Working with Winston

by Working

Lettice Marston, oral history

  He could be ‘in a bad mood… Perhaps things had gone

  wrong in the House of Commons… so [we] kept out of his

  way… It soon disappeared, [amid] twinkling blue eyes.’

  Lettice Marston, oral history

  LETTICE MARSTON WAS born in 1919. She had been with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) during the Second World War, and after Germany’s surrender was sent to Berlin to work with the Control Commission for Germany.* She had worked with Lord Ismay to set up the accommodations for the Potsdam Conference, refusing to assent to those arrangements until ‘they had got the kitchen range working in Churchill’s residence’.1 Later, she worked for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but didn’t fancy ‘working for a large organization’, although her boss there had also recommended her to Lord Ismay. Lord Ismay put her in touch with Kathleen Hill, who interviewed Marston over lunch in a London restaurant. Churchill was in America at the time, but Hill hired her on a month’s probation. Marston started working for Churchill in March 1946, after the loss of the 1945 general election. When she started work, Churchill had to sign her employment card, meaning that she would receive moneys from the government, with contributions by the employee, employer and the state. This was the result of a plan that Churchill had been instrumental in setting up in 1909 – the first national insurance scheme. Churchill said to her: ‘I pay both parts. It’s all my fault.’2

  A month later, and before Marston was exposed to the pace of life as a Churchill secretary, an American company suggested to Churchill that he might like to experiment with what is now called a voice-activated recording machine. Sturdee, always on the alert for new efficiencies, must have agreed to having it tested at Chartwell. It ‘was first acclaimed by us secretaries, as relieving us of some of the long hours of night dictation… Indeed, Churchill was so delighted with the device that he dismissed his secretaries for the weekend. They rejoiced in this unexpected change in their routine.’ Alas, it was not to be a success: Churchill kept tripping over the wires of his lapel microphone and the machine. ‘The machine had to go and the secretaries returned.’3

  Marston began working at Hyde Park Gate alongside Gilliatt, because Jo Sturdee was with him in America, and Hill had become Curator at Chequers. Three weeks later the Churchill entourage returned from the United States, ‘family members, staff and luggage and everything’. Churchill told Sturdee, ‘Let me see the new girl,’ so up she went to his bedroom and started taking down. Nothing was said until much later, when, sorting books at Chartwell, he tossed her one which landed on her foot, so ‘we had a good laugh’ and he unexpectedly asked her, ‘Do you think that you could endure the vicissitudes of this life?’ And she answered, ‘Yes, if you think I am capable.’ And that was that.

  Marston lived in a flat in Kensington, but when she was working at Chartwell she stayed overnight either in the house or in a cottage on the grounds if there were too many guests staying overnight in the house. She had meals at the Kings Arms Hotel or at Pitts Cottage in Westerham, but usually at her desk, in the office. Rare were the ‘working lunches’ when she would sit at the table with her pad and pencil, perhaps with family members and others.

  Her first task in the morning was to sort the mail: she and the other secretaries decided what Churchill should see: ‘Obviously political matters, letters from anyone of repute… anything from the public that was of great importance, or something new that he should know about or deal with. There was a lot of trivialities, of course, and a lot of correspondence from madmen.’

  They had great discretion and Churchill trusted them to decide in his interest. Marston says that she grew in confidence to decide what post Churchill should see. She also had to ring people up, make appointments, set up meetings, arrange for cars and drivers if he were going to the House of Commons or elsewhere. And she, and the others as well, all took part in taking dictation on Churchill’s war memoirs, which he worked on ‘a certain amount every day’. Because he found it ‘comfortable and relaxing’, he worked in bed all morning, as usual – which had a certain advantage: ‘it was good to have him out of the office… We could get on with things in the morning alone.’ He seldom worked in the office set up at Chartwell, which Marston considered a good thing as ‘He’d make a muddle of one’s arrangements.’ The papers strewn around the bedroom looked ‘like a pudding mixture on his bed’, and when he had trouble finding what he wanted, she ‘would have to sort things out’. One advantage of the Chartwell office was its location: at the front of the house, ‘so [we] could see everybody who came and went… and say [so and so] is on the horizon. Of course, there were times when he had to get up, like going to see the king.’

