The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (24 page)

B
righton, with its sea air, chalybeate springs, colorful architecture, and general atmosphere of freedom, was a distinct improvement on St. George’s, but Winston continued to play the imp. Any form of discipline still incensed him. The word
permissiveness
cannot be found in any dictionary of the time; as a concept it did not exist. Even if it had, Kate and Charlotte Thomson would have condemned it. They expected docility from their wards, and the record shows that they did not get it from their new boy; in his first term, when he passed his tenth birthday, his conduct was ranked twenty-sixth in a class of thirty-two. By the next term he was at the bottom, and there he remained. Charlotte Thomson wrote Jennie in her first report that “frequent absence from the schoolroom made competition with other boys very difficult.” His dancing teacher, Vera Moore, later depicted him as “a small, red-haired pupil, the naughtiest boy in the class; I used to think he was the naughtiest small boy in the world.” Even the indulgent Duchess Fanny, in whose Grosvenor Square home he spent holidays from time to time, wrote to Randolph: “Winston is going back to school today. Entre nous I do not feel very sorry for he certainly is a handful.”
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Yet the Thomson sisters treated him with kindness and understanding, and he began to respond. At the end of his second term they noted “very satisfactory progress,” and, after the third, “very marked progress.” He was first in his classics class and near the top in English, French, and Scripture knowledge. He began to enjoy school: “We are learning Paradise Lost for Elocution, it is very nice.” He was “getting on capitally in Euclid. I and another boy are top of the school in it we have got up to the XXX Proposition.” In French they were rehearsing “Molière’s
‘Médecin Malgré lui
.’ I take the part of ‘Martine.’ ” In Greek, he wrote, “I have at last begun the verbs in ‘μι’ of which the first is ‘ιστημι.’ ” He proudly wrote his mother: “I have got two prizes one for English Subjects & one for Scripture.” He even wrote Jack, aged six: “When I come home I must try and teach you the rudiments of Latin.” In later life he recalled: “At this school I was allowed to learn things which interested me: French, History, lots of Poetry by heart, and above all Riding and Swimming. The impression of those years makes a pleasant picture in my mind, in strong contrast to my earlier schoolday memories.”
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Collecting stamps, autographs, and goldfish, he began to share the interests of the other boys. He even tried sports—“We had a game of Cricket this afternoon, I hit a twoer, as the expression goes, my first runs this year”—though that didn’t last long. He was now reading every newspaper he could find, poring over accounts of the Belgian conquest of the Congo, the Haymarket riot in Chicago, the death of Chinese Gordon, the erecting of the Statue of Liberty, and, in Germany, Gottlieb Daimler’s invention of the first practical automobile. (These years also saw the founding of the Fabian Society and the Indian National Congress, both of which were to play major roles in his life, but London editors had dismissed them as insignificant.) In the spring of 1885 he was aroused by the uproar in Paris over whether or not Victor Hugo should receive a Christian burial and wrote his mother: “Will you send me the paper with Victor Hugo’s funeral in it?”
King Solomon’s Mines,
published during his first year in Brighton, held him mesmerized. He begged Jennie to send him everything Rider Haggard wrote, and was transported when her elder sister Leonie, who knew the author, took the boy out of school to meet him. Afterward he wrote Haggard: “Thank you so much for sending me
Allan Quatermain;
it was so good of you. I like
A.Q
. better than
King Solomon’s Mines;
it is more amusing. I hope you will write a good many more books.”
