Churchill feels entitled to his privacy, and is probably one of the few great men of history with courage enough to protect it. His reasons for sequestering himself are ample, and even grudgingly respected by many of those most anxious to see him. He has been able to do a lot of valuable work in the time he might have allotted to well-meaning reporters. However, some journalists in London believe, maybe with justification, that a political servant has no right to insist on a writing monopoly concerning his acts in behalf of the public. Like nearly every other in the world, the argument has two indisputable sides. When he thinks that people have written rashly about him, Churchill uses effective arguments, many of them presented by lawyers. He is quick to sue, as the late Louis Adamic, author and whilom liberal, found out. In Adamic’s book, Dinner at the White House, there were several passages criticizing Churchill’s conduct of the war and containing a footnote that said, “As Drew Pearson revealed in one of his columns in 1945, the motives for the British policy in Greece were at least partly linked up with the fact that Hambros Bank of London, the chief British creditors of Greece (they gave up to 17 percent on their loans which the leftist or E.A.M. Greeks wished to scale down to 5 percent) had bailed Churchill out of bankruptcy in 1912.” In a British High Court, the statement was proved to be untrue; the publisher (Harper and Brothers, in England and America) made a public retraction; and Churchill was awarded damages against the publisher and author of five thousand pounds, together with three hundred pounds in costs.
Paradoxically, Churchill can be the soul of condescension. Nobody ever knows exactly what reaction to expect from him. During the war, the British had in America a comparatively obscure member of the embassy office named Isaiah Berlin, whose reports on various conditions and trends came to be read in London with deep respect. They were polished models of careful research and both precise and witty analysis. Before the war was over, Churchill was reading them with amused satisfaction. And when he saw in a London paper an announcement that Mr. I. Berlin had arrived from America, he roared to his staff, “I must have that fellow to lunch today!” The Berlin mentioned in the dispatch, Irving Berlin, of New York, turned up in answer to the invitation with pleasure somewhat tempered by astonishment. As he and his host started the meal, Churchill said, “You have written some wonderful things. I have admired them greatly. Now tell me, of all that you have written, which one do you think was the best?”
Berlin thought a moment, then replied, “Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I hardly know, but I guess I would say, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band.’ ”
Churchill laughed without restraint, feeling that this was political wit at its peak. Then he essayed a feeler on the American presidential campaign, asking, “What will happen in that election over there?”
Not wishing to give a snap judgment, Berlin weighed the question and said cautiously, “A lot of people think Roosevelt will lose.”
“Ha! Do they, now?” cried Churchill, keenly interested.
“And again, quite a number think that he will win.”
Churchill said, “Excuse me a moment,” and went out to find one of his secretaries, to whom he shouted, “Will you please tell me who that is in there?”
“Why, Mr. Irving Berlin, the composer, Mr. Churchill,” answered the secretary. It was feared that the Premier was on the verge of an embarrassing eruption, but he returned to the lunch and made himself agreeable, chatting with Berlin on a variety of subjects and complimenting him on the fine songs he had written.
The criticism has been raised, amidst the Tories, that Churchill’s autocratic ways have occasionally hampered the success of the party. This seems untenable in view of the October election, which was widely acclaimed as a personal victory. In a long-term sense, however, the towering majesty of such a gigantic oak possibly tends to stifle the growth of nearby political saplings. It may be unfortunate for the party, and for Churchill, that any organization which he heads is soon reduced to the status of a one-man machine. Churchill has an inborn compulsion to run things with a high hand, and this trait was thought by many to have influenced his defeat after the war. The British, it is said, had tired of being driven on such a tight rein. If this is true, it would appear that Churchill’s basic force, his enduring desire to lead, is simultaneously a weakness, if a too disregardful exercise of it has periodically deprived the British, and the world, of his guiding genius. His relationship with Lord Woolton, the party chairman, is a source of entertainment to party subordinates. Churchill selected Woolton, who had formerly organized a chain of successful stores and has a brisk and commanding manner, and treats him with paternal firmness. Many people in the party are rendered half paralyzed by Woolton’s imperious presence; Churchill calls him “Uncle Fred” and sends him hopping on errands. Once, when both were traveling by auto to a campaign meeting, somebody asked Woolton what he planned to discuss. The chairman, who was perched up in front with the chauffeur, turned around and replied a little pettishly, “Oh, it doesn’t matter what I’m going to say; Winston is speaking, you know.” Bundled up in the rear seat, Churchill replied easily, in his modest way, “That’s right, Uncle Fred. That’s right.”
