May 7, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 56

Old Titles Revisited – Harold Nicolson and His Diaries

“For us they shine happily today as myrtle flowers among the heavy wreath of bay.”

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By James Lancaster

Mr. Lancaster provides the “Churchill Quiz” in Finest Hour and on winstonchurchill.org. He has provided a copy of Nicolson’s 1948 Life article, available from the editor by email.

Harold Nicolson met Winston Churchill in the spring of 1908, when Nicolson was an undergraduate at Oxford and dined periodically with his Balliol friend Arthur Bertie at Wytham Abbey, a few miles from the city. This “grim gray building in a lovely park” was the country estate of Arthur’s father the 7th Earl of Abingdon. Nicolson described Churchill as “a young man with reddish hair who stooped and slouched [and] who talked a great deal, only thirty-three and already a member of the Cabinet.”

The account of this first meeting is not in the Nicolson diaries but in Nicolson’s “A Portrait of Winston Churchill,” in Life magazine for April 1948. Nicolson kept only a very occasional diary during his Foreign Office career (June 1909-December 1929), so it is not until 1925 that we find his first diary entry about WSC.

• 7 June 1925: Dine and sleep with the Churchills at Chartwell. Winston is delighted with his house, which he considers a paradise on earth. It is rather nice. Only Goonie [WSC’s sister-in-law Lady Gwendoline Bertie] there, and a red-headed Australian journalist called Bracken. A most self-confident and, I should think, wrong-headed young man. We talk about Curzon. Winston is nice about him. June 8: Motor up with Winston. A rather perilous proceeding. We break down two or three times on the way.

• 27 Apri1 1961 [letter from Harold to his wife, Vita Sackville-West]: I went to the Academy Banquet and enjoyed it very much. I watched [Winston’s] huge bald head descending the staircase, and I blessed it as it disappeared. “We may never see that again,” said a voice behind me. It was Attlee.

These are the first and last entries on Winston Churchill in the diaries of Harold Nicolson, who had many interesting things to say about people and events during thirty-five eventful years. He was a prolific writer, and many of his observations, kind and critical, concern the life and times of Winston Churchill. This is why the Nicolson diaries are of such interest to Churchillians, and why they are quoted frequently in the last four volumes of the official biography, and in many books about Churchill.

Three volumes of the diaries, edited by Harold’s son Nigel, were published between 1966 and 1968. A fourth volume was published in 2004, incorporating extracts from the pre-1930 diaries held at Balliol, entries from Nicolson’s Peacemaking: 1919 (published in 1933), plus letters to friends and family.

Harold Nicolson was born in 1886, the son of Sir Arthur Nicolson, later Lord Carnock, who was Ambassador to Russia in 1905-10 and Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1910-16. Churchill had great respect for Sir Arthur, whose despatch written in 1910 he quoted at length in The Eastern Front: “The ultimate aims of Germany are…to obtain the preponderance on the continent of Europe, and when she is strong enough…she will enter into a contest with us for maritime supremacy.”

In 1909 Harold passed the Foreign Office exams, one of only two candidates accepted that year. His first diplomatic posting was in Constantinople, where he spent two and one-half years between 1912 and 1914. Back in London he was assigned to the newly created War Department at the Foreign Office. He distinguished himself with a succession of insightful papers on the Balkans, and later played a major part in the drafting of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

In the spring of 1919 Nicolson was sent to the Paris Peace Conference. Between October 1919 and May 1920 he was seconded to Woodrow Wilson’s nascent League of Nations, shuttling between the League’s offices in London and Paris. In 1922 he accompanied Lord Curzon to Lausanne to settle the differences between Turkey, Italy and Greece. His next posting was in 1926-27 as Counsellor to the Legation in Teheran, followed by two years in Berlin, where he served through December 1929.

He then made a fateful decision, prompted primarily by his wife’s refusal to follow him any more from post to post. Vita Sackville-West, whom he had married in 1913, declared she was a writer, not the “wife of a diplomat.” Encouraged by her friend Virginia Woolf, she persuaded Harold to give up his promising career at the Foreign Office and make his way, like her, by writing and journalism.

