May 5, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 6

Datelines

Quoation of the Season

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“All these schemes and crimes…are bringing upon him and upon all who belong to his system a retribution which many of us will live to see. The story is not yet finished, but it will not be so long. We are on his track, and so are our friends across the Atlantic Ocean…. If he cannot destroy us, we will surely destroy him and all his gang, and all their works. Therefore, have hope and faith, for all will come right.”
—WSC, Broadcast to the french people, London, 21 October 1940

Churchill on the Royal Wedding

London October 22nd— “I am in entire accord with what the Prime Minister has said about Princess Elizabeth and about the qualities which she has already shown, to use his words, ‘of unerring graciousness and understanding and of human simplicity.’

He is indeed right in declaring that these are among the characteristics of the Royal House. I trust that everything that is appropriate will be done by His Majesty’s Government to mark this occasion of national rejoicing. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel. From the bottom of our hearts, the good wishes and good will of the British nation flow out to the Princess and to the young sailor who are so soon to be united in the bonds of holy matrimony. That they may find true happiness together and be guided on the paths of duty and honour is the prayer of all.”
—WSC (His quotation is from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida)

London, April 29th, 2011— If the Great Man woke up from his “black velvet—eternal sleep,” perhaps to enjoy a cigar and a cognac during the pageantry in London, he might have felt a sense of satisfaction, and invoked his favorite Boer expression, Alles sal reg kom—”All will come right.” The words he spoke sixty-four years ago at another Royal Wedding have stood the test of time. “We could not have had a better King,” he told Anthony Montague Browne in 1953: “And now we have this splendid Queen.”

The road has indeed been hard these six decades of her reign, but “unerring graciousness” and “human simplicity” have marked her every step along the way. We wish the couple a happy life and a sense of responsibility. Live long, and prosper. RML

False Alarm at 33 Eccleston Square

London, February21st— Stefan Buczacki, author of Churchill and Chartwell (FH 138), left home to give a talk on Churchill’s homes to a civic society. “I returned to find an alarming email sent a few minutes after my departure to the effect that Churchill’s former London house at 33 Eccleston Square had been destroyed by fire during the day. The London Fire Brigade confirmed that there had indeed been a major fire in Eccleston Square but the neighbouring house to Churchill’s former home at Number 33 was the one affected; terrible for the owners, but a relief for historians.

“Churchill took over 33 Eccleston Square in March 1909 after selling his first home at 12 Bolton Street. The Square was created in 1835 by Thomas Cubitt, who took a lease from the Duke of Westminster to provide rather grand neoclassical houses for the aristocracy and successful professional classes. Number 33 is a typical property, a gracious family home on four floors. The cost to Churchill was £200 per year with the option of purchasing a 65-year ground lease for £2000. It played a most important part in his life and he owned it for seven years. It was to Eccleston Square that he returned in the evening of 3 January 1911 after personally observing the famous Siege of Sidney Street (last issue, page 34) in his capacity as Home Secretary.

“From early 1913 the house was leased to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, when the Churchills moved to the First Lord of the Admiralty’s official residence at Admiralty House. They returned to the Square in late 1916 and finally disposed of the lease in late May 1918—rather surprisingly to the Labour Party, who wanted it as offices and paid Churchill £2350 for the lease and £50 for his carpets.” The escape of 33 Eccleston Square leaves 2 Sussex Square as the only one of Churchill’s former homes to have been destroyed. It was damaged beyond repair in an air raid on the night of 9 March 1941.

Praetorian Guards

London, April 1st— Prime Minister David Cameron has started to keep tabs on backbench Tory MPs by joining them for roast beef in the House of Commons Members’ Dining Room every Wednesday lunchtime. But the schmoozing has its limits, reports the Daily Mail: “When voluble troublemakers such as Bill Cash or [Sir Winston’s grandson] Nicholas Soames loom, a praetorian guard of young Cameroons forms a circle around the PM so he can munch his Yorkshire in peace.”

Wiesenthal Honors

Ney York, March 30th— The awards that pursued Sir Winston during his lifetime continue. Tonight about 500 supporters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented the Center’s Medal of Valor posthumously to Sir Winston Churchill, Hiram Bingham IV and Pope John Paul II. The Humanitarian Award was given to General Electric chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

At a pre-dinner reception at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Churchill Centre chairman Laurence Geller accepted the medal on behalf of the late Prime Minister: “Accepting an award on behalf of Winston Churchill can only make me feel like a midget.”

