First Lady

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First Lady Page 11

by Sonia Purnell


  Both Churchills now felt that Winston was being conveniently blamed for everything by everyone; indeed sometimes it was as if more firepower was being directed at him than at the real enemy in Berlin. His isolation – political and social – was complete. Many former so-called friends cut him off, and even Violet now deserted him in favour of defending her father. Those few still close to him at the time – and thereafter – believed that it was only his marriage that saved him from self-destruction; the darkness of his moods frightened them. For her part, Clementine feared her husband would ‘die of grief’, and yet even then she never lost her faith in his greatness.

  General Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay, who became a great Churchill favourite when Winston’s chief of staff during the Second World War, was convinced that only Clementine’s unbreakable loyalty preserved Winston’s ‘sanity’ in the First. The Dardanelles ‘experience had the most tremendous impact on him, an impact that people never realised’ and one which lasted in the back of his mind even after he became Prime Minister in 1940. Clementine, who had shared all his ups and downs, was ‘his rock during that terrible time’, Ismay believed, ‘because I cannot imagine what other comfort he could have had’.31

  In fact there was to be another comfort. The Churchills had been renting a country retreat, Hoe Farm near Godalming in Surrey, a rambling fifteenth-century house altered in the 1890s by the architect Edward Lutyens. With ten bedrooms and the numerous bathrooms Clementine insisted on, there was room for Goonie and her brood too (fortuitously, they shared the rent). One Sunday, desperate to lift his spirits, Goonie handed Winston one of the children’s paint boxes and asked: ‘Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people.’ It was love at first sight. The very next morning, Clementine rushed out to buy him his own paints, easel and canvas. For short intervals at least, Winston discovered he could escape his sorrow by throwing his energies and thoughts into what he liked to call his ‘daubs’. He became transfixed by ‘a wonderful new world of thought and craft’ and applied himself with childlike enthusiasm. Clementine ensured much praise was poured on his early rudimentary efforts, which pleased him no end, of course. Remarkably, he had never been to an art exhibition, so she took him to the National Gallery where he spent half an hour studying the brushstrokes in a single Van Dyck. ‘Grandmama had an appreciation of art,’32 says her granddaughter Edwina Sandys, one that she now tried to pass on to him. Later Winston would say that if it had not been for painting he could not have withstood the strain.

  Not only had Winston been kicked out of power, the Churchill household had also been shorn of its trappings – including a London base, a full Cabinet salary and the beloved yacht Enchantress. Asquith offered to let them stay on in Admiralty House, but Clementine’s pride would not allow her to accept charity from the man who had, in her view, sacrificed her husband on his own altar. Eccleston Square was still let, so the couple were without a roof over their heads in London. In early June they moved, albeit temporarily, to a large house belonging to Winston’s aunt Cornelia and her son Ivor Guest next to the Ritz Hotel.

  Domestic life had comforted Winston immediately after his downfall, but denied his normal refuge in work he now found the all-day commotion of rumbustious children overwhelming. His son Randolph, a beautiful child with golden locks and flashes of charm, was a particular handful, once pushing a nursery maid into a full bath in her clothes, and on a later occasion phoning the Foreign Office claiming to be ‘Mr Churchill’. Having endured parental coldness in his own childhood, Winston did not have the heart to punish him. Diana, too, exhibited a naughty streak, although she was generally shy and nervous. Unfortunately, Clementine seemed to lack both the inclination to coax her out of her shell and the strength to keep her children in order. Neither was there a Mrs Everest to provide firm but loving discipline; only a series of undertrained and underpaid nursery maids who left as soon as they could.

  This may account for why Winston spent many nights half a mile away with his mother at 72 Brook Street, Mayfair, a tall graceful Georgian house with arched windows and a much-admired interior designed more for photogenic dash than practicality. Jennie, whose home-making talents were now widely admired, wove a particular magic with fine rugs, furniture and paintings, a silver bedroom, flowers everywhere and the luxury of a seven-course dinner elegantly served. Tablecloths were banned from her marble dining table (a style swiftly copied by many a London hostess) and a maid would burn incense to complete the theatrical mood. Here Winston was the undisputed centre of attention and could escape the demands of family life. She has a ‘heart of gold’, Winston would say about his mother, hardly endearing her to his half-deserted wife.

