May 14, 2014

L. Hugh Newman

Mr. Newman operated a butterfly farm founded by his father, L.W. Newman, author of The Text Book of British Lepidoptera. Together they supplied Churchill with numerous native species before and after World War II. This article first appeared in Audobon Magazine in 1965, and was reprinted by permission in Finest Hour 89, Winter 1995-96.

This is Winston Churchill speaking,” the voice on the telephone said. “I have just read an article in the magazine Good Gardening entitled ‘Stock Your Garden with Butterflies.’ I found it most interesting.”

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The voice that all the world was soon to know continued – deep, cultured and polite in a decisive sort of way. It was the spring of 1939, a busy season at my father’s butterfly farm at Bexley, Kent, and Mr. Churchill wanted to know more about our butterflies and our business.

“I should like some butterflies to liberate in my garden at Chartwell,” he continued. “May I come and see your butterfly farm and discuss a plan?”

I turned to my father, L.W. Newman, who was sitting at his desk nearby. Placing my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, I whispered, “It’s Winston Churchill on the line. Do you want to show him around the farm?”

“Of course I do,” my father replied, “if he’s really interested. Here, pass me the phone.”

Immediately Mr. Churchill recognized the voice of authority on butterflies, and for quite a long time they talked – Mr. Churchill listening while my father told him something of the aims and objects of our unique profession. Before Mr. Churchill rang off, a date had been arranged for his visit to our establishment.

I often think of that conversation in 1939, when we discussed butterflies with Winston Churchill as the war clouds were gathering. Our talk marked the start of an intriguing association with the future prime minister, whose interest in nature, we soon discovered, was intense and unlimited.

On the day set for Mr. Churchill’s visit my father and I waited in our office. Time passed, and when the great man failed to appear at and after the scheduled hour, we tried to hide our disappointment. Then, suddenly, the phone rang, and I practically leaped to answer it.

In measured Churchillian tones our prospective guest expressed his regrets at the delay in his arrival and explained in some detail that his chauffeur had lost the way. He had not given up hope, he assured me, of being with us soon.

When his chauffeur finally found us, it was evident that Mr. Churchill had planned an outing for his wife and friends. He was accompanied by quite a party. My father was delighted, for he was always at his happiest when he had an audience. He immediately took everyone for a grand tour of the breeding grounds. My father had a wonderful gift of transforming the most insignificant insect into an object of intense interest, because he had never lost his wonder and admiration for the simple things in nature.

Mr. Churchill’s visit coincided with the height of the season when butterflies emerge, and in one of our smaller greenhouses we were able to show him British swallowtails emerging from their chrysalides. He asked if he could handle one of the butterflies.

My father opened the door of a cage, and when Mr. Churchill put his head, shoulders and outstretched hand through the aperture, a butterfly obligingly settled on his hand. Mr. Churchill looked at the colorful yellow-and-black insect with a smile of satisfaction, obviously as pleased as if he were still a boy.

Outside in the grounds once more I opened a “sleeve,” or cloth covering, on a limb of a wild plum tree. On the limb were a number oflappet moth larvae. With a remarkable form of camouflage, these caterpillars make themselves virtually invisible by blending in with their surroundings. My father never failed to get acertain amount of amusement from exhibiting this species to people who were not prepared for such a convincing disguise on the part of insects.

Even our distinguished guest was not spared. Mr. Churchill peered vainly into the muslin sleeve and after a while came to the somewhat natural conclusion that there was nothing there to see. Then I rolled back the sleeve a little farther, touching a caterpillar so that it moved and revealed the disguise.

Mr. Churchill was naturally amazed, and I think it was at this moment that his early interest in entomology was rekindled. Instead of being only an interested visitor he became, if not a full-fledged lepidopterist, at least a disciple in the field.

He told me that his interest in butterflies had begun when he was a prisoner of war in South Africa during the Boer War. He used to while away the time watching butterflies when he was exercising in the compound where he was confined. He had never attempted to catch butterflies or to make a collection, he said.

During the ensuing years in which I helped Mr. Churchill stock the grounds at his country home, Chartwell, near Wester ham in Kent, he carefully avoided killing a single insect. It was live butterflies he wanted to see flying in his garden and in the park, and it was for this purpose that I was engaged, over a period of years, to advise him and to supply him with specimens from our butterfly farm.

On that first visit of 1939 we finally adjourned to the office, where my father showed Mr. Churchill the paintings of entomologically historic insects which he had bred or captured. He showed interest, but this was stressing the past whereas he was thinking of the future. He made it clear that he wanted to increase the butterfly population in his immediate neighbourhood and would like to have my father help him do so. He promised to invite us both to lunch the following week, when the whole matter could be discussed thoroughly after he had shown us around his estate.

