The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (52 page)

Churchill’s impressions of the dervish rout were melodramatic because he was, and always would be, a romantic. In this he was a man of his time. He was no more persuaded of war’s ennobling virtues than Sir Henry Newbolt or Tennyson in
Maud
(“… hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!”), or Thomas Hughes.
Fighting,
to Hughes, was one of the most honorable words in the language, “the real, highest, honestest business of every son of man.” As late as August 24, 1914, when the British cavalry flung itself against a sleet of German bullets, John Buchan felt exalted. He knew that this suicidal act was “as futile and gallant as any other like attempt in history on unbroken infantry and guns in position. But it proved to the world that the spirit which inspired the Light Brigade at Balaclava… was still alive in the cavalry of today.” Somehow carnage had been transformed by concepts of Saint George, the Holy Grail, and “playing the game,” as though butchery were a manlier form of rugby. “Victorian and Edwardian chivalry,” Mark Girouard notes, “produced its own world of myth and legend, just as much as medieval chivalry.”
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Young Winston had fallen under this dark enchantment, and he would never be entirely free of it. But even at Omdurman he was his own man, undazzled by rank and quick to accuse those who betrayed the code of honor, which, he realized, must be observed by all or none. Kitchener soon discovered this. Despite his lordly bearing and his impeccable guardsman’s mustache, the Sirdar was a man of primitive, inclement instincts. On his orders the Mahdi’s tomb was desecrated, the corpse ripped from its shroud, and the head lopped off and dumped in a kerosene can to be “preserved for future disposal”—an official phrase which, the outraged Churchill wrote, could only be interpreted as meaning that it would be “passed from hand to hand till it reached Cairo,” where it would be treated as “an interesting trophy.”
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Lord Cromer read this and had the gruesome relic sent back for reinterment. Kitchener seethed. Then Churchill found evidence of battlefield atrocities. He wrote his mother that the triumph had been “disgraced” by atrocities, and that “Kitchener is responsible for this.” Most of the guilty had been Egyptians and Sudanese fighting under the khedive’s colors, but some had been Englishmen. No blind chauvinist would have acknowledged that. Winston accepted it and wrote about it, and that took courage. “The sentiment that the British soldier is incapable of brutality,” he told his readers, “is one which never fails to win the meed of popular applause; but there are in fact a considerable proportion of cruel men in any army.” Kitchener now erupted. Winston wrote Hamilton: “I am in great disfavour with the authorities here…. Generally things have been a little unpleasant.” The Sirdar tried to punish him by putting him in charge of a band of sick camels limping wearily back to Cairo. Churchill tore up the orders, took the next launch north, and reached England in time to join the lancers’ triumphant London parade. A “general officer” testily wrote to the
Army and Navy Gazette:
“What is the position of Lieut. Spencer Churchill in Her Majesty’s Army?” Here he was, a subaltern with less than four years’ service, “acting as special correspondent here, there, and everywhere. Now, as a special correspondent he has, as a matter of course, to criticise general officers highly placed in authority and to influence public opinion. Can it be for the good of the Service…?” Even the Prince of Wales was offended. He wrote Winston: “I fear that in matters of discipline I may be considered old fashioned—and I must say that I think an officer serving in a campaign should not write letters for newspapers or express strong opinions of how the operations were carried out.” HRH said he now realized why the Sirdar “viewed your joining his force with dislike—it is I am sure merely because he knows you write, for which he has the greatest objection I understand—and I cannot help agreeing with him.”
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Winston was unruffled. This was one test for which his pathetic school years had prepared him. He knew how to stand alone. As for the controversy and evidence of his independence, he welcomed them; they would be useful in Parliament. At the same time, he was developing political acumen in other, subtler ways. Earlier he had missed the significance of the French troops on the upper Nile, but now, as Kitchener led a force there, he noted “rumours about Fashoda” in a dispatch and predicted that “the Battle of Fashoda will be fought in Westminster, that tempers rather than lives will be lost, and ink rather than blood expended.” And so it happened. Five days later the Sirdar confronted Captain Marchand and demanded he leave. Paris was furious, but the deputies were split by the growing Dreyfus crisis, and Théophile Delcassé, the foreign minister, ordered Marchand to withdraw. As compensation, the British generously gave France an expanse of Sahara Desert. That was how the Empire did things under Victoria, and Churchill would go to his grave believing that it was the best way, not just for England, but for all mankind. He could hardly wait to get his own hands on the reins of some of this vast power. The lancers’ charge had been less than forty-eight hours old when, itching to reach the hustings, he had written Jennie: “Arrange me some good meetings in October, Bradford & Birmingham. Sunny will help.” He was still obsessed with medals. After he had left Kitchener’s command, to the vast relief of both, he wrote a superior: “I naturally want to wear my medals while I still have a uniform to wear them on. They have already sent me the Egyptian one. I cannot think why the Frontier one has not arrived. Young Life Guardsmen on Sir B. Blood’s staff in Buner have already got theirs. Do try and get mine for me as soon as possible.”
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In Egypt he felt he had mounted another rung on his ladder to the House of Commons. He had even acquired a sort of vicarious wound. Having floated down the Nile with the Grenadier Guards, he had encountered a fellow officer in Cairo, a subaltern who had charged the
khor
with him and had emerged with a severe sword cut above his right wrist. A doctor, coming to dress the wound, said a skin graft would be necessary. Winston rolled up his sleeve. The doctor warned him that he would feel as though he were being flayed alive, and Churchill later recalled, “My sensations as he sawed the razor slowly to and fro fully justified his description of the ordeal.” At the end of it Winston was missing a piece of skin about the size of a shilling with a thin layer of flesh attached to it. “This precious fragment was then grafted on to my friend’s wound. It remains there to this day and did him lasting good in many ways. I for my part keep the scar as a souvenir.” One has the distinct impression that he believed that this, like his decorations, would win votes.
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Ironically, he had overlooked his greatest achievement on the Nile, a propitious sign of what was to come. It lay in the sinew of his dispatches. His mastery of the language was growing. The fruits of his formal schooling had been negligible. He had entered the army an ignorant youth. Now, less than four years later, his command of English distinguished him from every other correspondent in the field and won the admiration of readers accustomed to the finest Victorian prose. He had arrived in Bangalore without knowing who Sophocles was or what ethics were, yet he could write, speculating about the Khalifa’s men meeting Kitchener’s first storm of fire: “What must the Dervishes have heard? Only those who were with the Prussian Guard on the glacis of St. Privat, or with Skobeleff in front of the Grivica Redoubt, can know.” He could capture, as few writers can, moments of utter horror. Of a sergeant trying to collect his troop after the charge, he wrote: “His face was cut to pieces, and as he called on his men to rally, the whole of his nose, cheeks, and lips flapped amid red bubbles.” He described the abandoned battlefield as looking “like a place where rubbish is thrown, or where a fair has recently been held. White objects, like dirty bits of newspaper, lay scattered here and there—the bodies of the enemy. Brown objects, almost the colour of the earth, like bundles of dead grass or heaps of manure, were also dotted about—the bodies of soldiers. Among these were goat-skin water-bottles, broken weapons, torn and draggled flags, cartridge-cases. In the foreground lay a group of dead horses and several dead or dying donkeys. It was all litter.”
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As magnanimous to the enemy as he was rebellious toward his commander, he paid tribute to the slain Arabs:

The Prince of Wales, though he felt his rebuke justified, added thoughtfully: “Your writing a book with an account of the campaign is quite another matter.” Such a work, HRH said, would have his blessing, and he hoped Winston would “come & see me & tell me all about the recent campaign & about your future plans.” Then, revising his earlier advice, he observed: “I cannot help feeling that Parliamentary & literary life is what would suit you best.”
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Winston agreed, of course. And he was in a hurry. He had reached the odd conclusion that he was destined to die, like his father, at forty-six, that whatever he did must be done by 1920. He had already anticipated the prince’s literary advice and was at work on a new manuscript. Its working title was
The War for the Waterway
. He believed it would be ready for publication in a year, and he was right. What he did not anticipate was that he would be unable to read the reviews, because by then, still racing the calendar, he would be a prisoner of war in another part of Africa.

B
ack in England he was all business. In Rotherhithe, Dover, and Southsea he addressed cheering Tories. “To keep the Empire you must have the imperial spark,” he said. And: “To keep our Empire we must have a free people, an educated and well fed people.” And: “The great game will go on until we are come through all the peril and trial, and rule in majesty and tranquillity by merit as well as by strength over the fairest and happiest regions of the world in which we live.” Turning a room at 35A Great Cumberland Place into a study, he started the new book; then, taking a break, he finished his novel,
Savrola,
and sent the completed manuscript to his grandmother for comment. Duchess Fanny thought it had “much merit and originality,” but she noted shrewdly that the character based on Jennie “is a weak and uninteresting personality. It is clear you have not yet attained a knowledge of Women—and it is evident you have (I am thankful to see) no experience of Love!”
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Pamela Plowden could have told her that. As the daughter of Sir Trevor John Chichele-Plowden and granddaughter of a general, Pamela was eminently suitable for Winston, and he had written his mother that he thought her “the most beautiful girl” he had “ever seen,” but although they had been meeting and corresponding for two years now, their relationship was going nowhere. One has the feeling that Miss Plowden, like Eliza Doolittle, was ready for action and was becoming exasperated as she got only words, words, words. She as much as told him so. He admitted it and promised to “try and take your advice,” telling her that he had met a girl “nearly as clever & wise as you,” which meant “I rank her one above Plato.” Pamela, who plainly did not relish a comparison with Plato, at least not in this situation, accused him of lacking ardor, thus offering him a classic opening. But Winston was merely wounded: “Why do you say I am incapable of affection? Perish the thought. I love one above all others. And I shall be constant. I am no fickle gallant capriciously following the fancy of the hour. My love is deep and strong. Nothing will ever change it.”
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