Churchill and the King

by Kenneth Weisbrode

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  Churchill also was fond of his nurse, Mrs. Everest. Theirs was his closest relationship for the first few years of his life. That was in keeping with the Victorian and Edwardian practice of child-rearing, typical of the “Nanny-archy” of the day. She alone doted upon the “pale little ghost” and became, in addition to his sole source of intimacy and constant sympathy, his principal “audience. . . . in the centre of a stage of his own creation,” which included elaborate reenactments of military battles in his playroom.

  He grew up into a difficult boy, not as bad-tempered as Bertie but about as querulous, ill behaved, and mischievous as a child could be. Discipline was usually absent or arbitrary. Later, at Harrow, he was often threatened with caning—neither the threat nor the action, so far as history records, impressed him—and with other punishments, such as being forced to run for hours at a time.

  Churchill’s feelings about Harrow were almost surely painful and hostile. His five years there, he later said, were the worst period of his life. The scar took a very long time to heal. When he visited Harrow in his thirties, he was booed by the pupils and reacted badly, especially for a politician by now accustomed to the treatment. The only change seemed to have occurred during the Second World War, for then, when he visited the school, he took part eagerly in the singing of school songs and in cheers against Hitler.

  At Harrow there was an infamous incident soon after his arrival that reflected on Churchill’s filial disposition. Leo Amery, later to become a political ally, was pushed into the pool from behind by Churchill, then a “rather inky small boy, grubby and obstinate.” Upon learning that Amery was head of his house and in the sixth form, young Winston pointed out how easy it had been to mistake him for a nonentity given his small size. “He did not seem at all placated by this; so I added in a most brilliant recovery, ‘My father, who is a great man, is also small.’”

  Winston idolized his father and wished he could relate to him, somehow, as an equal. Yet even at a relatively early age he was made aware of some flaw or irony to heed in a father who may not have been “as wise as he was shrewd.” He told Winston, “Do remember things do not always go right with me. My every action is misjudged and every word distorted. . . . So make some allowances.” His son was just twenty-one when Lord Randolph died. He devoted the rest of his life, he said, to proving himself worthy of the father whose own political ambition had been cut short.

  Winston’s relationship with his father may have been even more literally distant than Bertie’s with his; yet the senior Churchill remained his lodestar for some time. He memorized his speeches, wrote his biography, and adopted his political philosophy. He made the promotion of the Churchill name his life’s work. It was no coincidence that the two other biographical subjects he chose, in addition to his father, were the Duke of Marlborough and himself, fictionalized as “Savrola.”

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  “When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think, ‘my friend, you have had a pretty poor life.’” We cannot know if Churchill really believed this, but the king probably did, for there is little evidence to the contrary. “The House of Hanover, like ducks, produce bad parents—they trample on their young.” Nor did their successors prepare theirs well for adulthood.

  Bertie grew up surrounded by a retinue but with few actual friends or companions his own age besides his elder brother. He tended to lack sociability and was often ill at ease, which limited the possibility of building a circle of supporters. He was not only uncomfortable in society but also moody. Worst of all was his temper, lost in terrible eruptions the family called “gnashes” or “Nashvilles.” The tantrums did not cease; in fact, they became worse with age. At some point in these early years he began to stammer. He was also prone to daydreaming, hyperactivity, and depression, even despair, when he failed to accomplish what he wanted. He became known as a “bad starter” but, once his determination kicked in, a keen finisher.

  Bertie had been badly educated in most subjects. He knew very little about literature, philosophy, or history. His principal tutor, a Mr. Hansell, found him hopeless. His brother David was not much better. Years later, the latter returned from a weekend and exclaimed, “Look at this extraordinary little book which Lady Desborough says I ought to read. Have you ever heard of it?” It was Jane Eyre.

  Violet Bonham Carter has told a similar story about Churchill. During their conversation at a dinner party, he told her—in what became one of his more famous epithets:

  “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.”

  By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed.

  Later on he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and a music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head:

  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

  His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvellous!”

  “But,” I objected, “you know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to the [sic] Nightingale.’”

  He had apparently never read it and never heard of it before. (I must however add that next time I met him he had learnt not merely this, but all the odes of Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable.)

  As a child, Winston hated memorization—at least forced memorization—disliked classical learning, and relished only games and exposure to the pageant of English history. He was otherwise a terrible student who left Harrow with little to show for the time he had spent there, apart from some useful education in the English language: his compensation for having been unable to succeed with Greek or Latin.

  He headed next to the military academy at Sandhurst to learn the art and science of soldiering. It was the first time he enjoyed his education. Later in the army, when posted to Bangalore, he finally found the time to compensate for his literary deficit. He had his mother send him volumes of Macaulay and Gibbon, which, along with Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, became his favorite guidebooks. His own writing style was, as he put it, “a combination of . . . the staccato antitheses of the former and the rolling sentences and genitival endings of the latter,” to which “I stuck in a bit of my own from time to time.” The resulting composite resembled that of Dr. Johnson in its “solemn facetiousness,” as Isaiah Berlin has described it. Churchill probably would not have used a term like that.