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The visit with Haggard, though unusual, was not unique; teachers and relatives were taking the restless boy off the school grounds on frequent trips. He saw what he described as “a Play called ‘Pinafore’ ” with Leonie’s daughter Olive, and, with Randolph’s sister Cornelia, heard Samuel Brandram recite
Twelfth Night
. Then came electrifying news. “Buffalow Bill,” he wrote home, was bringing his show to London; Bill was a friend of Clarita Jerome’s husband, Moreton Frewen, who owned a Montana ranch. Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee was to be celebrated the Monday after that weekend, and Winston was determined to see both of them. He wanted to come home to Connaught Place on Saturday and stay until Wednesday. The Thomsons discouraged him, explaining that there would be no place for him in Westminster Abbey and his mother would be far too busy to look after him. Predictably, Jennie agreed with the sisters; she rejected his first appeal. He wouldn’t give up: “I can think of nothing else but Jubilee. Uncertainty is at all times perplexing write to me by return post please!!! I love you so much dear Mummy and I know you love me too much to disappoint me. Do write to tell me what you intend to do. I must come home, I feel I must…. Please, as you love me, do as I have begged you.” Before she could reply, he wrote again: “Miss Thomson says that she will let me go if you write to ask for me. For my sake write before it is too late. Write to Miss Thomson by return post please!!!” In the end, his mother relented. A seat for him in the abbey was in fact out of the question—though Jennie had a good one—but he did see Buffalo Bill and all the rest. Thus it was that Winston Churchill stood among the cheering throngs on June 21, 1887, as the old Queen rode by, crowned by a coronet-shaped bonnet of lace studded with diamonds, her hands folded, her head bowed, her cheeks glistening with tears. Afterward Jennie and the Prince of Wales took him for a ride on the royal yacht, where he met the future King George V. It would be pleasant to report that his conduct was exceptional. It wasn’t. He was loud, he stunted, he showed off. Back in Brighton he apologized to his mortified mother: “I hope you will soon forget my bad behavior… and not… make it alter… my summer Holidays.”
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He feared a summer tutor. One tutor had spoiled a seaside holiday at Cromer, then as now a watering place on the North Sea coast; Winston had complained that she was “very unkind, so strict and stiff, I can’t enjoy myself at all.” But the reports of improvements in Brighton had lifted that threat. He was free to play, and in his choice of games we see the growth of his combative instincts. Once he talked Woom into taking him and his cousins to the Tower of London, where he delivered, with great relish, a lecture on medieval tortures. Pencil sketches of cannon and soldiers adorned the margins of his letters. His cousin Clare Frewen recalled in her memoirs that when the Churchills rented a summer house in Banstead, Winston erected a log fort with the help of the gardener’s children, dug a moat around it, and, with Jack’s help, built a drawbridge that could be raised and lowered. Then, she said, the children were divided into two rival groups and “the fort was stormed. I was hurriedly removed from the scene of the action as mud and stones began to fly with effect. But the incident impressed me and Winston became a very important person in my estimation.” Shane Leslie, Leonie’s son, remembered that “we thought he was wonderful, because he was always leading us into danger.” There were the fort struggles, fights with the village children, and raids on the nests of predatory birds. In Connaught Place he had converted the entire nursery into a battlefield. According to Clare Frewen, “His playroom contained from one end to the other a plank table on trestles, upon which were thousands of lead soldiers arrayed for battle. He organized wars. The lead battalions were maneuvered into action, peas and pebbles committed great casualties, forts were stormed, cavalry charged, bridges were destroyed…. Altogether it was a most impressive show, and played with an interest that was no ordinary child game.” It impressed Lord Randolph. One day he put his head in the door and studied the intricate formations. He asked his son, then in his early teens, if he would like to enter the army. In Winston’s words: “I thought it would be splendid to command an Army, so I said ‘Yes’ at once: and immediately I was taken at my word. For years I thought my father with his experience and flair had discerned in me the qualities of military genius. But I was told later that he had only come to the conclusion that I was not clever enough to go to the Bar.”
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On such slender evidence was so weighty a verdict reached. Winston was clearly ready for intellectual stimulation, and one might expect that he would have found it in the home of a lord who was also a member of Parliament and a charismatic MP at that. Instead, the boy’s mind was fired by, of all people, Mrs. Everest’s brother-in-law, John Balaam, a senior warden at Parkhurst Prison. British workmen in the nineteenth century, undiverted by mass media, often read deeply and thoughtfully. The family of Woom’s sister Mary lived in the coastal town of Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, and she took him there on holiday. It was the first time Winston had seen a humble English home. The experience was worthwhile for that alone, but the old warden, after holding the boy spellbound with tales of prison mutinies, produced a worn copy of Macaulay’s
History of England
. He read passages aloud; Winston listened, rapt, to the cadences of the majestic prose. Later in India he remembered those evenings in the cottage on the sea. He acquired his own Macaulay and, in his words, “voyaged with full sail in a strong wind.”
