Working with Winston

by Working

  With fully functioning offices set up at Hyde Park Gate, Chartwell and in the Leader of the Opposition’s offices at the House of Commons, Churchill felt it was safe to take a prolonged working vacation – he knew no other kind – in America. The Churchills accepted an offer of his Miami house from Colonel Frank Clarke, a wealthy Canadian shipowner, who had provided the then-prime minister with a guest house outside of Quebec during the first (1943) conference in that city. Mrs Churchill was delighted, and wrote, ‘I think it would do Winston such a lot of good.’37

  So they set off on a three-month trip to the United States in January 1946, partly for a vacation in the sun, more importantly, to meet with President Truman. The president of Westminster College, a small men’s college in the Midwest, had invited the most famous man in the world to give a lecture. That college president was a friend of President Truman, a fellow native of the state of Missouri. Truman had added a handwritten note on the bottom of the official invitation letter, agreeing to introduce Churchill. Churchill quickly accepted the invitation, as he planned to sound the alarm of the increasing Soviet threat to Europe and knew that Truman’s presence would give his speech the publicity he felt it merited. In addition, Churchill was closely following the meetings in Washington on a new US loan to Great Britain.

  Sturdee had demonstrated so many skills setting up the offices that Churchill was confident they would run smoothly in his absence, and hers, and asked her to accompany him on the long trip to the United States. The woman who had begun her career working with Churchill, clipping and filing, was now in charge of organizing his working life, both in the UK and abroad. Before setting sail to Miami via New York, Sturdee had to pack up an entire duplicate office, as always. She arranged to take the minutes and telegrams he had been allowed to take away from Number 10 Downing Street, as a basis for his history of the Second World War. Negotiations were ongoing as to publishers, due dates, rights and payment schedules, a complex business overlooked by Emery Reves and Lord Camrose on Churchill’s behalf. With Sturdee overseeing and keeping track of all the moving parts, she and Churchill sailed for New York on the RMS Queen Elizabeth on 9 January 1946, although her boss ‘took it fairly easily on the boat’ and had not started writing what became known as the Fulton ‘Iron Curtain’ speech or working on the memoirs. But he was thinking deeply about both.

  Arriving by train at Miami from New York, Sturdee set up the office in Colonel Clarke’s Florida vacation home. He was a Canadian friend of Churchill’s and Sturdee was grateful too for the help of Clarke’s secretary Lorraine Bonar, because almost at once sacks full of letters arrived three times a day – mostly from American fans. Churchill did not have to get accustomed to a new face on his staff, something he always tried to avoid (‘at times it would put him off his work to see a strange face opposite him’38), and he directed all the work to Sturdee, who then had Bonar help get it done. Bonar told her parents: ‘the great man has arrived and he’s just wonderful – entirely captivated me… really charming to everyone. Today Mr Churchill and I had a chat about the goldfish, of which I am the keeper… he thought he might try to take some back with him.’ Knowing his fondness for goldfish, we can easily imagine his thinking about how to get this done. Bonar must have come face to face with him, perhaps he only resented new faces when they worked for him as they might interfere with his thinking and dictating. He could be charming; he was after all a politician. However, she goes on to say: ‘he wasn’t above being very difficult and contrary.’39

  Once again, the resources available proved insufficient to meet the workload. And once again Sturdee confronted Churchill with that fact and persuaded him to ask the British Consul’s office in Miami to help by answering the letters from the public. It remained Sturdee’s job to open, sort and decide which letters Churchill had to answer and which could be answered routinely by the consul’s staff. That staff proved unable to keep up with the workload and so called upon the Consul General in New York to send reinforcements. In addition, the British Embassy in Washington flew down two additional secretaries to help.40 All to assist Churchill during his ‘vacation’.

