeting in London, where a rumour emerged of his engagement with Helen Botha, daughter of the South African general. The Manchester Guardian presented its compliments, and former love Muriel Wilson spoke of her hope for “little Bothas.” But there was no engagement.

Shortly after, Winston was sat next to Clementine at a party, but spent his time talking to the girl on the other side of him. At the end of the dinner he noticed her, and asked if she would read a copy of his new book. She said she would, if he would send it round. He forgot!

Despite these false starts, fate intervened and their relationship blossomed. Clementine would witness at first hand the great strains of Winston’s political life, and was always the greatest support to him. He feared that he was a “dull companion” and said, “I wish I were more varied.” But politics was his life, and he knew that one has to be “true to oneself.”

In time Churchill was to become a loving husband and then a father, cautioning Clementine, “…do not let [the children] suck the paint off” their new toys. Despite his affection for his family, he frequently caused Clementine pain and anxiety. He loved flying, but three of his instructors were killed, one in a machine that Winston himself had frequently used. Clementine begged him to desist, which eventually he did (“this is a wrench”), admitting to her that he was sorry to have enjoyed himself “at your expense.”

After his resignation over the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, a period in which Clementine thought “he would die of grief,” Churchill went to the trenches in France, writing Clementine a letter to be opened in the event of his death. It is a revealing document. She was to be his sole literary executor; she was to get hold of his papers relating to the Dardanelles, and to ensure that “the truth be known.” Randolph, he wrote, would carry on his work. Touchingly he told her: “do not grieve…death is only an incident…I have been happy.” Clementine had taught him to know “how noble a woman’s heart to be.”

As we know, Churchill survived six months on the Western Front, after which he needed to rebuild his career. Crucial to Churchill over the next twenty years were a number of secretaries whom he worked hard but genuinely cared for. A key secretary during the wilderness years was Mrs. Violet Pearson; Churchill provided for her and paid for her daughter’s education after her retirement. There was Katherine Hill, who was the first to be resident at Chartwell and who served throughout the Second World War. There were Miss Holmes and Miss Layton (now honorary member Elizabeth Nel), who, as Sir Martin said, “saw him in all moods and lights.” In addition to political work, they were vital in Churchill’s massive outpouring of books.

He wrote Clementine a ceaseless stream of letters. Even in his eighties, he would still write to her, albeit at this point with great difficulty. On her seventy-eighth birthday in 1963 he wrote her a birthday letter in his own hand, as he had every year for fifty-five years: “I am a pretty dull and paltry scribbler but my stick as I write carries my heart along with it.”

Sir Martin concluded with a reference to some of the most important women in Churchill’s life, his children. Diana, Sarah and Mary offered him support when he was “up” and comfort and encouragement when he was depressed, especially towards the end of his life, when blows and disappointments came his way and the first critical books began to be published. In the presence of his daughter Mary, Sir Martin quoted her own words to her father, which sum up better than any others what Churchill did for the world: “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving, generous father, I owe you what every Englishman, woman & child does—Liberty itself.”

Mr. Courts is a member of the International Churchill Society of the UK and is is training to work as a barrister. He lives in Balsall Common, near Coventry in Warwickshire.