April 17, 2015

Finest Hour 121, Winter 2003-04

Page 33

By HENRY A. LAUGHLIN

My Encounters with the Charismatic Churchill

Henry Alexander Laughlin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1892 and attended Princeton University. After distinguished artillery service in World War I, he joined Houghton Mifflin Company’s Riverside Press as an editor. By 1939 he had become president of Houghton Mifflin, and began to make a series of highly controversial decisions that eventually made the publishing company stronger both financially and in prestige. The first of these decisions was to publish Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, because he felt it could be used to demonstrate the true nature of the man who led Germany. The second was to secure the war memoirs of Winston Churchill. Many inside Houghton Mifflin, and in the greater publishing world, thought it foolish to assign a statesman to write his war memoirs so soon after the war was over, while others believed that war memoirs would not sell well to a war-weary public. But Churchill’s The Second World War became one of the best-selling books of all time. Laughlin continued to publish great works from distinguished authors, including Bernard De Voto, John Kenneth Galbraith, Rachel Carson and]. R. R. Tolkien. He ended his long stewardship in I960 and lived in pleasant retirement with his wife Rebecca until his death in 1978. His memoir of Churchill, read at the January 1965 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, just before WSC’s stroke and death, is probably the last speech about Sir Winston delivered in his lifetime. It was brought to our attention by Ted Hutchinson, and is published here by kind permission of the Society.

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

So much has been said and written about Sir Winston, so many anecdotes told, actual or legendary, that you may wonder why I should feel justified in adding to the list. The only reason I can put forward is that, while I have no new breathtaking revelations to offer, I have been with him a good number of times, and after each, I sat down and put on paper everything I could remember of what had happened or what I had seen. I have had to make selections and omit many details, even on the limited number of glimpses I shall tell you of, but whatever I do say comes to you at first hand.

I must acknowledge one other bit of presumption. Who am I to talk in open meeting about one of our own Members? I will remind you that Sir Winston has been an Honorary Member of this Society since 1943 and now in his 91st year may, I believe without fear of contradiction, be thought of as our most distinguished Member.

When in the late spring of 1947 I went to London for the formal signing of Houghton Mifflin’s contract to publish The Second World War, I was invited by Mr. Churchill to call on him at 28 Hyde Park Gate. I shall henceforth call him “Sir Winston” throughout except when I am quoting something else, although he was not made a Knight of the Garter until 1953. I shall call his wife Lady Churchill rather than Mrs. Churchill. She is usually addressed as “Clemmie” by Sir Winston and by her host of friends.

Instead of giving you brief accounts of all the times I have seen Sir Winston I am inclined to pick out eight and tell about each in some detail.

My First Visit to London

It was on the 24th of July in 1947 that I first saw Sir Winston. I had sat next to Lady Churchill at a dinner the night before, given for my wife and myself by our old friends Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Agar. Sir Winston had not been there as he was recovering from an operation and was not allowed to go out at night.

At eleven o’clock in the morning I appeared at Hyde Park Gate, which is a short dead-end street, the opening of which, on Kensington Road, faces Hyde Park. On the outside it is a modest house—actually two houses made into one—in a line of block houses in an agreeable but not particularly impressive part of London. It is attractive inside. I saw very little of it then, but years later when my wife and I had luncheon on a beautiful sunny day, we had a chance to see how charming it was.

I rang the bell and was admitted by a maid and shown into a room on the right. In the room I was in there were gay, light-colored curtains at the windows and antique furniture on which the brasses shone. Two sofas covered in what I think was yellow damask were facing each other, in front of the fireplace, with small tables at each end of them. It was a bright room giving the impression of having a lot of flowers around. There were oil paintings on the walls. Over the fireplace was one of the House of Commons in session.

