My Early Life

by Winston Churchill

  * * * * * * *

  Lilian, widow of my uncle the 8th Duke of Marlborough, the daughter of a Commodore in the American Navy, and very wealthy by an earlier marriage, had recently married in third wedlock Lord William Beresford. He was the youngest of Lord Waterford’s three brothers, each of whom was a man of mark. The eldest, ‘Charlie’, was the famous admiral. The second, Marcus, made a great place for himself in Society and on the Turf; and the third, ‘Bill’, the soldier, had won the Victoria Cross in Zululand. All my life until they died I kept coming across these men.

  Lord William and Lilian Duchess had married in riper years; but their union was happy, prosperous and even fruitful. They settled down at the beautiful Deepdene near Dorking, and bade me visit them continually. I took a strong liking to Bill Beresford. He seemed to have every quality which could fascinate a cavalry subaltern. He was a man of the world acquainted with every aspect of clubland and Society. For long years he had been military secretary to both Lord Dufferin and Lord Lansdowne, successive Viceroys of India. He was a grand sportsman who had lived his whole life in companionship with horses. Polo, pig-sticking, pony-racing, horse-racing, together with shooting big game of every kind, had played a constant part in his affairs. As a young officer of the 12th Lancers he had won a large bet by walking after dinner from the Blues Mess at Knightsbridge to the cavalry barracks at Hounslow; there catching a badger kept by the 10th Hussars and carrying it back in a bag on his shoulders to the expectant Mess at Knightsbridge, in an exceedingly short time, considering the distance. There was nothing in sport or in gambling about sport which he had not tasted. Lastly, he was an officer who had served in three or four wars, and who had in circumstances of forlorn hope rescued a comrade from the Zulu assegais and bullets. His opinions about public affairs, though tinged with an official hue, were deeply practical, and on matters of conduct and etiquette they were held by many to be decisive.

  Thus I paid frequent visits to Deepdene with its comfort and splendour, and I was never tired of listening to his wisdom or imparting my own. Always do I remember his declaration that there would never be another war between civilised peoples. ‘Often,’ he said, ‘have I seen countries come up to the very verge, but something always happens to hold them back.’ There was too much good sense in the world, he thought, to let such a hideous thing as that break out among polite nations. I did not accept this as conclusive; but it weighed with me, and three or four times when rumours of war filled the air, I rested myself upon it, and three or four times I saw it proved to be sure and true. It was the natural reflection of a life lived in the Victorian Age. However, there came a time when the world got into far deeper waters than Lord William Beresford or his contemporaries had ever plumbed.

  It was at Deepdene in 1896 that I first met Sir Bindon Blood. This general was one of the most trusted and experienced commanders on the Indian frontier. He was my host’s lifelong friend. He had come home fresh from his successful storming of the Malakand Pass in the autumn of 1895. If future trouble broke out on the Indian frontier, he was sure to have a high command. He thus held the key to future delights. I made good friends with him. One Sunday morning on the sunny lawns of Deepdene I extracted from the General a promise that if ever he commanded another expedition on the Indian frontier, he would let me come with him.

  I sustained one disturbing experience at Deepdene. I was invited, and it was a great honour for a 2nd lieutenant, to join a weekend party given to the Prince of Wales. Colonel Brabazon was also among the guests. I realised that I must be upon my best behaviour: punctual, subdued, reserved, in short display all the qualities with which I am least endowed. I ought to have caught a six o’clock train to Dorking; but I decided to travel by the 7.15 instead. This was running things very fine, but it was not until my journey was half completed that I realised that I should be almost certainly late for dinner. The train was due to arrive at 8.18, and then there would be ten minutes’ drive from the station. So I proceeded, much to the concern of the gentleman who shared my carriage, to dress in the train between the stations. The train was horribly slow and seemed to lose a few minutes at each stop. Of course it stopped at every station. It was twenty to nine before I reached Dorking. I nipped out of the carriage to find a servant on the platform evidently disturbed. I jumped into the brougham and saw by the speed at which the two horses were being urged that a serious crisis awaited me at my destination. However, I thought, ‘I will slip in and take my place almost unnoticed at the table, and make my apologies afterwards.’

