Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness

by Taylor, Robert Lewis

  Even in his frazzled condition Churchill was able instantly to discard his first account and come up with an alternative, an easy product of his richly inventive brain. “Ah, good evening,” he gasped, jiggling the funny hat, “I’m the Reverend Hjalmar T. Buglemeister, currently a poor war worker who —”

  “Come in, come in,” said the man abruptly. “You needn’t lie to me; you’re Winston Churchill, and this is the only house for twenty miles where you wouldn’t be given up.”

  His host was John Howard, manager of the Transvaal Collieries, a mine now staffed by a skeleton crew, because of the military drafts upon labor. Howard himself was an Englishman who had become a naturalized burgher of the Transvaal Republic; his three key employees were also British. One of these, a Mr. Dewsnap, turned out to be from Oldham, the scene of the fugitive’s political fiasco. “Don’t worry,” Dewsnap told Churchill, crushing his hand in a miner’s grip, “they’ll vote for you next time.”

  Churchill meditated upon this cheering news as he was lowered two hundred feet into the earth. Howard hail related that the surface regions were swarming with spies; he had two sleep-in maids who were Dutch and intensely inquisitive. “You will be better off in the mine,” he insisted to Churchill, who had asked for food, a pistol, a guide, and a pony, so that he could flee, in nocturnal stages, to the sea. Before being dropped in the cable car, he had been invited to make himself free with a bottle of whiskey and a siphon. By the time of the actual descent, he was a shade better than fully recovered in mind and body.

  The developing plot grew more elaborate. As indicated, Kruger and his Republic were righteous but dull; Howard had lived for years in a state of uneventful torpor. Now he was privy to an adventure of resounding quality, and he went to work on it in the manner of Tom Sawyer freeing a runaway slave. During a council of war, held in the bowels of the earth, he advised the underground party that Churchill would be known, in the colliery, as Dr. Bentock. He did not vouchsafe the origin of this singular name. In the opinion of Bentock, the plot grew almost too elaborate. For the first few nights, the doctor was lodged in a stable room with the pit ponies, which seemed friendly but not as friendly as the several dozen rats that made use of the place. From Howard’s library, Churchill had selected a book to read — Stevenson’s appropriate Kidnapped — and prone on his subterranean pallet he tried to review the problems of David Balfour and Alan Breck. Stuck in the mine, the rats had little or no access to literature, and they kept creeping up to look over his shoulder. In an hour or so he called it quits, blew out his candles, and settled himself to sleep. The rats — uncommonly large ones, pink and with phosphorescent eyes — then dug under his pillow to get at the candles. It was hard to tell whether they were starved for tallow or crazy about Stevenson.

  In four days Dr. Bentock was brought up to an office adjoining Howard’s and several Englishmen of the neighborhood called in that evening to see him. The night following, they transferred him to the barn of a sympathetic Dutchman, a man who had once gone round the world in a windjammer and held important geographic differences with Kruger. The Dutchman was preparing to ship some bales of wool to Delagoa Bay. Into a railroad car with these Dr. Bentock was carefully secreted. He shook hands with his benefactors, feelingly told Howard that he hoped to meet him again, preferably in London, and soon afterward the train started rolling. Churchill did meet Howard again, and in London, as he had suggested. The unselfish colliery manager eventually wearied of South Africa and moved back home. He met Churchill several times to reminisce happily about the touchy days in the coal mine. Howard died in England in 1941, not long after his former ragged protégé had become Prime Minister, and the most important man in the world.

  For two and a half days the freight train bumped its way toward the frontier; then it sat on a siding for eighteen hours so that Boer officials could examine it. Dr. Bentock, a man of more than ordinary impatience, had improved the journey by sticking his head out every ten minutes or so in an effort to catch the names of towns. On Howard’s advice, he had memorized a whole string of station stops: Dalmanutha, Machadodorp, Waterval Boven, Waterval Onder, Elands, Nooidgedacht, and so on, and he kept a fair track of his progress. But it was a long ride, and for the most part he squirmed restlessly amid the bales — woolgathering, as it were. At a dinner thirty years later, in a remarkable demonstration of his memory, Churchill rattled off a series of eighteen of the Boer railroad towns without making a single error. During the inspection he had burrowed down deep, and although he heard somebody pull off the covering tarpaulin, and sensed the inquisitive stare, he was not discovered.