Lady Churchill came in almost immediately and said that Winston would be down in just a minute. One of the most winning things about Lady Churchill is that she invariably refers to her husband in talking to you as “Winston.” We talked mostly about the evening before, and then Sir Winston burst through the doorway. Lady Churchill and I both got up, and she introduced me. At once she said she had to go along and that she would meet Sir Winston at lunch at one fifteen. He then kissed her goodbye, and she said something nice to me and was off. They were a striking couple in the doorway. Lady Churchill was conservatively and tastefully dressed. She has a kind and refined face—very distinguished looking, and, in my opinion, with her silver hair really beautiful. Sir Winston was in a siren suit, all of one piece, made of blue jeans material, which zips up the middle. He was pudgy, with a red face and pinkish, moist eyes; he exuded vitality in spite of his 72 years and recent operation. So many years ago….We’ve all grown older since, and now that I too am 72, it doesn’t seem so old as it did then.

Sir Winston suggested to me that I sit with him on the sofa to the left and asked me if I would have a cigar. I said I would smoke a cigarette if he didn’t mind. He asked me then if I would have a glass of port or a whisky-and-soda. I said I would have a whisky-and-soda if he were going to have one—although I often get well beyond eleven o’clock in the morning before I have my first whisky-and-soda. He jumped up, hurried out of the room, and called a man—his valet as I later learned—who placed a silver box of cigarettes and a box of matches on a small table, which he put in front of me, and a silver box of toothpicks and a box of matches on a small table in front of Sir Winston, who asked him to bring in two whiskies. He disappeared and in a few minutes came back with a tray, and Sir Winston poured from a Johnny Walker Black Label bottle a drink for each of us, and then we individually put in the soda.

He pulled out a long, very fat cigar. He took a toothpick from the box and stuck it up the mouth-end of the cigar to make it draw, but that appeared to be a failure, for it kept going out and being relighted all during our conversation, and when I left it was not half smoked.

All the time, he was talking enthusiastically, telling me how deeply interested he was in his book, that he had already produced more than a million words, that it took all his thoughts, and that he had lost interest in the House of Commons— and even in his painting.

He said he wanted me to be as excited over his book as he was; that there never had been one like it. He had got his idea of the form of it from two sources—Napoleon’s Chronicles and Marlborough’s Reports, but his would be different in this respect: everything in his book would be a direct statement of the facts as they were—or as he saw them—put down at the time; that they would be the actual instructions he gave which controlled Britain’s fighting of the war. He said he did not have the position of Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces as President Roosevelt had, nor did he as Prime Minister have the authority Stalin had. But all of the men in command of the Army and Navy and Air Force trusted him and he trusted them, and he had a War Cabinet which he could call together on very short notice and which would support him in everything he did, on every appointment or removal he wanted to make. He didn’t mean by that that he always did what he wanted to do, for he was often dissuaded from undertakings by his Generals, Admirals, and Cabinet Colleagues, sometimes unwisely—he said with a sort of sly smile-but, in fact, he had the full conduct of Britain’s war in his hands and accepted full responsibility for it.

Each morning at an early hour, he said—actual time not mentioned—he got all his despatches and read them in bed. He either wrote in longhand or dictated to one of his secretaries his definite instructions for that day. Those instructions were immediately set in type and each day’s lot was bound as a secret document.

All this was to show me that, unlike other writers of memoirs, he was not relying on his memory as to what he thought and did—or should have thought and done—but on what he actually did think and do. He said he is willing to be judged by history—and that is very important to him—on the basis of his day-by-day decisions.

At ten minutes past twelve, I looked at my wristwatch and figured I had better go, so I got up. He walked into the hall with me, I got my hat, and he followed me to the door. He asked where I was going, and I said to Claridge’s. He asked then how I was going to get there, and I said I’d take a taxi. He insisted on my getting in his car, which was at the door, and having his chauffeur drive me to Claridge’s. As we started to move, he suddenly called and ran after the car. We stopped, and he said through the open window that he was sorry not to have met my wife, that his wife had enjoyed seeing her so much the evening before, and he hoped he would meet her on our next visit. He has an extraordinarily winning personality.

