August 1, 2013

Finest Hour 125, Winter 2004-05

Page 12

Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas

Q: We wish to give a 90th birthday present to my grandfather, Victor Brooks. His father Albert (not sure of the name) was one of the policemen present at the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911, and the BBC had a shot of him standing with Churchill, when WSC met some of the police officers afterwards. Do you know of anywhere I may be able to obtain a copy of this picture?
—Duncan Steele

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A: Fascinating! Did your great grandfather record his memories? The famous photo of Churchill with the policemen may be found in Mary Soames’s Family Album (1982), Randolph Churchill’s Churchill: A Life in Photographs (1954), and R.G. Grant’s Winston Churchill: An Illustrated Biography (1989). It is photo #81 in Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life in Photographs (1974). This might be the best to extract and mount, as it is large format and on coated paper. For copies of the photo itself try Orbis.com. The photo was used on a contemporary postcard, but this is of course small.

Mentions of the “official biography” below refer to Winston S. Churchill, by Randolph Churchill (vols. 1-2) and Martin Gilbert (vols. 3-8), London: Heinemann and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968-88; and/or to the biography’s sixteen (to date) Companion (Document) volumes, published 1968 through the latest “Churchill War Papers” for 1941.

Q: I was told that Mr. Churchill in his early school years was called upon to stand up and speak, and fainted. Is there any truth to this? I am interested because I refer to him in my speech about taking the fear out of public speaking, to show that many a great speaker started out afraid of facing an audience.
—Peter Fowler, Reno, Nevada, USA

A: That version is somewhat garbled, but the facts illustrate your point. It was during a speech in the Commons in 1904, not at school; Churchill didn’t faint, but lost his train of thought and had to sit down. From the official biography, II:79:

“On April 22, Churchill spoke for three quarters of an hour during the debate on the Trade Union and Trade Disputes Bill. It was one of the most radical of his early speeches….However, the impact of his speech was lost at the end. His memory temporarily collapsed and his imaginative powers for once deserted him. ‘It lies with the Government,’ he said, ‘to satisfy the working classes that there is no justification…’ At this point he hesitated, having lost the thread of his argument, and stopped speaking. He seemed confused and began to fumble through his pocket for notes which might prompt him. Having not found what he wanted he abruptly sat down and covered his face with his hands, muttering, ‘I thank honourable members for having listened to me.’

“Some of the younger Tories were tempted to jeer at Churchill; but most of the contemporary accounts dwell on the murmur of sympathy amid which Churchill sat down. It was not ten years since Lord Randolph’s death and the memory of his last few halting speeches in the House, painful to friend and foe alike, was still vivid in the minds of older members. Was Churchill, they wondered, to succumb in the same way? Friends hastened to reassure him. Sir Shane Leslie has told the author how on the following day he visited Churchill at Mount Street. His brother Jack and Sir Alfred Harmsworth were there sympathizing ….[But] Churchill’s memory was capacious. This was one of those lapses that occasionally occur to even the most practised speaker if he does not have the aid of fairly full notes. Until then, Churchill’s speeches had indeed been most thoroughly prepared; but he tried to deliver many of them in the House of Commons by learning them by heart beforehand. Churchill hardly ever again ventured to make a public speech without the fullest, almost verbatim, notes to guide him.”

Q: Please tell me about the origins of the term “Black Dog” to represent depression. Was Churchill the first to coin the use of this expression? When did he first experience it? Is there any information about what his actual experience of depression was?—Elizabeth Page

A: Sir Walter Scott first coined the term in 1826. Churchill’s first experience was probably when he was dismissed from the Admiralty over the failure of the Dardanelles/Gallipoli attacks in 1915. You can learn about this on our website. Click on “search” and enter “black dog,” which will lead you to numerous articles. I think the best to judge the question is his daughter, Lady Soames, who said in an interview:

“A lot has been made of the depressive side of his character by psychiatrists who were never in the same room with him. He himself talks of his black dog, and he did have times of great depression, but marriage to my mother very largely kennelled the black dog….I never saw him disarmed by depression. I’m not talking about the depression of his much later years, because surely that is a sad feature of old age which afflicts a great many people who have led a very active life.”

Q: At the Teheran Conference in 1943, why does Churchill wear a uniform of the Royal Air Force? —Axel Reuter, Gross Lobke, Germany

A: Although he did not serve as a commissioned officer in WW2, Churchill had several honorary military titles: Honorary Air Commodore of RAF #615 Squadron, Hon. Col. of Royal Artillery, Hon. Col. of Royal Scots Fusiliers, and Hon. Col. of 4th Hussars. He sometimes chose the RAF uniform when abroad: at Teheran in 1943 and in France after liberation in 1944. In 1947, his wife argued that he should wear civilian dress in Paris to receive the Médaille Militaire, instead of his RAF Honorary Air Commodore’s uniform. But an on-the-spot photograph, taken on the day and published in FH, indicated that WSC had for once rejected her advice, choosing the uniform of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, his old regiment.