What transformed a delicate situation into a disaster for Churchill was that the prime minister was about to form a coalition government, his position progressively weakened by military setbacks and the breaking news of the shells shortage (and he himself weakened by news that the love of his life was to marry a close colleague). On May 20, 1915, Sir George Riddell saw Churchill at the Admiralty. “I am finished!” Churchill said. “Not finished at forty, with your remarkable powers?” “Yes, finished in respect of all I care for—waging war, the defeat of the Germans.”48 In forming a coalition (a move Churchill approved of), the incoming Tories made Churchill’s removal from the Admiralty the price of their cooperation, a dread fact that slowly dawned upon him. Thus Churchill was dumped from the War Cabinet and into the honorific post of chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an obscure and virtually powerless ministerial appointment. (“What is a duchy and where is Lancaster?” a newspaper photo-cartoon had Churchill asking.) His salary abruptly fell from £4,000 to £2,000 per annum, his reputation in tatters.
Lesser men would not have recovered from this apparent political interment, and it devastated Churchill. His answer was to brood and expostulate, but not to give in, and to seek redemption and solace through active service and a calming new hobby, painting. His family and friends worried for him—“I thought he would die of grief,” his wife said. His mother “was in a state of despair at the idea of her brilliant son being relegated to the trenches.”49 His enemies viewed his downfall with glee, believing it served him right for his egotism and overzealous management of the affairs of war rather than the affairs of state.50
Churchill’s fall was spectacular. Undoubtedly he was a scapegoat for Gallipoli, particularly unfairly because his dominant role ended with the initial naval attack. Kitchener had demanded it, the prime minister had sanctioned it, and British decision making was governed by the iron rule of collective responsibility. The prime minister was culpable, as primus inter pares, for weakness and inactivity and for allowing Kitchener to dominate military decision making (for example, repeatedly blocking conscription, a policy Churchill knew was inevitable). In the execution of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli operations, once the decision had been taken, the War Office was responsible for the campaign on land. Admiral Fisher, if indeed it was the case that he never liked the plan, kept quiet when he should have spoken up and came later to back it enthusiastically before withdrawing his support. But Churchill carried the can and, in the mind of many people, still does.
For some time he withdrew into his family, which had had to vacate Admiralty House and decamp to Cromwell Road, South Kensington, to live with Lady Gwendeline Churchill, wife of Winston’s brother, who was serving with the army in Gallipoli. At the family’s weekend retreat on a farm in Hascombe in Surrey, in “a delightful valley,” as Churchill wrote, with a garden that “gleamed with summer jewellery,” he first encountered the hobby that was to remain a major recreation for the rest of his life. One June day in 1915, he noticed Gwendeline sketching. This arrested his deep contemplation, and after studying her for a while, he borrowed her brush, and then her son’s paint box. He was a quick learner and soon produced a charming study of his sister-in-law in the cottage garden. Violet Bonham Carter saw Churchill at work and wrote that “as he painted, his tensions relaxed, his frustration evaporated. . . . I was suddenly aware that this was the only occupation that I had ever seen him practice [sic] in silence . . . rapt in intense appraisal, observation, assessment.”51
The question for Churchill’s restless mind was what to do next. His sadness and depression were profound, mixed with anger, sorrow, and frustration at remaining in government in a sinecure office shorn of all power to direct the war effort. After leaving the Admiralty, he was still a member of the War Council and the War Cabinet, though his counsel was unheeded. As he put it:
I knew everything but could do nothing. . . . At a moment when every fibre of my being was inflamed to action, I was forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front seat. And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue. . . . I do not know how I should have got through those horrible months from May till November, when I resigned from the Administration, had it not been for this great new interest.52
It is easy to see why painting captivated a man so completely possessed by his work as a politician and who found himself out of power and with “long hours of utterly unwanted leisure.” “One forgets utterly the work of the past or the worry of the future. . . . I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind.” His paintings were characterized by vivid colors, sun and stone, and greenery bursting from canvases capturing country scenes, garden days, and the color of travel, particularly in the Mediterranean.
But despite the superficial distraction of this newfound hobby, he remained wretched at heart. He did not get the Ministry of Munitions position when it became available, remaining resentful and depressed. As he wrote to his brother, Jack, “Is it not damnable that I should be denied all real scope to serve this country in this tremendous hour? . . . Asquith reigns, supine, sodden and supreme.” In November 1915, when the government officially abandoned the Gallipoli campaign, Churchill felt obliged to resign his Cabinet position.