  When the train rolled slowly on and past the frontier, Churchill crawled out for a celebration. Perched on top of his sleeper, he drew a revolver that Howard had given him and emptied its six chambers into the quiet, African air. Then he added something fairly special in the way of howls and yelps. But noting that the train, not too surprisingly, was beginning to slow down, he reflected that the less known about the details of his flight the better for Howard and his associates. Accordingly he plopped back into his grotto and subsided. The train crew could find no accounting for the unholy racket and are undoubtedly, if still living, wondering what hit them that day near the Transvaal border.

  Covered with grime, the onetime prisoner disembarked at the town of Lourenço Marques and hurried to the office of the British consul, where he had a dampening experience. A subordinate, haughty and officious in the subconsular tradition, took him for a fireman from one of the vessels in the harbor and was unaccommodating. He had picked the wrong man. Churchill has ever been competent to deal with the petty snobberies of small officials. With a manner painfully ducal, soot or no soot, he sent the flunky hiking for his superior. Immediately all was changed. The refugee was welcomed with shouts of congratulations. The English colony in the town turned out in a body, offering refreshment, clean clothes, and other benefits.

  “Name it, just name it,” one patriot cried, and Churchill, after practically no reflection, ordered a telegraph blank. He wrote out a long and stinging announcement of his safe arrival and dispatched it to the Boer Minister of War.

  An inspiriting celebration proceeded until he boarded the steamer Induna for Durban. He was escorted onto the ship by a large group of armed Englishmen, who had taken the notion that, at this late date, he might still be kidnapped and returned to durance vile. Their precautions were unwarranted. Except for a pair of elderly ladies in deck chairs, who seemed annoyed at the boisterous arrival, everybody within sight was amiable and sympathetic.

  At Durban, the lid of British enthusiasm was blown off more emphatically. All the ships in the harbor were flying a colorful laundry of bunting, numberless small craft swarmed about, bells, bosun’s pipes, whistles, sirens, and foghorns set up a joyous chorus, and a monster gathering with three bands was on the quay as the Induna was warped alongside. After successions of bitter defeats — at Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso — the British had a victorious hero at last. Bareheaded, Churchill stood in the bow and, in the idiom of the ring, mitted the crowd. His hour had come at last. For several years he had repined under the odium of a limited notoriety. From this day on he would be all but impossible to hold.

  It might have been difficult to find a young man more brilliantly suited to the mantle of public benefactor. In the midst of the color and the noise, Churchill shone like a gem. With that indefinable air compounded of nonchalance, an awareness of great things, and suppressed excitement (for which the overworked “glamour” is the best available label), he fulfilled exactly the hopes of a people in carnival mood. To deafening sounds, he descended the gangplank with stately warmth and shook hands with the mayor, the local admiral, and the local general, who were dignitaries of the highest accessible voltage. The bands, consecutively and, by accident, concurrently, played everything in their repertory, and then Churchill made a speech.

  There exists a photograph of Churchill on this halcyon date. Mounted on a makeshift platform be
fore the City Hall, hatless, wearing an ill-fitting black suit with a vest, his hands on his hips, his thinning red hair tumbled over his forehead, he is addressing the crowd with an expression of patriotic intensity. Beside him stands an unidentified young man wearing a straw hat and holding aloft a huge British flag. The crowd includes both blacks and whites, and there is a sway-backed horse with a buggy in the foreground. The men are wearing straw hats, or bowlers, or caps, ducking a little from the sun. It looks like a hot day. And in some vague, nostalgic way, it looks like 1900, as 1900 must have looked — lazy, unhurried, comfortable, and relaxed despite the war. The faces are peaceful, lacking that ashen strangulation that an eminent neurologist has recently classified as Uranium Cramp, the nerve cancer of technocracy.

