Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness

by Taylor, Robert Lewis

  These, together with the gaudy foreigners previously mentioned, were housed in strict accordance with the enduring philosophy of English school life. A cadet such as the Egyptian prince, for example, could have transported a spare palace to Camberley, equipped it with a staff of fifty servants, and lived in regal ease without denting the family budget, but like his fellows he was stabled in the approximate style of one of his father’s horses. Though born to the purple, the cadets lived a gray life at Sandhurst. The college’s heating facilities consisted of a small fireplace in each room. On a windy, subfreezing day, with the gusts howling through the halls and tearing at the loose-fitting doors of the studies, a fireplace picked things up much as a lighted cigarette might relieve the situation in an igloo. It has been established that English cold has character; it is superior to any other kind known. Rather than creeping into the human frame from the outside, it seems to work from the inside out. It bears little relation to temperature; with the thermometer at 40, one can easily drift into a gelid stupor that will persist until late spring. Few Englishmen ever get entirely thawed out; their best hope of survival is to wrap up and keep moving. The island’s meteorological peculiarity has been laid to the conflict that doubtless arises from the unnatural tempering of a far-northern, nearly arctic land by a warm and errant Gulf Stream. Subtle, icy vibrations are set up that can’t be measured in inches of mercury. In view of these conditions, and of Sandhurst’s especially slender arrangements, Churchill and his mates studied within arm’s reach of the fireplace. They followed the general English procedure of frying one side, while the other freezes, and then switching when both become intolerable. Bad as it sounds, the Sandhurst (and British) approach to weather is filled with merit. Over the years a race has been developed that can stand nearly anything. Moreover the Army intended that cadets emerging from Sandhurst should match in ruggedness the most poverty-hardened soldier of the line.

  To this end they were put through the stiffest possible paces on horseback — chased up hill and down dale, over fences and rock walls, through pebbly streams, and in and out of all the military drills then known to cavalry. Churchill began to find his niche; he attained the rank of fourth among the cavalry candidates. “I enjoyed the riding school thoroughly, and got on — and off — as well as most,” he wrote, and later he said, “Horses were the greatest of my pleasures at Sandhurst.” Noting the boy’s growing zest, Lord Randolph arranged a vacation course for him at the Knightsbridge Barracks, in London, with the Royal Horse Guards. Back at school, he and his companions took to spending all their pocket money hiring horses at the village livery stables. They organized point-to-points and even steeplechases on the estate of a nobleman Churchill knew in the neighborhood. So proficient did he become that Lord Randolph relaxed the hostility accumulated at the time of the examinations and took him on several outings, to a fluffy entertainment at the Empire Theatre and to political parties at Lord Rothschild’s. Also, at Churchill’s behest, they went to several race meetings, functions at which Lord Randolph was extremely well known, both as horse owner and as miscellaneous horse backer. Altogether, the outings represented some splendid educational opportunities for young Churchill, and he made the most of them. But even now there was no intimacy or warmth in Lord Randolph’s manner. “If lever I began to show the slightest idea of comradeship, he was immediately offended,” Churchill was to write, in the sad vein of a boy who had and yet never actually knew a father.

  Besides the formal instruction at Sandhurst, he learned refinements in the behavior code of British officer-gentlemen. One of his fellow cadets recalls a lesson taught Churchill by his company commander, a martinet major named Ball. Wishing to visit a friend in a militia battalion training at nearby Aldershot, the boy hired a rig and drove over from Sandhurst rather early in the morning. On the road coming back, getting the utmost out of his horse, he dusted by a tandem in which, sitting bolt upright, was Ball, who nodded stiffly and continued at his reasonable gait. Churchill suddenly remembered that he’d either neglected or forgotten to sign the leave-book, a bitter offense. As he pondered his probable punishments, it occurred to him that by beating the major home he could still sign up and nobody would be the wiser. He laid into his indignant horse, which had been accustomed to clack along at a half-dead trot while dreaming of the grassy retirement for which he was years past due, and shot to Sandhurst like a cinema stagecoach. Springing out, he dashed in to where the leave-book was kept and riffled it open, then straightened up in astonishment. Midway down the page was his name written in Major Ball’s hand and initialed “O.B.” in the margin. This courteous yet reproachful gesture made such an impression on Churchill that he never failed to sign the book again during his remaining time at the college.