  When I arrived at Deepdene, I found the entire company assembled in the drawing-room. The party it seemed without me would be only thirteen. The prejudice of the Royal Family of those days against sitting down thirteen is well known. The Prince had refused point-blank to go in, and would not allow any rearrangement of two tables to be made. He had, as was his custom, been punctual to the minute at half-past eight. It was now twelve minutes to nine. There, in this large room, stood this select and distinguished company in the worst of tempers, and there on the other hand was I, a young boy asked as a special favour and compliment. Of course I had a perfectly good explanation. Oddly enough, it was one that I have had to use on more than one occasion since. I had not started soon enough! I put it aside. I stammered a few words of apology, and advanced to make my bow. ‘Don’t they teach you to be punctual in your regiment, Winston?’ said the Prince in his most severe tone, and then looked acidly at Colonel Brabazon, who glowered. It was an awful moment! We went in to dinner two by two and sat down an unexceptionable fourteen. After about a quarter of an hour the Prince, who was a naturally and genuinely kind-hearted man, put me at my ease again by some gracious chaffing remark.

  I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it. ‘I have never been able,’ said Mr Welldon to me some years later, ‘to understand the point of view of persons who make a practice of being ten minutes late for each of a series of appointments throughout the day.’ I entirely agree with this dictum. The only straightforward course is to cut one or two of the appointments altogether and so catch up. But very few men have the strength of mind to do this. It is better that one notability should be turned away expostulating from the doorstep, than that nine just deputations should each fume for ten minutes in a stuffy ante-room.

  * * * * * * *

  In December 1895 there had occurred in South Africa an event which seems to me when I look back over my map of life to be a fountain of ill. Lord Salisbury had been returned the summer before with a Conservative majority of 150. He looked forward to a reign limited only by the Septennial Act. He set before himself as his main task the wiping out of Mr Gladstone’s disgrace in the Soudan when General Gordon was murdered, and his surrender in South Africa after our defeat at Majuba Hill. He proceeded upon both these courses with slow, sure steps and with the utmost cautiousness. He carefully fostered peace in Europe, and kept everything as quiet as possible at home. When Russian expansion in the Far East threatened the interests of Britain and the life of Japan, he was not above beating a retreat. He allowed the British China Fleet to be ordered out of Port Arthur by the Russians. He put up with the mockery which the Liberal Opposition of those days somewhat incongruously directed upon his pusillanimity. When the Olney Note about Venezuela – virtually an ultimatum – arrived from the United States, he sent the soft answer which turned away wrath. He confined his purposes to the British Empire. He kept the board clear for the Soudan and the Transvaal.

  In this latter sphere Mr Chamberlain was also active. The great ‘Joe’, having kept Lord Salisbury in power from 1886 till 1892, had been the spear-point of the attacks which in 1895 had driven the Liberals from their brief spell of office. He had at last decided to join Lord Salisbury’s new Administration; and the Colonial Office, which in Mid-Victorian times had been considered a minor appointment, became in his hands the main creative instrument of national policy. Lord Salisbury, moving ponderously forward towards the general
squaring of accounts with the Khalifa at Khartoum and with President Kruger at Pretoria, found in the South African business a reinforcing and indeed overriding impulse from the Radical-Imperialist of Birmingham.

  Apart from these personal and temperamental currents, the tide of events in South Africa carried everything steadily forward towards a crisis. The development of deep-level gold-mining in the Rand had in a few years made Johannesburg a recognisable factor not only in British, but in worldwide financial and economic affairs. The republic of Boer farmers, hitherto content to lead a pastoral life in the lonely regions into which their grandfathers had emigrated, now found themselves possessed of vast revenues from gold mines and responsible for a thriving modern city with a very large and rapidly growing polyglot population. A strong, capable and ambitious organism of government grew up at Pretoria. It became the magnet of Dutch aspirations throughout South Africa. It nourished itself by taxing the golden spoil which was drawn in ever-growing volume to the surface of the great Banket Reef. It reached out to Holland and Germany for European support and relationships. Behind all lay the unmeasured fighting strength of fifty or sixty thousand fierce, narrow, prejudiced, devout Boer farmers, constituting the finest mass of rifle-armed horsemen ever seen, and the most capable mounted warriors since the Mongols.

