The time for action was getting closer. Campbell-Bannerman had missed the opening of Parliament on January 29, 1908, and his heart disease was entering its final stages. Many assumed that he would be gone by the spring. As Asquith began planning a new administration, he discussed various possibilities with Churchill. In a letter of March 14, Winston explained that his own job preference was to head the Colonial Office. But, he added, he was increasingly concerned about social issues at home and was eager to share his ideas with the rest of the government. “Dimly across gulfs of ignorance,” he wrote, “I see the outline of a policy which I call the Minimum Standard.”
Churchill had in mind something like the reforms Beatrice Webb and her friends had been pushing for years. Winston called it a “network of State intervention & regulation,” which he hoped would give everyone in Britain a minimum standard of security in such areas as employment, housing, and old age pensions. This was heretical thinking for a politician who had left the Tories only three and a half years earlier. But it was the result of a natural progression, beginning with his experience in imperial methods of “intervention and regulation.” The more he contemplated reforming the empire, the more he was tempted to start by reforming Britain.10
But the difference between Winston’s position and that of many other radical reformers was his focus on the individual rather than the state. He had little sympathy for elaborate theories and intricate, coercive bureaucratic plans. The problem was to balance rights and responsibilities, and to find the acceptable “minimum” for government intervention. “There were some things,” he had said in 1904, “which a government must do, not because the government would do them well, but because nobody else would do them at all.”11
Some of Winston’s Liberal friends thought it strange that a former Conservative and son of Blenheim would suddenly take so much interest in making life better for the underprivileged. Charles Masterman—an MP who was Winston’s age and had already written a book about slum life, From the Abyss—was amused by Churchill’s passion for the subject. Joining him for a weekend in the country, he wrote afterward of watching Winston march “about the room gesticulating and impetuous, pouring out all his hopes and plans and ambitions. He is full of the poor whom he has just discovered.” Later, as they were talking at night, Churchill said without any apparent self-consciousness, “Sometimes I feel as if I could lift the whole world on my shoulders.”12
Violet Asquith yearned to discuss Winston’s latest ideas with him, but she was out of the country. She had become ill at the end of January with a bad cough and general fatigue, and Margot thought she needed a long rest to regain her health. So off Violet went to spend several quiet weeks at hotels in Switzerland and Italy. This separation was probably for Margot’s benefit as much as Violet’s. The strain on both was considerable as they waited anxiously for the moment when Asquith would become prime minister. Violet had begged to stay in London, where she could follow the latest news of old C.B.’s health. But Margot insisted that she go abroad, and Violet lost the argument.
To keep peace in the family, Asquith went along with the decision, but didn’t like it. He wrote Violet of his regret that she was “away in these trying & exciting times” and recalled fondly, “You & I have been through so many adventures together.” They kept in close touch through letters and telegrams, and Violet made a point of urging him not to forget the importance of bringing Churchill into the Cabinet. “Make the most of Winston,” she wrote.
“You need have no fear on W’s account,” he hastened to assure her. “He will be well looked after and provided for in your absence.”13
* * *
Winston knew how to provide for himself, and this time he took a step that would mean more to his life than joining the Cabinet. One day in the middle of March he went to a dinner party at 52 Portland Place, the London home of Lady St. Helier—a society hostess so determined to keep a steady flow of guests coming to her house that the novelist Edith Wharton called her “a sort of automatic entertaining machine.” She was an effusive character who loved bringing an eclectic mix of guests to her table, with the very famous seated among others who were simply very promising or very amusing.