  The college rules in general were strict but not harsh. The old yearbooks, in discussing the relative systems of Sandhurst, West Point, and St. Cyr, admitted that the former’s working day could not compare with that at the American or French schools; it was felt, though, that “the Sandhurst cadet at the end of his course is probably equal if not superior in physique to the American or French cadet.” Dancing, it was noted, was a prime exercise at West Point, while not enjoying much popularity at Sandhurst. “St. Cyr likes dancing, too, but no out-of-door games, for they have little attraction for the Frenchman, but in the matter of esprit de corps the St. Cyrians are far ahead of the Sandhurst cadets or the West Pointers.”

  Some of the rules posted in the halls of Sandhurst were:

  Shouting in college buildings strictly forbidden.

  When cadets go to mess they are to turn down the gas in their bedrooms.

  Cadets when in uniform are not permitted to smoke in Camberley, Yorktown or Blackwater.

  All gambling is strictly forbidden.

  Only gentlemen will be permitted to visit cadets in their rooms at any time.

  Afternoon teas may be given in a cadet’s room with the sanction of the officer commanding the company, but all other meals are prohibited.

  Cadets are cautioned against crossing any land under cultivation.

  When a parent (or guardian) wishes his son to keep a horse during the hunting season, or to be permitted to ride with the drag or hunt, he must send notice to that effect to the assistant commandant.

  Greatcoats, buttoned up, are to be worn only in wet or inclement weather.

  No cadet is allowed to exceed the sum of one shilling a day for wine or beer at mess.

  Accidental breakages at mess will be charged against the cadet.

  *

  Even though its character was at all times military, Sandhurst offered a stylish sort of program for its gentlemen cadets, in keeping with the British upper-class precept of masking duty and labor with a ritual yawn. Life proceeded in a well-mannered, orderly fashion, only infrequently bumped out of its rut by extracurricular excitements.

  It was in his Sandhurst period that Churchill had the first of his unending set-tos with women. Excepting his wife, his mother, his daughters, and one or two others, his experiences with the opposite sex have been more than ordinarily grisly. There can be no doubt that he has been horsewhipped by feminists as often and as passionately as any man living. Part of the fault may be attributed to women, who are occasionally troublesome, but Churchill is by no means free of blame. He has always been regarded as an impatient man living in a man’s world, and has never been much inclined to discourse with women on any but a polite basis. Even today at dinners he is not at his best until the ladies leave the room and the men can descend to male topics, brandy, and cigars. At one such function a few years after he left the college, he crushed a bumptious dinner partner with evidence of his maturing repartee. He had political aspirations at the time and was growing a faint, scraggly mustache. The woman on his left said, with true British candor, “Young man, I care for neither your mustache nor your political opinions.” “Madam,” replied Churchill, “you are as unlikely to come into contact with the one as with the other.”

  W
hile at Sandhurst, he took violent exception to one Mrs. Ormiston Chant, an elderly fool, who was causing an absurd ruckus around the London music halls. She was rightly considered to be the paramount British nuisance of the year, and she had some claim to a world title, although America was developing a few likely pests: Carrie Nation with her busy hatchet; Frances Willard, who endeavored to put the world on a sarsaparilla basis; Amelia Jenks Bloomer, an advocate of universal pants; and Susan B. Anthony, who ran a publication against men. As in the case of most reformers, various of these ladies suffered from one or another of the popular frustrations — an unelectric sex life, involuntary housework rejection, sour stomach, age, fright, etc. — and in the aggregate they represented a strong argument for the Chinese domestic plan. Mrs. Chant’s principal complaint had to do with sipping spirituous beverages at theater bars, and in particular at the Empire, where she felt that people were having an unusually good time. She enlisted the support of a number of sympathetically anti-fun citizens and served notice on the Empire to close its bar. Characteristically with agitators, a countermovement sprang up, headed in London by the Daily Telegraph, which described Mrs. Chant and her group as “Prudes on the Prowl,” and at Sandhurst by Churchill, who described them in some very picturesque language in private discussions. The meddling ways of Mrs. Chant got to be an obsession with him; in quick order he inflamed Sandhurst to the boiling point. Beardless children who had never seen a theater, and who didn’t care if they never drank a drop, walked about the campus cursing her and vowing to tear her down from her false pedestal.