  Sturdee calls Clarke’s ‘a small house’ in which Detective George Williams had to sleep in the office as there was no other room for him. Sturdee slept ‘at a place nearby’, but Sawyers ‘had a little box up there somewhere’, presumably near Churchill. American FBI and local police kept the crowds away from the house. Kathleen Hill, still supervising some of Churchill’s arrangements, had asked Scotland Yard’s Special Branch to make sure that whomever they sent to protect Churchill would be able to work with the American police. She had requested Sergeant Evan Davies (known to all as Bish), but Special Branch of Scotland Yard sent Detective George Williams instead.41

  Sturdee ‘worked from half-past eight until ever so late’, but there must have been some time off as she, Bonar and Detective Williams occasionally went to a hotel and bar called the ‘Ole King Cole… with a marvellous display of fruit’. She and Bonar were often included in invitations to join the Churchills at the Surf Club,** where Churchill would bathe and lunch, or at an animal centre, which she thinks was called something like Parrot Land or Jungle, ‘where the parrots would come and settle on your shoulder… [he] loved going there’. But she was invariably too busy and ‘[I] could not get away… wouldn’t be happy leaving all that stuff’.

  This was when Churchill began his war memoirs. Sturdee says: ‘You could see he had to wind himself up into a whole new world and this had to be his future… this was going to be his work.’†† He would take out the first box of minutes and telegrams and start dictating from them. Sturdee typed it up and returned it to him for editing. She continues: ‘not a great deal was done but certainly a start was made’. And she says he began to dictate his Fulton speech to her. As usual Churchill could work on two big projects at the same time, separating each in his mind and concentrating on one at a time. Secretaries were meant to keep up with his wide-ranging personal, diplomatic and, in some cases, political output, as well as the personal chores he assigned.

  She says: ‘Mr Churchill [had] got a yen about going to Cuba’ even before he had left Great Britain, asking how long it would take to fly there from Miami. Perhaps he was recollecting the excitement of his earlier days there in a prior century, or perhaps thinking about visiting some cigar factories, or both. In any case, President Truman put an American air force plane at his disposal for the trip to Cuba, as well as for the trips back to Washington and New York.

  After a few weeks in Miami, the Churchills – taking Sturdee as the only personal secretary – flew to Havana. Mrs Churchill’s maid flew with them, so there was no danger this time of Sturdee having to do double-duty ironing. The velvet gowns were safe. Decades later, Sturdee recalls with great affection that one of the American commanders, a Major General William Plummer, who also piloted the plane, taught her the rhumba. It wasn’t all work.

  The British Embassy in Havana did not have enough room for the entire party. The British Ambassador suggested they all stay at the Hotel Nacional. Arrangements were made to accommodate everyone there, including the necessary offices – they had an entire floor to themselves, staff and offices included. A very rich Cuban cigar manufacturer, Antonio Giraudier, lent the group his private house and beach as the hotel had no accessible beach for Churchill, who loved swimming in the surf. Sturdee recalls the ‘gorgeous imported silver sand’ and the vast number of attentive servants: ‘if [I] got a drop of water on my toe, [they] would wipe it off with a clean towel.’ Still, she went there only a few times as she didn’t like to leave any work undone.

  She recalls Giraudier with great fondness. Later, he had to flee Castro’s regime and moved to the United States. He not only supplied Churchill with cigars until his death, but also sent packages to all the typists, even the ones he had never met. He had asked Sturdee for a list of all the personal secretaries, and frequently sent them food parcels from Fortnum & Mason, silk stockings, perfumes, lipsti
cks and even brandy.42 They nicknamed him Uncle Antonio, and Jane Portal (now Lady Williams) told me recently that she still remembers him fondly some seventy years later.

  Sturdee was surprised that Churchill did not paint in Cuba, despite the brilliant sunshine and bright colours. After returning from Cuba, Sturdee had to pack up to leave the Florida vacation home in ‘a mad rush, clearing the place of muck and rubble’,‡‡ and only one night off to go dancing. To get that one night off after weeks of working at night, she writes ‘it means asking Mr C at 7 o’clock or something like that “Will you be wanting me any more tonight?” Grunt, grunt, grumble, grumble, mumble mumble. [Finally, he says] “No, I can manage.”’

  Sturdee was in such a frenzy because she thought (as it turns out incorrectly) that Churchill would be going on to Fulton without her, leaving her plenty of time to close up the Miami operation.