Accepting on behalf of the late Pope, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, Papal Nuncio to the United States, said, “I feel a little bit at home when I am among Jews. I know their history, their beliefs and their hopes for the future. They have given humanity the idea for a spiritual God which has elevated the human spirit.” “What about their bagels?” a reporter asked. “Well,” he said, “As a good Italian, I always prefer Italian food.”

Robert Bingham accepted the award for his father, a U.S. diplomat who enabled more than 2500 Jews to escape the Holocaust. He attended with his wife, sister and brother-in-law, all wearing Hiram Bingham pins.”My father placed humanity above career,” he said. “He believed that there was that of the divinity in every human being. And he left us a lesson, and that is to stand up to evil.”
—Lizzie Simon, Wall Street Journal; Full article: http://on.wsj.com/ffrozi

A Porny Issue

New York, April 26th— Another faux Churchill “quote” cropped up on the blog of columnist Jonah Goldberg, writing about “A Thorny Porny Issue” (http://bit.ly/j7RZ7t). For collectors of Churchillian red herrings, here’s the alleged exchange:

WSC reportedly says to a woman at a party, “Madam, would you sleep with me for £5 million?” The woman stammers: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, yes, I suppose….” Churchill interrupts: “Would you sleep with me for £5?” “Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?” Churchill replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.” Cute, but no cigar.

Like the equally fictitious encounter with Nancy Astor (“If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee”…”If I were married to you, I’d drink it”—actually between Astor and Churchill’s friend F.E. Smith, who was much faster off the cuff—this putdown cannot be found in Churchill’s canon or memoirs by his colleagues and family. This hasn’t prevented it working its way into spurious quotation books, and, of course, the Web.

Sir Winston usually treated women with Victorian gallantry. He was so dazzled by Vivien Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind, that he became uncharacteristically tonguetied. When he met actress Merle Oberon on a beach in the South of France after WW2, he turned somersaults in the water. Prurient jests were not in his makeup.

Getting the Boot

London, April 2nd— It’s been a hallowed custom for years, but now MPs have been ordered to stop rubbing the foot of the imposing bronze statue of Winston Churchill as they enter the Commons Chamber. It wore a hole in the great man’s left foot. It has now been restored and a strict instruction has gone out to MPs to keep off.
—Daily Mail; Full article at http://bit.ly/lsw1it.

Terry McGarry

Encino, Calif., April 26th— Terry McGarry, 72, died today of a rare brain disease. A longtime Churchillian, Los Angeles Times editor and former UPI foreign correspondent, he was a raconteur extraordinaire, who loved nothing better than traveling cross country to Churchill conferences with his wife Marlane on their BMW motorcycle, only to don black tie for the formal dinners. The McGarrys served on the 2001 San Diego conference committee, a challenging operation in the wake of 9/11.

Steve Padilla of the Times wrote that Terry was “one of those old school journalists who covered just about everything—wars, the assassination of President Kennedy, the trial of Jack Ruby.” Terry was in the room in Dallas when Ruby shot Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Terry was a keen follower of Finest Hour. His last letter to the editor commented on the “Some Issues about Issues” in FH 133: “It needed to be said and was said quite well.”

“We will also remember that Terry could make a reader laugh,” Padilla wrote. He left UPI in 1983 saying that reporting is “like sex: it’s worth doing well, but sooner or later you have to stop and eat.” Our sympathies to Marlane and his family. As WSC wrote of Joseph Chamberlain: “One mark of a great man is the power of making a lasting impression on the people he meets.” RML

Errata, FH 150

Paga 47: At the end of “Dev’s Dread Disciples,” for “diffuse” read “defuse.” Thanks for this catch to Sidney Allinson of Victoria, B.C.

Page 50: Barbara Langworth wishes to note that her review of My Years with the Churchills incorrectly stated that Churchill’s 1953 stroke was omitted (see “Fond Memories,” page 5). It was the editor (as usual) who misunderstood and added this note to her text. Sorry.