  In mid-June, Clementine and the children went to live with Jack and Goonie at 41 Cromwell Road, their red-brick terraced house opposite the Natural History museum in South Kensington. Winston’s restless soul, though, could never be content with such hugger-mugger family life. He had been considering the possibility of returning to soldiering, and now resolved that if he was to be prevented from waging the war at his desk in London, he would fight it on the frontline. As his mother instinctively understood, he deliberately sought danger to ease his pain. He would take up his commission as a major in the Oxfordshire Hussars and rejoin his regiment in France.

  On 11 November 1915, after being excluded from the newly formed War Council, Winston wrote to Asquith resigning from his government post to place himself at the ‘disposal of the military authorities’. The announcement prompted his old sweetheart Muriel Wilson to write: ‘I just wanted to tell you how much I admired you for your courage.’ (It was one of several affectionate letters from his former amours over the years that highlighted the degree to which the women who had rejected Winston nonetheless continued to cherish him.33)

  The following Tuesday, there was a small farewell lunch at Cromwell Road, where the hall and landings were piled up with bags and military equipment. It was a family occasion, apart from Eddie Marsh and, more surprisingly, Violet and even Margot Asquith. Taking action at last, Winston was on good form, trying on his uniform and enjoying the rumpus. Eddie and Jennie, meanwhile, were blinking back the tears, the latter distraught that her brilliant son was being ‘relegated to the trenches’. As at any such gathering, the prospect of death was, of course, the ‘uninvited guest’.

  Unbeknownst to Clementine, Winston had already written a letter to be given to her in the event of his demise. Much of it concerned their finances – notably what to do about overdrafts and other debts. But he also wrote: ‘Do not grieve for me too much . . . On the whole, especially since I met you my darling one I have been happy & you have taught me how noble a woman’s heart can be . . . Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in Life, cherish the children, guard my memory. God bless you. Good bye W.’

  Yet despite the terrible likelihood of Winston being killed or maimed, Clementine remained admirably calm, organised, even cheerful throughout. She seemed fortified by an unshakeable conviction that Winston was preordained for greatness, and that this was merely another stage in his journey. Although thousands were being slaughtered by the day across the Channel, it was as if she were incapable of believing that her husband could become yet another casualty statistic. Perhaps her brave front was born more of necessity than delusion: she knew that when Winston was this low, she had no choice but to be ‘up’. Certainly, just a year on from her breakdown in Pear Tree Cottage, and despite all the trials she had endured since, her self-control and courage at such a moment was exemplary. She was now a woman with conviction; one who knew her worth in a true partnership. Violet’s star, on the other hand, was waning. She herself observed that it was Clementine who now commanded centre stage, while she was unable to have any ‘interchange with Winston’ that day. ‘Only the implicit passed between us,’ Violet wrote in sadness about the man she had loved and lost.

  Chapter Four

  I Believe in Your Star

  1915–16

  Major Winston Churchill arrive
d in Boulogne, northern France, on 18 November 1915 to be met on the quayside by a staff car. He was swept off to the champagne and hot-bath comforts of General Headquarters at St Omer, where he dined with his old friend and commander-in-chief, Field Marshal French. Such a reception befitted Winston’s former VIP status as a senior politician and his own sense of importance. But it sat uncomfortably with the new reality of being a middle-ranking officer bound for the trenches.

  He could have remained in the well-appointed Château de Blendecques, but both Clementine and Winston knew there would be little benefit for him in a staff post at GHQ, other than the obvious one of increased personal safety. Winston would never be happy doing things half-heartedly and in any case had a point to prove. So within a few days he was at the Front, with its stinking mud, bloated rats and rotting corpses. It was the first – and only – time in his life when he lived in discomfort, or cheek-by-jowl with the lower classes.