  The women were in charge of setting the rota of their own work; one would be on nights, another would be working alternate weekends. Churchill ‘did no organizing like that’.4 He simply expected the secretaries to be there when he needed them – two on duty at a time, one to take the dictation and then type it up, while the other one was ready to take his new dictation. Such was their loyalty to him and his work that they ensured he was always covered.

  He was a hard taskmaster, as all the women have said, but they agree that he could make ‘things much brighter… he would turn and smile and say, “Poor lamb”, “I’ve done too much” [or] “You must go to bed” [or] “Go home.”’ But he could also be

  in a bad mood, and you had to take a cue from it… Perhaps things had gone wrong in the House of Commons… nasty remarks… or there was some bad vote… something gone wrong in some way. So [we] kept out of his way… it soon disappeared, [amid] twinkling blue eyes. But there were other times when he was elated and excited by things.

  But the work was varied and interesting. She recalls:

  He’d want you sometimes to go with him to feed the fish, and all the time he’d be saying ‘We need some more worms or something for them’… and you’d have to make notes all the time and remember to order whatever it was… You were making notes fairly all the time he was talking, because he was wanting this, that and the other.

  In other words, a full-time job with no division between his work, his hobbies and his friends and family.

  Like the other secretaries, Marston enjoyed going with Churchill to the races – she even won money betting on Colonist II – in between working, while Churchill watched his horses. She tells of a Dutch businessman who gave Churchill a famous horse and brought it to Chartwell to present to him. ‘He [Churchill] didn’t keep it at Chartwell so he had it at Knightsbridge Barracks, where Elizabeth [Gilliatt] and I would use to go ride him… It was great fun… Elizabeth and I used to go in the evenings sometimes, exercise this horse… It was a beautiful horse.’ There were unusual perks for working with the Churchill family.

  Marston also took charge of the constituency work, recalling that Churchill went down to Woodford in Essex once or twice a year, more frequently during election time. But she often travelled down there and met with constituency officers and agents when they came up to London. Churchill went to the House of Commons as often as he could, ‘sometimes pop[ping] in at odd times, perhaps on his way back from Chartwell at night. If the House was sitting, he saw the lights on, he would pop in… for half an hour. It was his life, really.’

  When Churchill was writing his war memoirs, she helped (with Gemmell) to organize the muniment room, so the principal researchers, William Deakin and Denis Kelly, could start work. Those researchers, along with secretaries and research materials, had to be organized and transported between Chartwell and Hyde Park Gate, depending on which chapter Churchill was working on and where he was working. All the documents Churchill needed had to be on hand when he wanted them. Marston ‘would ask for things from the cabinet office… They would be sent around by hand,’ and she would make sure Churchill’s own papers – for the most part at Chartwell – were available when and where needed. But, she says, he just dictated ‘out of his head, with the aid of [some] documents… but long long
passages from his own mind’.

  And it was not just the researchers who had to be organized, but also the guests – both political and social, including family – who often stayed overnight at Chartwell or came in for dinners at Hyde Park Gate. She recalls the food being good, because Mrs Landemare was a ‘supercook’, but Churchill could be

  very cross when it wasn’t right… Once at Chartwell, Grace had… got him some fruit for breakfast. And you know how difficult pears are to assess, whether they are ripe or not, and he had a pear he could not get his knife into and he was absolutely livid about it… What can you do? It’s just bad luck.

  And a more than slightly spoiled boss.

  ‘But he did love his food,’ Marston says.

  He had particular likes: oysters, one of his favourites, and smoked salmon, of course, and smelly cheese like Stilton, and things like gulls’ eggs and strawberry jam and turtle soup were the two great things. Turtle soup [consommé] every night before going to bed… Yes, always… We used to have to get it out of the fridge… and give it to him before he went to bed. One day when he was in Marrakesh, he cabled back to London asking for strawberry jam and turtle soup, and Lady Churchill made us cable back… saying, ‘Did he really mean it?’, because it was such an effort to get it sent out to Marrakesh, but that’s how he was.