Around the House of Commons, Churchill is accorded the sort of deference that was given an eighteenth-century monarch. He usually arrives for sessions a little late, in his chauffeur-driven Humber; he gets out ponderously, chewing on a cigar, and goes into the smoking room. For all his public appearances, he “times” his cigars, to be sure they are not smoked down comically short. In the chamber, a special black leather chair is set aside for his personal use, and lackeys, watching carefully, rush him drinks when he raises one hand with a slight, regal gesture. He has never demanded servility, but the English, of both parties, take such pride in his record of accomplishment that they proffer it spontaneously. Simon Worthington-Digby, the Tory whip, says that Churchill is not necessarily approachable as he sits brooding in the smoking room. He does not encourage windbags to interrupt his thoughts, though he has never, to date, gone to the lengths of his father in hiring a House waiter to listen to the end of somebody’s anecdote.
For years, Churchill has refused to take the stipend provided for His Majesty’s Members of Parliament. Herbert Morrison, the former Labor Minister, was once sufficiently incautious, in a speech outside the House, to attack Churchill on the ground of absenteeism, “despite the fact,” he said, “that the Opposition Leader still draws his pay.” In making this statement, Morrison unwittingly called down upon his head some rare Churchillian thunder. Not only did he not accept his two thousand pounds a year as a Member, replied the patriarch, but he had never even taken the annual two thousand pounds to which he was entitled as a former Prime Minister. Morrison sent him an instant apology, in an open letter beginning, “My dear Churchill —” He received an unruffled answer from the accused, starting off, “Dear Lord President of the Council —”
In the venerable assembly, Churchill no longer provides the catalysis for Tory debate but leaves this strenuous job to his first lieutenant, Anthony Eden. During nearly any speech by the Opposition, Eden is up and down like a jack-in-the-box, quizzing, challenging, trapping the speaker. The Foreign Minister’s fiery actions belie his languid appearance that Americans have come to know from newsreels. It is regrettable, think several Tories, that Eden is content to accept his formal speeches from the hands of press workers in the party. Although Churchill composes and memorizes each address, Eden often delivers a vital statement while reading it for the first time himself. But in the debates he is the personification of energy, with a gift for caustic rejoinder. Alongside him on the front bench, Churchill sits listening, with a hand cupped to an ear, sometimes smiling, often growling, occasionally even chiming in without observing the rite of arising. There is nothing very ritualistic about Churchill. It is a custom for Members leaving the room to get up, walk away from the Speaker (presiding officer), and then turn and bow before disappearing. Churchill generally gets up and shambles out without a backward look,
and as likely as not will have a cigar in his mouth before he reaches the door With the other front benchers on both sides, he frequently sits on the base of his spine and puts his feet on the desk before him. At these times it is to be noted that he has a fondness for zipper shoes, ones that he created himself. In periods of disfavor, he has been known to doodle artistically, drawing designs and caricatures of his colleagues, and even making paper airplanes and sailing them into a hat.
A gauge of his popularity may be taken on the fete days, the sessions of unpartisan pride, of national rejoicing, when Englishmen band together to hail a good thing that is simply English. Churchill’s birthday may be counted as one of these. As he forges on past his biblical threescore and ten, bringing further honors to England, his birthdays become times of increasing acclaim. They are, perhaps, the only state birthdays ever informally evolved of a man still living. Then he is at his best in Parliament. The chamber is filled — with his allies and comrades and with men who the day before were attacking him without stint. Before he goes to the House, his habit is to enter Westminster Abbey, across the yard, where England’s mighty are buried. Beneath the banners of the dukes and princes, near the grave of the Unknown Soldier, not far from Pitt’s sepulcher, he says a private prayer. His appearance in the House, in the formal attire that he always wears there, brings a standing storm of applause and shouts of “Hear, hear!” Churchill tries to make his expression fierce, the look of the boy warrior of Malakand and Omdurman, the face of a fighter à outrance for more than half a century. But he is easily moved to emotion, and the tears roll down his cheeks as he bobs his head like a schoolboy.
England continues to cry hail to her man of heroic size, the last of the great statesmen, a giant among pygmies. In the words of his compatriot from Avon, “When comes such another?”
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[1] Author’s note: Churchill is not regarded as a cigar connoisseur by some of his friends. His favorite blend is half Havana and half Virginia tobaccos. However, he once cabled Rushbrook, “Kindly send another 1000 with slight variations at your discretion.” He smokes about sixteen cigars a day but actually consumes only a fraction of each.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 44