Churchill was at a loss as to what best to do. His wife and mother fretted for him throughout the painful months of 1915, Clementine protesting fiercely to the prime minister. As his mother realized, Churchill craved danger in order to ease his own pain. He felt the urge to join the fighting in France, a yearning for catharsis through active service and revulsion at the prospect of sitting idly in the political wings following the Gallipoli debacle. Naturally, Churchill imagined that if he were to get into uniform, his talents would best be employed in a senior position. He hoped for command of operations in East Africa; General French all but promised him command of a brigade (though Churchill thought an entire army a more appropriate use of his talents). The prime minister, however, vetoed this unseemly elevation, which would have seen Churchill promoted from a Territorial Army major to a Regular Army brigadier general. This would have been wrong, even if Churchill’s own estimate of his talent was correct: an example of rank nepotism and the advantage of being a member of the ruling elite. But the episode greatly embarrassed Churchill and made him very angry with Asquith, and it was in no small measure Clementine’s influence during this period that persuaded him to temper his rage and keep lines of communication open with the man who was, after all, still prime minister. If ever Churchill entered the wilderness, it was surely now.
To the Trenches
Whatever one’s view of Churchill, it can hardly be denied that his decision to give up a position in the British government to go to the lethal environment of the Western Front was a remarkable and unprecedented act of courage. Churchill gave up his government post, and with it the remainder of his government income. He trained with the Grenadier Guards and was given command of the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. On November 18, 1915, he crossed the Channel to join his pre-1914 yeomanry regiment of the Oxfordshire Hussars, was met on the quay by a car, and taken to GHQ, where he dined with the commander in chief, General French. Though this was a reception based upon his status as a senior politician, he was soon sharing the trenches with the common soldier, observing, as he told the Commons in May 1916, “one of the clearest and grimmest class distinctions ever drawn in this world—the distinction between the trench and the nontrench population.”53 His home was to be “among filth and rubbish” and “graves built into the defenses and scattered about promiscuously,” as he told Clementine.54 Despite the extreme danger of the Western Front, Churchill was not one to suffer discomforts if they could possibly be moderated. He sent letters to Clementine requesting specific items—a periscope, a sheepskin sleeping bag, a leather waistcoat, face towels, sardines, chocolate, and a big beefsteak pie. Brandy, cigars, and a tin bath with copper boiler followed. A “most divine and glorious sleeping bag has arrived
,” he wrote, “and I spent last night in one long purr!”55 He took to life in the trenches like a duck to water. “I am very happy here,” he wrote to Clementine, “I did not know what release from care meant.” On November 23, he wrote that he had “lost all interest in the outer world and no longer worry about it or its stupid newspapers.”
It was not, however, to be a release that lasted for long. His letters show that he was still self-absorbed and yearning for a return to political power, and he was not convincing when he wrote of “fate” or of being a small player in an enormous game, especially given that he had struggled so hard to reach the heights of British political life. There had been a lot of speculation about whether Churchill was to get a brigade or a battalion. General French was adamant that he should have a brigade at once; Clementine wrote, “I hope so much my Darling that you may still decide to take a battalion first,” ever a brake on her husband’s overweening ambition and always seeking to mediate the way in which others would perceive his actions.
Churchill remained bullish, intent on rejoining the political fray as soon as he could. He instructed his wife (in one of his more selfish passages) to “keep in touch with Curzon & others. Don’t fail to keep the threads in your fingers. Let me know who you see.” He insisted that Clementine marshal her social contacts in order to benefit him, even to the extent of decreeing how she was to conduct herself in the company of certain key individuals. On Asquith: “Make no change except a greater reserve about me & my affairs”; on January 13, 1916, after Clementine had met the maligned prime minister, he complained: “You do not tell me in your letter what the PM said. You only say he said a lot. But I should like a verbatim report”; January 19: “I should like you to make the seeing of my friends a regular business.” But then a break in the clouds of ambition and self-absorption the following day: “I wrote a miauling letter yesterday, & I expect the Kat will be flustered by my directives to her to keep in touch with so many people. Do only what comes easily & naturally to you my darling.”57
He fulminated against Kitchener and Asquith: “My scorn for Kitchener is intense. If they evacuate [Gallipoli] in disaster—all the facts shall come out. They will be incredible to the world. The reckoning will be heavy & I shall make sure it is exacted” (December 8). Churchill cast himself and the actions in which he played a part in a dramatic, almost heroic light. His letters reveal the extent of his hurt, as well as his self-obsession. On December 15, he wrote that “the hour of Asquith’s punishment & Kitchener’s exposure draws near. The wretched men have nearly wrecked our chances. It may fall for me to strike the blow. I shall do so without compunction.” But, at that moment, this wounded beast was a soldier sitting in a muddy trench, no longer a man in power. Meanwhile, the men in power could thwart him, even ignore him; though he felt sure that command of the 56th Brigade was coming his way, Asquith would have none of it.