Towards the end of 1929 Beaver-brook signed him up to write the “Londoner’s Diary” for the Evening Standard. He turned up for his first day on Grub Street as “Londoner” on 1 January 1930. Hitherto his diary entries had been occasional, in pen and ink; on New Year’s day he switched to a typewriter.

His son Nigel writes: “Having once started the diary afresh he maintained it without a single break until 4 October 1964 when the emptiness of his days left him too little to record. He typed it every day after breakfast on both sides of loose sheets of quarto paper….The entire diary is some three million words long.” In an entry for 23 August 1938 he explains to his sons Ben and Nigel that “this diary, of which they know the industry and persistence, is not a work of literature or self-revelation but a mere record of activity put down for my own reference only.”

Here we see some convergence between the careers of Churchill and Nicolson. By 1930 they were both out of office, each living by their writings. Nicolson wrote his autobiographical Some People in 1927, Churchill’s My Early Life appeared in 1930. Winston had written the life of Lord Randolph in 1906, Harold wrote the life of his father Lord Carnock in 1930. Both authors were very proud of their filial biographies. The literary output of both men was colossal, a mix of serious works and profitable journalism.

There was also a convergence of views as the decade darkened. Both supported the League of Nations and resisted appeasement, Nicolson influenced by his firsthand knowledge of German and Italian methods of diplomacy. His fluency in German gave him an advantage. On 12 June 1936 he was seated next to a German woman who told him he should visit Germany: “You would find it all so changed.” He replied: “Yes, I should find all my old friends either in prison, or exiled, or murdered.”

On 10 May 1938 Nicolson tells us: “On afterwards to Randolph Churchill’s flat. He is editing a book of his father’s speeches which show how right he has always been.” Later in the Telegraph, he reviewed the book—Arms and the Covenant (While England Slept in U.S.):

The ordinary reader….will be amazed at the prescience of Mr. Churchill and at the blind optimism of his critics. He will be encouraged by the blend of realism and idealism which renders Mr. Churchill’s present theory so far above the jangles and tangles of party controversy. And he will delight in the brilliance of one of the greatest orators of our time.

Nicolson was prescient himself. In his biography of his father he reminds us of German foreign minister (and later chancellor) Prince Bülow’s speech on 11 December 1899: “The times of our political anaemia and economic humility must not recur. In the coming century the German people will be either the hammer or the anvil.”

Participating as he did in the Paris Peace Conference negotiations in 1919, Nicolson agreed with Foch’s comment, “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.” During his posting in Berlin, October 1927 to December 1929, he reported to London about the growth of the Nazi movement, German nationalism, the demands for “Lebensraum,” and the clamant calls for the abrogation of treaty obligations.

There is plenty of gossip, folly and wisdom in these diaries, much more than “a mere record of activity.” Here is a potpourri of Winstonian items:

• 6 July 1930 at Wilton, the Earl of Pembroke’s house in Wiltshire:

[Winston] goes for a long walk with Vita….He spoke of his American tour. The difficulty of drink and food. One never got real food, only chicken. He had been given a dozen champagne by Barney Baruch and paid it back to him at a cost of £30. He was happy there.

• 17 March 1936, meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee of which Nicolson is Vice-Chairman:

Winston gathered a group together in the smoking-room and talked about funk versus national honour and our duty to generations yet unborn.

• 4 November 1936, letter from Harold to Vita (Hadji to Viti) about seconding the Address at the opening of Parliament:

My constituency [West Leicester] which, maybe in a moment of blindness, refrained from electing the Right Honourable Member for Epping…. Winston at this flashed out, “They also refrained from electing the Right Honourable Member for the Scottish Universities [Ramsay MacDonald].”

• 8 December 1937, breakfast with Lord Baldwin:

He talked about Winston Churchill and said he lacked soul. I suggested that Winston is very sympathetic to misfortune in others. He answered, “I don’t deny that Winston has his sentimental side. And what is more, he cannot really tell lies. That is what makes him so bad a conspirator.”