  But it fell to Churchill to take positive action. Reading the Telegraph, he spied a letter written by a man who was forming “The Entertainments Protection League,” an organization to undermine Mrs. Chant and secure freedom of drink for all. A meeting of the Executive Committee was announced for six o’clock of the following Wednesday at a London hotel. Churchill moved quickly. He obtained a two-day leave, by promising to brush up his lessons, and got to work on a long, impassioned speech, in which he touched on the Constitution, the Rights of Man, the nature and denature of alcohol, the sly corrosion of malice, Guy Fawkes Day, Ethelred the Unready, sidelights on the Druids, and additional staples of English history, several of them relevant. Then he committed the effort to memory and boarded a train for London. His monthly allowance of ten pounds was not due for two weeks, and he had only five shillings to his name, but he taxied to the hotel mentioned, and was dismayed by its drab façade and soiled surroundings. He consoled himself with the thought that such a setting was proper to the establishment of a democratic constitution for carousing, and he marched up to a seedy-looking porter.

  “I have come to attend the meeting of the Entertainments Protection League,” he said.

  The porter’s verbatim reply has been lost to history, but it was an English equivalent of the American “Pardon?” or “Say which?”

  “It states here in the newspaper,” Churchill went on, “that the Executive Committee is meeting today in your hotel.”

  “There’s a man setting in the lobby,” said the porter.

  Churchill walked inside to face an embarrassed, well-dressed youth who rose and said, “Oh, yes, quite — I’m the Committee all right. It’s rather hard to get anything worth while started — what?”

  “You mean this is all you have so far?”

  “They’ll flock in once they see we mean business. Now let’s get at it — do you suggest a few motions or any of that rot?”

  Churchill beat a retreat, and found himself adrift in London at the dinner hour and with nothing in his pocket but cab fare, his speech, and a return ticket. He had counted on an oratorical triumph, an admiring round of congratulations, perhaps an interview or two, and a festive evening on the Committee, the members of which he assumed were wealthy. After this he hoped to gather up the late papers and read the wild announcements of a new political genius as he rode back to Sandhurst.

  A disappointing alternative was to hock his watch, which he did, for five pounds. Then he ate a whopping dinner and went to one of the degenerate music halls.

  His return to Sandhurst was inglorious. He sat huddled in a wretched train — the shadowy early morning carrier that conveyed the daily toll of London dead to the outlying cemeteries — and rehearsed excuses. Upon arriving, he told his inquiring fellows that the meeting had gone off brilliantly — the Executive Committee had been joined and a bibulous platform was in the works.

  “How about the speech? Did it go down well?” they kept asking. He replied with such evasions as, “Couldn’t have been a happier occasion in any respect — a perfect meeting of minds.”

  “They like the speech?”

  “Naturally, we must proceed with caution; it would be unwise to press public opinion prematurely.”

  The cadets finally gave up on the speech and concentrated their interest on the developing news in the case. By a tremendous effort, Mrs. Chant forced the Empire management, if not actually to close its bar, to put up canvas partitions with which to screen the drinkers from the merely strolling members of the audience. This capitulation raised a fearful hubbub at Sandhurst. “For shame!” the cadets cried out in lively distress. “These poor devils are being boxed up like donkeys.” After some goading from Churchill, it was felt that a large delegation should go in on the Saturday night the canvases were hung. And by chance, a great many young bloods of London had the same idea.

  It made a pretty scene. Mrs. Chant and her spastic crew, carrying signboards lettered with messages like “Whiskey is a Curse,” “Drop that Bottle!” and “Watch out before it’s too Late,” patrolled outside the doors, lamenting and moaning piteously. Inside, the atmosphere was rather different. Churchill and upwards of two hundred exponents of laissez-faire were draped over the bar, making the canvases bulge and shouting defiance at the teetotaling Mrs. Chant. On stage, a variety show had come to a halt. The noise of the clashing factions was deafening, and anyway nobody was watching. At length, the whiskey group, leaving its grotto, took to the aisles in a snake dance which was stopped when Churchill, or somebody, cried in a ringing voice, “Follow me and charge the barricades!”