The invitation never arrived. Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party of France, came to England that weekend especially to confer with Mr. Churchill. When we read of this conference we understood why it had become impracticable for Mr. Churchill to follow through with his invitation. Europe was in turmoil. A great deal of diplomatic activity was going on in high places.

Within a few months World War II broke out, and Mr. Churchill was named First Lord of the Admiralty.

After the war I wondered whether this man who had borne such mountainous responsibilities in rallying the nation and the Free World would still be interested in butterflies. How wrong I was even to hazard a doubt. That far-ranging mind of his had never lost interest in the idea, as I discovered when I wrote to Mr. Churchill in 1946 reminding him of his visit to the butterfly farm in 1939. His secretary responded with a telephone call and arranged to send a car from Chartwell to pick us up on the following day.

My father, however, could not make the trip. A German rocket had fallen near his home in the spring of 1944, demolishing it and partly burying him in the ruins. He had suffered a mild stroke and was still unable to walk. That he could not go to Chartwell was a bitter disappointment to him.

Thus it fell to me to take my father’s place. I had not then attained his ease and confidence in the presence of the great, and it did not make things easier for me, after I had arrived at Chartwell, when Mr. Churchill came into the reception room where I was waiting, looked me up and down, and remarked sharply, “Deputizing for your father, are you?”

When I told him of the misfortune which had befallen my father, he changed his tone completely and sent the most sympathetic message to my father, accepting me as the new head of the farm.

Then he suggested a walk around the grounds so that I could assess the possibilities of stocking his garden with butterflies. It was more of a whirlwind tour than a quiet stroll, and I found it was almost as difficult to keep up with Winston Churchill physically as mentally. It was quite obvious that he had read a lot about butterflies before my visit. He knew, for example, the food plants of many of the butterflies and which species would be most likely to breed successfully on the Chartwell terrain.

When we reached the walled rose garden, Mr. Churchill stopped and pondered for a moment. “Butterflies feed on nectar from flowers , don’t they?” he said, turning to me for confirmation.

I agreed.

“Um-m, but roses don’t provide nectar, do they?”

“No,” I replied, “although artists are very fond of depicting a butterfly settled on a rose, as you’ve probably noticed!”

Mr. Churchill nodded. “Artists sometimes depict very curious things,” he said. Then, changing his tone of voice, he continued, “We will make a fountain here in the center of the rose garden, and it will flow with honey and water.”

“A good idea,” I commented – but the scheme was never put into practice.

With his remarkably inventive mind, Mr. Churchill may well have thought it a good idea at the time and abandoned it later for practical reasons. However, as the world knows, Mr. Churchill seldom spoke for long without a shaft of humor illuminating his conversation. I shall never know ifhe was serious when he suggested installing a fountain of honey and water.

On our way back to the house we passed a small summerhouse. Mr. Churchill stopped outside and thought a moment or two. Then, turning to me, he said, “Take the roof off it if you like, and put a glass one in its place. I can get it done for you, but make use of it.”

With that he took me to the waiting car, opened the door, gave me his hand, smiled and, with a keen glance, said, “Let me have your plan soon.” Then, command- Clementine and Winston Churchill in rapt attention as entomologist L. W. Newman explains his Butterfly Farm, 1939. ingly: “And let it be a plan of action.”

That night I composed a list of the species which I thought would be most likely to naturalize successfully at Chartwell. They were quite common butterflies and probably occurred there already – peacocks, small tortoise shells, and the rarer larger tortoise shells (if I could collect any of this species from the rather limited localities where it was then still known to be breeding), brimstones, commas and, to be added later in the summer, the migrant red admirals, painted ladies and, perhaps, some clouded yellows.

Before going to bed I drafted a sketch adapting the summerhouse as a place of emergence for the chrysalides which I hoped to supply. I realized that there would be no need to “take the roof off,” as pupae are always best kept cool and in the shade; otherwise they will dry up and seldom emerge successfully. I completed the plans in the morning, and within twenty-four hours they were on Mr. Churchill’s desk.

He wasted no time, and within a day or two I received another telephone call asking me to go to Chartwell to inspect the new Butterfly House, which had been constructed according to my plan. I had designed it so that anyone could walk upright when inside.

The seating had been left in place to act as a stage for the emerging cages. In the front, as I had suggested, there was a wooden framework with a small door in the center. The whole structure was to be covered with black mosquito netting so that one could see clearly the butterflies inside the house.

On this visit I was shown into a private sitting room, and I was admiring some of Mr. Churchill’s paintings wh en he came in. We set off at once to inspect the erst while summerhouse. He liked the idea of being able to sit inside the Butterfly House, and I h eard later that he spent a lot of time waiting for the various species to come out of their chrysalides. After the butterflies took to the wing, however , he quickly opened the door and gave them their liberty.