  The ducal grandson, former First Lord of the Admiralty and ex-nabob of the Enchantress, was now widely reviled at home and ankle-deep in the squalor of war. No major British offensives were launched during his time on the Franco-Belgian border at Ploegsteert (or Plug Street as it was dubbed by the Tommies), but it was a wretched existence all the same. During the unforgiving winter of 1915–16, when there were only eighteen rainless days in five months, it was impossible to get dry or warm. No wonder he took a pleasure in escorting visiting staff officers – often from his own exalted social circles – on tours of the trenches, where they would be splattered with mud, tear their pristine uniforms on barbed wire, and on occasion endure gut-twisting fear.

  Although they resented him at first as a privileged imposter, Winston’s men came to love him for his stoicism and good humour. His bedroom in a semi-ruined farmhouse was pierced three times by shells and his dugout obliterated. Snipers were a constant danger and there were terrifying night-time sorties into enemy territory. Yet he displayed to his men a fatalistic, almost romantic, attitude to the prospect of his own death. He also talked down the dangers to Clementine, at first absurdly insisting that it was all ‘a vy harmless thing’1 and there was ‘certainly nothing to complain about . . . except cold feet’.2

  This did not mean he intended to tolerate unnecessary hardships. He kept Clementine frantically busy with lists of urgently required (but often scarce) items, such as periscopes, sheepskin sleeping bags, small face towels, trench wading boots, leather waistcoats, big beefsteak pies and chocolate. Later came demands for brandy, cigars, fancy headed notepaper and a tin bath complete with copper boiler. Regularly thereafter she would send him hampers of carefully chosen delicacies, which he shared around his fellow officers, prompting raucous cheers for Clementine in her absence. Winston was, moreover, favoured by the personal support of French, who had written to Clementine to reassure her that he was going to do all he could to ‘take care’ of him.3 There is little doubt that he was one of the most cosseted officers on the Western Front.

  In fact, Winston reported on 19 November, ‘I am very happy here. . . I did not know what release from care meant.’ For Clementine, however, left at home to march alone, there was no corresponding sense of escape. Earlier that same day she had written: ‘Altho’ it’s only a few miles you seem to me as far away as the stars, lost among a million khaki figures . . . Write to me, Winston. I want a letter from you badly.’4 His reply was still deliberately defiant in tone; he claimed to have ‘lost all interest in the outer world’ and ‘its stupid newspapers’.5 As if needing to talk himself up, however, he added: ‘Do you realise what a very important person a major is? 99 people out of 100 in this great army have to touch their hats to me.’ Within a couple of days, the brave face was slipping altogether and he was struggling to conceal from Clementine either his private rages or his continued longing for renewed political power. Nor could he any longer keep from her the true savagery of conditions in the trenches, with ‘filth and rubbish everywhere, graves built into the defences . . . feet and clothing breaking through the soil, water & muck on all sides’ and ‘enormous rats’ creeping and gliding ‘to the unceasing accompaniment of rifle & machine gun fire’.6

  Recognising Clementine was his most loyal – perhaps his only – follower at home, he pressed on her the need to ‘show complete confidence in our fortunes. Hold your head very high.’7 Fortunately, she drew intense pride from Winston’s courage in willingly suffering such horrors; she also soon recognised that it was working wonders for his reputation. ‘Wherever I go I find people awestruck at your sacrifice,’ she told him.8 The Observer, for instance, was running articles about Major Churchill’s ‘blaze of glory’.