Luncheon in Boston

Perhaps the most exciting of my times with Sir Winston was on 1 April 1949, when he was in Boston. He had accepted an invitation to speak to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at their Mid-Century Celebration. I had written him asking if Houghton Mifflin could give a luncheon for him, and we were delighted when he said we could and that he would like to meet more of our people. He suggested he would be with us the day after the speech and hoped the luncheon would be fairly small and informal.

Of course, everyone we knew wanted to be asked, and that presented a problem. This was solved by our deciding to have it at the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston, where we could seat only fifty, and by confining the guests to members of our company and their wives or husbands.

I had been advised by one of Sir Winston’s secretaries, Miss Sturdee, whom I had gotten to know early in our negotiations, that it would be wise not to get in touch with Sir Winston in Boston until after he had made his speech at M.I.T., for he spends all his time before an important speech first writing it, then correcting it, and finally committing it to memory. He is always in great agitation over a speech until it has been delivered. So on the morning of our luncheon I had had no direct communication with him. I didn’t get to my office until 9:30. Just as I reached my desk the telephone rang. I picked it up and said “Hello,” and the voice came over: “This is Winston Churchill.” I made no smart retort for I thought it very well might be he! It was. He asked if I would come to the Ritz and see him. I went at once. He was in bed. In the sitting room which I first entered was a large cake. Miss Sturdee said it was Lady Churchill’s birthday.

Sir Winston offered me at once a whisky-andsoda. He was drinking one himself. We talked of his next volume, of his speech the night before, and of the plans for the luncheon to come in a couple of hours. In the midst of this the telephone rang. It proved to be Randolph Churchill, who had been on hand for the speech but he had taken the “Owl” sleeper to New York. Sir Winston motioned me to stay where I was and asked Randolph how he had liked it, what the New York papers had said, and had he talked with London? The New York papers were enthusiastic, and in London it was favorably mentioned by The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Daily Mail. Sir Winston was greatly excited, for it was the first time he had ever appeared on live television and he wanted to know not just how he sounded but also how he looked. Seasoned warrior that he was, he was as much interested about the success of his speech and his appearance—and as pleased, as it turned out—as a boy in college after his first notable exploits in a football game.

When I had outlined plans for the luncheon, I told Sir Winston that we would have to have the usual cocktails—which I knew he abominated—and asked whether he would prefer sherry or tomato juice. He said, “tomato juice.” When Sir Winston and Lady Churchill arrived at the Club of Odd Volumes accompanied by Mr. Bernard Baruch and Col. Clark,* my wife, Becky, and I met them as they got out of their motorcycle police-escorted car, and we walked up the path and into the Club with them. The gentlemen went to the second floor, Mr. Baruch in the elevator and Sir Winston up the stairs, puffing, but game. I took Lady Churchill’s coat on the first floor and waited for her, so we were a few minutes behind the others when we walked up. All the guests had arrived and were having cocktails. My eye immediately lit on Sir Winston, who was being handed a cocktail by my friend and co-director, Gus Loring, who was acting as host and master of ceremonies. I dashed over and said, “Mr. Churchill doesn’t want a cocktail; he wants tomato juice.” Sir Winston took the cocktail, gave me a withering glance, and started sipping at it. I decided he liked to make his own decisions, and change them whenever he wished.

We had an excellent lunch with Sir Winston’s special choice for Champagne, Pol Roger ’34—1928 would have been his real choice but that wasn’t procurable. An amusing incident took place due to our efforts to provide what we thought he would most like at the luncheon. I had been told that when he made a speech it was comforting for him to have a small glass of brandy at his place. Gus Loring was a connoisseur of wines and liquors, and I thought it well to enlist his services in the selection of an excellent brandy. I had two cognacs of reputation myself and Gus had one he was glad to recommend.

Accordingly we had met at the Club of Odd Volumes at about 11:30 in the morning of the lunch for a blindfold testing of the three brandies to determine which was suitable for our distinguished guest. We got three glasses and numbered them and Mrs. Gardner, who managed the club, handed them to us, we all unwitting. She kept the record. We were very serious about it and, as luck would have it, we both selected the same one.