  When the hubbub had died down slightly, Churchill resumed his work with the telegraph blanks. Having thoughtfully reported his safety to the Boer Minister of War, he could scarcely do less for the London Morning Post, upon whose expense account he was theoretically traveling. In wiring his paper, Churchill became carried away and launched a critique of the entire conduct of the war. In the British phrase, it did not “go down very well.” Certain passages, such as his query, “Are the gentlemen of England all fox-hunting?” were construed as impertinent. His tributes to the fighting qualities of the Boer also were regarded as overdrawn. “The individual Boer,” said Churchill, “mounted in suitable country, is worth from three to five regular soldiers,” and he added that the only way to treat the problem was “either to get men equal in character and intelligence as riflemen, or, failing the individual, huge masses of troops.”

  Replies to his broadside were quickly forthcoming. While Churchill had reviewed the government’s whole prosecution of the war, several papers reviewed Churchill’s. The periodical Truth led off with a few remarks about the Armored Train. “... Mr. Churchill is described as having rallied the force by calling out ‘Be men! Be men!’ But what can the officers have been doing who were in command of the detachment? Again, were the men showing signs of behaving otherwise than as men? Would officers in command on the battlefield permit a journalist to ‘rally’ those who were under their orders?”

  The Phoenix commented, “That Mr. Winston Churchill saved the life of a wounded man in an armoured train is very likely. Possibly he also seized a rifle and fired at a Boer. But the question occurs what was he doing in the armoured train? He had no right there whatever. He is not now a soldier, although he once held a commission in the Fourth Hussars, and I hear that he no longer represents the Morning Post.”

  The Daily Nation got in a similar plug: “Mr. Churchill’s escape is not regarded in military circles as either a brilliant or honorable exploit. He was captured as a combatant, and of course placed under the same parole as the officers taken prisoners. He has however chosen to disregard an honorable undertaking, and it would not be surprising if the Pretoria authorities adopted more strenuous measures to prevent such conduct.”

  There were many other notices in a similar vein. The Morning Leader struck a fresh note, a departure from its accustomed sobriety, by saying that, “We have received no confirmation of the statement that Lord Lansdowne has, pending the arrival of Lord Roberts, appointed Mr. Winston Churchill to command the troops in South Africa, with General Sir Redvers Buller, V.C., as his Chief of Staff.”

  Perhaps the pithiest observation was composed by the generals and colonels of London’s most exclusive military club, who, no doubt feeling that Randolph’s son needed counsel in these trying times, sent him the following telegram: “Best friends here hope you will not continue making further ass of yourself.”

  The attacks on Churchill grew so reckless that later, as he said, “I have been forced to extort damages and public apologies by prosecution for libel on at least four separate occasions.” These were mostly in connection with the untrue statement that he had broken a parole, but the fact is that Churchill, in general, is a zealous protector of his legal rights, as his chief secretary once warned an unauthorized biographer. He customarily reads magazine and newspaper pieces about himself while making frequent asides to members of his staff. “Aha, we’ll sue on that sentence!” he will say, or, again, “An outrageous misstatement — institute proceedings immediately.”

  The Phoenix was wrong about Churchill’s job on the Morning Post. His plan of procedure after his arrival in Durban was to re-enter the military. But he did not wish to relinquish his well-paying job, so he got General Buller to appoint him, as an unpaid lieutenant, to an irregular regiment, the South African Light Horse, or Cockyolibirds, as the members were informally known (from the plumes in their hats). In this way the hero was able to continue with his writing, and among the first things he turned out were some pretty sharp criticisms of Buller.