• 22 February 1938, HN to Vita after his speech on Eden’s resignation:

Winston comes up and says, “That was a magnificent speech. I envy you your gift.”

• 2 March 1938, Harold to Vita on a meeting of WSC’s “Focus Group”:

Winston was enormously witty. He spoke of “this great country nosing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, mooing dolefully now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing.”

• 5 December 1938, in the House, remarking on Churchill fumbling his notes when attacking Hore-Belisha:

[Churchill] certainly is a tiger who, if he misses his spring, is lost.

• 14 June 1939, dinner with Kenneth Clark of the National Gallery, the Walter Lippmans and Churchill:

Winston is horrified when Walter Lippman tells him that the American Ambassador, Joe Kennedy, thinks that war is inevitable and Britain will be licked. “No, the Ambassador should not have spoken so, Mr Lippman….Yet supposing (as I do not for one moment suppose) that Mr. Kennedy was correct in his tragic utterance, then I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men.”

• 17 September 1939, diary:

Chamberlain must go. Churchill may be our Clemenceau or our Gambetta.

• 26 September 1939, WSC speaking on the Navy’s successes to date:

The effect of Winston’s speech was infinitely greater than could be derived from any reading of the text. One could feel the spirits of the House rising with every word.

• 8 May 1940, Norway debate:

On the one hand he has to be loyal to the Services; on the other, he has to be loyal to the Prime Minister….he manages with extraordinary force of personality to do both these things with absolute loyalty and apparent sincerity, while demonstrating by his brilliance that he really has nothing to do with this timid gang.

• 4 June 1940, “Never Surrender”:

This afternoon Winston made the finest speech that I have ever heard. The House was deeply moved.

• 4 July 1940, attack on the French fleet at Oran:

The House is saddened at first by this odious attack but is fortified by Winston’s speech. The grand finale ends in an ovation, with Winston sitting there with tears pouring down his cheeks.

• 14 July 1940, after Churchill’s BBC broadcast:

Imagine the effect of his speech in the Empire and in the U.S.A….Winston’s best phrase was “We may show mercy—we shall ask for none.”

• 5 November 1940, WSC makes a statement after Question Time:

He is rather grim. He brings home to the House the gravity of our shipping losses….It has a good effect. By putting the grim side forward he impresses us with his ability to face the worst.

• 23 December 1940, WSC’s broadcast to the Italian people:

He read out his letter to Mussolini of May last. It was tremendous. He read out Mussolini’s reply. It was the creep of the assassin.

• 7 May 1941, vote of confidence carried by 447 to 3:

[Churchill] stands there in his black conventional suit with the huge watch-chain. He is very amusing. He is very frank….As Winston goes out of the chamber… there is a spontaneous burst of cheering….Members are a bit defeatist. But Winston cheers them up. Yesterday it was rather like a hen-coop of wet hens; today they all strutted about like bantams.

• 23 April 1942, Secret Session on the fall of Singapore:

He tells us of our present dangers…. It is a long and utterly remorseless catalogue of disaster and misfortune. And as he tells us one thing after another, …gradually the feeling rises in the packed House….members begin to feel in their hearts, “no man but he could tell us of such disaster and increase rather than diminish confidence.”…The House gives him a great ovation.

• 12 March 1943, dinner with the cartoonist and critic Osbert Lancaster the diplomat Charles Peake:

Charles tells me about the latest de Gaulle row. De Gaulle had decided to go to Syria, and Charles had been instructed to say No. “Alors,” he had said, “je suis prisonnier.” [“So, I am a prisoner.”] He [de Gaulle] retired to Hampstead. Winston had telephoned Charles saying, “I hold you responsible that the Monster of Hampstead does not escape.”

• 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe:

As Big Ben struck three, there was an extraordinary hush over the assembled multitude, and then came Winston’s voice….”The evil-doers,” he intoned, “now lie prostrate before us.” The crowd gasped at this phrase. “Advance Britannia!” he shouted at the end, and there followed the Last Post and God Save the King which we all sang very loud indeed. And then cheer upon cheer.

