His readiness to look past the future King’s human frailties was evident at the Laverys’ party. In studying him at close quarters, Churchill was reminded of the portrait in Hampton Court of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, the Reformation King’s official artist. It was of a decidedly rotund monarch. Nonetheless, in the studio of one of Britain’s leading portrait artists of the day, his painterly eye spotted a marked resemblance to the slim young Prince of Wales. ‘What a strange thing heritage is,’ he mused, ‘we are really only variants of what has gone on before.’ He himself never forgot his own heritage as a direct descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough, the victor of Blenheim.15
*
During Clementine’s absence on the Riviera he threw himself into an energetic social life. He enjoyed dinners at Philip Sassoon’s Park Lane mansion with fellow politicians and friends, spent a couple of weekends basking in the luxuries of Lympne, visited his cousin Freddie Guest at Templeton, and regularly attended social occasions within the privileged square mile of Mayfair including dinners thrown by his mother, who remained an inveterate socialite. He relied heavily, too, on the company of his brother Jack and his wife. In most biographies the quiet and unassuming John (‘Jack’) Strange Churchill is a largely absent figure. Six years younger, and a practised if only modestly successful stockbroker, he eschewed publicity and remained in his brother’s shadow for the whole of his life. Yet they were always close and Jack was to spend the Second World War living in private quarters at 10 Downing Street. As 1921 opened, he was poised to become a partner in the distinguished City of London firm Vickers da Costa. It was not the career he had hoped for. But lack of family money had denied him entry to Sandhurst and instead, thanks to the family connection with Sir Ernest Cassel, he had entered the world of finance. He had fought with distinction in South Africa and held staff positions at GHQ France and at Sir Ian Hamilton’s headquarters at Gallipoli, from where he provided his brother with a useful unofficial channel of communication. Jack had emerged with the Croix de Guerre, the Légion d’Honneur, and the Distinguished Service Order. Goonie his wife – otherwise known as Lady Gwendeline Bertie – was the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Abingdon and a society beauty whose glamour was splendidly captured at age thirty by Sir John Lavery as she wore a fur coat and hat and dark leather gloves. Jack and Goonie had two boys and a girl. The Churchill parents and cousins frequently lived, socialized, and holidayed together. Jack was especially useful for financial advice, and particularly in sorting out the tangled mess of their mother’s money affairs.16
Despite such close-at-hand family support, Churchill missed Clementine badly and eagerly looked forward every morning to receiving a letter. On the page his love was unbounded. Often twice a week, and sometimes on successive days, he brought her up to date with his life in London. It was not just a marriage and a family they shared. Both were social animals and Clementine cared deeply about her husband’s political career and ambitions. In return, she painted detailed pictures of her life on the Riviera and offered her reactions on significant issues of the day. At other times, their letters were of an intimate, personal nature. Clementine worried about the prying eyes of the household servants at Sussex Square, so Churchill assured her that he kept her letters securely locked up in a special box in his desk. It seems certain from indirect clues in their correspondence this winter that Clementine was also dealing with a gynaecological problem that demanded medical attention. It might have involved birth control, or perhaps fertility treatment, or something else. Whatever it was, he was deeply anxious about her health and even discussed it personally with her doctor in London, urging her to follow his advice and take it easy.
Meanwhile, between family and work he found little time for painting or writing. Returning from the Riviera burning with his new-found enthusiasm for light and colour, he immediately found fault with the new studio. The problem was the windows. Their frames were so wide that they cut out a third of the light, and light, he insisted, ‘is life’. He immediately started chasing the builder to have them altered. But a week later he was frustrated that nothing had been done. In any case, he had now decided that the best solution was simply to install a single large sheet of plate glass and store away the offending frames for some future use. In addition, he also wanted to add a skylight to let in direct sunlight. Without it, he found the studio depressing, and he was impatient to get into it. The skylight would have the added benefit of giving the whole space the feeling of a proper art gallery, where pictures were illuminated from above.