  As neither Mrs C nor Mrs Truman were going as the President preferred a male party for such dos.§§ I naturally assumed that Mr C would not take me… [So I was] scurrying as fast as possible through the [Fulton] speech trying to get it typed in time for him to take away, ignoring the piles of correspondence strewn all over the place.43

  Churchill was demanding ‘Come along, come along. Where are all the telegrams? Hasn’t anything come from England? Surely there is a newspaper I can look at. What have you done with my red pen?¶¶ Tell the ambassador I want to see him. Where’s Sawyers? Haven’t you opened the post yet?’44 These rapid-fire requests and demands are typical of Churchill’s wide-ranging and eclectic interests and demands, not to mention his unreasonableness when it came to work. In any case, he said he needed her with him there to work on the speech – as he always made changes and edits right up to delivery time. He also needed her secretarial help for a speech he had agreed to give a few days after the Fulton trip to the General Assembly in Richmond, Virginia – followed by a visit (this time with Mrs Churchill) to Williamsburg with General Eisenhower and his wife Mamie – all in one day.

  Sturdee wrote home that week that Churchill said to her:

  Of course you must come, with various reasons why… after having flung office papers and a tooth brush into a suitcase, which had not been unpacked or thought about since Miami… I tagged along looking like something… emptied into the dust bin. I felt self-conscious… about being added at the last minute and being the only female.45

  In March 1946 Sturdee travelled with Churchill and the president on the presidential train inherited from President Roosevelt, named the Ferdinand Magellan, from Washington, DC, to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill was to give his now-famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech. She recalls that a ‘sweet’ Dr Robert Harris (a former navy officer) from Miami was also on the train, as both a friend and doctor for Churchill. Missouri was then a dry state and it seemed that only Churchill and Truman could have their whisky on the train. At one point on the journey within Missouri, Dr Harris asked to see her and she followed him down the corridor into a private lavatory. She worried and thought, ‘Oh dear, Sir Winston has been taken ill in the lavatory and Dr Harris [needed her help]. But no, the good doctor pulled out a whisky flask, offered it to her and said, “It will do you a power of good.”’ She refused, but Dr Harris needed a swallow and took one himself. She goes on: ‘He thought perhaps with all the work and worry I had it would do me good.’ Another ‘sweet’ man was President Truman, ‘honest and perfectly sweet… a nice man.’ It was highly unusual that a secretary should have such personal contact with Churchill’s also-famous colleagues. Recall that Churchill neglected to introduce Kathleen Hill to President Roosevelt when they were at Hyde Park. Perhaps Truman was less forbidding, or a long trip in the confines of a train produced a more casual atmosphere.

  After a twenty-five-mile drive to Fulton from the rail depot, with Churchill and the president in an open car, and Sturdee and Sawyers in following cars, they arrived at the College President’s house to face stacks of incoming mail for Churchill; and since Sturdee was not included in the official lunch before the speech, ‘one of those G-Men… took us over… for a scrum with the press men… for a sandwich and a Coca-Cola.’ ‘Out of the bottle or with a straw?’ they asked her.46

  About the Fulton speech itself, she wrote to her family: ‘I wonder if you heard it on the wireless? I feel it was or will be proved in the future to be quite a historic speech.’47 After the speech, they all returned to the president’s house hoping for a drink. But no alcohol, she complained, as

  it is a Presbyterian house [and a dry state]. Fortunately, Dr Harris… who had been requested by Mr C to come along [from Miami] had… brought along a little bottle ‘just in case of anything’. So one by one, we were tapped on the shoulder, informed that Dr Harris thought we needed medical attention and would we step into… the w.c.

  ‘Ah, heaven!’ she concluded. ‘Dr Harris was a true dear,’ as he had proved to be on the train to Fulton.48

  At Fulton, Sturdee recalls that she thought the Westminster College gymnasium not very grand and the audience smaller than she had expected. But she admits that ‘only afterwards [did I] realize what importance [the speech] had… everything, certainly to me, everything he did and said was important and right.’ Churchill never meant the speech only for the audience present on 6 March 1946. He meant it as a warning to the world.