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  In 1909 young Bertie followed his brother to the Royal Naval College at Osborne. The school’s motto, associated with Admiral Nelson, was “There Is Nothing the Navy Cannot Do.” His experience there was as rough as one might imagine for a shy, awkward, and relatively ignorant boy who had never been part of a society of his peers, let alone a military one. His nicknames were Sardine, on account of his size, and Bat Lugs, on account of his ears. There was also his stammer. He finished at the bottom of his class.

  Bertie did not give up. He would, eventually, be recognized for his “grit and ‘never say I’m beaten’ spirit.” But he was no student. During this time, his grandfather died. Now his father was the king.

  In 1911 he entered another naval college, at Dartmouth. His experience there would be happier. Particular highlights were the chance to meet Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and even to socialize with Mrs. Churchill. Others were his first ventures at sea, including a memorable trip to the Caribbean and Canada in 1913. Bertie’s shyness and stammer seemed to evaporate on this journey. He received his appointment as a midshipman that September, and followed his father into the navy.

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  Whereas much of the script of Bertie’s life had been written for him already, Winston’s path had to be written largel
y by himself. For while the life of the former was about to be challenged at home and abroad in ways that nobody foresaw, the life of the latter—a life of constant, self-willed adventure—would not succeed by blending and flouting prescribed roles so easily. Events would alter the plan and pattern, such as they were. But they, too, needed a script.

  Although born nearly a generation apart and of very different parentage, Winston and Bertie held some important things in common. Both were the sons of illustrious yet mixed families. Both from their earliest years failed to live up to certain expectations and were placed under great social and family pressure. Both suffered from indifferent, at some level at least, parents. Both had difficult fathers whom they nonetheless admired and in Winston’s case worshipped. Both of their mothers were elegant but remote, and both were reared mainly by governesses. Both had physical limitations and were often ill and sought ways to compensate, either by persistent adaptation or by sheer bravery. Both had awkward associations with other boys and very few friends. Both were more or less young loners and lived to some degree in fantasy worlds of their own making. Both found difficulty in learning and in speaking. Both found some solace in an early military education, and later found relief, even exhilaration, in military combat. And while both differed in the degree to which they as young men sought glory and power in a public career, both had been born and reared during the height of the British Empire, when it was expected that anyone of their rank would do his duty to his country, no matter what.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ordeals of Youth

  The next half decade of Churchill’s life after Sandhurst was, with the possible exception of the Second World War, the most satisfying. The reason was that he was always active, even hyperactive, and seemed to be going in a forward direction, despite many twists and turns. “Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years!” he later put it. As it happened, they coincided with Britain’s imperial apogee. “It’s a pushing age,” he told his mother, “and we must shove with the best.”

  The complement of youthful feistiness is indelicacy. Churchill possessed both. There was the instance as a young second lieutenant when he turned up late to a royal dinner party. The entire party awaited his arrival in silence. It may have set a precedent. Edward VII had been close to Churchill’s mother and had followed his career, especially his writing, with some appreciation, but there were other moments when Churchill seemed well out of favor. In the spring of 1906, King Edward wrote to his son: “As for Mr. Churchill he is almost more of [a] cad in office than he was in opposition,” a verdict with which the prince, later George V, concurred.

  Undaunted, Churchill drew a particular lesson from such events: standing out was a prerequisite to notoriety. Making this work on the battlefield took some effort. His first moments of combat were in Cuba, where he had volunteered as a war correspondent. There, he said, the main thing he learned was how best to duck fire.

  These qualities—the thirst for glory and the desire to live to the fullest—have often been depicted as a form of warmongering. It was more complex than this. It was true that Churchill had a romantic attachment to combat, but it was a means to an end, which was the fulfillment of his chosen destiny. He was not bloodthirsty and did not seek war for its own sake. War was just another form of grand competition, albeit a rather dire and costly one. So, too, was politics.

  Life for him in the army was not perfect. His fellow soldiers did not always appreciate him. According to contemporaries, he was a “Medal-hunter,” a “Self-advertiser,” and a “poisonous young man.” All were partly true. War had won Churchill literary fame. His series of military adventures and mishaps—including a dramatic capture and escape during the Boer War—began the legend.

  You’ve heard of Winston Churchill;

  This is all I need to say—

  He’s the latest and the greatest

  Correspondent of the day.

  So began his long literary career as a raconteur and historian. About this and earlier adventures in Cuba, India, and Africa, he wrote brilliantly. His books and articles sold very well. He profited from speaking tours, especially in the United States, where he was once introduced as his country’s future prime minister.