  His new ‘military halo’, as she called it, gave her a glimmer of hope for his future rehabilitation as a national figure and so, when not scouring London’s shops for his creature comforts, she set about what amounted to a ‘Bring Back Winston’ campaign. Long before the term came into use, Clementine was tirelessly schmoozing newspaper proprietors such as Lord Rothermere, editors including C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian, Cabinet ministers from Asquith downwards, and MPs and military chiefs even including General Hamilton. She sang Winston’s praises, pointed out his courage in leading by example, and duly reported back to him any positive reaction. She also kept a constant lookout for openings for Winston and tried to act on them. When she got wind of plans to create a minister for air, she immediately engineered a lunch with Lord Curzon (who was to become President of the Air Board) to suggest that her husband would be ideal for the job. ‘Oh my darling I long so for it to happen, & feel that it would except for the competition for the post inside the Cabinet,’9 she wrote somewhat optimistically to Winston.

  She also courted more amenable journalists, dealt with daily press enquiries and sent Winston all his cuttings – most of which were still unflattering, although Clementine reassured him that press hostility was not a major concern ‘becos’ the public is very fond of you personally’. She understood the potency of his celebrity – a quality so lacking in many of his powerful enemies. But she avoided giving much of herself away to journalists, even when they were agreeable personally. It was a policy she would retain for the rest of her life, granting few interviews and no in-depth ones. Around this time she wrote that she had ‘determined with great courtesy to hold all newspaper men at arms’ length’, in other words a safe distance from which they might regard her with ‘curiosity, interest & respect’. She believed that if she allowed them to ‘come closer’ they would ‘observe the flaws in my armour!’10 Understanding the dangers to a woman who projected herself in public, she still lacked confidence in her own abilities.

  Despite her exhaustive efforts, the restless Winston would issue her with peremptory instructions to ‘keep the threads in your fingers’, ‘let me know what you see’ and send ‘verbatim’ reports of relevant conversations with key players. On 19 January 1916 he ordered: ‘I should like you to make the seeing of my friends a regular business.’ Such commands were unnecessary and insensitive, and he later apologised for one particularly ‘miauling’ letter. She was already sending him regular bulletins on political events, discussions and plans; she attended the relevant functions and her diary was full of meetings and ‘reconnoitre’ sessions. She was, in effect, an early twentieth-century amalgam of special adviser, lobbyist and spin doctor, and became widely admired on the political circuit. The Labour man Ramsay MacDonald thought her ‘the queen of wives’ and Lloyd George considered her ‘charming and delightful’, as well as expert at ‘managing’ Winston.11

  Of course she did not enjoy Winston’s previous status or access to secret information. Women were yet to be given the vote, there were no female MPs, and when they visited the Commons to watch debates they had to do so in the Ladies’ Gallery, like cloistered nuns behind a grille. What Clementine could do was confined by her sex, but studying politics – and politicians – at Winston’s side had imbued her with a sense of the people who mattered and what to say to them. After seven year
s of being at the centre of power she missed the hubbub almost as much as he did. Indeed, there were to be times in her life when she hinted at regret that she felt she could not enter politics on her own account; that her sex unreasonably contained her. ‘I don’t believe that it is so difficult to be a statesman or a strategist,’ she told Winston a few years later. ‘All one needs is core common sense but to be born with trousers instead of petticoats!’12 Another time she mused about being ‘reincarnated’ so that she could ‘go into public life’.

  Jennie also wrote frequently to Winston, urging him not to stay in the trenches too long. She still invested much of her energy in her famous elder son, but at the Front he became unresponsive to her (and to Violet). His daily missives were to Clementine. During his rational moments he recognised that she was the one indispensable figure in his life; later he referred to her as his ‘vy wise & sagacious military pussy cat’.

  As well as managing her husband, Clementine was also once again running a household on too little money. Winston urged her not to deny herself reasonable comforts – and sent her £100 for urgent bills and later £300 for emergencies – but Clementine was otherwise making do on £140 a month, a great deal less than she had enjoyed at the Admiralty. Fortunately, Jennie came to live with them too, contributing £40 a month to the household kitty in the process, but money was tight and the family car was sold for the cash. Even so, Clementine made a point of showing generosity to others. For instance, she spent the princely sum of £25 on ‘a really beautiful Louis XV’ gold box as a thank-you gift for Winston’s ex-private secretary, Eddie Marsh, because nothing cheaper was good enough.

 

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