In 1963, after spending a holiday in Monaco with Clementine, Mary and Christopher, Winston was somehow able to make one final visit to Washington. His doctor was convinced the trip would kill him, but in fact the excursion seemed to energise him, for his daily routine had become very boring to him. He followed this journey with his eighth and last cruise aboard the Christina. He was now an old, old man, seldom even bothering to paint. Clementine and the family were always watchful and worried about him, and they had held their breaths collectively while he was in America. His main problems, though, were the familiar effects of old age – mild depression and deafness.44 The deaths, one by one, of his old contemporaries also saddened him greatly; Max Beaverbrook died in June 1963. He could still make an effort, show flashes of the old Winston, but he often sank into long silences, though he hated to be left alone. Mary recalled in her biography of her mother how he would sometimes, after one of these periods of silence, suddenly put out an affectionate hand and say apologetically to his visitor: ‘I’m sorry I’m not very amusing today.’45
It was in July 1963, while Sarah and Henry were visiting Granada, that tragedy struck. They had only just checked into their hotel room, and Henry was resting on the bed while Sarah was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. The couple were chatting to each other when Sarah suddenly realised Henry had not answered a question. When she popped her head around the door to ask ‘Did you hear me?’ it was obvious straight away that he was dead. Doctors diagnosed a heart attack, but later it would be confirmed that it was a sudden and massive cerebral haemorrhage that had killed him instantly, between one heartbeat and the next.
Apart from the shock and the grief – they had been happily married for just over a year – there were the inevitable doctors, police, post-mortem and death certificates to cope with, all in Spanish. It was an appalling few days for Sarah until Diana arrived, calmly assured, to take over and allow Sarah to fall into an exhausted sleep, and then begin the grieving process. The following day they discussed the funeral and Sarah deliberated whether she should ship Henry’s body back to England. But Diana was a rock: ‘Remember,’ she said firmly, ‘we are the daughters of a soldier. Where we fall, there we rest.’ Diana knew the British Consul at Malaga, who suggested that the British naval cemetery there would be a suitable resting place for Henry. So it was all arranged. Sarah was told: ‘We have chosen a very beautiful place where there are two slim trees, a pepper and a fir.’ Sarah placed her wedding ring in the earth that she sprinkled on the coffin. Within a few days she flew to England and drove down to Chartwell. Winston met her at the front door and they stared silently at each other. It must have been so difficult for him to know what to say that could offer his daughter any comfort. But then he took her hand and held it, and said simply, ‘We must close ranks and march on.’46
A few weeks later, in September 1963, Clementine collapsed with a nervous breakdown. It was surprising she had not done so before. One friend had spotted her decline before it happened, and wrote to Mary: ‘She really is worn out. Winston dislikes being left alone all day with his nurses, and dislikes having meals alone; Clemmie found it a strain having to talk loudly to make him hear…My view is that…Clemmie…is worn out and needs rest.’47 She had always been highly strung, living on her nerves, and to this was added the strain not only of being a carer but also of maintaining her own impossibly high standards. Then there were the various problems concerning her children – not least, Henry’s death just when Sarah seemed to have her life back on the rails. Such events, which always made headlines, were all the more distressing for someone who hated her personal life being exposed. She was admitted to hospital, heavily sedated, and underwent several electrotherapy sessions. While this was happening, another family tragedy occurred.
After Diana flew to England following Henry’s funeral, Sarah had returned to the Marbella villa that she and Henry had bought after their marriage. She was still there some weeks later when her neighbour called round. Sarah had no telephone and her neighbour took calls for her from England. This time she advised Sarah to prepare herself for bad news when she went to the phone. ‘I couldn’t imagine what else could have happened,’ Sarah recalled, and she suspected it was going to be news about Winston. She went to the telephone and heard Mary’s voice say: ‘Darling Sarah, Diana has died. There’s to be an inquest.’48
27
1963–78
Crossing the Bar
Diana had never got over losing Duncan. For some years before their divorce the two had lived apart, and well before that she had lived with the knowledge that her marriage was far from stable. Whether it was cause or effect, her life had been punctuated for many years with periods of depression. Duncan had made a success of his parliamentary life, had worked closely with ‘the Prof’ promoting secret weapons, and had been appointed Financial Secretary at the War Office. After that he held Cabinet posts in successive Tory governments for the remainder of his career. Clementine had never taken to Duncan, so his visits to Chartwell were infrequent, but Winston liked him a lot and was upset that Diana’s marriage had failed. After the divorce Winston asked Jock Colville to invite Duncan to dinner at the Other Club: ‘I should so much like to see him again, but if I asked him to luncheon or dinner, Clemmie would be upset.’1
Diana underwent several intensive electrotherapy treatments, which seemed to leave her just as depressed and confused as before. Perhaps only Winston really understood her deep despair: having himself suffered from the same affliction, he was able quietly to offer sympathy and comfort. Recently, though, Diana had appeared far more serene, and had even become a Samaritan in order to try to help others with similar mental problems. When she flew to Spain in July to help Sarah she had taken over the funeral arrangements for Henry with a calm assurance. This is remarkable in view of the fact that from March to July 1963 Diana had suffered a more than usual amount of stress. In March the sensational divorce case of the Duchess of Argyll* was heard in London and Duncan Sandys was named as one of her lovers. The case and the rumours and accusations rumbled on through the early summer at exactly the same time as the Profumo scandal. John Profumo admitted that he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with Christine Keeler and resigned in early June. Later the same month, Duncan, who was Minister of Defence at the time, under extreme pressure from the media, confessed in a stormy Cabinet meeting to being the ‘headless man’. Another sex scandal, coming so soon after Profumo’s resignation, could easily have toppled the Macmillan government, so Duncan was persuaded not to resign, and instead an inquiry was ordered, headed by Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls. Diana had all this to contend with when she flew to help Sarah. But when on 19 October Diana learned that Duncan’s new wife had just given birth to a son, it was evidently more than she could tolerate. She took an overdose of sleeping pills.