  Laden with telegrams from all parts of the world, Churchill made his way from Durban to rejoin the Army. The meeting took place within a hundred yards of the spot where he had been captured. He recognized a platelayer’s hut that he had used as a landmark on that hurried and disappointing day. Only six weeks had elapsed since he had jumped down from the train and scurried into the grasp of Louis Botha, but in that time he had become internationally famous. The pangs of ambition were appeased for the moment. He gathered together all the fine foods and wines he could buy and gave a dinner to his friends. It went on through the evening, past midnight, and into Christmas morning. The slow century of Victorian England was drawing to a close. Churchill had begun the merry season, as he would so many others, “on the flinty and steel couch of war,” a gift of the tyrant custom.

  Chapter 15

  A FEW details of Churchill’s later career in the Boer War should be mentioned briefly before the bizarre events. of his political life are considered. The war itself was not concluded until May 31, 1902, but he detached himself from the Army in 1900, when the back of Boer resistance was unmistakably broken. As usual in Churchill’s life, his span of service had not been barren of incident. Despite the newly won honors, he distinguished himself further. At the relief of Ladysmith, he was the first horseman to enter the city, and there is some basis for the story that the English prisoners there thought for a while that he had delivered them singlehanded. At Dewetsdorp, his saddle girth was shot through and he tumbled to the ground to watch his unharmed mount gallop away. For an awful moment it looked as though he might repeat the dark experience of Pretoria. Precisely what the Boers would have done with Churchill had they retaken him is not known, but it may be assumed that the Minister of War, clutching his jolly telegram, could scarcely have been genial. In any case, the crisis passed; Churchill thumbed a ride from a mounted British trooper, who said later that his passenger “didn’t mind a bit. That man could stand anything. He didn’t show the least sign of fear, and wanted to talk when he got up behind me. But I thought it was no time for talking and I told him so.”

  For his pains in halting, scooping up Churchill, and carting him to safety, the trooper, whose name was Roberts, was awarded the D.C.M.

  It was reported that Churchill himself was considered for decoration after he had stormed an occupied town in search of bottled beer. He had understood that the place had been evacuated; however, minus the beer, or perhaps incensed by failing to get it, he conducted a bristling withdrawal that was much admired.

  There were indications that, as the war went on, Churchill took the notion that he was fighting it alone. His movements bore little relation to those of his unit. Not unnaturally, the Queen was less severe about individualism on the part of unpaid soldiers; it was considered that no matter how far afield such a man might wander, it could cost nobody but himself to get him back. In Churchill’s case, the expense was defrayed by the Morning Post, which received its money’s worth. There was no end to the lively anecdotes he sent in. At one point, he told of a soldier who was found skulking in the wake of the Army. A general asked him why. “Because I’m only a third-class shot,” said the man (according to Churchill of the Morning Post). “That’s a great p
ity,” remarked the general, “because we’ll have to put you three times as close to the enemy to make you effective. Forward!”

  At Lindley, Churchill made a reconnaissance based on information that the Boer President, Two-dimension Kruger, was hiding in an old house. Churchill cased the dwelling, as the gangsters say, then broke in to make the capture. The President was absent, but he captured two bottles of enemy champagne, which he executed on the spot.

  A good many of Churchill’s activities in the Boer War centered on fodder. He took some outrageous chances to dine luxuriously. He got a name for being a scrounger above and beyond the call of duty. There was the matter of the purloined goose. Traveling through a country sparse in produce, he scouted an unexpected flock of fat geese. He chose a spot downwind and crouched in the underbrush, waiting his chance. It was a fretful operation, since other units were coming up and there was a danger of losing the flock to attrition. At length Churchill spied a straggler, then pranced out and delivered a heroic kick, aimed to hoist the bird over a fence. Owing to a miscalculation, and a cross wind, it sailed into the highway and the lap of a martinet colonel, who hauled Churchill up for a public rebuke. It is a matter of pride to Churchill’s political allies that he has taken some of the fieriest tongue-lashings in history without turning a hair. His knowledge of his qualities has always been too secure to permit wilting from censure by mediocrities. He listened attentively to the colonel, returned a brisk salute, wheeled, snatched up the goose, which was lying in the road, and fled. Later, squatting in the bush, he cooked the bird himself, after which he shared it with some like-minded unregenerates.