Working with Winston

by Working

  10

  Jane Portal

  ‘[Churchill] felt it was his last deed in his life to bring

  about world peace. He felt he could get through to him

  [Stalin]. And everybody told him he could not.’

  Jane Portal, oral history

  ‘If I remain in public life… it is because… I believe that

  I may be able to make an important contribution to the

  prevention of a Third World War… It is the last prize I seek to win.’

  Winston Churchill, 23 October 19511

  BORN IN 1931 in India, Jane Portal was the niece of both Air Chief Marshal Charles (‘Peter’) Portal and of ‘Rab’ Butler, who served as president of the board of education in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, and as chancellor of the exchequer when Churchill returned to power in 1951. Portal was reared in the Smith Square home of Rab and his wife, Courtauld heiress Sydney Elizabeth, which was crucial to Portal’s future career. When only eighteen, she graduated from a secretarial college and signed on to an employment agency. She heard, undoubtedly from her uncles, that Churchill was looking for what she describes as a

  donkey in the office. Somebody who was young and strong and could do the night shift… He had only gotten to Volume II, Their Finest Hour, of his [six-volume] The Second World War, and I think he had a premonition that he would again go to Number 10. There was an election due in 1950 and he wanted to get as much of his war memoirs written as possible so he needed a good typist.

  Thanks to recommendations from her uncles, she was interviewed at Hyde Park Gate by Jo Sturdee, the ‘head girl’, as Portal called her. She was then called back for an interview with Churchill. She was ‘terrified… paralyzed with fear’, as most of the secretaries report they were when they first met him. Portal recalls ‘There was always this feeling until you got to know Mr Churchill that he was a terrifying figure… I saw Monty [General Montgomery] go in to have an interview with him and he was, I could see, nervous.’ Sturdee told her that Churchill would come in to see her and when he did, he just ‘walked around [her], not saying a word… then he said, “You’ll do”, and that was all the interview I had… [A]lmost like a heifer being inspected at a sale.’ An experience no different from that of any of the secretaries Churchill hired during his long life, a tribute to his faith that the vetting process that preceded his inspection was comprehensive, his interest in the appearance of those who worked for him, almost as if he were memorizing their faces. Also, too, his confidence that the trial-by-fire to which he customarily subjected new members of his staff would separate the capable ‘heifers’ from those unable to survive the pace or work set by a man always in a hurry – except perhaps when painting.

  In Portal’s case there was an added factor. As she puts it in her keen yet fond reminiscence:

  [Churchill] liked relationships and I believe that is how I got the job. He had a great sense of people being related to each other and belonging to each other… maybe this went back to his childhood. He took on an even sweeter atmosphere when there were people who were related around him. He became more affectionate and I think he liked the relationship that Rab had with me.

  No need for her to guess that she was hired because of her relationship to both Portal (‘Uncle Pete’ as she calls him) and Butler, and because she was brought up in a political family, and not any political family, but the Butlers. At one point Churchill admitted to her that ‘I took you because of your uncles.’ Churchill also knew Gilliatt’s father, Sir William Gilliatt, and Vanda Salmon’s grandfather, with whom Churchill ‘would sit on the low wall in the sun having a drink and talking [about] trees’.2

  In late December 1949 ‘I went to work for him straightaway,’ Portal recalls, ‘and for six months I never went near him.’ This mirrors the experience Sturdee and others had when first hired. It was standard operating procedure for Churchill, who apparently preferred to have his new hires gain some experience and be tested before he trusted them with ‘taking down’ and other important chores. And, perhaps most important, to make certain that they worked in harmony with other members of his team.

  Portal was assigned to do the filing, which had not been kept up to date, and to manage the ‘old-fashioned switchboard with levers’ at Hyde Park Gate, with extensions in almost every room, including Churchill’s bedroom. Hers was the awesome responsibility of deciding which calls would be routed directly to Churchill. She survived, although making many mistakes ‘and cut people off and put the wrong people through’, an experience she later characterized as ‘very good training’, but at the time it must have been a little unnerving.