It was while we wer e sitting together one day in the Butterfly House that I put forward a proposal to Mr. Churchill that had been on my mind for many years.

There is an attractive butterfly, known as the blackveined white, which u sed to occur locally in various parts of England until 1912. My father saw it flying wild then , for the last time in any numbers, in an orchard at the back of the old Portobello Inn within sight of Canterbury Cathedral. Soon after this the butterfly disappeared completely from the countryside, its extermination coinciding with the start of the use of poison sprays in orchards to control insect pests.

I had conceived the idea that it might be possible to reintroduce this species from the Continent, where it still occurs commonly in the mountain valleys of France, Germany and Switzerland. The attempt, however , would have to be on private land where the owner had consideration for wildlife.

At the time of our talk in the Butterfly House, I had a few “nests” of the young caterpillars of this butterfly which a colleague had sent me from central France, so I suggested to Mr. Churchill that we “plant” them out in the grounds and try to establish this once-British butterfly again at Chartwell. It might breed successfully there, I said, and spread into the surrounding countryside.

I asked Mr. Churchill if the idea appealed to him. After asking me a few more questions he suddenly said, “But what about my fruit trees. Won’t they be damaged by the caterpillars?”

I reassured him on this point by explaining that hawthorn was their natural food plant in the mount ains, that they only spread into orchards occasionally to feed on plum and apple trees, and that, in any case, routine spraying would quickly check larvae which might stray over the garden wall into the orchard.

Mr. Churchill pondered a moment or two and then asked whether he would be able to see the butterflies flying in the garden that same year. When I told him they hibernated as small caterpillars in “nests” from late summer until the following spring, and admitted regretfully that it was too late in the season for a brood to emerge as butterflies, he pondered again. Then he said slowly with deep feeling:

“A pity, for goodness knows where we shall all be this time next year.”

I did not understand the true significance of that remark and said so.

“The Russians, you know,” he explained. “They are being very troublesome.”

He probably was referring to the tensions developing over West Berlin and Iron Curtain tactics. An inspiration came to me, and I replied, “But nature goes on, sir.”

He nodded and remarked, “True, very true.” Coming quickly to a decision, he looked me in the eye and said, “Very well, then, carry on with your plans.”

So that autumn I placed several “nests” of larvae on the hawthorn bushes near the lake where Mr. Churchill kept his black Australian swans. I covered the larvae colonies with small, muslin bags to keep away any birds that might be tempted to tear open the silken webs and devour the small caterpillars.

The following spring, when my own black-veined white caterpillars at the butterfly farm were beginning to stir, I wrote to the head gardener at Chartwell, asking that somebody be instructed to remove the muslin bags from the hawthorn bushes. When I went down to Chartwell a little later, however, to see how the caterpillars were faring, it was obvious that my instructions had been misunderstood.

The bags had simply been snipped off with secateurs, and apparently the larvae inside had been removed as well, for I could see no sign of them anywhere. I did not tell Mr. Churchill of this minor tragedy, but hastened home to prepare my own stocks of black-veined whites for release at Chartwell.

Gathering them as quickly as I could, I rushed back to Chartwell and liberated them on the hawthorns by the lake. I do not know what happened to them. For all I know, there still may be a nucleus colony of blackveined whites in the district. I certainly hope so.

Another experiment I conducted at Chartwell was doomed to failure, but through no fault of my own. Mr. Churchill and I had agreed that it would be interesting to try to localize some British swallowtails beside the lake. These large, handsome butterflies are now confined to the Norfolk Broads in England. In the 19th century, however, they had been quite widespread on marshy land.

I planted a bed of fennel all around the edge of the lake in the autumn, and by the next spring it had grown up sufficiently to support a small colony of these butterflies. I liberated a score of almost fully fed caterpillars as a preliminary test. They appeared to thrive in their new surroundings. Possibly because they have “warning colors,” no bird will touch them for food.

Before the caterpillars had time to pupate, however, the men who cut the hay in the meadows also razed the fennel. After this disappointment we made no attempt to carry the scheme any further.

There was a time when I was constantly at war with the head gardener at Chartwell. For the Vanessa butterflies to breed successfully there must be a plentiful supply of stinging nettles, as the larvae of small tortoise shells, peacocks and red admirals feed only on the leaves of these weeds. I wanted as many nettle clumps left in the grounds as possible; the gardener wanted to cut and clear them away to keep the place tidy.

Eventually, we came to an amicable agreement. Certain nettle beds became sacrosanct to the butterflies, and the rest were kept within bounds.

I am certain that during the years when I was regularly turning out specially bred or surplus stock for Chartwell there was a great resurgence of the butterfly population in that part of Kent – thanks to Mr. Churchill.