At the end of the lunch Sir Winston made a delightful and gracious speech saying how much he liked our edition of The Gathering Storm, and he won our hearts when he ended with the words, “When I take it in my hands it opens like angels’ wings.”* As he sat down there was a burst of applause. He reached for the small brandy glass and polished it off in one gulp. Gus and I looked at each other. It might just as well have been Hennessy’s Three Star. Lady Churchill left shortly after lunch to see Mrs. Charles Francis Adams and tried to take Sir Winston with her, but he stayed until 4:30, chatting with a number of us and enjoying that excellent brandy.

A Family Gathering

Later that same year I had told Sir Winston that I expected to be in London and hoped I might see him. Our house in Ireland was being renovated after its hard treatment during the war, when it was occupied by the Irish Army, and we were living in a small cottage lent us by a friend of ours in the little village of Ballyduff, County Waterford. We had no telephone, so quite a sensation was created when a message was sent up from the Post Office that Mr. Laughlin was wanted on the telephone by Winston Churchill in London and would I ring him up. I did, and he asked if my wife and I would have lunch with Mrs. Churchill and himself at 28 Hyde Park Gate on a day about a week later. A day or so before, we arrived at Claridge’s. We—and particularly Becky, who had never been to their house—were quite excited, and we both took unusual pains to be appropriately and conservatively dressed. I remember I put on a blue suit and sent a pair of black shoes down to be polished.

At about 12:45, we got into a taxicab and were off. Just as we got to Hyde Park Gate I looked down and saw to my horror that I had on a pair of light tan shoes, which I felt was not quite the thing in London, especially with a dark suit. It was too late to turn back but I was unhappy about it; Becky was even more unhappy.

On our arrival Lady Churchill talked to my wife and said they were waiting for her daughter Sarah and her new husband, Tony Beauchamp, whom none of the Churchills had ever seen. Their aircraft from New York was late but arrived, and they were on their way from Northolt. I went into another room and talked with Sir Winston for a few minutes. I recall that he was greatly pleased because he had just hit upon a title for his fourth volume—The Hinge of Fate. He told me that in the first three books Fate had appeared to be against us, but this fourth one was the story of the hinge swinging from uninterrupted disaster to unbroken success. He then said with a smile to show what a scholar he was that the Latin for hinge was “cardo” and the word cardinal is derived from it—one who acts as the hinge on the door through which true believers get into heaven.

Lady Churchill said we would go down to lunch without waiting longer. I should mention that whenever I had dined with Sir Winston we had delicious food, attractively served. There were two other guests, a cousin of Lady Churchill’s whose name I forget, and Lord Cherwell, who had been Professor Lindemann, Sir Winston’s scientific adviser during the war, known by all as “the Prof.”

The dining room is on the ground floor and looks out on the garden. It is a charming room, relatively large, with a gallery above ending in a stairway on one side and wide windows on two sides. The garden was full of flowers, the windows leading out on it were open, and yellow curtains were blowing gently. On the walls were oil paintings, I think of Marlborough’s battles. At any rate, they were pictures of which we have all seen reproductions in our schoolbooks. On the table were place-mats of pewter with a coat of arms on each, and in the center of the table were lovely bright flowers. It was a gay setting.

Becky sat on Sir Winston’s right, and a place was left for Sarah on his left. The conversation went easily and was general. One of Sir Winston’s secretaries came in with an open box in which there were fourteen copies of The Gathering Storm in fourteen different languages. They were passed around. Sir Winston was boyishly excited and was particularly taken with the one in Persian,* which read from back to front.

When Sarah and Tony arrived they were welcomed, but Lady Churchill told us to remain seated. Sarah kissed her parents and then introduced Beauchamp. It was almost uncomfortably informal and undemonstrative as a welcome to a new son-in-law. They sat down, and we went on with our conversation after a few words about the flight from New York. There was a long story about the time during the war when Sir Winston and the Prof, after dinner at Downing Street, went down to compliment the cook, and with bombs dropping decided that they ought to get the cook out of the kitchen into a shelter. They had no sooner done so than a bomb fell on the kitchen and demolished it.

