Alone, 1932-1940 Read online

  And Winston, for reasons which reveal more about him than Bracken, enjoys the younger man’s company. Men who have done something with their lives interest him—indeed, they are the only men who do. He is particularly impressed by military men; any winner of the Victoria Cross is embraced, and when he meets Sir Bernard Freyberg, the New Zealand war hero, Churchill insists that the embarrassed Freyberg strip so that his host can count his thirty-three battle scars. Similarly, men who have amassed fortunes while he has struggled year after year with creditors, hold enormous appeal for him. That is part of Bracken’s charm.

  It also explains, in part, Winston’s fondness for Baruch, though Baruch’s appeal is broader. He is an American, he is Jewish, he recognizes the menace of an aggressive Germany, and Churchill is indebted to him for an extraordinary act of shrewdness and generosity. Winston was badly hurt in the Wall Street Crash three years ago. Had it not been for Baruch, however, it would have been much worse; he could have spent the rest of his life in debt. He is not a born gambler; he is a born losing gambler. In New York at the time, he dropped into Baruch’s office and decided to play the market, and as prices tumbled he plunged deeper and deeper, trying to outguess the stock exchange just as he had tried to outguess roulette wheels on the Riviera. In Wall Street, as in Monte Carlo, he failed. At the end of the day he confronted Baruch in tears. He was, he said, a ruined man. Chartwell and everything else he possessed must be sold; he would have to leave the House of Commons and enter business. The financier gently corrected him. Churchill, he said, had lost nothing. Baruch had left instructions to buy every time Churchill sold and sell whenever Churchill bought. Winston had come out exactly even because, he later learned, Baruch even paid the commissions.21

  Bracken can’t match that. Being British and in Parliament, however, he can serve his idol in other ways. In the House he is scorned as Winston’s “sheepdog,” his “lapdog,” or—this from Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin—his faithful chela, the Hindi word for minion. But uncritical admiration is precisely what Churchill needs. He is in the third of what will be ten years of political exile to the back benches. No other statesman in the country’s political history will have served so long a Siberian sentence, and he would have to have a heart of stone not to be grateful for Bracken’s steadfast, unquestioning allegiance.22

  Churchill may even be flattered by the stories that he fathered a son on the wrong side of the blanket. Those closest to him agree that he is undersexed; some suggest that the explanation lies in the promiscuity of his beautiful, wanton mother. The historian A. J. P. Taylor will reflect: “She moved from one man to another. And it’s possible, I don’t say this is the only explanation, that Churchill’s really almost extreme chastity was a reaction to his mother’s lack of it. There are other possibilities. He may have been weakly sexed biologically, or the explanation may have been psychological. He once remarked: ‘The reason I can write so much is that I don’t waste my essence in bed.’ ” Winston didn’t marry until his thirty-fourth year, and there is every reason to believe that he was a virgin bridegroom. Despite frequent separations from Clemmie, who disapproves of the lush Riviera and spends her holidays with the children at spartan resorts on the North Sea, or a hotel near Rugby, he has committed but one act of infidelity, at Golfe-Juan, on the Mediterranean, with a divorced, titled Englishwoman whose seductive skills and sexual experience far exceeded his. To one who cherishes his reputation for mischievousness, whispers that a fellow MP is his bastard may not be altogether unwelcome.23

  Bracken is one of his two most striking disciples. The other, in many ways Brendan’s opposite, complements him. Born in Germany of an American mother, Frederick A. Lindemann took his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1910, continued his scientific studies in Paris and Brussels, confirmed Einstein’s refinement of Planck’s quantum theory, and, as a member of the Royal Aircraft Establishment in the Great War, organized London’s kite balloon barrage. After the Armistice he was appointed professor of experimental philosophy at Oxford and recognized as one of Europe’s leading physicists. Now in 1932 “the Prof,” as everyone in the Churchill family calls him, has just published his Physical Significance of the Quantum Theory. His Oxford colleagues now believe that his best work is behind him; Professor Derek Jackson notes that the younger generation regards him “as more of a theoretical physicist devoid of experimental ability.” Churchill disagrees, and so will history.24