If he couldn’t get behind an easel, at least he could write about his new-found passion. The Strand magazine had already offered him some £1,000 for two illustrated articles on the subject and he was eager to accept it. But Clementine was alert to the need to re-establish his political credibility as a man of gravitas. She worried that the project would give both professional art critics and his political rivals gratuitous ammunition with which to attack him. ‘I do not think it would be wise to do anything which will cause you to be discussed trivially as it were,’ she urged him from Cap Ferrat. But he bluntly disagreed. It would be no worse than a Cabinet colleague writing about their hobby of golf or chess, for example. As for the art critics, he would make his articles light and amusing. In any case, he argued, he wanted to encourage other people to experiment with the brush and see if they got as much pleasure as he did out of painting. So he went ahead.
The fee, of course, was also welcome. So was the contract he received in January from Charles Scribners’ Sons for the American rights to The World Crisis, with its handsome terms of 20 per cent royalties, tax free, and an advance of $16,000. With his customary generosity he lent some of this money to help Clementine’s sister, who needed a loan to open a hat shop. He had also guaranteed a loan to Montagu Porch, his mother’s third husband, and helped Clementine’s mother, Lady Blanche, with her own financial affairs. He took such family obligations seriously, even while he continued with his own ambitious and spendthrift ways.17
FIVE
THE GREAT CORNICHE OF LIFE
Churchill’s relationship with money was a high-wire act that always teetered on the brink of disaster. As the grandson of a duke, he expected and relished the trappings of aristocratic life – grand houses, personal valets and servants, fine food and drink, expensive clothes, first-class travel. The problem was that he lacked the assured income to fund it. He received only a modest allowance when his father died and was forced to make his own financial way in life. This he did brilliantly by earning a small fortune through his early books and journalism. But what he earned was quickly spent. Never afraid to take on debt or run financial risks, by 1921 he was spending more than he was earning as a Cabinet minister. Meetings with his bank manager about juggling loans had become distinctly fraught. He could count on covering some of the gap between income and expenditure thanks to the lucrative contract he had just signed for The World Crisis. Still, the situation was precarious. Bills for the renovations and additions to the new house continued to mount. ‘We must try to live within our income,’ he sternly admonished Clementine.1
But that same day, twenty-four hours after the railway accident in Wales, his solicitors were officially informed of his inheritance of the Garron Towers estate lying on the coast of County Antrim in Ireland. Following the recent sale of most of the estate’s houses it consisted mostly of farmlands, quarries, a lime works, and a harbour. The proceeds of the sale were safely invested in government bonds and stocks that yielded an annual income of some £4,000 (£240,000 in today’s terms). Combined with his Cabinet salary it meant that he was suddenly a wealthy man, one of the many reasons that made this year an important turning point in his life. For the first time, he now had a secure income independent of any parliamentary or ministerial salary, or of what he could earn from writing. Adding to the rosy financial picture was the news this same month that his wildly spendthrift mother had sold her Mayfair house for a clear profit of £15,000, and was thus re
scued from the depressing prospect of having to move across the Channel in search of a lower cost of living, as Clementine’s mother had done. ‘No more need to [live] abroad!’ he sighed with relief on her behalf.2
Observers were quick to speculate on what his inheritance would mean for Churchill. One of them was Thomas Power O’Connor, an Irish Nationalist Party Member of Parliament and a living link with the politics of the 1880s and the glory days of Churchill’s father. With almost fifty years of continuous service in the Commons, he now enjoyed the title of ‘Father of the House’. By profession he was a journalist and a long-time correspondent for the New York Herald, and he wrote regular columns for The Times. After noting that one of the assets of the Garron Towers estate was a large and gloomy house that for years had been let as a hotel, O’Connor went on to make the point that while there was not quite so much money as originally rumoured, nonetheless it opened new doors to Churchill’s ambitions and prospects:
But still there will be enough left to make Mr. Churchill’s position pecuniarily [sic] much more satisfactory than it has been. He also is like Mr. Lloyd George in finding politics the master passion of his life. Restless, boundlessly ambitious, with quite wonderful gifts as a Parliamentarian – which have steadily improved in the last few years – there is no knowing what he will ever do or to what position he may ultimately reach.3
*
Churchill was never reluctant to celebrate good fortune in extravagant style. The day after receiving news of his inheritance, in an escapade missed even by the official biographer, he headed back to the Riviera to rejoin Clementine at Cimiez. Passing through Paris, he met briefly with Gerald Geiger, who reported eagerly to Archie Sinclair that ‘the blessed railway accident’ had seen their mutual friend leaving for the south of France in ‘an atmosphere of geniality possibly more exuberant than normal owing to the rosy visions which the prospect of an additional £6,000 pa [sic] doubtless engenders’. Travelling with Churchill in the train south were the Curzons, and on arrival at Nice he found Clementine waiting happily at the station along with various local dignitaries. He was in time to take in some of the colourful winter carnival and stayed for three or four days before returning home.4
*
To Clementine the inheritance came as a massive relief. She had never shared her husband’s tolerance of debt and financial risk. Since he had left Nice two weeks before she had continued the good life on the Riviera. She was there for the Festival of Flowers, played tennis, socialized with friends, and spent money she knew they could ill afford; in fact, she had just sent her husband a bill for some new clothes. So her first natural reaction to the news was to hope they could pay off their debts. However, after a few days’ reflection, she began to relish the prospect of an easier and grander life. Dreams of again owning a large house in the country swam into view.
