June 21, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 19

Wit and Wisdom – Mutual Tears

“I was reduced to the position of a messenger between [my wife] and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other.” —HAROLD WILSON

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In 1951, when Harold Wilson, then a junior member of the Labour government, resigned on a point of principle, the first person to express his sympathy was Churchill—to Wilson’s wife:

“[His] message was that whereas I, as an experienced politician, had taken a step of which he felt free to take such party advantage as was appropriate, his concern was with my wife, an innocent party in these affairs, who would undoubtedly suffer in consequence; he recalled the number of occasions his wife had suffered as a result of his own political decisions. Would I therefore convey to her his personal sympathy and understanding?”

Wilson went home and repeated the conversation to his wife, who burst into tears. The next day in the House Wilson related her reaction to Churchill— who also burst into tears!

Wilson added: “Two days earlier, I had been a minister of the Crown, red box and all. Now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between [my wife] and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other.”

Picnic Etiquette

Walter Graebner, Churchill’s Life magazine editor during the writing of his war memoirs, wrote the following in his charming book, My Dear Mr. Churchill (Boston, 1965). We do not understand why Churchill Centre affiliates do not mandate these ceremonies whenever they hold summer picnics. —Ed.

The picnics were as gay and easy as those of any ordinary large and good-humoured family. There were no guests and polite attendants: with the exception of Mr. Churchill, who painted busily away with sublime disregard for the bustle going on behind him, everyone, from Mrs. Churchill and assorted elderly peers and generals down, pitched in to help the detectives and Norman the valet, get things in readiness, and everyone hopped up and down from the table as often as he pleased to get what he wanted of food and drink. Everyone laughed, everyone was unbraced.

If the sun got hot, you put your napkin on your head, turban style, and the others would follow suit, joking inordinately at the strange effects produced. If you got even hotter, you could take off your shirt, for all anybody would care.

Gayest and most unbraced of the company was always Churchill, who on picnics became more roguish and ebullient than ever, and delighted in singing old songs, telling slightly risque stories, and pressing drink (“It’s white port, you know. All the ladies must have some because it’s only white port”) on everyone round him.

At Marrakesh he took special delight in a couple of picnic customs which he quickly elevated to the rank of formal ceremonies. One was the drinking of old Indian Army toasts, which he had learned from his friend and assistant, General Sir Henry Pownall; and at the end of every picnic we would solemnly rise and drink the Toast for the Day. On Sundays it was “To Absent Friends,” on Mondays, “To Men,” and so on through “To Women,” “To Religion,” “To Our Swords,” “To Ourselves,” “To Wives and Sweethearts,” to the end of die week.

The other was a verse from Thomas Gray’s “Ode on the Spring,” which he gravely recited at each picnic:

Beside some water’s rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
How indigent the great.

One night at dinner my wife asked him to repeat the verse to her. “Oh, no, I couldn’t, he replied firmly. “I can only say it at picnics.”—”WALTER GRAEBNER

Brandy by the Cupful

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I lunched with Christian and Danielle Pol-Roger. At the end of the meal, Christian Pol-Roger brought out a 30-year old bottle of armagnac, explaining that it came from a vineyard which he owns with a friend of his in Armagnac. They have had the vineyard for some years.

This gave rise to a Churchill story with which I was not familiar. Apparently WSC frequently poured brandy (or cognac or armagnac) into coffee cups at the end of a meal. He did this for two reasons: 1) the warm coffee cups warmed the brandy, and 2) coffee cups do not reveal how much brandy one pours in! —JRL

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