  One of his historical researchers, Alan Hodge, heard Churchill explain why it was good to eat cream: ‘it cushions the nerve ends’.5 And of course, the champagne. Marston recalls: ‘Very often one had to go down to put the champagne in the fridge at the right time for the meal.’

  Social guests seldom varied. The same names are mentioned by all the other secretaries: Lady Lytton, Venetia Montagu and Violet Bonham Carter – Churchill liked to see the familiar faces of his old friends, with whom he could relax and play cards. Lord Ismay and Lord Cherwell, Leo Amery and Brendan Bracken were constant guests at both Chartwell and Hyde Park Gate. Churchill would occasionally ask them questions about something he wanted to include in his war memoirs, but the visits were mainly social, with much card-playing, especially the two-pack bezique. And, as always, there were family members visiting, especially Mary and Christopher Soames.

  Marston, as the other secretaries have mentioned, had little to do with Churchill’s painting, but she did have opinions – which she kept to herself, as he ‘wasn’t really interested in what you thought about what he did’. Nevertheless, he did value advice from other painters. Marston thought his best paintings were done in France during the First World War, ‘which were very striking with the bursting shells over the battlefields’. She thought him ‘very good at painting three subjects which I think are very difficult… water, metals like gold and silver and copper, and glass’. Fortunately, she only infrequently had to clean the brushes, as Churchill’s valet and at times Gemmell did that. The valet ‘always used to curse at having to do it’ and, as we shall see, Gemmell complained about this chore, although decades after the fact to the interviewer but never to Churchill.

  After 1945 Churchill received many awards, honours, freedoms and honorary degrees, both at home in Britain and in Europe. Marston, who joined his staff shortly after these honours started to come in, went along on several of these trips, but the trips she most enjoyed were the painting holidays to France and Venice. Her first trip, she recalled, was to a Villa Choisi on Lake Geneva, with Liz Gilliatt, to prepare for Churchill’s speech at Zurich; then later to Paris and Cap-d’Ail to stay at Lord Beaverbrook’s villa, whose owner regarded Churchill as ‘a glittering bird of paradise’.6 She also went along on Churchill’s visit to the Windsors’ villa in the South of France, where she stayed for two nights, ready should Churchill need a document to show the duke – although she describes the visit as social.

  The women decided not only who would work which hours, but also who would go on which foreign trips – they shared the burdens as well as the perks. Only occasionally would Churchill ask that a specific person accompany him. Whoever was to travel had the full responsibility of organizing everything: the travel and security arrangements; coordinating detectives and drivers; packing the painting paraphernalia; moving the office and all the work material that might be needed and logging in and out of all the luggage. As many as 100 personnel – all with their own office and luggage requirements – might be included on foreign trips, complicating arrangements and increasing security concerns. Churchill’s personal secretaries were privy to all these decisions, working with Special Branch and its counterparts. On ‘working’ holidays or electioneering, he always travelled with an entourage – a valet, a secretary or two and what Marston called his ‘flying circus’. And when Mrs Churchill came along, her lady’s maid.

  Marston did have some help from Thomas Cook and British Rail. When he was first out of office after 1945, Churchill could use RAF planes out of Biggin Hill, she says, but ‘seldom did he go in public transport’.† Churchill also used ‘private air companies and when he first came out of office he used to use the RAF planes’. Frequently trips were cancelled or changed, so all the arrangements had to be redone. She recalls: ‘then at a moment’s notice you had to rearrange everything. That was rather a headache, but… these things can be done.’ And, as always, the young ladies cooperated closely with each other, communicating between the offices, within Britain and abroad. Especially when abroad, urgent messages and telegrams flew back and forth on arrangements for receiving page proofs, editing them, and sending them back to the London printers, all necessitating a staff working very closely indeed.

  Sometimes the messages were wryly amusing, as when Marston telegrammed back to London: ‘Lots of curses as we are trying to get ready for a picnic.’7 So close were the relationships among the secretaries that when Sturdee travelled abroad with Churchill, she directed that the newsy letters she was sending in the official pouch to her family remain unsealed, so that all the secretaries could read about her news and adventures, before sending them on to her family.