She loved to watch as politicians talked to novelists, or explorers listened to art critics. Hundreds of guests trooped in and out of her house every year, and some may have chuckled afterward over a famous story told about their hostess. It was said, Edith Wharton recalled, that one day a cannibal chief was about to boil a captive explorer but changed his mind after looking closer at the man and exclaiming, “But I think I’ve met you at Lady St. Helier’s!”14
In Churchill’s official biography, the party that Winston attended in March is said to have been in honor of Frederick and Flora Lugard, and Winston is described as having been rude to Flora. Though Lady St. Helier was usually quick to defuse such situations, she didn’t need to intervene on this occasion because the Lugards weren’t there. They were six thousand miles away, in Hong Kong, where Frederick had been sent to keep him out of trouble. Flora didn’t come back to England until May and isn’t mentioned in the one written account of the dinner that has survived—a diary entry by Ruth Lee, the wealthy American who, with her British husband Arthur, owned the country house Chequers, which they later donated to the nation.
On March 15, 1908, Ruth Lee wrote, “We dined with Lady St. Helier and, amongst others, Winston Churchill was there. He arrived late, after we had gone in to dinner, and took the vacant place on his hostess’s left. He paid no attention to her, however, as he became suddenly and entirely absorbed in Miss Clementine Hozier, who sat on his other side, and paid her such marked and exclusive attention the whole evening that everyone was talking about it.”15
The twenty-two-year-old woman who captured his attention that night wasn’t rich and theatrical like Muriel, or political like Violet, or famous like Ethel. But she did have that air of mystery that Winston liked, and there was a touch of the exotic in her beauty. One admirer called her a “sweet almond-eyed gazelle,” and the rakish old poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was mesmerized by her when she appeared at a fancy-dress party wearing “a kind of Mermaid’s dress which looked as if she had no clothes at all underneath her outer sheath of crimped silk. . . . She is certainly a lovely woman with no small share of knowledge of the fact.”16
Clementine—or Clemmie, as she would always be known to Winston—was the granddaughter of the Earl of Airlie, but was one of his relations who had fallen on difficult times. Her mother, Lady Blanche, was—like Jennie Churchill—a spendthrift and a free-spirited woman with a long romantic history. She had four children, but it wasn’t clear whether her husband—Sir William Hozier—had fathered any of them. Suspicion later fell on a cavalry officer named William “Bay” Middleton as Clemmie’s father. In any case Sir William lost patience with his wayward wife, and the couple separated when Clemmie was only six.
Thereafter, Blanche and her young family lived a frugal but often colorful life in England and France. They frequently stayed in Dieppe and Paris, where Blanche enjoyed the company of writers and artists. James McNeill Whistler and Walter Sickert were two of the more important painters in her life, and both were impressed early on by the beauty of Clemmie and her older sister, Kitty. For a time Clemmie had a schoolgirl infatuation for Sickert, who once spent a day giving her a tour of his favorite museums and galleries in Paris. Her French was excellent, and by her early twenties she was earning a little extra money giving French lessons to English pupils.
Winston liked her unconventional background and her knowledge of France and its culture. They added to her romantic charm. He had met her briefly in 1904 but had been too much under the spell of Ethel and Muriel in those days to give her much thought. But now, in the candlelight of Lady St. Helier’s dining room, he suddenly discovered a radiance about her that he had failed to see before. She, too, saw something new in him. When they had met earlier, his immaturity and arrogance had stood out and left a poor impression
. Now he seemed less a boy and more a man.
Like Winston, she had also experienced disappointments in love. She was attracted to older men and had been engaged to two of them. The first was a lawyer and banker fifteen years her senior; the second was a civil servant almost twice her age. She seemed to be looking for a father figure, for there had never been an older male relative in her family capable of giving her the love and security she craved. Her only real parent was a restless and improvident mother. But her engagements didn’t work out. She had second thoughts about each man and abruptly ended the relationships.
Now one of her aunts was trying to get her back on track, and to bring her the renewed attention she deserved from society. This was her “Aunt Mary”—otherwise known as Lady St. Helier, who just happened to know everyone, and who specialized in surprising her guests with unexpected companions for dinner. Thanks to Lady St. Helier’s legendary hospitality, Winston found an empty seat waiting for him at Clemmie’s side, and he didn’t have to worry if he spent the rest of the evening ignoring the aunt in order to give all his attention to the niece.