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Woom never let him down, but her health did. During the Christmas holidays at the end of 1887, while Jennie and Randolph were abroad, she contracted diphtheria, then a fearsome disease and often fatal. Dr. Robson Roose found two bad patches of false membrane in her throat and moved the two boys from Connaught Place to his own home. “It is very hard to bear—we feel so destitute,” Winston wrote. “I feel very dull—worse than school.” Duchess Fanny whisked them off to Blenheim, and Leonie telegraphed the news to their parents. Fanny, very much in charge, wrote to Randolph: “I fear you will have been bothered about this misfortune of Everest having diphtheria but she appears to be recovering & the 2 children are here safe & well.” Blandford (George) offered to take them into his London house. Fanny wrote: “They leave here & go to Grovr Sq tomorrow so you might write (or Jennie might in your name) a line to B for having had them here. It has done them good & I keep Winston in good order as I know you like it. He is a clever Boy & not really naughty but he wants a firm hand. Jack requires
no
keeping in order. They will stay at 46 till you return.”
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By January 12 Winston could write his mother: “Everest is much better—thanks to Dr Roose. My holidays have chopped about a good deal but… I do not wish to complain. It might have been so much worse if Woomany had died.”
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There seems to have been a tacit acceptance by the relatives of both parents that Randolph and Jennie were not really responsible for their children. As a consequence, Winston’s awareness of his grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins deepened; they move in and out of his early life like characters in a Pirandello play. Had his immediate family been more self-sufficient, he might have been less conscious of his Marlborough heritage on one side and his American roots on the other. Jennie, by now, was indistinguishable from the titled Englishwomen of her social circle. She had no interest in Buffalo Bill. But her sisters were vibrant with the U.S. chauvinism of the time. Jennie, a purebred American, had become indifferent to the fact. Her son was half American, was constantly reminded of it by his maternal aunts, and never forgot it.

Winston’s own illnesses, with one important exception, were normal for children of the time. He caught mumps (“My mumps are getting smaller every day the very thought of going home is enough to draw them away”) and, later, measles, which—to his mother’s intense annoyance—he passed along to her current lover, the dashing Austrian sportsman Count Charles Kinsky. The important exception was double pneumonia. All his life he would be plagued by recurrences of bronchial infections; his consequent indispositions would play a role in World War II. He was first stricken in his twelfth year, on Saturday, March 13, 1886. The danger was clear from the outset; Jennie and Randolph arrived separately in Brighton, and Dr. Roose, who kept a house there, remained by the boy’s side, sending them bulletins after they had departed. These survive. At 10:15
P.M
. Sunday he scrawled: “Temp. 104.3 right lung generally involved…. This report may appear grave yet it merely indicates the approach of the crisis which, please God, will result in an improved condition should the left lung remain free. I am in the next room and shall watch the patient during the night—for I am anxious.” Infection of the left lung swiftly followed. At 6:00
A.M
. Monday he wrote: “The high temp indicating exhaustion I used stimulants, by the mouth and rectum…. I shall give up my London work and stay by the boy today.” Then, at 1:00
P.M
.: “We are still fighting the battle for your boy…. As long as I can fight the temp and keep it under 105 I shall not feel anxious.” At 11:00
P.M
.: “Your boy, in my opinion, on his perilous path is holding his own well, right well!” Tuesday: “We have had a very anxious night but have managed to hold our own…. On the other hand we have to realise that we may have another 24 hours of this critical condition, to be combatted with all our vigilant energy.” By Wednesday the worst was over. At 7:00
A.M
. Roose scribbled: “I have a very good report to make.
Winston has had 6 hours quiet sleep
. Delirium has now ceased.” Later in the day he wrote from the Brighton train station: “Forgive my troubling you with these lines to impress upon you the absolute necessity of quiet and sleep for Winston and that Mrs Everest should not be allowed in the sick room today—even the excitement of pleasure at seeing her might do harm! and I am so fearful of relapse knowing that we are not quite out of the wood yet.”
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