By now she had moved on from Nice to stay with Adele, the widowed Countess of Essex, another old friend, who owned a villa named Lou Mas at St Jean Cap Ferrat. An American heiress and former society beauty, she was a close neighbour in Mayfair of Churchill’s mother and divided her time between London and the Riviera. One day she and Clementine met for lunch in Monte Carlo with Jean, Lady Hamilton, the co-owner with Sir Ian of the Churchills’ lost lamented Lullenden. The encounter sparked nostalgic musings that revealed that both Clementine and Winston were now already nursing hopes of repeating the country house experience – though Clementine ruefully accepted that even with the Garron Towers inheritance a place like Lullenden itself would be too costly to run.5 Shortly afterwards, she moved to the gleaming white belle époque Hotel Bristol in nearby Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where she stayed until the end of February. She felt lonely in this vast hotel surrounded by middle-class English people, but she kept up her tennis, continued her casino visits, and was especially delighted when John and Hazel Lavery arrived for a lengthy stay at nearby Cap d’Ail. The artist’s previous Mediterranean visits had been to North Africa. Now he hoped to capture the visually exciting landscape of the Riviera.6
*
Clementine was no passive or subservient observer of her husband’s political career, and actively promoted his cause with other sun-seekers on the Riviera. One day, at her special request, Adele invited J. L. (‘Jim’) Garvin, the voluble editor of the influential Sunday newspaper, the Observer, for lunch at Lou Mas. He was one of the few Conservatives to have defended Churchill over the Dardanelles. ‘He is young. He has lionhearted courage. No number of enemies can fight down his ability and force’, he had written. ‘His hour of triumph will come.’ So gratified was Churchill by this that he had nominated Garvin to write his biography, although this never in the end transpired. The lunch was a relaxed event full of London gossip, and Clementine learned that Lord Northcliffe was bursting with curiosity about Churchill’s art and wanted to know how much his ‘Charles Morin’ paintings in Paris had sold for. Yet memories of war still cast their shadows over the Riviera’s febrile glitter. Garvin’s only son had been killed on the Somme in 1916, and his wife had died of influenza during the post-war pandemic. The Hotel Bristol itself had only recently re-opened after serving as a military hospital. More consequential, however, was a lengthy conversation Clementine had at the Bristol with another powerful media figure. But this one was known as an outspoken foe of her husband.7
*
‘Thank God, we are once more on British soil!’ declared the fresh-faced twenty-six-year-old Churchill as he stepped off a train from Boston at the Windsor railway station in Montreal. It was just before Christmas 1900. He was heavily bundled up against the cold and on his way to Ottawa and Government House to enjoy the season’s festivities with the Governor-General of Canada and his wife, Lord and Lady Minto. Afterwards, he would continue with a speaking tour he was making of North America. It was his second visit across the Atlantic, and the first to Canada. Since his dramatic escape from the Boers, he had spun it into a highly lucrative lecture tour and tale of personal adventure that earned him enough to fund his lifestyle for several years to come. He had also just been elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament. In New York he had been introduced to his audience by the legendary author Mark Twain, and in Boston by his namesake (but no relative), the American novelist Winston Churchill. He had met President McKinley in Washington, and dined in Albany with the Governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt. After Christmas with the Mintos, he returned to Montreal to give his lecture before going on to Toronto and Ottawa and finishing his tour in Winnipeg.