• 10 August 1945, on Churchill’s attitude toward his electoral defeat on July 26th:

Not one word of bitterness; not a single complaint of having been treated with ingratitude; calm, stoical resignation—coupled with a shaft of amusement that fate could play so dramatic a trick, and a faint admiration for the electorate’s show of independence.

• 19 December 1945, at the French Embassy; WSC talking about dealing with the Russians:

“…one is not sure of their reactions. One strokes the nose of the alligator and the ensuing gurgle may be a purr of affection, a grunt of stimulated appetite, or a snarl of enraged animosity. One cannot tell.” Winston then comments on the younger Conservative MPs: “They are no more than a set of pink pansies.” His passion for the combative renders him insensitive to the gentle gradations of the human mind.

• 12 December 1946, diary entry:

Jack Churchill tells me that somebody had asked Winston why Attlee did not go to Moscow to get in touch with Stalin. “He is too wise for that,” replied Winston. “He dare not absent himself from his Cabinet at home. He knows full well that when the mouse is away the cats will play.”

• 17 August 1950, in conversation with Paddy Leigh Fermor:

Somebody said, “One never hears of Baldwin nowadays—he might as well be dead.” “No,” said Winston, “not dead. But the candle in that old turnip has gone out.”

• 19 August 1955, Chartwell:

Winston told Viti that at his last audience with the Queen she had said to him, “Would you like a Dukedom or anything like that?”

These extracts from Nicolson’s diaries date from many years ago, long before the days of live television in the House of Commons. It will never be possible to reproduce the sight and sound of Churchill as “a child of the House of Commons.” Nicolson writes that many of the studio recordings of his speeches unfortunately fail to reproduce the flavour of the live performance. Was it ever thus.

However, more than any other observer, Harold Nicolson often conveys the sensation in the House when Winston was “up” and at his best. Here is an example. On 29 November 1944 Churchill spoke about “The tasks which lie before us.” The text of this speech in The Dawn of Liberation includes the words: “Youth, Youth, Youth….there is no safer thing than to run risks in youth… A love of tradition has never weakened a nation….Let us have no fear of the future. We are a decent lot, all of us, the whole nation.”

These simple words will have been enjoyable to read in The Times the following day, Churchill’s 70th birthday. But the Hansard text can never convey the way these words were delivered. Nicolson tells us what it was like to be in the House that day. In his letter to his sons Ben and Nigel dated the 29th:

By the time I reached the Chamber, Winston was about to rise. When he came back from his Italian visit, we had all been horrified by his apparent exhaustion. But Moscow did him good, and the snow-drifts of the Vosges did him even more good. He is, or seems, as fit as he ever was, even in his best days. It is incredible that he should be seventy, all but a day. He made a lovely speech. He spoke of tradition as the flywheel of the State. He spoke of the need of youth—”Youth, youth, youth, and renovation, energy, boundless energy”—and as he said these words, he bent his knees and pounded the air like a pugilist— “and of controversy, health-giving controversy. I am not afraid of it in this country,” he said, and then he took off his glasses and grinned round at the Conservative benches. “We are a decent lot,” he said, beaming upon them. Then he swung round and leant forward over the box right into the faces of the Labour people: “All of us,” he added, “the whole nation.”

It read so mildly in the newspapers next morning. Yet in fact it was a perfect illustration of the Parliamentary art.

Churchill’s contemporaries have left enough memories of the Old Man to fill several bookshelves, but Nicolson’s are especially valuable. From his first meeting with the young Winston in 1908 to his obituary broadcast on BBC television in January 1965, Nicolson has described superbly many of the memorable, as well as some of the forgettable, moments of Churchill’s long life:

“It is salutary to be reminded how bitter were the animosities, how dark the lies, how almost unendurable the injustices which, until 1940, he had constantly to endure,” Nicolson said. “He may have been wrong in the attitude he took over the India Act or the Abdication; but his defiance of contemporary opinion on such occasions was not due to any egoism or self-advantage but to an overpowering loyalty to lost causes and stricken friends. For us they shine happily today as myrtle flowers among the heavy wreath of bay.”