Prof, Beauchamp, and I stayed with Sir Winston over port, cigars and brandy, and we had a genial conversation. But there was no attempt to put Beauchamp at ease or to include him in the conversation. Eventually, the Prof drove my wife and me back to Claridge’s. We felt we had had a memorable day.

A Men’s Lunch at Hyde Park Gate

In 1951, I had a noon appointment at 28 Hyde Park Gate to talk with Sir Winston before a small luncheon he was having. I found him smartly dressed with black short morning coat and bow tie. We talked about his proofs, schedules, and all until he said suddenly that he would give me a briefing on the three others who were to be with us at lunch. The first, he said, was a very young chap who had won the Victoria Cross on the beach at Anzio. He had secured a seat in the House, and was a bright hope of the Tory Party. But alas his father had died, and he had just succeeded to the title of Lord De Lisle and Dudley and gone to the Lords. Very distressing!

“The second,” he continued, “is a compatriot of yours—you may know him, Henry Ford” (grandson of Ford’s founder). I said I did not, but that my son-in-law had been a friend of his at Yale. The third guest, he told me, was a kind of relation of his: “No, not quite a relation,” he went on, “but a connection. He is the Duke of Alba and was the Spanish Ambassador, but he got into some sort of row with Franco and is out, but his best friend is now the Ambassador, and he still is on very good terms with the Government. He’s a connection of mine, for the sister of my great, great, great, great grandfather was the mistress of his great, great, great, great grandfather.”*

It was a gay and stimulating luncheon with everyone taking part in the conversation led on by Sir Winston—something I think that was somewhat unusual with him as he likes to do most of the talking as a rule. Toward the end Sir Winston asked Henry Ford and me if we would like to go to Question Time in the House of Commons. We said of course. I was amazed to find how hard our visit was to arrange at short notice, even for the Leader of the Opposition, but it was managed through various telephonings and sendings for Miss Sturdee. Sir Winston was going himself, but for us to get in at all we had to be there early. Just as we were leaving, in Henry lord’s car, Sir Winston said IK1 would “try to make it interesting.” He did, asking the Socialists a couple of controversial questions from the floor, but they had not been put in the Question Box and no reply was made to them—he was offering trouble but there were no takers.

My First Visit to Chartwell

By the time I visited Chartwell, the Churchills’ country house in Kent about twenty-five miles from London, he was once more Prime Minister. I expected to have a short lunch with him and then be on my way. I arrived at Chartwell at 12:45 as invited.

The red brick house, comfortable looking with vines growing on it here and there, is almost on the road, and the driveway is a short one. Not only were the gates open, but the front door as well. There was a man in dark blue uniform near the gate opposite the one I entered. The drive makes a short half-circle. I was driven up to the door. I got out and rang the bell. The maid, whom I recognized as having seen before—no doubt at Hyde Park Gate—came at once, holding out her hand. Thinking she was one of the secretaries I reached out mine to shake it, but she simply wanted to take my hat! We did shake hands, both knowing my mistake, which amused rather than embarrassed us, and I followed her into the hall. Sir Winston’s secretary, Miss Sturdee, then appeared, also holding out a hand which I also shook: “Mr. Churchill will be a little late; he has already left Ten Downing Street and should arrive at one.” Miss Sturdee and I went out on the lovely brick terrace, well above the ground, like an upstairs verandah. There was a beautiful wisteria vine in full bloom against the wall, comfortable porch chairs and a table, and a border of petunias. All the French windows were open. The property is an extensive one, giving the impression of field upon field, mostly golden and brown with grain crops at that time of the year. Two ponds were to be seen, with black swans on one of them; cows grazed in the foreground.

Sir Winston arrived from London in “blue battle dress”—that is, his zip suit. We started out on an easy conversation about volume six of The Second World War, which he told me was going to be called Triumph and Tragedy, because it described the tragedy brought about by what we gave away at Potsdam and by the incredibly shortsighted removal of our troops from Europe at a time when Britain and America could still have dominated it.