* * *
On April 3, 1908, the prime minister lay in his bed at 10 Downing Street unable to go downstairs or to hold up a newspaper long enough to read it. His face was as white as his snowy thatch of hair, and his voice was weak. But he gathered enough strength that day to dictate a brief note to the king. It read, “Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman with his humble duty to Your Majesty submits his resignation of the appointments of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.” With difficulty, he leaned forward to sign it, and then said wearily, “That’s the last kick. . . . I don’t mind. I’ve been Prime Minister for longer than I deserve.”
Five days later, Herbert Henry Asquith—now, as expected, the new prime minister—asked Churchill to join the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, the department that dealt with industry, transportation, and labor. Though it wasn’t his first choice, and the ponderous title came with unglamorous responsibilities, Winston quickly accepted, and he thanked Asquith for showing confidence in him. At thirty-three he was finally taking his place in the Cabinet, and was the youngest to do so in almost half a century. John Morley—always cautious—advised his young friend not to overestimate the importance of his achievement. “At this stage,” Morley wrote him, “the department is not all; it matters less than the acquisition and accumulation of influence, authority and power in the Cabinet.”17
Margot took advantage of Violet’s absence to discover whether Winston could be useful to her. One of her jobs, as she saw it, was to protect her Henry from being stabbed in the back by his colleagues. She was worried that Lloyd George, who had been promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer, would one day become the Brutus to Henry’s Caesar. She intended to watch him closely, but first she wanted to test Winston’s loyalty, and his potential as an informant.
Out of the blue she asked Churchill to go with her for a drive to Richmond Park. The list of Cabinet appointments had yet to be released, but somehow the Daily Chronicle had learned the details and published them. Margot suspected the culprit was Lloyd George. She wondered if Winston knew anything about it?
Wisely, he professed ignorance, but he defended Lloyd George when Margot named him as the most likely source of the leak. That evening she sent a messenger to Churchill with a note explaining that she had done a little investigating and now had a strong case against Lloyd George. She said that Henry was “furious.” Would Winston help her, she wanted to know, by confronting Lloyd George with the evidence?
“Dearest Winston,” she wrote, “I am told Lloyd George dines with you tonight. I wish you wd speak to him & tell him quite plainly that the staff of the Daily Chronicle have given him away to 3 independent people. . . . Lloyd George’s best chance if he is a good fellow, wh I take yr word for, is not to lie about it. . . . I think you might [help Henry] & the Cabinet if you do this courageously.”
To emphasize the importance of his mission, and the confidence she was placing in him, Margot wrote melodramatically, “Burn this,” at the end of her note. (He didn’t.)
With such a request Churchill couldn’t win. If he played the part of her enforcer, he would offend Lloyd George. If he kept silent, he would offend her. At midnight he responded with a note, but sent it to Asquith instead of Margot, explaining that he had “broached the matter” with Lloyd George, who had denied any responsibility. To remove himself from the cross fire, he gently suggested that the prime minister solve the problem by talking directly to his new Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Not for the first time, Asquith was put in a difficult position by Margot’s fondness for intrigue. Lloyd George—though apparently guilty—was offended by her meddling, and angry that he had been exposed as the prime suspect. This was no way to start a new administration, and Asquith realized it was better to back away gracefully than to sink deeper into the muck of suspicion. “I accept without reserve your disclaimer,” the prime minister wrote his colleague, and deftly shifted the blame to journalists and their clever snooping. “The press in these days is ubiquitous, difficult to baffle, and ingenious in drawing inferences from silence as well as from speech.”18
Margot was proud of having given Henry a chance to admonish Lloyd George, and thereby to put him on notice that he was being watched. But then both Henry and Winston let her down by not taking a harder line against their colleague. It was a humiliating setback for her. She didn’t care that they were merely trying to avoid a nasty fight at an inopportune time. So she took to her bed—supposedly ill from “nausea and weight loss”—and stayed there for a few days, nursing grievances.19
In the circumstances Churchill was fortunate to have an excuse for spending the next two weeks away from London. As a new minister entering the Cabinet, he was required in those days to stand again for election. Given his great victory in 1906, he was optimistic that he would win the contest. He shared his feeling with Clementine Hozier, whom he had recently seen again. They had met at his mother’s home, and had enjoyed another long talk.