Clementine was still under sedation, a feature of the treatment for her condition, and it was Mary who had to break the news about Diana to Winston. He seemed stunned at the death of his eldest child, but he said very little. By now he spent long periods in silence every day, remote from those around him. It was difficult to know whether he was deep in thought, or bored because he could not hear what was going on, or whether he had begun to slide into the vacant realms of dementia. But it is evident from the diary entries of those closest to him that there were still brief moments when light would come back into his eyes and the old Winston would shine forth.
Eventually Mary was able to tell her mother about Diana’s death. Because Clementine was still lightly sedated, the information filtered only gradually through to her over a period of days, without causing huge shock. But both she and Winston were too upset, and too unwell, to attend the funeral. Instead they attended the memorial service on 31 October.
In the spring of 1964 Randolph was seriously ill again with bronchopneumonia. Evelyn Waugh visited him and wrote to Diana Cooper: ‘I have become reconciled with R. He looked so pathetically thin and feeble and when he
tried to shout a whisper came. So 12 years [of] enmity are expunged.’2 After exploratory surgery for suspected lung cancer later that year, Randolph had part of his lung cut away. The tissue underwent a biopsy but no cancer was found. Waugh could not resist telling their friends that the surgeons had cut out the only part of Randolph that was not malignant. But his hell-raising days were behind him – he spent all his time now working on the great opus that was his father’s life story.
The entire family was thrilled when in June twenty-four-year-old Winston, who would go on to make a career in politics, married his childhood sweetheart Minnie d’Erlanger. His grandfather was unable to attend the wedding but the couple called on him afterwards at Hyde Park Gate. A few weeks later, on 27 July 1964, Winston made his final appearance in the House of Commons. His first day there, as an ambitious twenty-six-year-old, had been 14 February 1901, shortly after the death of Queen Victoria when the London streets were filled with horse-drawn buses and hansom cabs and illuminated by gas lamps. On 28 July, a deputation consisting of the Prime Minister and other leaders and elders of the House called on him at Hyde Park Gate and presented Winston with a formal vote of thanks for a lifetime of service, following a resolution passed that day in the House.3
Clementine had recovered from her breakdown by this time, and although much relieved at Winston’s retirement – indeed, she had engineered it – she also agonised that it had removed from him his only incentive for getting up each day. He still managed to attend dinners at the Other Club, which he greatly looked forward to. Despite the family difficulties they’d had to overcome in recent years the deep love of this couple for each other never faltered, and on his ninetieth birthday in November 1964 at a party at Hyde Park Gate Clementine gave Winston a small gold heart engraved with the numerals ‘90’. It was to hang on his watch chain, alongside the gold heart with the ruby that she had given him when they became engaged fifty-seven years earlier.4
Brushed and spruced up, Winston had made a public appearance at the window of the drawing room at Hyde Park Gate, where a crowd had appeared in the street below to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. As usual he rose to the occasion, and press photographs depict him waving, making the victory sign, smiling broadly and looking remarkably well. That evening there was a family party attended by Randolph and Arabella, Mary and Christopher and their children, Sarah, young Winston and Minnie, and a few very close friends such as Anthony Montague Browne and his wife. As they toasted Winston’s health Mary felt the poignancy of the occasion, for her father was now very fragile, ‘and often so remote’.
A week later Consuelo died quietly at her house Garden Side, in the Hamptons, Long Island, aged eighty-seven. Her son Bert, the 10th Duke, flew over to be with her when summoned, but he arrived too late. The funeral service was held in the church where she had so unwillingly married Sunny Marlborough almost seventy years earlier. She was interred at Bladon in the Churchill plot: Bert and his family, with Clementine, Randolph, Sarah and Mary, attended the ceremony. Winston was unable to be there.
