May 5, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 34

Randolph by His Contemporaries 1927-1968

By Dana Cook

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Mr. Cook ([email protected]) compiles literary and political encounters for numerous newspapers, magazines and journals, including FH 147 and FH 150. The last two entries herein were added by the editor.

London, 1927: Winston’s Pride

[Winston’s] son Randolph [was] a handsome stripling of sixteen, who was esurient for intellectual argument and had the criticism of intolerant youth. I could see that Winston was very proud of him.…
—Charlie Chaplin, actor, My Autobiography (1964)

Oxford, 1929: Botticelli Angel

Randolph…had just come up and I “enjoyed”—if that is the right word—his friendship for a few months. Though he was nearly five years younger than me, he established a spirited relationship that was equally balanced between flirtation and rudeness. I tended to patronize him, though secretly dazzled by his extraordinary youthful beauty: thick golden hair, enormous blue eyes and a sugar-pink complexion….He looked like a Botticelli angel.
—Elizabeth Longford, writer, The Pebbled Shore (1986)

Bosnia, 1943: Deceptive Forms

Randolph was all that has been said and written about him—irrepressible, arrogant, rude, argumentative—and much more. He had a natural eloquence, a deeply inquisitive intelligence and a retentive memory; he was a marvellous story-teller, and—when he wished to be—one of the most charming men I have ever known. he had courage that went beyond bravery, because he had to force himself to the front, and he did so consistently….an object lesson that human greatness and goodness may reside in deceptive forms not always recognized by those who are looking for them.
—Sir Fitzroy Maclean, soldier, statesman, in Kay Halle, ed., The Grand Original (1971)

Naples, 1944: “You Have Sent Us Your Son”

On 12 August I met Winston Churchill in Naples. He said that he was sorry he was so advanced in years that he could not land by parachute, otherwise he would have been fighting in Yugoslavia. “But you have sent us your son,” I replied. At that moment tears glittered in Churchill’s eyes.”
—Josip Broz (Tito) in The Grand Original

London, 1945: Political Ambition

Dined with Randolph. He was quite meek. Said he wants to get into politics as a career and is only continuing his newspaper work because he needs the money. Says it is difficult for him sometimes to reconcile his “dignity” as an Englishman and a Churchill with his reporting. He hopes to be Prime Minister some day.
—C. L. Sulzberger, journalist, A Long Row of Candles (1969)

Los Angeles, 1950s: Quiz Bust

The famous names of the time paraded through Information Please [quiz show]. Randolph…was supposed to be an authority on the geography of the United States. When he was asked to name a river that divided two New England states, he replied with great authority, “The Delaware.”
—Oscar Levant, pianist, Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)

London, 1950s: Managing Waugh

[Evelyn] Waugh was not only anti-black but also anti-Semitic, anti-French and, with the rarest exceptions, anti-British. Once, years ago, I asked Randolph Churchill how he managed to get along with him, having in mind that not many could get along with Randolph himself. “Well,” he said, “I always promise him I won’t have any Americans around.”
—J.K. Galbraith, economist, A View from the Stands (1986)

London, 1950-51: Still Trying

In White’s Club ran into Randolph whom I hadn’t seen for more than ten years. He was very genial—now immensely bloated and rather absurd-looking, laying down the law to a little circle of fellow drinkers about politics, etc.: not any edifying scene, but, all the same, I like him in a way…. (1950)

Looked in to see Randolph in the London Clinic, where he’s having his Korean wound attended to—immense figure propped up in bed, drinking and smoking, writing letters to newspapers, telephoning etc.; a sort of parody of a man of action; of his father, indeed. We talked about politics. Poor Randolph, who looks almost as old as Winston, still trying to be the wild young man of destiny. (1951)
—Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist, Like It Was (1981)

London, Mid-1950s: Under the Burden

Another character writing for the [Evening] Standard at the time was Randolph Churchill, who labored under the burden of being the son of his famous father. He was not a popular figure, given to booze and bluster, and earned part of his considerable upkeep by writing articles for Beaverbrook, as Winston had done when out of office in the 1930s. Also like his father, he wrote well, but he lacked the authority of any substantial achievement in his own life.
—Anthony Westell, journalist, The Inside Story (2002)

London, Late 1950s: Prep for Provocation

For a television interview with Randolph Churchill… everyone, including TV critics next morning, said how relaxed and calm I had been with Randolph, in spite of his attempts at provocation, at which he was not untalented. In fact I had spent a number of hours that day and the previous day being grilled by some of my sharpest colleagues in Gray’s Inn Road. I got them to fire questions at me, the kind of questions they thought I would be asked.
—Roy Thomson, press baron, After I Was Sixty (1975)