“I must say,” he wrote her on April 16, “I feel confident of a substantial success.” He was referring to the election, but he might just as well have been describing his feelings about her. He was hopeful, he said, that they would soon “lay the foundations of a frank & clear-eyed friendship.”20
XV
BEST-LAID PLANS
No one had ever seen anything like it before. Politicians often stood and waved from their open motorcars, but giving speeches from the top of a limousine was unheard-of. Most politicians would have considered it beneath their dignity—not to mention a risk to their safety—to clamber over the chauffeur’s compartment and stand on the roof as if on a giant soapbox. But there, in the middle of a Manchester street, was Winston Churchill addressing a crowd from his limousine perch, pounding the air with his fist just as he did in the House of Commons.
A crowd quickly gathered and soon filled the street from end to end, giving the appearance from above that Churchill’s car was anchored in a sea of hats. His words were difficult to hear, but the real object of this stunt was to project a certain image instead of his voice. He was the embodiment of spontaneity and originality, and was showing it by seizing the chance to turn a fancy piece of modern machinery into a stage for himself.
His critics weren’t surprised. To them, it was just another example of Winston’s reckless determination to make a spectacle of his life. And what was worse, claimed a hostile journal, he was polluting British politics with vulgar “American methods of electioneering.” But, in fact, even Americans were stunned when they saw the photographs of Churchill campaigning from the roof of his car. “Occasionally the motor car has been utilized as a platform from which to address gatherings,” observed a New York automotive magazine, “but it remained for Winston Churchill to discover the top of a limousine as a point of vantage from which to appeal to his hearers for support.”1
During the April by-election Winst
on often seemed to be the same height as the lampposts as he went aloft to plead his case at street corners. On one occasion his driver stopped in a neighborhood at midnight, and Churchill drew a surprisingly large crowd as he hovered in the misty glow of the lampposts denouncing the Conservatives and promising better days under the Liberals. His opponent once again was William Joynson-Hicks, whose campaign style was just as dull as before. While Churchill commanded the heights in the election battle, the Conservative candidate made speeches in front of posters with another bland slogan, “Joynson-Hicks This Time.”
But even though Winston was by far the more exciting candidate, he soon noticed that his rival was drawing crowds as large as his. The mood of the voters had shifted since 1906. Some had been disappointed by the cautious leadership of Campbell-Bannerman and weren’t sure that Asquith would do any better. Others were no longer concerned about protectionism, for Chamberlain—crippled by his stroke—had now been silent for almost two years, and the cause had lost its urgency. But the Tories were as eager as ever to revenge their defeat in the last election, and they were united in their desire to humble Winston.
He also faced a new foe whose campaign tactics were more unusual than his. Hoping to compel the Liberals to give women the vote, the militant suffragettes targeted Winston for defeat. They wanted to demonstrate their power to influence elections, and in this by-election involving a Cabinet minister, they saw an ideal opportunity. It didn’t seem to matter that Churchill was in favor of their cause. He had voted for enfranchisement in 1904 and was ready to do so again. Asked directly during the by-election whether he favored women’s suffrage, he declared flatly, “The claim of women to exercise the Parliamentary franchise cannot be disputed on any ground of logic or justice. . . . I have said that I may be counted on as a friend of the movement, and I expect that I shall be taken on my word when I say that I will do what I can to help when and as opportunities occur.”2
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