  Lindemann’s achievements cannot be impeached, but in his own way he can be trying. Even by Chartwell’s standards he is odd. Indeed, he seems to be everything Winston is not. Tobacco in any form is anathema to him. He lives largely on the whites of eggs and is a vegetarian and teetotaler, except when as a guest here, he bows to his host’s insistence that he consume exactly 32 cubic centimeters of brandy a day. He always wears a bowler, even on a warship or in the cockpit of an RAF fighter. His valet and secretary, Harvey, who drives his huge, unwieldy limousine, is his double, matching his attire of the day shirt by shirt, sock by sock, and bowler by bowler.25

  The Prof will follow Churchill anywhere. Winston’s motives for cultivating him are very different. Lindemann’s many talents include a matchless gift as an interpreter of science for laymen. In the words of Sir John Colville, Lindemann can “simplify the most opaque problem, scientific, mechanical or economic,” translating technical jargon into language which provides “a lucid explanation” and sacrifices “nothing of importance.” Churchill loathes scientific terminology. He never even mastered public school arithmetic. The Prof provides him with the essential facts when he needs them without disrupting his concentration on other matters. Like radar, Lindemann’s “beautiful brain,” as Churchill calls it, will prove worth several divisions in the struggle to save England from Adolf Hitler. Less than ten years from now he will arrive at No. 10 Downing Street with clear, accurate charts which, by replacing statistics, present displays showing England’s stockpiles of vital raw materials, the rate at which ships are being launched on the Clyde, the Tyne, and Barrow, and Britain’s production of tanks, artillery, small arms, and warplanes in terms the prime minister can understand with what Colville calls “infallible skill and punctuality.”26

  It is a measure of Churchill’s own accomplishments that he can inspire a man with whom he shares little except a common affection for Americans. The Prof has little use for others. Like many of his laboratory colleagues, he never applies the scientific method in judging society. He is in fact a snarl of prejudices. So profound is his misogyny that he has not spoken to his only sister for fifteen years. His sole recreation is tennis. He is a champion of Sweden, an achievement all the more remarkable because, to discourage women from regarding him as a sex object, he plays in the hottest weather wearing thick black ribbed socks and a heavy shirt tightly buttoned at the wrists.27

  This is not at all Churchillian, though modern feminists would regard Winston as a stereotype of male chauvinism. He opposed woman suffrage until Clementine converted him, wouldn’t dream of soliciting a woman’s advice on matters of national policy, and dropped the idea of writing an article for Collier’s on the prospects of a woman becoming prime minister of England because he thought the idea laughable. Nevertheless, he admires Englishwomen of his class and enjoys their company—provided, of course, that they are attractive and don’t attempt to discuss topics reserved for members of his own sex. As a man who reached his majority in 1895, when Victorian gentlemen never used the words “breast” or “leg” if ladies were present, he assumes that they are innocents who must be shielded from the brutal facts of life and that feminine beauty is unaccompanied by carnal desire.

  If Chartwell’s guest book is a reliable index, the only ladies who will be invited to lunch in Churchill’s heaven—with the one great exception of his longtime friend Lady Violet Bonham Carter, née Asquith—will be escorted, and even they will be required to confine themselves to smiling when their host makes a clever remark, nodding vigorously when he has expressed an op
inion, and expressing no opinion of their own. This is not sexist, however, because it also applies to gentleman guests. Winston means to dominate them and cheerfully acknowledges it; his own idea of a fine meal is to dine well and then discuss a serious topic—“with myself as chief conversationalist.” It isn’t even conversation; unlike Lloyd George he is a poor listener, has little interest in what others have to say, and, if he is not the speaker, withdraws into silent communion with himself while his interior monologue, the flow of private rhetoric, soars on. His daughter Mary will recall that “small talk or social chitchat bored Winston profoundly—but he rarely suffered from it, since he completely ignored it, pursuing his own themes.”28

  In London he will give those who disagree with him a fair hearing; two of his favorite aphorisms are “I would rather be right than consistent” and “In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.” But at Chartwell, with a pony of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, he is inclined to bully those who challenge him. And the fact is that few dare try. Lords Birkenhead and Beaverbrook could. Birkenhead—F. E. Smith before his ennoblement—would cross foils with Churchill and win as often as he lost. It is perhaps significant that F.E. became Winston’s best friend. And the man has not drawn breath who can intimidate Beaverbrook, the great press lord, known to the Churchills as “the Beaver,” who, when he first met Churchill in 1911, was plain Max Aitken, a Canadian upstart. During one visit here he declined wine with his Stilton. “Port is the brother of cheese,” his host said in lordly reproach. “Yes,” Max flashed back, “and the sister of gout.” But Birkenhead has lain in his grave two years, and Beaverbrook, though Churchill’s once and future ally, will seldom be seen at Chartwell in this decade. The feisty Beaver, for all his shrewdness, shares the almost unanimous conviction of England’s ruling classes that Winston—whom he calls a “busted flush”—exaggerates the emerging Nazi menace; like his fellow press lords he believes Hitler’s friendship worth cultivating and assures his readers—he will reassure them every year, even when the sands are running out in 1939—that “there will be no war.”29