London, 1958: Anti-Disarmament Serenade

On one [disarmament] march, Randolph greeted the marchers with a wind-up gramophone on which he was playing patriotic music, but the din was so great he was taken to be a supporter and then, when his furious gestures made his position clear, invited to join us and have his mind changed.
— Doris Lessing, novelist, Walking in the Shade (1997)

1950s-60s: Multiple Remembrances

One has a montage of memories. Randolph arguing with a Georgetown cop who had dared stop a car he was driving rather drunkenly down 29th Street sometime in the Fifties; Randolph red-faced and exultant at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in 1960, rejoicing over the nomination of Jack Kennedy, whom he adored as extravagantly as he despised Jack’s father; Randolph boasting of a Hollywood dinner given by Otto Preminger, at which he successfully insulted so many guests that eight of them, he claimed, left the table; Randolph on a hilarious riff about the Munich crisis in which he gave leading characters Joycean names—Chamberpot and Holyfox and Mountbottom….
—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., historian, A Life in the 20th Century, vol. 1, Innocent Beginnings (2000)

London, 1967: Happier Than Ever

Randolph, looking old and grey, like a haggard hawk, has been on the brink of death for three years. The other night he told me that he was now happier than he had ever been. He was at last doing something that justified his life—his book on his father, the best thing he had ever done, his contribution to the world; the fact that he was no longer restless was balm to him. I am sure he was being sincere, but it is hard to believe. His eyes looked so abysmally sad.
—Cecil Beaton, photographer, The Parting Years (1978)

Pennsylvania, 1968: On Stamps

I wrote him to ask for help identifying portraits on Churchill stamps, for what was then the philatelic Churchill Study Unit. I knew little about him, but what I knew I liked. I knew of his volcanic personality. (“I am an explosion that leaves the house still standing.”) I had read of the famous exchange at White’s, after Randolph survived an operation for a benign tumor: “Have you heard the news?” Evelyn Waugh thundered to the bar: “Leave it to modern medical science to cut out of Randolph the only thing that was not malignant.” And I knew of Randolph’s response, his Easter card to the devout Catholic Waugh: “Wishing you a Happy Resurrection.” I knew of his failure on TV’s “$64,000 Question,” failing to identify the man who gave his name to the word “boycott”—and how he then named his favorite pug “Captain Boycott.” And of his lawsuit against the gutter press, who had called him a “paid hack,” described in a book published by himself, under the imprint, “Country Bumpkins.”

I knew of how, incensed over a South African landing card asking his race, he had written: “Human. But if, as I imagine is the case, the object of this enquiry is to determine whether I have coloured blood in my veins, I am most happy to be able to inform you that I do, indeed, so have. This is derived from one of my most revered ancestors, the Indian Princess Pocohontas, of whom you may not have heard, but who was married to a Jamestown settler named John Rolfe.”

Moreover, I had read his two volumes about his father— and they are the reasons I am writing here, in this place, today.

My request was inconsequental and I expected no reply, but back it came: “I regret to record that I know nothing about stamps, but if you will send along your questions I shall be pleased to try to answer them.” Martin Gilbert remembers my letter. Scarcely a fortnight later, Randolph was dead.

Over the years I collected all his books, and books about him, and I think I know some of his pathos, his driving forces, and the vindication of his final triumph: the biography. When he died a friend spoke of him as his father had of Brendan Bracken: “Poor, dear Randolph.” I liked that, too. Every admirer of Sir Winston is grateful for Randolph’s life.
—Richard M. Langworth

Washington, 9 April 1963: Randolph s Day

I remember Randolph, on a spring day after rain, with the afternoon sun streaming into the Green Room. It was the day Jack had proclaimed Sir Winston Honorary Citizen of the United States. Now the last guest had wandered out, and we had gone to sit in the Green Room to unwind together.

Jack had cared about this day so much. We met in his office. Randolph was ashen, his voice a whisper. “All that this ceremony means to the two principals,” I thought, “is the gift they wish it to be to Randolph’s father—and they are both so nervous it will be a disaster.”

The French windows opened and they went outside. Jack spoke first but I couldn’t listen. Then the presentation.

Randolph stepped forward to respond: “Mr. President.” His voice was strong. He spoke on, with almost the voice of Winston Churchill. He sent his words across the afternoon, that most brilliant, loving son—speaking for his father. Always for his father.

But that afternoon the world stopped and looked at Randolph. And many saw what they had missed.

After, in the Green Room—the happy relief—Randolph surrounded with his loving friends—we so proud of him and for him—he knowing he had failed no one, and had moved so many. I will forever remember that as Randolph’s day.
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in The Grand Original