In Montreal he delivered his talk to a packed audience at Windsor Hall. It followed the format he had perfected, a skilled confection of vividly told highlights of the British campaign against the Boers woven together by the scintillating thread of his personal adventures and illustrated by carefully selected photographs. For his rapt audiences north of the border he added some suitably laudatory words about the performance of the Canadian troops. By all press accounts it was a great success. The English-language Montreal Gazette noted approvingly that ‘Lord Randolph’s son . . . caught the sympathy and interest of his audience and retained it throughout.’8
Yet one listener took away a distinctly negative impression of the ambitious young politician from Britain. Colonel John Bayne Maclean was the son of Scottish immigrants to Ontario. A former journalist who owned a number of trade magazines, he had put an enormous effort into publicizing the talk as well as arranging a lunch and a dinner afterwards for the speaker. But he was disappointed to find that Churchill had little to reveal about the Boer War that the twelve hundred or so paying listeners did not already know. What was worse, he came across as ‘boastfully arrogant’ by claiming that one day he would be the British prime minister. The son of Lord Randolph, thought Maclean, had been ‘shamefully disgusting and offensive to all’, and his negative opinion had only hardened over the years.
This winter Maclean had joined the swelling wave of North Americans flooding to the post-war Riviera to mingle with the rich and famous of European society.
By this time, he was a grandee of Canadian publishing and had accrued a media empire that included Maclean’s, an influential news magazine reporting on politics and current events that was read across the country. To have it as an enemy could be disastrous. Clementine was well aware of Maclean’s influence in Canada. So she deployed all her considerable charms against the tycoon whom she found ‘naif, vain, touchy, kind-hearted, horribly energetic, and vital’. The blunt-speaking Maclean was sufficiently diplomatic not to mention his reaction to her husband’s 1900 visit to Montreal. Instead, urged on by Clementine, he enthused at length about Canada and himself. By the end of their conversation he was a convert to the Churchill cause.9
The dividend came several weeks later when Maclean’s published a special feature on Churchill carefully timed for the Imperial Conference in June. Spread over several columns, the hefty article described him as ‘the most striking figure in British politics’. The author of the laudatory article was well chosen for the purpose. Sir Ian Hamilton had first met the young Churchill as ‘an eager chubby-faced shipmate’ while they were sailing home together from India in 1897. Ever since, they had formed something of a mutual admiration society. Churchill’s fifth book was a glowing account of Hamilton’s triumphant march on Pretoria during the Boer War. As commander of the Allied forces at Gallipoli, Hamilton in turn had deplored Churchill’s dismissal from the Admiralty. ‘What a tragedy that his nerve and military vision have been side-tracked,’ he lamented; ‘his eclipse projects a black shadow over the Dardanelles.’
To anyone reading Hamilton’s profile of Churchill it was clear that in the new Colonial Secretary the Empire had found a man of courage, vision, and genius. ‘Is he perfect?’ asked Hamilton rhetorically. ‘Heavens, no! A genius he is, but wayward and self-absorbed. In company he falls often into a sort of trance . . . [but] . . . really he is dreaming with an intense concentration and is clearing the decks for action . . .’ Above all, he emphasized, Churchill was the man for action. ‘He is in every sense courageous, and he never gets frightened unless danger is still a long way off; then he does get the wind up but that is because he sees very far ahead and is miserable, wretched, when his colleagues wish to wait-and-see. He sees. He doesn’t want to wait; he wants to make ready for the storm. Yet once let it break and the last thing that will break under it is Winston’s nerve.’ It was almost as though Hamilton was writing the advance script for Churchill as he urged rearmament on a reluctant Britain in the 1930s.10
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