  Lacking peers in colloquy, Churchill rules his table as an absolute monarch. His expression radiates benevolence, his arms are spread to embrace everyone there; then, having opened all hearts, he speaks of today’s guest of honor, usually an old friend. Then his visage darkens, he points a threatening finger, and all await the inevitable consignment of a transgressor—never present—to his doom. Today’s wretch turns out to be Thomas Babington Macaulay, who dared slander John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. The great duke’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandson thunders his verdict: “It is beyond our hopes to overtake Lord Macaulay. We can only hope that truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten the label ‘liar’ to his genteel coattails.”30

  Guests say afterward that the host is so fascinating they cannot remember what they ate. Political scientist and historian Harold Laski observes that many of them, in trying to remember all Winston’s mots, overlook the flaws in his reasoning. Other critics note that Churchill has no small talk, though as the American writer Virginia Cowles asks, “Why should anyone want small talk when Churchill is at the peak of his form?” Certainly no one here tries to stop him. Later, biographer Lady Longford will write that “his set-pieces were… so brilliant that few listeners wished to interrupt. Similarly, they recognized that he was self-centered precisely because he had an interior vision which must be brought to the light of day. They felt privileged to assist.”31

  Absolutely secure here, he can laugh at himself and encourage others to join him. “Megalomania,” he says, referring to his domineering manner, “is the only form of sanity.” He has just published a collection of his magazine articles under the title Thoughts and Adventures (Amid These Storms in the United States) and, as usual, he has sent copies to friends and acquaintances in high places. Opening an envelope bearing the royal crest, he reads aloud an acknowledgment from the Duke of Gloucester: “Dear Winston. Thank you for your new book. I have put it on the shelf with the others.” And he relishes and retells the story of how F.E., his adversary when Winston was the Liberal member for Dundee, set a Tory rally roaring with laughter by interrupting his speech to say: “I see from the Dundee Advertiser—I mean the newspaper, not the politician….” Like a man trying on neckties, he tests his phrases at lunch, watching faces to measure their effect. “An immense responsibility,” he ruminates, “rests upon the German people for this subservience to the barbaric idea of autocracy. This is the gravamen against them in history—that, in spite of all their brains and courage, they worship power, and let themselves be led by the nose.”32

  The last drop of brandy is gone. He gives the empty bottles a glance, not of regret, but of affection; he will paint them, he announces, and call the completed canvas Bottlescape. Through the meal his visage has been kaleidoscopic: somber, mischievous, bored, proud, arrogant, magnanimous, despairing, indifferent, exalted, contemptuous, adoring. Now it screws up, creasing his laugh lines, and he makes a crowing, expiratory sound in his throat—signs, as his friends know, that he is about to amuse them, perhaps with that odd brand of self-mockery to which British soldiers and parliamentarians alike turn in times of adversity.33

  They are right. He tells of taking his annual Riviera holiday without his valet. This, for a patrician of his generation, was a momentous decision. He had never even been on a bus or even seen the tube. In traveling alone he felt he was “striking a blow for equality and fraternity,” but misadventures plagued him all the way, and he describes each, relishing the details. His guests laugh; it is a good story. But it is more. Winston cannot get through the day without servants, and he assumes this is true of all gentlemen. It was true in his youth, but is no longer. Later Colville, his assistant private secretary, will ask leave to become an RAF fighter pilot. Winston hates to see a valuable member of his staff go, but it is a request he, of all men, cannot refuse. Alone together, “Jock” and Winston are equals; the first Lord Colville became a peer in 1604. The younger man, like Winston, is a Harrovian; his Cambridge college is Trinity; his club, White’s. Churchill, the quondam hussar, grandly declaims: “The RAF is the cavalry of modern war.” But he is shocked when Colville tells him he will first serve in the ranks as an aircraftsman, second class. Winston protests: “You mustn’t—you won’t be able to take your man!” It hasn’t crossed his mind that a civil servant earning £400 a year, about $32.30 a week, could hardly afford a valet.34

  Should his visitors include a guest of great eminence, Churchill will offer to show him round Chartwell’s grounds. Otherwise, he proceeds with his first afternoon activity: feeding his golden orfe, ducks, and swans. Donning a Stetson—if there is a chill in the air, he will also wear an overcoat—he heads for a broad wicker chair beside the goldfish pond, calling ahead, “Arf! Arf!” or “Yoick! Yoick!”