  Her initiation apparently completed, Sturdee found a good time for Portal to confront the man himself. At 3.30 in the afternoon of 12 May 1949 Churchill, as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, was to respond to Labour’s position on the North Atlantic Treaty, a speech he considered very important. Labour’s foreign secretary Ernest Bevin was proposing to support the new North Atlantic Treaty, and Churchill was eager to have his Conservative MPs, as he said later that afternoon in the Commons, ‘approve this Atlantic Pact… the only opposition to it expected from that small band of Communists, crypto-Communists and fellow-travellers whose dimensions have been very accurately ascertained in recent times’.3 But by 2 p.m., working at Hyde Park Gate, he had gone through three or four drafts and was still dissatisfied. Because all the other young ladies were busy still typing up his dictation from the night before, early that morning Sturdee had to send Portal up to Churchill’s bedroom to take dictation on a last-minute draft. Sturdee ‘took me up and flung me into his bedroom… He said in a voice of horror, “Isn’t there anyone else?”’ Portal fled back downstairs, telling Sturdee: ‘He doesn’t like me.’ Sturdee, responsible not only for seeing to her boss’s immediate needs, but for the long-term efficient functioning of his organization, was not prepared to lose a good secretary. She ‘frog-marched me up to his bedroom… giving him a steely look from her flashing blue eyes, saying she has got to do, there is no one else’. Before long, as with other secretaries, Churchill ‘felt that even in that tense moment, when he was working against the clock, that he had been unkind. And he always made up for being rough, if ever he was, which was very seldom. He always made up for it by some kind of gesture, not an apology, which would have been out of place, but a gesture.’ That Portal thought an apology ‘would have been out of place’ says a great deal about the professional and social distance between Churchill and the women who worked with him; a kind ‘gesture’ showing Churchill’s willingness to recognize an obligation to make amends for his harsh treatment of a frightened young woman.

  She fit in well with the other staff – Vanda Salmon, who worked with her, describes Portal as ‘an amazing and pleasant person’4 – and with the family, which came in and out, as the door to the Hyde Park Gate office was always open. Portal recalls she worked there in ‘a beautiful two-room office knocked into one, with a garden on one side with lots of light and comfortable chairs… for people [to] come in and sit down and relax.’ The two detectives waited in this office as well as politicians, researchers helping with the memoirs, and others, all waiting for meetings with Churchill. Next to the office was a small waiting room for formal visitors like Jan Smuts, Anthony Eden and Bernard Baruch, and, according to Salmon, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, who was Commander of the First Airborne division at Arnhem, which Browning had predicted might be ‘a bridge too far’.5 Portal recalls that the John Singer Sargent portrait of Churchill’s mother dominated that small room.

  As always, everyone worked in concert, in Churchill’s interest; intra-staff bickering was minimal, even when one of the women found chores such as feeding the tropical fish, cleaning the tanks or cleaning paintbrushes highly undesirable, as did Gemmell. Portal says, ‘They all did everything,’ which was true when events so required. But Sturdee had established a system in which each of the young ladies had several areas of res
ponsibility and could develop expertise. Portal’s responsibilities were acknowledging gifts, helping with constituency matters, and seeing to Churchill’s painting supplies and arrangements. She had to make certain that he always had available the paints, brushes and frames he wanted and needed. She worked closely with a famous framer who would come to Chartwell to frame all of Churchill’s paintings. At one point, Churchill wanted to try his hand at painting portraits and asked Gemmell and Portal to sit for him. Gemmell still has her portrait, as we have learned in her chapter, but Portal does not know where hers is – probably ‘[it] has sunk into oblivion, I’m thankful to say, because he wasn’t really a good portrait painter,’ and besides she wore a ‘multi-coloured ugly dress’, which certainly did not help.6

  In addition to these ongoing chores, Portal had responsibility for some one-off special events, such as the arrangements for the Conservative Party Conference scheduled for October 1951. Was the hotel adequate? Were enough rooms ordered? Was the furniture adequate for Churchill? Was the bed in his rooms in the right place? Was there enough space for his office to be set up in or near his rooms? Were there enough telephones? These were only some of the details to be seen to. She might have had some help from the party officials, but she alone spoke for Churchill.