Although he did not say so at the time, I knew that he thought also of his own personal triumph and the sense of tragedy he felt when the electorate repudiated him in 1945. We had a great deal of talk about both British and American politics, and then we discussed at length his own writing, the success of the first five books, and our plans for the final volume.

You may be interested in the lunch.* We began with hors d’oeuvres of sardines, olives, stuffed eggs, cucumbers, and chopped greens of some kind. Sir Winston insisted on my putting vinegar on the sardines, saying it greatly improved them. Then he noticed I had only taken one sardine. He reached over and put three more on my plate—or tried to—and dropped one on the mahogany table in the process. This I retrieved. Then, the vinegar. It did improve them.

With the hors d’oeuvres we had a bottle of Pol Roger ’28, which we discussed. He told me that Odette Pol-Roger (the family name carries a hyphen and is pronounced “Rozhay”) sends it to him especially. “She is a charming woman.”

There followed lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and cabbage—on which we both poured vinegar without further comment—followed by what I would call an ice—a sort of very cold, creamy raspberry soup, which he called a custard. I liked it, and he more so. I think he had a second— at least we talked about it, though I declined. Meanwhile he had the maid get some meat to feed Rufus, his small grey poodle. He called the dog “sweetheart” as he fed him. Rufus was friendly and appreciative, and followed us around all afternoon.

We finished with cheese and bread (bread and butter had been on all along) and by that time we were on our second bottle of Pol Roger ’28. He said I must have port with the cheese—there was nothing like it. We were then served fruit. I think I didn’t take any. Then we had coffee and brandy, and on we went with our conversation.

The maid came in, and Sir Winston asked her to get a bottle of Cointreau. He said it was a pleasant light finisher and poured my glass himself. A little later we had a second light finisher, which he also poured.

Meanwhile, the cigars. There were a couple of boxes on the sideboard, but he had the maid bring the “specials,” which he said were sent by his friend Col. Clark, whom I had met both in Boston and at Mr. Baruch’s in New York. They were Super-Churchills in size and quality. We each took one. We didn’t leave lunch until I had smoked my Super-Churchill down to an inch, but I don’t think he had gone an inch and a half on his.

We went from the dining room to a room which contained six large tanks of small fish and then wandered outside and looked at his fishpond, containing golden orfe. A rivulet works down from the house, with falls and pools, clear to the pond where the swans are.

A man walked up while we were sitting in chairs looking at the fish. Sir Winston introduced him as his detective, Mr. Murray, and asked him if he would get something to feed the fish. While he was gone Sir Winston told me that Mr. Murray corresponded to our Secret Service. He was not in uniform. Eddie Murray and I had a pleasant chat about the weather and the beauties of Chartwell. He then strolled casually away.

Sir Winston and I sat on a bench on a lower terrace under the one described earlier and discussed politics, the party system in America, the end of American isolationism, and the need for Britain and America to stand together no matter what happens. Then we wandered through the two gardens, ending in a brick arbor which he had built with his own hands.

I suggested leaving then, but he asked if I would like to see his pictures. I said I would. We went into a room almost completely hung with his own paintings, and there were a great many more stacked in a sort of bicycle rack along the length of the room opposite to where most of his pictures were hung. In the center was a very good portrait of Lady Churchill, though not by Sir Winston. He told me he could not do portraits. Finally I said I must go. We looked at William Orpen’s famous portrait of him from long ago in 1916— very good I thought (cover, Finest Hour 118, Spring 2003), and a black and white by Sargent just two weeks before the latter died.

He asked me to take another cigar, and I showed him I already had one in my pocket. He shook my hand and we drove off. He waved. I looked at my watch. It was just five minutes to five. I had been with Sir Winston four hours, absolutely fascinated. The uniformed guard was at the gate. Mr. Murray was nowhere to be seen.*

A Luncheon at Chequers

The only time I was ever at Chequers, which is the country residence of British Prime Ministers, was in the autumn of 1954. While in Ireland I had received a telegram from Sir Winston asking my wife and me to have lunch with Lady Churchill and him at Chequers on Sunday, September 19th. I will not describe the lunch, as I have covered one of these in detail.