  Churchill’s later account of the riot in the Empire Theatre does not jibe with others presumed to be equally authoritative. He took a modest view of his participation, while it was said by many that he was the sole instigator. In any case, it is fairly definite that he sounded the charge. There was a happy scrambling for the rear, and the canvases came ripping away. And now, typically, Churchill seized the opportunity to deliver his speech. He darted up to the stage, asked a couple of half-dressed chorus girls and a sword-swallower to step aside, and sailed into his remarks about the Constitution, alcohol, and the Druids. Then he departed from his set pattern and concluded with, “You have seen us tear down these barricades tonight; see that you pull down those who are responsible for them at the coming election!” It was his first public address, and while he did not have the undivided attention of his audience (many of the members had repaired to the rear to break sticks and rip up cloth), he bore himself well.

  The management ordered drinks for the house, and the victorious party marched to Piccadilly Circus, where they topped off the evening by making a ceremonial bonfire of the debris. Mrs. Chant and her following withdrew to regroup. She was by no means finished; later on, with that hyperthyroid drive that distinguishes morality workers of the front rank, she actually succeeded in screening off all the theater bars in town.

  One aspect of his speech troubled Churchill when he returned to Sandhurst. From birth he had suffered from a slight lisp, a not unmelodic impediment in his speech. It made him whistle the letter s. The fact that he was not assaulted at the Empire convinced him that he had a future in oratory, and he wanted to shine to best advantage. On his next trip to London he consulted a specialist, Dr. Felix Semon. The burden of the man’s report was that little mechanically could be done to correct the flaw; determination, a thick hide, and practice were what was w
anted. These Churchill could muster in abundance. He embarked on a program of declaiming in wooded nooks and other secluded spots, enunciating slowly and carefully. But he never quite mastered his lisp; he has the accentuated sibilants yet today. In choosing his words, he avoids terminal s’s as far as is practicable.

  It is difficult for a biographer to leave Churchill’s Sandhurst career without remarking a curious void. Notwithstanding his campaign against Mrs. Chant, and despite his adept horsemanship, few men who attended the college then have a clear recollection of him. As previously mentioned, his manner underwent startling changes. He graduated near the bottom at Harrow, but everybody knew him well, and many even painfully well. His efforts at Sandhurst were satisfactory in every way, but he made no great impression on either the students or the faculty. The Annals of Sandhurst, published in 1900 and assembled by Major A. F. Mockler-Ferryman from the available records, contains no mention of Churchill at all. While his old antagonist, E. M. Panter-Downes, who gave him the brisk watering down, turns up as a fighting member of rugby and other teams, Churchill is conspicuously absent from any cadet list. A historian who recently studied an assembled bibliography of Churchill, including both books and newspaper and magazine pieces, was unable to find a single Sandhurst anecdote that had not first appeared in his own writings. Neither can the faculty at the college successfully trace their famous former cadet. As a rule, stories of a rich personality linger on for generations; Churchill left no legend at Sandhurst. Lieutenant Colonel G. A. Shepperd, the genial present librarian of the college, has made it his business to search out evidences of Churchill’s stay there, much as Churchill used to search for mementos of the Celts. It has been unrewarding work. Of the two inhabitants, the Celts left the stronger mark. The young man of destiny walked away, was caught up by great events, shot into celebrity, and has never returned. The truth is that, by Sandhurst, Churchill had heard the faint but unsettling bugle call of that dubious product of civilization, the career world. He preferred to step out from the last citadel of his boyhood with his chances unimpaired by mischief. In a class of one hundred and fifty he ranked eighth. The figures have no meaning. Ulysses Grant was twenty-first of thirty-nine in his class at West Point; Robert E. Lee was second in his. Douglas Mac-Arthur was first; Dwight Eisenhower sixty-first and Omar Bradley forty-fourth in a class of about one hundred and sixty.