  The new inhabitants of Johannesburg – the Outlanders, as they were called – in whom British elements predominated, were dissatisfied with the bad and often corrupt administration of the Boer Government; and still more so with its heavy and increasing taxes. They proclaimed the old watchword about ‘No taxation without representation’. They demanded votes. But since their numbers would have swamped the Boer regime, and replaced the Transvaal sovereignty in those British hands from which it had been wrested in 1881, their rightful demand could by no means be conceded.

  Mr Chamberlain, with Lord Salisbury following steadily on behind, championed the cause of the Outlanders. On paper and for democratic purposes the case was overwhelming. But you can never persuade anyone by reasonable argument to give up his skin. The old inhabitants of the Transvaal were not going to yield their autonomy or any effective portion of it to the newcomers, however numerous or influential they might become. They intended by taxing them to procure the necessary means for keeping them in subjection. If the quarrel should come to actual fighting, President Kruger and his colleagues saw no reason why Europe should not intervene on their behalf or why they should not become masters of the whole of South Africa. They too had a good case. Had they not trekked into the wilderness to avoid British rule, with its perpetual interference between them and their native subjects and servants? If England could use the language of ‘the Boston tea-party’, the Boers felt like the Southern planters on the eve of the War of Secession. They declared that the long arm of British Imperialism, clutching for gold, had pursued them even into their last refuges; and Mr Chamberlain rejoined, in effect, that they were refusing to give civil rights to the modern productive elements who were making nine-tenths of the wealth of their country, because they were afraid they would no longer be allowed to larrup their own Kaffirs. Evil collision!

  Mr Cecil Rhodes was chairman and creator of the Chartered Company. He was also, with a considerable measure of Dutch support, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Dr Jameson was an administrator of the Company serving under him. Jameson – a man of strong and impulsive personality – had gathered a force of 600 or 700 men at Mafeking so that if the Outlanders rose in rebellion to gain their civil and political liberties, as they frequently threatened to do, he could if necessary, if Mr Rhodes were favourable and if the British Government approved, march rapidly across the 150 miles from Mafeking to Johannesburg and prevent needless bloodshed. Side by side with this there was an actual conspiracy in Johannesburg to demand by force the rights of citizenship for the Outlanders. No money was lacking, for the conspirators included the leading proprietors of the gold mines. In the main they were supported – though rather lukewarmly – by most of their employees and by the non-Dutch population of Johannesburg, which already in numbers exceeded the whole of the rest of the Transvaal. In 1895 a provisional government was formed in Johannesburg, and on December 29 Dr Jameson with 700 horsemen and two guns started out from Pitsani and crossed the Transvaal border.

  This event shook Europe and excited the whole world. The Kaiser sent his famous telegram to President Kruger and ordered German marines – who happened to be on the spot – to disembark at Delagoa Bay. Great Britain was censured in unmeasured terms in every country. The Boer commandos, who had long been held in readiness, easily surrounded Dr Jameson and his force, and after a sharp fight forced them to surrender. At the same time other large Transvaal forces quelled the rebellion in Johannesburg and arrested all the leaders and millionaires concerned in it. When the first news of Dr Jameson’s Raid reached England, his action was immediately disavowed by the British Government. Cecil Rhodes at Cape Town laconically remarked, ‘He has upset my apple-cart.’ Lord Salisbury invoked all the resources of his patient and powerful diplomacy to allay resentment. The Johannesburg ringleaders, having been sentenced to death, were allowed to ransom themselves for enormous sums. The Jameson raiders were delivered up by the Boers to British justice, and their Chief and his lieutenants were tried and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