Having returned to London we drove to Chequers, thirty-six miles from Marble Arch and extremely difficult to find. It is amazing how few people seem to know where it is or how to get there. There are of course no road markings. My wife, fortunately, had been sent a map with special instructions by Lady Churchill. There is no guard or policeman at the gate, and not until you get up a fairly long avenue—almost to the house—does anyone come out to ask your business and then only in a perfunctory and unobtrusive way*

Inside we were greeted by Anthony Montague Browne, Sir Winston’s Private Secretary. He seems invariably to be called by his three names. There were ten for lunch. It was a bright warm day, and we sat on the terrace and had a choice of sherry or tomato juice. Sir Winston had not come downstairs but we indulged in a general conversation. Lady Churchill told Anthony Montague Browne he would never guess the name of the guest coming to stay next week, about whom she had just had a note. “John Foster Dulles isn’t coming back, is he?” “Oh no,” she replied, “not as bad as that; it is the Lion of Judah—Haile Selassie.” There was general laughter. Shortly after that Sir Winston appeared, looking bright and debonair. His color was good, and there was a general air of freshness about him. Lunch was easy and pleasant. Talk was for the most part general, but Sir Winston is not interested in general conversation; he likes to talk to one or two people, and to do most of the talking. After lunch, when the ladies had left, we sat and talked animatedly over brandy and cigars.

Then Sir Winston, his solicitor Mr. Moir, and I went into a small room and discussed his future writing plans, including an abridgement of The Second World War. He told me he wanted to make much better provision than he had already made for “Mrs. Churchill.” (To others, he always referred to her by that name.) He talked very freely, and without the slightest reluctance, about what was going to happen to his papers after he died. He said I should talk with Mr. Moir about that, for all his papers would belong to the Churchill Trust, of which Mr. Moir was one of the trustees. All his papers are now being edited by Randolph Churchill for the official biography, which Houghton Mifflin will eventually publish.

At almost five o’clock we joined Lady Churchill and my wife, who had been having tea. We all went out and walked over the croquet ground and the garden. Lady Churchill told us how easy it was to go to Chequers for weekends; but it was absolutely impersonal, she continued: there was no feeling that the place was one’s own. The housekeeping was beautifully done by Mrs. Hill, who had managed it during the war, and of whom Lady Churchill was very fond: the property cared for by Mr. Gardner. Both of them were guests at lunch. There was an attractive garden of sorts, but Lady Churchill said it was impossible to take an interest in a garden for which the Government buys the seeds and the various public gardens send their surplus bulbs and plants.

The Chequers staff included eleven members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, who liked the job; there was much competition for it. They waited on tables and did all the housework. Sir Winston told me he called them all “Corporal,” with the exception of the only one who is a Corporal. He calls her “Flight,” bearing a kind of relationship in his mind—and possibly hers—to “Flight Lieutenant.” Chequers after Chartwell, we gathered, was agreeable, if not comfortable and delightful.

Cinema at Chartwell

When Becky and I were in London in August, 1957, while I was just getting around after breaking my leg, my wife got a note from Lady Churchill asking us to come to Chartwell for Sunday lunch. We were particularly pleased because Becky had never been to Chartwell. I also had had a letter from Sir Winston saying he wanted to see me while I was in England.

At nine o’clock that Sunday morning Anthony Montague Browne telephoned to say that Lady Churchill was ill with lumbago and would we be able to postpone coming to lunch until Monday? We were up against it, for we had timed our stay in London to end with the Churchill luncheon. We had made our plans accordingly, had people coming to stay with us at Castle Hyde the following Tuesday, and had air tickets back on Monday morning. At that time, just at the close of the London season, impromptu transportation is difficult to arrange.