Pamela, now married to the Hollywood producer and agent Leland Hayward,* was still living the life of international jet-setter, and would visit Winston whenever she flew into London. For years he had paid her a small pension, to make up for Randolph’s failure to do so. Pam still adored her former father-in-law, and her visits seemed to offer him some cheer. Soon after Consuelo’s death, when she was sitting holding his hand, he said wistfully: ‘Why can’t I just die?’ Not realising that he said the same to other visitors, she understood it to be a private confidence and it haunted her for years. But Winston’s family and closest friends had become accustomed to hearing those words. The man who had once believed he would die young, and so had always been in such a fervour to justify his existence before it was too late, had done everything there was for him to do. Thirty years earlier he had written, ‘One must always hope for a sudden end, before faculties decay…’ But this grace was not given to him.
Soon after the New Year of 1965 Winston caught a cold which he could not shake off. On 11 January Clementine phoned Mary and told her that her father seemed to have suffered another ‘spasm’ and was far from well. Lord Moran, who had now treated Winston for twenty-four years, came and checked his patient. He told the family that Winston had suffered a cerebral thrombosis, and although he had pulled through such attacks on previous occasions he believed he was too feeble to weather this one. When Mary saw him that evening she felt he did not recognise her. The following morning he woke up, but seemed ‘very remote and said nothing’. In the afternoon Christopher sat with him, and to encourage him to talk, asked him, ‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’ Winston regarded him vaguely, and delivered his last coherent sentence: ‘I’m so bored with it all.’
He could still move his right arm and for a while it seemed there was a chance that, despite what Lord Moran had said, he might yet recover. However, Moran warned that if he did survive he would be terribly ‘impaired’, which left the anxious family not knowing what to hope for.
By the 15th Winston fell into deep unconsciousness and it was agreed that a formal announcement of his condition should be made. It read: ‘After a cold, Sir Winston has developed a circulatory weakness and there has been a cerebral thrombosis.’ Sarah was summoned from Rome and arrived next day. The house was swamped with telegrams and flowers and a small crowd gathered quietly outside the house despite the freezing weather. There would always be knots of people outside the house now, keeping vigil, until the end. Initially these were swelled by groups of reporters and cameramen, but Clementine requested that they move away because the noise, arc lights, flashbulbs and chatter were disturbing. Without a word and within minutes they had withdrawn respectfully to a distant corner, where they could still be on hand to watch members of the family as they came and went each day, and to catch the daily health bulletins.
Through all the family visits Winston slept on, apparently tranquilly. He had taken no sustenance since 14 January, and all the family could do was keep his mouth and lips moistened with water and glycerine, and speak to him. Once, when young Winston was alone with him he was so worried that his grandfather might be thirsty that he disobeyed instructions and gave him a sip of orange juice. Sometimes Winston’s right hand would move as though he were painting, and once it seemed he was attempting to smoke an invisible cigar. A good deal of the time Clementine sat quietly holding his hand, while Winston’s beloved marmalade cat lay curled at his feet on the bed. Clementine appeared serene, only once – briefly – breaking down. She seemed surprised that she could maintain a calm demeanour and told Mary she did not know where all her tears had gone. Always immaculately dressed and coiffed, she seemed to have withdrawn into herself, while mechanically checking the scores of messages and flowers that arrived daily, running the house as impeccably as always and organising meals for visitors. ‘There had never been any room in her life for slipshod ways,’ Mary recorded.5 On Friday the 22nd Randolph looked in to report that Minnie had safely given birth to a son whom she and young Winston had named Randolph.
Two days later, shortly after 8 a.m. on 24 January, after a few deep sighs Winston died. Most of the people he loved, Sarah, Mary, Diana’s daughter Celia, Randolph and young Winston, were at his bedside with Clementine and Anthony Montague Browne. Lord Moran was in attendance. ‘Nobody moved or spoke,’ Mary recorded. ‘Presently, Clementine looked up at Lord Moran. “Has he gone?” she asked. He nodded…One by one we all got up and silently left the room. I went back and remained with my mother for some little time. Then we both kissed his hand and then his brow and left him.’6
Soon after, Randolph went to find a book to check something that had occurred to him. He came back to tell them that Winston had died seventy years to the exact day, and almost to the hour, after his father’s death, for Lord Randolph had died at 6.15 a.m. on 24 January 1895. Perhaps, with his great sense of history, Winston had somehow played a deliberate part in this remarkable coincidence.* Jock Col
ville could not help recalling a morning some years earlier when Churchill was still at the height of his powers: ‘I went to his bedroom,’ he wrote, ‘to talk to him about some business matter while he was shaving. “Today,” he said to me, “is the twenty-fourth of January. It is the day my father died. It is the day that I shall die too.”’7
It is not too fanciful to say that grief enveloped Britain. Winston had dozens of political opponents, but as a person he was deeply loved by the people, and it seemed that the nation almost stopped in its tracks at the news. Prime Minister Harold Wilson postponed a major speech in the House of Commons, and ceremonies to commemorate the seven-hundredth anniversary of the first Parliament were postponed for six months. Winston’s customary place, the corner seat by the gangway, was left vacant out of respect for the man who was arguably the greatest parliamentarian during all of those seven centuries.
The Churchills Page 61