July 24, 2013

RIDDLES. MYESTERIES, ENIGMAS: FINEST HOUR 124, AUTUMN 2004

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Mentions of the “official biography” refer to Winston S. Churchill, by Randolph S. Churchill (vols. 1-2) and Martin Gilbert (vols. 3-8), London: Heinemann and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968-88; and/or to the accompanying sixteen companion (document) volumes, published from 1968 through the latest 1941 “Churchill War Papers” (2000).

Q: Canyou inform me as to the exact date when Sir Winston Churchill bought Chartwell? —Claire Anderson

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A: His offer was accepted 24 September 1922 and it appears he attended the closing during the first week of November. From the official biography, vol. 4, p. 793: “…he was offered ‘first refusal’ on Chartwell Manor, an Elizabethan house near Westerham, in Kent. On September 14 a letter from Knight, Frank and Rutley, Estate Agents, gave him ten days to decide whether to buy the property, at a price of £5,500.” Churchill offered £4,700, saying the house needed a lot of work,

P 794: “Knight, Frank and Rutley did not accept Churchill’s arguments. Later that week he summoned their negotiator, H. Norman Harding, to the Colonial Office. Harding repeated that the price could not be reduced. ‘He strode up and down,’ Harding later recalled, ‘using every argument he could think of to lower the price, but I repeated he could have it at the price my client had named, but if not, he would have to go on searching. Eventually, with a very bad grace, he gave way. This was the only time during my various meetings that he was anything but courteous, kind and considerate….’ Five days later Churchill raised his offer to £5,000, and on September 24 it was accepted. He at once sent a cheque for £500 as an earnest of his intention to buy.”

Sir Martin writes that he completed the transaction the first week of November, while his wife was en route to Scotland to campaign for his seat in Dundee—but the date is not stated.

Q: In one of Richard Langworth’s recent articles he mentions Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin saying in the 1930s that, while Churchill was unacceptable in his peacetime government, “we must save Winston to be our wartime prime minister. ” Can you help me convince a skeptical editor that Baldwin ever said this about Churchill? —Russ Mann

A: See the official biography, vol. 5, page 687, on the formation of the 1935 government: “Churchill realized at once that there was to be no place for him, writing to Flandin on November 26: ‘The full composition of the new Ministry is not yet determined, but I do not think it likely that Mr Baldwin will require my help now he has got so good a majority. I think I can perhaps do some useful work from my corner seat below the gangway and am very content with that position.’

“Writing in his diary, Thomas Jones had praised Baldwin for having ‘avoided all trace of the Daily Mail’s lust to arm the nation to the teeth,’ He had also, Jones wrote, ‘kept clear of Winston’s enthusiasm for ships and guns.’ In a letter to [former Tory chairman J.C.C.] Davidson, Baldwin gave his own comment on Churchill’s exclusion. ‘I feel we should not give him a post at this stage,’ Baldwin wrote. ‘Anything he undertakes he puts his heart and soul into. If there is going to be war—and no one can say that there is not—we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister.'” —RML

Q: In The Illustrated London News Eightieth Year Tribute to Winston Churchill (1954), l am intrigued by an artistic rendering on page 6 showing Churchill discussing naval policy in the House of Commons, 22 July 1912. To Churchill’s right is a mustaschioed gentleman with extraordinarily long feet, wearing a ridiculously large hat the size of a sombrero. Wouldn’t it be disrespectful to wear a hat, even a small one, in the 1912 British Parliament? Who is the gentleman wearing it, and the others pictured?— Stan Orchard

A: On the right is Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith; to his right is Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. The others I cannot identify; they may be stylised drawings rather than accurate portraits. In the middle of the picture is a youngish man sitting on the bottom step of the gangway; all those to the left are termed “below the gangway,” i.e., not members of the Government, though they must be MPs in the ruling Liberal Party.

In Victorian times and later it was quite normal to wear a hat in the House, though this was usually a top hat; it was mandatory if raising a point of order. Today this requirement seems to have lapsed, though a top hat was always kept in the House in case a Member needed to wear it for this purpose (and may well be still there). It used to be traditional for Members to wear hats on Budget Day, though the last occasion I can recall this being done was about thirty years ago. The sombrero is certainly most unusual. If not the artist’s whimsy, the wearer must have been a Liberal MP, though not a member of the Government. It’s possible he was signalling to the Speaker his wish to raise a point of order. —PHC
 

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