I therefore told Anthony Montague Browne that I was very sorry but we couldn’t go on Monday, but I wondered if, forgetting the luncheon, Sir Winston might like to see me sometime during the day for just a few minutes. In a few minutes Anthony rang back saying that Sir Winston wondered if we wouldn’t come to dinner that evening instead, and if Lady Churchill were able she might join us briefly. Becky and I were delighted, for we had planned nothing, although we realized that it would mean our chugging back to London in our small self-drive English Ford after midnight.

We put on our “black ties” and appeared at eight. Sir Winston’s nephew Johnny Churchill, his niece Lady Avon (Clarissa Eden), and Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Montague Browne were the only other guests. Sir Winston talked with Becky about my broken leg while I parked the car and on my arrival said he wanted me to make the cocktails the way I liked them. We had a pleasant chat; Lady Churchill sent down a note saying how sorry she was she couldn’t join us but she was helpless.

Sir Winston insisted on pushing me into the lift to go up to dinner, sending Anthony running up the stairs to pull me out at the upper end. Becky and I were seated on either side of Sir Winston, Anthony on Becky’s right, and Mrs. Anthony on my left. Johnny Churchill was on the opposite end. Sir Winston talked quite spiritedly both to my wife and to me. We had the full treatment, but nothing fancy; sherry with soup, Pol Roger ’34 with the cold chicken, port after the sweet, our choice of brandy or Cointreau with the coffee.

Then we all went into the cinema to see a film. The staff was obviously waiting for us, for they too were invited: the valet, butler, three maids, and three or four other unidentifiables.

We sat in front on either side of an aisle, Becky and Sir Winston in armchairs with their feet on an ottoman; Anthony on Becky’s left; Mrs. Anthony, myself, and Johnny Churchill on a sofa. The staff was in chairs behind us. The film was “The Lavender Hill Mob,” a semi-comic gangster picture starring Alec Guinness. It was on a large, rounded screen, and the sound was at a high pitch to compensate for Sir Winston’s deafness. It overcompensated for mine, but I at least got used to it. I thought it was a good picture.

Afterwards—it was almost midnight—-Sir Winston brushed the cigar ashes off his dinner jacket— it and his trousers were completely grey from them—and we said goodnight. We hit the road for Claridge’s, which we reached at just about one.

Last Encounter

I still get too excited about my recollections of Sir Winston. My trouble, you see, is that I find it hard to hold myself down to a few words. I shall stop though, after one more fleeting glimpse of him—my last—in 1963, just after he had been made, by resolution of the Congress, the first Honorary Citizen of the United States. (He called my attention to the fact that he was the first Honorary Citizen. Lafayette had been made a Citizen but not an Honorary Citizen.)

Sir Winston appeared much older, but still his face lit up from time to time with enthusiasm, especially when he said to Mr. Montague Browne, “Show Laughlin my passport.” Anthony brought in a passport, the same size as mine, only bound in dark green leather with the Seal of the United States in gold on the cover. Inside, instead of the usual unflattering picture and information about birth and nationality, there was the exact wording of the resolution of the Congress. Here was the document certifying him as the first Honorary Citizen of the United States. I go farther than that. To me Sir Winston Churchill is the First Citizen of the World.


* A Canadian industrialist who often hosted Churchill. In 1946 WSC had stayed at Clark’s house in Florida before die “Iron Curtain” speech.

* Churchill said the same of the Cassell edition of A History of the English Speaking Peoples, which opened even more like angels’ wings. —Ed.

* Perhaps some were proofs: no Persian edition was published. Arabic and Hebrew editions, which read back to front, arrived in the 1960s.

* Alba’s ancestor was the Duke of Berwick, the illegitimate son of James II and Arabella Churchill and a Marshal of France.

* For a very similar account of lunch with Churchill, see A. L. Rowse, “A Visit to Chartwell,” Finest Hour 81:9 (Fourth Quarter, 1993).

* The light security Churchill enjoyed, at Chartwell and even Chequers, is sadly a remnant of history for today’s Prime Ministers.

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.