  Flying circus, indeed: when Churchill went out painting ‘the whole lot of you went, the valet and everybody, detectives, [sometimes] Lady Churchill went, plus lunch, sometimes one of the waiters to serve it, all the cutlery and knives and forks and plates and tablecloths and napkins… umbrellas and chairs’.

  If the trip was a long one, Churchill usually planned to have two secretaries along, so they could alternate the dictation and typing: one would take a few hours of dictation, then go to the office to type it up. The other woman would then be available to take dictation, so they would work in tandem with one always available to Churchill, wherever he was and whatever he was working on. When abroad, all the mail was sent on to his travelling office. Mail included correspondence, gifts, ‘flowers, books to sign, asking for cigars and all this sort of nonsense… and then, of course, thank-you letters for all these presents’. And if the workload became too heavy, she ‘always got help from the British Embassy wherever [we] were’.

  When abroad, Marston might stay in the villa they were visiting if there was room; if not, she stayed in a nearby hotel, as described by Gilliatt. Both women agreed it was lovely to be able to get away, as ‘he couldn’t get at you except on the telephone, which was unlikely’. Given the long hours they worked, an escape even for a few hours was probably most welcome.

  On a trip to Oslo, Norway, in May 1948, Churchill and his wife were guests of King Haakon. While there, he gave several speeches and received an honorary degree from the University of Oslo. Marston went with him and recalls that the king himself greeted Churchill on arrival at the airport – an unusual honour from a monarch. While there, Churchill visited the Viking Ships Museum – his curiosity was never-ending – and, of course, his hosts would have been proud to show off their heritage to so famous a man.8

  Marston was working with Churchill in August 1949 at La Capponcina, when Churchill developed some cramps in his right hand and realized that he could not write his name properly; although, as Gilliatt recalled, ‘he kept on practi
sing it, asking one again and again, “Is it all right?”’9 A local English doctor was called in and Lord Moran (as he had by then become) was summoned from London. Churchill had suffered a minor stroke, but only his doctors and Beaverbrook knew the truth. Marston observed that ‘it was pretty obvious something had happened, because his face was slightly collapsed… the side of his face.’ Both she and Gilliatt remembered how worried he was about being able to write his name; after all, his writing (and dictating) is what kept his working life – and his finances – going. Understandably, he worried, too, that he might have another stroke that would interfere with his participation in the upcoming general election, and the chance to become prime minister again. Fortunately, Churchill’s amazing recuperative powers helped, as Marston says that he did recover almost completely, although ‘perhaps he was not so active… physically… He would not walk around as much… around Chartwell. He would always go in the car over the fields rather than walk.’

  But Churchill felt well enough to continue as Leader of the Opposition after Labour narrowly won the general election in February 1950. Knowing that Labour’s majority was unstable and that another election might soon occur, Churchill took the opportunity to take yet another trip abroad, this one to Venice in August 1951 with both Marston and Portal. To his neurologist, Dr Brain, Churchill wrote:

  I am going to Venice for a fortnight and there will be beautiful bathing at the Lido. I think it would do me good provided that first, the water is well over 70° and secondly, that I do not plunge in but change the temperature gradually, taking two minutes or more in the process. This is after all only what I do in my bath. Will you kindly telegraph your advice to me at the Excelsior Hotel, Lido, Venice.

  Taking the honeymoon suite and the entire top floor, and no doubt several other rooms at the Excelsior, the ‘flying circus’ arrived with fifty-five suitcases and sixty-five smaller articles, including, of course, work relating to Volume V of the war memoirs. This volume was about to be printed, and last-minute telegrams flew back and forth between Venice and London with queries that only Churchill could answer. Denis Kelly, working at the London office, cabled Marston: ‘For God’s sake, or at any rate for mine, get Mr C. to read Prof’s [Cherwell’s] comments carefully. If necessary type them out as his pencil scribbles will put him [Churchill] off.’ But Volume V was finished: ‘twelve years had passed since the outbreak of war, the story of which he was now so near completing’.10