July 5, 2013

ACTION THIS DAY: FINEST HOUR 128, AUTUMN 2005

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

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125 YEARS AGO:
Autumn 1880 • Age 6
“A recurring sense of disgust”

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The “Fourth Party,” in which Churchill’s father Lord Randolph was a key member, continued to draw attention. The Times wrote: “The rise of a small body of Conservative free-lances below the gangway, of whom Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Gorst are the chiefs, is a curious incident, and has originated the half-serious nickname….”

Prime Minister Gladstone’s predecessor Benjamin Disraeli, now Lord Beaconsfield, noticed them as well. In his biography of his father, Churchill wrote that “Dizzy” was the Fourth Party’s “most powerful antagonist and their mainstay. His quick eye discerned very early in the session the menace that was growing below the gangway and he hastened to respond to the challenge….they returned by other paths unwearied to the attack.”

Churchill gently suggested that his father’s private letters “do not lend themselves to publication as readily as those of some other eminent persons. They are spontaneous and scrappy. They deal with the little ordinary commonplaces of the writer’s life. They reflect his mood at the moment….Any piece of gossip, any quaint conceit or joke or piece of solemn drollery, any sharp judgment that occurred to him went upon the paper without an afterthought. Every passing shadow or gleam of sunlight which fell upon him marked his pages with strong contrasts of feeling often extravagantly and recklessly expressed. Nevertheless his correspondence with Sir Henry Wolff has an air of gay and generous friendship, strong with an attractiveness of its own. But there runs through it a recurring sense of weariness and of disgust at politics, which seems to have alternated with his periods of great exertion even during these most merry and successful years of his life.”

100 YEARS AGO
Autumn 1905 • Age 31
“Thirty-one is very old”

A century ago Churchill completed his biography of his father (for which he was paid, in current value, over £350,000), and witnessed the first published biography of Churchill himself. His biographer was the Liberal writer Alexander MacCallum Scott, who said that except for Joseph Chamberlain (a party-switcher like Churchill but in the opposite direction, from Liberals to Tories), Churchill was “probably the best-hated man in English politics. He will ever be a leader, whether of a forlorn hope or of a great Party. Already in the House of Commons he leads by a natural right which no man can dispute. He does the inevitable act which no one had thought of before; he thinks the original thought which is so simple and obvious once it has been uttered; he coins the happy phrase which expresses what all men have longed to say, and which thereafter comes so aptly to every man’s tongue.”

On 30 November, Churchill celebrated his birthday and wrote to his mother that “Thirty-one is very old.” Four days later, the Conservative government resigned and ten days after his birthday, Churchill became a junior minister in the new Liberal government. Churchill asked for and received the post of Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, where he would conduct all the department’s business in the House of Commons because the head of the Colonial Office, Lord Elgin, sat in the Lords. Churchill’s cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, wrote to him: “I am truly glad….You don’t realize yet what a position is now offered to you. Your speeches will be read throughout the Colonies and you alone will be the mouthpiece of the Govt….”

On 13 December, Churchill dined with Edward Marsh, who had talked to WSC’s old flame, Pamela, Lady Lytton, to learn more about his new chief, about whom Marsh had some misgivings. Her comment, Marsh wrote, “was one of the nicest things that can ever have been said about anybody. ‘The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults, and the rest of our life you spend in discovering his virtues’; and so it proved.”

75 YEARS AGO:
Autumn 1930 • Age 56
“My dearest Mend”

Churchill’s autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, was published in October to widespread acclaim. His friend T.E. Lawrence wrote to him saying, “A hundred times as I read it I knocked my hands together, saying ‘That’s himself.’ I wonder if those who do not know you (the unfortunate majority today, and all the future) will see the whole Winston in the book, or not?”

Prime Minister MacDonald wrote, “When I have the hardihood to put mine in the window you will have a copy in grateful exchange for this. But then, there is no chance of mine ever coming unless some old fishwife turns biographer. You are an interesting cuss—I, a dull dog. May yours bring you both credit & cash.”

On 14 October, Stanley Baldwin publicly acquiesced in Neville Chamberlain’s demand that the Conservatives support tariffs at the next election, something the still ostensibly free trader Churchill vehemently opposed. He drafted a letter to Baldwin stating, “I refuse categorically to seek a mandate from the electorate to impose taxes upon the staple foods of this overcrowded island. There are perhaps twenty million people alive in Great Britain to-day who would not be in existence but for their power to purchase at world prices world wheat and meat, with neither of which they can ever adequately supply themselves…. Not only should we lessen and perhaps destroy our chance of securing a Conservative or non-Socialist government, but we should expose the newly-forged links of Imperial union to the most perilous strains….” But Churchill did not make the letter public, as had been his intent. Instead, he showed Baldwin, who urged him not to make his opposition public: “From what you said in your letter, I fear this may be the occasion when you feel it necessary to express your dissent. I hope not. But I am confident that nothing will disturb a friendship that I value.”

Chamberlain wrote in like vein: “I hope you will consider the whole situation very carefully before taking any irrevocable step….Whatever you ultimately decide to do, I hope we shall not find ourselves driven into opposite camps when there is so much about which we are in agreement.”

In the event, Churchill decided not to make his opposition public, sensing correctly that few Conservative members of Parliament would follow his lead.

At the time, Churchill was greatly saddened by the untimely death of his best friend, RE. Smith, Lord Birkenhead. On 30 October, he told a meeting of The Other Club, which he and F.E. had founded in 1911: “We miss his wisdom, his gaiety, the broad human companionship and comradeship which he always displayed and excited from his friends. We admired his grand intellect and massive good sense. He was a rock; a man one could love, a man one could play with, and have happy jolly times. At this narrow table where he sat so often among us, we feel his loss now. He loved this Club. He was always happy here….I do not think anyone knew him better than I did, and he was, after all, my dearest friend.”

50 YEARS AGO
Autumn 1955 • Age 81
‘Working at the book”

Churchill, seeking warmth and “paintaceous” surroundings, had decided to spend the autumn season in the south of France at Lord Beaverbrook’s villa, La Capponcina, where he painted and worked on a preface to his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. He wrote to Lord Beaverbrook on 6 October: “We have had a very pleasant three weeks here, and Clemmie is better. The Chef is excellent, and the garden lovely. I have painted another picture, and so far I have not spoiled it, which is something….! think of you in your cold, bleak, winter-ridden country with wonder and admiration that you have made this sacrifice for me. But perhaps you like to do it. That would only make it better.”

During his stay, Churchill’s wife Clementine had returned to England and he wrote to her on 15 October: “Today it is raining, and the prophets predict at least two days of similar weather. There is no doubt you were well advised to leave when you did. I have been working at the book. I hope that Miss Pugh [Doreen Pugh, one of his secretaries, and for many years a volunteer at Chartwell] gave you the ninth and tenth sections. You must not judge by the end. It is incomplete, and I have not looked at it (except “The Great Republic”) for fifteen years. There is, however, plenty of time as it is not required until October 1958.”

On Churchill’s 81st birthday on 30 November, President Eisenhower wrote him that the English-speaking peoples and the entire world “are the better for the wisdom of your counsel, for the inspiration of your unflagging optimism and for the heartening example of your shining courage. You have been a towering leader in the quest for peace, as you were in the battle for freedom through the dark days of war.”

Churchill replied: “Your letter has moved me more than I can tell you. As you know, it is my deepest conviction that it is on the friendship between our two nations that the happiness and security of the free peoples rests—and indeed that of the whole world. Your eloquent words have once more given me proof, if it were needed, that you share my own feelings and reciprocate my personal affection.” 

 

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