  Hyde Park Gate, of course, had been selected because of its proximity to the House of Commons, a ten-minute drive in which Churchill was always accompanied by a secretary, those suffering from car sickness generally being excused from this duty, even for a short trip, with the other secretaries working out the alternative rota. A police car eased his way through the traffic. From the Speaker’s entrance, into the ‘rickety old lift which was quite private’. But there was a problem. The lift was small, Churchill was ‘substantial, not fat’, and the detective insisted on being in the lift with him. And all the while Churchill was ‘in mid-sentence’, continuing to dictate, so that Portal had to run with him and squeeze into the lift to continue taking down. ‘[I was] really his shadow.’

  Once in the House, Churchill worked in the Leader of the Opposition’s rooms. Portal describes a wide-windowed room with a table large enough to accommodate a meeting of the shadow cabinet. Next to that room was the secretaries’ room, situated so that anyone meeting with Churchill had to pass by the young ladies. ‘We could ward off MPs if that was appropriate, or let them in. So we got to know the members of the party pretty well.’

  Portal confirms Churchill’s daily routine: awake at 7 a.m. and, after breakfast, by 8 a.m. he would start working from his bed, going through the correspondence – letters had been opened, decisions made as to what he ought to see, and the secretary who had not worked the night before would be in the bedroom, waiting to take down. Churchill wore a ‘very beautiful brocade dressing gown that came down halfway to his thighs, so as to be comfortable in bed. Everything was arranged so that he could work comfortably and efficiently while in bed; [there was a] mahogany tray which fitted snugly over his torso [and] was fitted with a set of small rubber pads on which he could rest his elbows.’7 There were also ‘pens laid out and various instruments for putting papers together… He like to call it “klopping”, which was an instrument that made a hole in the corner of a paper so that it could be attached to other papers, NOT with a paper clip but with a tag. He liked to do this himself… but we handed him the klop.’ And of course, the pets on the bed, the cigars and ashtrays and the telephone ringing all the while, all going on at the same time as Portal took down his words.

  Portal estimates Churchill read about a third of all the mail that came in, often asking ‘Aren’t there any ordinary people [the general public] writing to me?’ He would see official government letters and memos and family correspondence the instant they arrived. If the handwriting were recognized as that of a close friend or family member, or marked ‘private’ or ‘personal’, the envelope was delivered to Churchill unopened, even though he disliked opening his own mail. Staff members came and went during the morning bedroom hours, and ‘usually the Chief Whip would come to see him to talk about what was going on in the party… [then] lunch.’

  After lunch Churchill was taken on the short drive to the House, especially on days when it was Prime Minister’s Questions. When he returned to Hyde Park Gate he ‘always fitted in a two-hour sleep’. If the business of the House meant he had to stay there, ‘he would sleep there [in] a bed that went up against the wall [of his office], but he preferred to come back about six and have his sleep [at home]. He always had to have a sleep during the day.’ Perhaps because he was able to nap during the day, perhaps because he had ‘very good health indeed… never any sign of fatigue’ in a man seventy-five years old when Portal first observed him, he could work the long hours described by all secretaries. Portal believes that only young staff could maintain the working pace set by Churchill, one reason he selected secretaries in or just out of their teens. By the time Portal joined the staff, Sturdee insisted that the secretaries have regular two-week vacations. Portal spent the first four days of her vacation sound asleep, recovering from exhaustion. Not much time for ‘social life… I got exhausted at one point,’ she recalls. Portal attributes her boss’s stamina to several facts. He was ‘a very good walker… He walked very fast, [striding] out with his stick. He ate very little’ – small portions of the items on the very extensive menus he confronted at most dinners – ‘and drank very sparingly… amazing constitution’. He ‘never inhaled his cigars [but] was sucking on [them] so’, she says, ‘they did not smell’, a fond recollection which this author’s experience belies. ‘When they got all soggy at the end, he used to just throw them down and… souvenir-hunters… used to get into the gardens especially to look for cigar stumps.’

