June 24, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 62

Ampersand – The Touchstone Edition of My Early Life

The 1995 Touchstone paperback edition of My Early Life (for long the only edition in print in the USA) contains a somewhat problematic introduction by the late William Manchester. Some professors advise students not to read it—but of course, who can resist?

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(Before you send us an email, yes! Defender of the Realm, Volume III of Manchester’s The Last Lion continues to develop, under the hand of his friend Paul Reid, who tells us he hopes to have it completed by mid-2008.)

Errors in the Manchester introduction to the Touchstone My Early Life should be noted. The repetition of George Moore’s salacious assertion that Churchill’s mother “slept with two hundred men” is regrettable. Though Manchester states, “That figure is far too high,” the seeds of aspersion are cast…and recast. (See also our review of American Jennie, page 50.) Also, on page x, Churchill was born on November 30th, not 20th; on the last line, the word “most” should be “more.” On pagexi, “fl,000,000” should read “£1,000,000,” and on page xv, “Land of Hope and Glory” should be in italics.

Manchester notes (pg. ix) research on Jennie’s mothering by FH editor Richard Langworth, who was asked to vet his introduction: “I suggested he tone down the point that Winston was ignored by his parents. I believe his situation was little worse than it was for most middle-and upper-class Victorian children, though young Winston’s sensitive nature probably reacted more strongly to it than most of his fellows. WSC’s nephew Peregrine showed me numerous entries recording how she read to, played with, took walks with, and was concerned about, Winston and Jack.” Some of this appeared in Finest Hour #98. The dates of the diary entries are however revealing, as it seems certain his parents visited him little, if at all, during his years away at school when his youthful letters poignantly plead for his mother and father to “…try and come down.” Equally frequent were his pleas for extra allowance and other indulgences.

Modern historians have soundly established that Churchill took certain liberties with episodes in his autobiography. Young Winston was scarcely the school dunce he suggests he was; Peregrine Churchill said “he was a very naughty boy, and his parents were most concerned about him.” His entry into Sandhurst, and in due course into the cavalry, were rather less than personal triumphs. Nonetheless, Churchill found he could learn quickly enough if the material interested him.

Professor James Muller advises readers to consider the state of the world in the last years of the 1920s as Churchill recalls his youth and writes this book. Muller describes Britain in 1930 in a state of exhaustion from the Great War. Average people were still struggling to put their private lives back together. Britons were looking inward, into themselves, and not outward to the world and to the future. Muller believes that Churchill found this disagreeable, particularly as a model for the young. He wanted to encourage youth to look ahead to opportunity, and, above all, to action.

Perhaps the most egregious omission from the Touchstone Edition is Churchill’s original dedication, “To a new generation.” When he was 23 years old, Finest Hour contributor Robert Courts wrote: “I have read My Early Life at least ten times, and am still astounded by its wit and charm, its breadth of thinking, and above all by how much Churchill managed to pack into his life—the early years in particular. As he says: ‘Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are.’ There can be no better example and inspiration to young people of how to go out and get what you want.”