March 15, 2015

Finest Hour 160, Autumn 2013

Page 09

A reader in Texas asks for Churchill’s comments about and relations with residents of the lone Star State. What we found is of a jovial nature….

First Reference

Young Winston’s first memories were of Ireland, where his father was sent to get him out of town (London) after he threatened to name the Prince of Wales as a lover of the notorious lady Aylesford, in defense of Randolph’s brother Blandford, who had been named as co-respondent in her divorce.  After the scandal, lord Aylesford emigrated to Big Springs, Texas, bought a 27,000-acre ranch, and was “exceedingly popular” with the cowboys until he died of dropsy and hardening of the liver shortly before his thirty-sixth birthday in 1885.

Early Praise

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Rev. W.K. Lloyd, late Chaplain, 3rd Texas Infantry, Spanish-American War, to WSC, 19 November 1899:

Church of the Holy Cross, Paris, Texas: “I cannot refrain from writing you stranger tho I be to tell you how proud we Texas Englishmen are of you. When we see the best blood of England fighting side by side with ‘Tommy Atkins’ and performing such deeds of valor….Go on old man and show the world what Englishmen are still made of and may the good Father of all preserve your valuable life.”

Buffalo Trails

Young Winston’s uncle-by-marriage, Moreton Frewen (nicknamed “Mortal Ruin” for his numerous failed enterprises), was known as one of the best horse riders in England. “A tall, assured sportsman, he had explored the buffalo trails of Texas, and had known everyone there from Buffalo Bill to Sitting Bull. ‘A bad man with brown eyes need not be feared,’ Frewen once wrote, ‘but the fellow with grey eyes or grey-blue, whose eyes grew darker as they looked down a gun—that was the sort of man to reckon with.’”
—ANITA LESLIE, WSC’S COUSIN

Winston as Cowboy

Churchill acquired his first ten-gallon hat in 1929. In Alberta during their tour of North America that year, Randolph Churchill wrote in his diary: “Papa came out looking magnificent. Jodpur riding suit of khaki, his ten-gallon hat, a Malacca walking stick with gold knob, and riding a pure white horse.”

Visiting the oilfields, Randolph said it was “a depressing thing to see all these oil magnates pigging up a beautiful valley” to make fortunes, and went on to criticize their lack of culture. Instantly his father shot back: “Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production!”

“Damn good,” wrote Randolph.

Churchill continued to wear his Texas-style hat throughout his life. “At Chartwell when the weather was fine he always wore a huge grey hat (sometimes a ten-gallon style from Texas) with feathers tucked into the band. These were added to if he discovered any pretty ones near the domains of his black swans.”
—WALTER GRAEBNER, CHURCHILL’S LIFE EDITOR FOR THE SERIALIZATION OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1965

Pearl Harbor Climacteric

Southern reporter, Washington press conference, 23 December 1941:

“Mr. Prime Minister, in one of your speeches you mentioned three or four of the ‘great climacterics.’ Do you now add our entry into the war as one of these, suh?”

WSC [affecting a Texas drawl]: “Ah sho’ do.”

Texas vs. Hong Kong

“At no time did we press Britain, France or The Netherlands for an immediate grant of self-government to their colonies….When a certain Texan…urged that Britain should return Hong Kong to China, I retorted that Hong Kong had been British longer than Texas had belonged to the United States, and I did not think anyone would welcome a move to turn Texas back to Mexico.”
—SECRETARY OF STATE CORDELL HULL (MEMOIRS)