Despite his unbalanced state of mind at this juncture, Churchill’s politically skilled wife encouraged him not to burn bridges and, specifically, in hoping for an eventual renovation of his ministerial career, to write “private interesting friendly letters” to Asquith. Clementine helped Churchill curb his excesses and corrected his sometimes defective political antennae. He appreciated this, even though he never gave up believing that on most things—no matter how they turned out—he was right, and believing that his impatience and impetuosity (while sometimes damaging) were fundamental to his success. On January 7, 1916, he told Clementine that “the beauty and strength of your character, & the sagacity of your judgment are more realized by me every day. I ought to have followed yr counsels in my days of prosperity. Only sometimes they are too negative. I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes.”57 During this dark period in Churchill’s life, he managed to deal with (and limit) the extent of his personal frustration and hurt in order to perform as an officer to the satisfaction of those who served with him. This was all the more remarkable given the frightening and dangerous circumstances. He also retained a vital sense of perspective. On April 10, he added a “pps” to his letter to Clementine: “I must reopen my letter to tell you that quite a good mouse has also paid me a visit just now. I have been watching the little beast reconnoitring the floor of this cave with the utmost skill daring & composure.”
While it did not disappear, Churchill’s great resentment receded as he knuckled down to soldiering. On February 13, 1916, he reminisced in a letter to Clementine on the time a mere year ago “when all was hope at the Dardanelles & I looked forward to a very wide sphere of triumphant activity. Everything is changed now—only the old block [Asquith] continues solid & supine.” Churchill’s battalion was soon in the front line and, from an initial reception of suspicion and resentment, he quickly won the confidence and affection of his men. At first, the men were “naturally rather embarrassed at having a kind of large fish in a very small puddle” as Churchill put it, accurately if immodestly, in a letter to his wife on February 10, 1916. They were also, frankly, hostile. A “mutinous spirit” grew when the battalion heard that it was to have Churchill beamed in to run it.58 Yet, in a flash, Churchill changed morale to an almost unbelievable degree. Winning the affection of his men was no small feat and demonstrated Churchill’s ability to get on with soldiers and take his share of discomfort while demonstrating a high degree of personal bravery and genuine concern for the soldiers’ welfare. The soldiers were impressed by his indifference to danger and willingness to endure hardship, and he made thirty-six reconnoiters into no-man’s-land, “like a baby elephant” roaming at night in the deadly ground between the opposing trenches.59 Churchill impressed his men by his attention to their welfare, and to detail, such as his dissertation on the laying of sandbags, complete with illustrations. He deserves immense credit for switching from high office to nighttime raids on German trenches, showing rare qualities for a politician and a most impressive ability to adapt and suffer stoically. His battalion was stationed on the French-Belgian border at Ploegsteert (anglicized as “Plug Street”), and some early Churchill paintings record the scenery.
While encouraged by Clementine and friends to stay in the trenches for a suitable period, so as not to give his detractors the chance to label it a tawdry stunt, he was understandably anxious to reenter the Whitehall fray. As he wrote on January 6, 1916, “I do all I can with zest: but I must confess to many spells of emptiness & despondency at the narrow sphere in which I work & the severely restricted horizon.” He did, however, very briefly get “his” brigade; in early February 1916, the brigadier was away for a day, and so, as he wrote to Clementine, he was “in command of 5 battalions & 4,000 yards of front.” He was still a member of Parliament with political duties to perform. Never for a moment did he give up his appetite for politics and a role in directing the nation’s war effort. He was also desperate to clear his name of the stain of Gallipoli.
Even while in the trenches, he found opportunities to return to London and speak in parliamentary debates. Some he won, some he lost, as when he called for Fisher’s return to the Admiralty, a spectacular goal of his own. He had learned that there was to be a parliamentary debate on the naval estimates on March 7–8, 1916. His powerful speech wove its magic, growing in force, but the advocacy of Fisher broke the spell, and derision swept the chamber. Churchill was stunned and humiliated by the ridicule that followed and wrote to Clementine on March 13 that “you have seen me very weak & foolish & mentally infirm this week.” But he still hankered after “war direction.” As he reasoned on March 22, “I have a recognized position in British politics acquired by years of public work,—I cannot exclude myself from these discussions [about the war] or divest myself of responsibilities concerning them.” He was, he wrote, “so devoured by egoism,” not so surprising a trait for an elite politician to possess, and at least Churchill recognized it.
Clementine, meanwhile, though understanding his ambition and motivation to leave the army and return to the political fray, knew that acting so precipitately would
further damage his reputation. She urged him not “to lose your soldier’s halo, which if you keep it is unique & different from all the others. . . . You will be held in people’s hearts & in their respect. I have no originality or brilliancy but I feel within me the power to help you now if you will let me” (April 6, 1916). Churchill continued to exhort her, not always politely, to help him by keeping in touch with important people. As he wrote four days later, “Now mind in these critical days you keep in touch with my circle.” Again, Clementine cautioned him, writing on April 12, 1916, that “the government may not be strong enough to beat the Germans, but they are powerful enough to do you in, and pray God you do not give the heartless brutes the chance. . . . For once I pray be patient.”
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