  A strict inquiry was made under the guidance of the Liberal Party to ascertain what degree of complicity (if any) attached to Mr Chamberlain, or to Mr Rhodes. This inquiry took a long time, and in the end arrived at no definite conclusion; and the affair gradually died down. It left behind it, however, a long succession of darkening consequences. British reputation throughout the world had received a grievous wound. The Dutch hurled Cecil Rhodes from power in the Cape Colony. The British nation took the German Emperor’s telegram as a revelation of a hostile mood, and they never forgot it. The Emperor for his part, seeing himself completely powerless in the face of British sea power, turned his mind to the construction of a German fleet. The entire course of South African politics was turned away from peaceful channels. The British colonists looked to the Imperial Government for aid; and the Dutch race throughout the subcontinent rallied around the standards of the two Boer republics. The British Government gathered themselves together after their disastrous setback, while the Transvaal taxed the Outlanders all the more and began to arm heavily out of the proceeds. All the causes of the quarrel were inflamed, and their trial was referred to a far more important court.

  During this vivid summer my mother gathered constantly around her table politicians of both parties, and leading figures in literature and art, together with the most lovely beings on whom the eye could beam. On one occasion, however, she carried her catholicity too far. Sir John Willoughby, one of the Jameson raiders then on bail awaiting trial in London, was one of our oldest friends. In fact it was he who had first shown me how to arrange my toy cavalry soldiers in the proper formation of an advanced guard. Returning from Hounslow, I found him already arrived for luncheon. My mother was late. Suddenly the door opened and Mr John Morley was announced. I scented trouble; but boldly presented them to each other. Indeed no other course was possible. John Morley drew himself up, and without extending his hand made a stiff little bow. Willoughby stared unconcernedly without acknowledging it. I squirmed inwardly, and endeavoured to make a pretence of conversation by asking commonplace questions of each alternately. Presently to my great relief my mother arrived. She was not unequal to the occasion, which was a serious one. Before the meal was far advanced no uninformed person would have noticed that two out of the four gathered round the table never addressed one another directly. Towards the end it seemed to me they would not have minded doing so at all. But having taken up their positions they had to stick to them. I suspected my mother of a design to mitigate the unusual asperities which gathered round this aspect of our affairs. She wanted to reduce the Raid to the level of ordinary politics. But blood had been shed; and that makes a different tale.


  I need scarcely say that at 21 I was all for Dr Jameson and his men. I understood fairly well the causes of the dispute on both sides. I longed for the day on which we should ‘avenge Majuba’. I was shocked to see our Conservative Government act so timidly in the crisis. I was ashamed to see them truckling to a misguided Liberal Opposition and even punishing these brave raiders, many of whom I knew so well. I was to learn more about South Africa in later years.

  Chapter VIII

  India

  THE time was now come for us to embark for the East. We sailed from Southampton in a trooper carrying about 1,200 men, and after a voyage of twenty-three days cast anchor in Bombay Harbour and pulled up the curtain on what might well have been a different planet.

  It may be imagined how our whole shipful of officers and men were delighted after being cooped up for nearly a month to see the palms and palaces of Bombay lying about us in a wide crescent. We gazed at them over the bulwarks across the shining and surf-ribbed waters. Everyone wanted to go on shore at once and see what India was like. The delays and formalities of disembarkation which oppress the ordinary traveller are multiplied for those who travel at the royal expense. However, at about three o’clock in the afternoon orders were issued that we were to land at eight o’clock when it would be cool; and in the meantime a proportion of officers might go ashore independently. A shoal of tiny boats had been lying around us all day long, rising and falling with the swell. We eagerly summoned some of these. It took about a quarter of an hour to reach the quays of the Sassoon Dock. Glad I was to be there; for the lively motion of the skiff to which I and two friends had committed ourselves was fast becoming our main preoccupation. We came alongside of a great stone wall with dripping steps and iron rings for hand-holds. The boat rose and fell four or five feet with the surges. I put out my hand and grasped at a ring; but before I could get my feet on the steps the boat swung away, giving my right shoulder a sharp and peculiar wrench. I scrambled up all right, made a few remarks of a general character, mostly beginning with the earlier letters of the alphabet, hugged my shoulder and soon thought no more about it.