  Churchill and his travelling office returned from Fulton to Washington and the British Embassy, where Lord Halifax was in his last months as Ambassador (he would head home in May 1946). The Washington embassy had few bedrooms and certainly no provision for a secretarial office for visiting dignitaries, so Sturdee set up her office in her bedroom. She was

  in a frightful flap about all the urgent stuff awaiting us at the Embassy, telephone calls, etc. and the Virginia speech… get the speech done two minutes before he leaves that night… [she] ask[ed] to be excused from the trip to Virginia… but glad to get one day… [in order] to get a little order into the chaos.49

  Sturdee recollected with great fondness how kind Lady Halifax was to her, the only female personal secretary with the Churchill entourage. Sturdee says that during the war when she had been abroad she was usually ignored, ‘not paid much attention to’. Lady Halifax was a different sort. She came to Sturdee’s office/bedroom several times a day, asking if she was all right and did she need anything. Lady Halifax told her that lunch was served ‘at one and we meet for a drink at half past twelve… and we have dinner at eight… we are always there at half-past seven, so you come in when you like.’ Unusual this, to be included with the official guests at an embassy dinner. Sturdee responded, ‘I don’t think I’m included in dinner,’ but Lady Halifax said, ‘In this house you certainly are included.’ The problem was the length of the dresses: Sturdee did not have a long dress with her. So Lady Halifax arranged that she and Mrs Churchill would be wearing short dresses that night, so that Sturdee in her short dress would not feel out of place. No wonder Sturdee recalls her affectionate kindness. Lady Halifax was the aunt of the man Sturdee would later marry, Lord Arthur Onslow.

  Sturdee gives Lady Halifax (or Aunt Dorothy, as she later would be called) credit for ‘breaking the mould’, making the young ladies feel they were important, that we ‘were private secretaries… it was rather good for us [all]… it brought us on.’ Class lines and assumptions were indeed breaking down across Britain, even in the British Embassy, thanks in good part to the ambassador’s wife, who had a reputation for directness as Churchill well knew.

  Lady Halifax was known for her forcefulness and speaking her mind, even directly to the prime minister at Downing Street. When he appointed Halifax as Ambassador to the United States in December 1940, a post he did not want and considered ‘banishment’, Lady Halifax argued with the prime minister against the appointment with vigour and some ‘tough talking’.50

  Before returning to Britain, Churchill visited FDR’s grave at Hyde Park – he had not attended the funeral of the man he described as the ‘greatest American friend we [Britain] h
ave ever known’51 – laid a commemorative wreath, and by one account, sighed ‘Lord, how I loved that man.’52 Then, back to work at Chartwell and Hyde Park Gate in late March 1946, where Sturdee met Lettice Marston, who had begun working at Hyde Park Gate alongside Liz Gilliatt. Churchill told Sturdee ‘let me see the new girl’. Marston had settled in well with Hill’s help and was welcomed by Sturdee and, more importantly, by Churchill, and turned out to be ‘a good appointment. The best appointment that could be made’. For the remainder of 1946 Churchill would work on his war memoirs, taking several foreign trips, while his private office hummed along with Sturdee, the senior personal secretary in charge, working side by side with Liz Gilliatt and Lettice Marston.

  After the war, several European governments invited Churchill for an official visit so that they could thank and honour him, often conferring honorary degrees or bestowing the freedom of the city on him. He did not work on those usually short trips, merely acknowledging their thanks, enjoying the tributes and ‘taking it in his stride’.

  On one such trip, Churchill travelled to Holland at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina and took Sturdee with him. Sturdee recalls the innumerable details that had to be arranged between the Dutch monarch’s offices, the Dutch ambassador in London, the British ambassador in Amsterdam, and the British Foreign Office: what newspapers did he want (all!), what did he want for breakfast, whom did he want to see privately, approval for the seating at all the dinners. Sturdee managed the coordination between these elements and, on arrival, stayed at the Dam Square Royal Palace. Protocol demanded that all guests be in the drawing room before the sovereign, but occasionally Sturdee was delayed working for Churchill, so she had to explain to him why she was rushing out, needing time to dress and get to the reception before the queen. Churchill, of course, was aware of and respected this protocol, and so, unusually, allowed her to rush off.