  They rush to greet him, though a servant, a step behind him, has what they want. Twice a month Frank Jenner collects a blue baby-food tin at the local railway station. Within, packed in sawdust, are maggots, the caviar of goldfish gourmets. Winston offers a lidful of maggots to the fish; when it is empty he holds out the lid to be refilled. Nearby a wooden box contains bread crumbs. These Churchill feeds to the ducks and swans.

  The feeding is an integral part of the Churchillian day. After it, he sinks into the wicker chair, dismisses his servant, and remains, companionless and immobile, for at least a half hour. A table beside the chair bears another weak Johnny Walker and soda, a box of cigars, a pagoda-shaped ashtray, and a container of long Canadian matches, useful in a rising wind. The squire of Chartwell prefers solitude here. Long afterward, servants will recall his reciting Housman and Kipling to himself, or reading, or simply staring out across the Weald, alone with his reflections, a great hunched figure whose cigar smoke mingles with the many scents of an English country home, including, in season, the fragrance of freshly cu
t grass.

  His interest in all creatures on his estate is unflagging. As a young Colonial Office under secretary he had been an enthusiastic hunter of wild game, but those days are past. Now he holds a kitten to his face and murmurs, “Darling.” It is true that he kicked a large tabby cat who played with the telephone cord when he was speaking to the lord chancellor of England, shouting, “Get off the line, you fool!”—and hastily telling the chancellor, “Not you!” But afterward he offered the cat his apologies, which he never extends to human beings, cajoling the pet, cooing, “Don’t you love me anymore?” and proudly telling his valet at breakfast next day, “My Mickey came to see me this morning. All is forgiven.”35

  In his reverence for all living creatures Churchill approaches ascetic Jainism. Butterflies are sacred. So are predators. He loses two Siberian geese to foxes, but when a fox trap is proposed, he shakes his head, saying, “I couldn’t bear to think of them being hurt.” Similarly, when a heron raids his ponds he merely covers them with wire netting, forbidding his staff even to scare the bird away. A sheet of frosted glass occupies one wall of the guests’ bathroom in a friend’s Mediterranean villa. During one of Winston’s visits there, he observed that the bathroom light attracted night moths, who, fluttering against the glass, were easy prey for lurking lizards. He winced and gritted his teeth when the lizards chewed up their victims, but vetoed his valet’s suggestion that the lizards be frightened away by tapping on the window. They were obeying a law of nature, he said, and ought not be punished.36

  When a black swan falls ill, he does not hesitate to summon the keeper of the London Zoo. A goat sickens, and Whitehall’s Ministry of Agriculture is consulted. Arriving home at 3:00 A.M. after a late session of Parliament and learning that there has been no afternoon feeding at the pond, he rouses a maid to hold a flashlight while he makes amends to his piscatorial friends. All this is vexing to the sleepy maid. She is relieved when a new secretary becomes an overnight heroine in Winston’s eyes. Something extraordinary has been happening to the fish. They are turning white and dying. Winston is stumped; so is his gardener. Then the girl pipes up: “I know what’s wrong. They have fungus.” Churchill gives her a lowering look. How, he rumbles, does she know? She replies that her parents have an aquarium. He asks: “And how do you treat it?” She answers: “You put in a salt solution and gradually the fungus drops off. If you act quickly enough they can be saved.” He does, they are, and during the healing period he drives up to London and consults experts at the zoological gardens in Regents Park. On his return he summons the young secretary. “Do you know what they told me?” he asks. “They said exactly what you said.” He beams at her. “Oh, I think you are a very clever secretary! You know what goes wrong with fish. Henceforth, you will attend them.” He is delighted, the staff is delighted. The feelings of the girl, who has been at Chartwell long enough to know that her other duties will continue, are mixed.