  Once when she was in the car with him, Churchill rolled down his window and handed over his cigar butt in exchange for the latest Evening Standard – no words were exchanged with the news agent. It seems none were needed. There is no record of the value of this exchange. Churchill saved the price of a newspaper; the news vendor if he had saved the cigar butt for several years, might well have auctioned it off for £9,500 ($12,000), the price paid by a collector in Palm Beach, Florida.8

  Portal worked Monday to Friday in London, at Hyde Park Gate, often going with Churchill to the House. At this time, he was dictating his war memoirs and she was taking it down straight on to the silent typewriter, ‘a huge contraption which had muffled pads on it… very heavy to move.’ She claims

  I never could do shorthand properly… which was a problem, because he liked things read back very regularly. He would dictate a sentence and then say, ‘Read it back.’ I learned my own form of shorthand, which was half-written out… When he became prime minister… one had to go in after a cabinet meeting and read documents back to the cabinet. That was quite alarming. This was a way he had of making the work go more quickly, so that when you typed it, it was a final copy, as he wanted it. He dictated very slowly, because he was composing… the thought process was going on all the time.

  Churchill would finish dictating at around two or three in the morning, which meant Portal would be transcribing until break of day. If the dictation had been for his histories, she had to have those pages ready to be sent off to the printer first thing in the morning. The pages, as Gemmell tells us, ‘would be placed in the pantry for pickup and run it off during the day and it would come back [by 6 p.m.] in galley form, which must have been incredibly expensive.’ All the typed memos and minutes from the night before had to be ready in the morning.

  A relaxing and pleasant interlude in the work week occurred on the Friday arrivals at Chartwell. Portal, Churchill and a detective, along with Rufus II, would ‘walk around the gardens which he had designed… with the waterfalls coming down the hill to the pool at the bottom… to feed the fish.’ Churchill always claimed that ‘they came especially to say hello to him’, but of course they came for the food, not something anyone felt compelled to make clear to this sentimental man. A pleasant half hour –
even though there was no conversation between them – ‘he had no small talk’, perhaps an instruction or two – and then back to work. ‘The prime minister always found social conversation superfluous, as indeed did Rab… It was all politics, world affairs, serious business.’

  ‘Arrange for Rufus II to be poozled,’ Churchill would order. So Portal would set up an appointment for his ‘hairdo’, in a special dogs’ parlour in Beauchamp Place. Sitting in the front seat, Rufus II would be driven to his appointment by the chauffeur, who waited there the entire day to drive the dog back to Chartwell, ‘looking absolutely wonderful’. Hamblin also took great care with Rufus II, as we saw, and several secretaries report that Rufus II was in the car on trips between Chequers, Chartwell and Hyde Park, and, no doubt, other visits as well. None mention any of the cats moving back and forth with Churchill between houses, perhaps because those resident in Number 10 and at Chartwell had mouse-keeping chores to attend to.

  From about 1949 through 1951 Bill Deakin and Denis Kelly spent nearly every weekend at Chartwell, providing the required research materials, presumably for Volume III of the history of the Second World War,9 and obtaining government permission to use official papers. Often, Portal recalls, Ismay and Lord Cherwell were also there, refreshing Churchill’s memories, although Portal says that Churchill was ‘a tremendously fast reader and had a photographic memory’. He refreshed that memory by reading what his researchers provided and then would dictate his version of events, mostly after dinner, either in the study at Chartwell or in the dining room at Hyde Park Gate.

  When Churchill needed a secretary, he would simply

  shout ‘MISS!’… done in a way that nobody could possibly have resented this bellowing… then one of us would go… It didn’t matter who it was. Sometimes he called me ‘Joan’… but my aunt, who was married to Air Marshal Charles Portal, was Joan Portal and I’m sure that was the connection… Sometimes he called me ‘The Portal’.