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  Life for Bertie in the navy was rather different from Winston’s in the army. He was a good but not an enthusiastic sailor, having great affection for the navy but not for the sea. Sailing made him ill. His service was interrupted frequently by leaves on account of his poor health, including ulcers and other illnesses: appendicitis and dyspepsia. He was nervous at first but soon got along with his fellow midshipmen. He was with them, on board HMS Collingwood, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914. They did not make much of the event; more noteworthy, according to Bertie’s diary, was the visit of several girls from a nearby school. He probably never imagined the assassination would result in war. But his father worried. To his son, he wrote: “It has all come so suddenly. . . . Always do your duty. May God bless & protect you my dear boy is the earnest prayer of your very devoted Papa. . . . You can be sure that you are constantly in my thoughts.”

  Bertie’s illnesses kept him away from much wartime action, a relief to his family but a cause of great frustration to him. He was eventually allowed back in time for the Battle of Jutland. His elder brother, the Prince of Wales, on the other hand, never saw action during the war, being assigned to the western front but kept far from the front lines. Not so Bertie. His ship was the first to open fire in the battle. He manned one of its five turrets.

  “What the hell are you doing out there?” an officer demanded, having seen him climb onto the roof of the gun turret. “Come down before you get your head blown off.” Inside, the air “was poisonous with the fumes of burnt cordite and of hot oil, and the smell of paint blistering on overheated guns.” The “shells shrieked by. . . .”

  “Whew, that was a near thing . . . ,” Bertie said to his shipmate, “[t]he blighters have straddled us.”

  He was “distinctly startled and jumped down the hole in the top of the turret like a shot rabbit!!”

  He survived, and was glad he had not felt more fear and that he had not made any big mistake. Just as well, his father was pleased. Young Bertie had quickly become, according to one of his shipmates, a hardened man.

  Had he been of better health, and had he had a different elder brother or a different father, he might have made a good career as a naval officer. He would not have enjoyed it nearly as much as others, namely his father, might have, but it probably would have been a success. Had Winston been of a different disposition, and had he had superiors who were less hostile to him, he might have made a worthy career in the army. He, too, would have enjoyed it, most likely.

  Neither was to be.

  That the dramatic events of these years nonetheless toughened each man there can be little doubt. There was more: molding, shaping, and polishing. This happened as much by experience as by example: Bertie of his father, mainly, and of his navy commanders and comrades; and Churchill, once he entered politics, of his party and its leaders. Each man learned as much what to do as what not to do. They, especially Churchill, made mistakes, but it was the proximity to those of others in wartime that probably influenced them the most. They had earned their war medals, their spurs. They had seen so many of their best contemporaries disappear, so “many a pearl . . . which will never now be roped.” They could face another war, knowing that they had done all their positions allowed them to do during the previous war and that they had not shirked their duty. They learned how and how not to relate to generals and admirals. They learned the necessity, and the limits, of bravery. Ultimately war was fatal to neither man, and for each it became an education. It probably made them stronger. It certainly made them smarter, and maybe wiser.

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  Churchill had entered Parliament in 1900 on the coattails of his war reporting. His marriage to Clementin
e Hozier seven years later was a success, the point at which, in the final words of his memoir of early life, he “married and lived happily ever afterwards.” Their parents had been unfaithful, but they, so far as we know, never were. They had four children, the precise number to have, as Churchill later advised, “one to reproduce your wife, one to reproduce yourself, one for the increase in population, and one in case of accident.” There would have been five had one daughter, Marigold, not died in infancy.

  Political success bred more success at first: Churchill’s tenure in Parliament began loudly as he established himself there as a vocal and pugnacious member, especially on military subjects. By his thirties he had replaced his father as the Churchill whose name most people knew.

  However, his relations with his fellow Conservatives had soured to so great an extent, and his views had diverged so much with theirs, that he decided to switch parties, a rare thing to do for an ambitious novice politician. His timing turned out to be good—the Liberals carried the election of 1906. Try as he might, though, a liberal he was not. His instincts included a democratic strain, but not the “reluctance which inhibits Liberals from invoking force to solve a problem.” He was really an old-fashioned conservative, as time would tell. He not only revered tradition but also viewed skeptically the idea of progress, at least in human nature. English conservatism better suited his disposition, perhaps, but not his political temperament, and just as before, he would find himself outside the mainstream of his own party and mistrusted by its principal brokers. When he switched parties again in 1924, some remembered calling him the “Blenheim rat.” Well, “you could rat but you couldn’t re-rat.” It took a rare politician, Churchill later said, to get away with it. As both he and Bertie would learn, a man can still exert tremendous influence from the margins. Whether it could be converted into a central position was another question, one that would be answered as much by the course of events as by his inherent character and drive. For all that Churchill was regarded as an irrepressible opportunist, he was more like the future king in his capacity to fulfill a certain expectation, to do what was expected of him (and in Churchill’s case, what was expected was not always favorable), once circumstances placed him in a particular position. His childhood and young adulthood allowed him to hone a talent for responding to challenges more than for seizing opportunities, per se. The same may have been true, though to a very different extent and in very different circumstances, of the future king, who did not appear to make many choices of his own. “Rising to the challenge” is a convenient cliché. In these two cases, it may be taken literally. So, too, is “two steps forward, one step back,” although in Churchill’s case the Snakes and Ladders metaphor in time became more apt.