The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (65 page)

Churchill in 1904, when he joined the Liberals

I
t was Disraeli’s cynical conviction that “no man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.” Churchill had disproved that, but there were those who felt that he might have been a dash less abrasive, a shade more conciliatory, had he shared his bed. Unfortunately he continued to be an inept suitor. His romance with Pamela Plowden had died in Canada. His mother had entertained high hopes for their meeting there. “Pamela is devoted to you,” she had written him. His reply had been guarded, and Lord Minto, who had been their host, had written Jennie: “Everything seemed to me… platonic”; indeed, it was hard to imagine “any other feelings than those of Plato” between them. For Pamela, that was the last straw. Back in England, she managed to get engaged to two other men in a fortnight. She chose between them and became Lady Lytton the following year.
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Jennie wrung her hands. She told him that if he wanted a wife he must first propose. So he did—twice. First he courted the beautiful, twenty-four-year-old American actress Ethel Barrymore; he besieged her with notes and flowers, took her to Claridge’s for supper every evening after her performance, and, on July 13, 1902, entertained her at Blenheim. But Miss Barrymore, having faced the footlights since the age of fourteen, knew all the stagecraft of lovemaking. Winston had mastered none of it, and she gracefully declined his hand, explaining that she felt she “would not be able to cope with the great world of politics.” Next he wooed Muriel Wilson, a handsome young heiress. Privately he admitted that he was after her money. Perhaps she sensed that; after an automobile tour of Italy with her and another girl in Lionel Rothschild’s motorcar, he wrote glumly: “Nothing could exceed the tranquil
banalité
of my relations with M.” Halfheartedly he pressed his suit and she, to his evident relief, rejected it. She gently told him that she didn’t think he had much of a future.
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Part of his difficulty was inherent in his upbringing. As Lord Boothby points out, in their class “the sexes were completely segregated from the age of ten to twenty-two.” Yet Boothby, who shared that handicap, managed to find his way into a remarkable number of beds, partly because he genuinely liked women. Winston didn’t, at least not those outside his family. He was the kind of chauvinist feminists love to hate. During his bachelor days, he and Eddie Marsh, his private secretary, would arrive early at a party and watch each lady make her entrance. Recalling “the face that launched a thousand ships,” Churchill would ask, “How many ships do you think she would launch?” Marsh would hazard, “Two hundred ships, or perhaps two hundred and fifty?” Winston would reply decisively: “By no means. A small gunboat at the most.” He complained that the United States “is too cluttered up with women. They are everywhere. They control eighty percent of the country’s wealth. They wield enormous power—and they bully their husbands.” The only person to succeed in frightening him was the American Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, who always referred to him as “that dreadful man.” He growled that she was the least feminine woman he had ever met.
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But he was at a loss even with the mannequins of young Edwardian womanhood. He didn’t know what to say to them. The only subject which really interested him was himself. He knew none of the delicate moves that could lead to intimacy; for example, “peering down Pennsylvania Avenue,” as it was called—discreetly glancing down a girl’s décolletage to admire her breasts. In mixed society he was a combination of Wellington and Peel—“I have no small talk,” the great duke had said, “and Peel has no manners.” If Churchill felt cordial, he might ask a woman her age. Sometimes he didn’t even speak. In 1904, during a dance at Salisbury Hall given by Lady Crewe, Jennie introduced him to the lovely Clementine Hozier. Clementine said, “How do you do?” In her words: “Winston just stared. He never uttered one word and was very gauche—he never asked me for a dance, he never asked me to have supper with him. I had of course heard a great deal about him—nothing but ill. I had been told he was stuck-up, objectionable etcetera. And on this occasion he just stood and stared.” In the beginning, Violet Asquith, sitting beside him at dinner for the first time, found him equally uncommunicative. She wrote: “For a long time he remained sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. ‘And I,’ he said almost despairingly, ‘am thirty-two already.’ ” On reflection he added thoughtfully, “Younger than anyone else who counts, though.” Then, savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!” He burst into a diatribe about the brevity of life and ended: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glowworm.”
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Later Violet observed that his “inner circle of friends contained no women. They had their own place in his life. His approach to women was essentially romantic…. Their possession of all the cardinal virtues was assumed as a matter of course.” She, knowing how rare purity was in his mother’s set—they openly despised “middle-class virtue”—accused him of “innocence.” He was offended, but he was aware that his perception of girls was flawed; comparing himself to his cousin Sunny, he wrote: “He is quite different from me, understanding women thoroughly, getting into touch with them at once, & absolutely dependent upon feminine influence of some kind for the peace & harmony of his soul.” Later, after marriage, he developed a glorious dependence upon his wife, but outside his home he was never really comfortable in the company of women. One explanation may lie in his mother’s affairs. He knew of her relationship with the King, which appears to have resumed after his coronation. In one postscript he wrote her: “I have been reading ‘An English Woman’s Love Letters.’ Are all Mothers the same?”
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Certainly they weren’t in the lower classes. The nine-year reign of Edward VII saw vast technological advances, but the only sexual innovations were the brassiere, invented by Charles R. Debevoise in 1902, and the perfection of the Wassermann test in Germany four years later. Few could afford, or even knew about, the expensive Dutch cup. Contraception was largely limited to withdrawal or, for the unfastidious, such abortifacients as lead-plaster. Outright abstention was surprisingly common. Paul Thompson concludes that “the cumulative weight of three generations of Victorian puritanism, affecting the working classes directly through church and chapel teaching and indirectly through middle-class influence,” led to “striking self-restraint among young adults.” The average bride was twenty-six. One Englishwoman in every five did not marry at all, and those who did were often parsimonious with their favors. A pioneer sex researcher, interviewing Edwardian workmen, found them bitter about their wives’ unresponsiveness in bed. One wife, during the throes, kept reminding her husband not to forget to leave twopence for the gas; another chewed an apple during sexual intercourse; a third kept her clothes on (her spouse said, “It’s about as exciting… as posting a letter”); and a fourth, “a sad little man, complained that not only did his wife take no interest in the proceedings, but she also insisted on a regular emolument of sixpence per session.”
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The liberal recommendations of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce were ignored, and adultery still meant social ruin, but upper-class women, like their mothers in the 1880s—and often with their mothers’ advice—had learned to manage complex intrigues. In public they were angelic. On Sundays they joined the black-bonneted, black-robed processions setting off for church. Mornings they trotted through the park in their gleaming victorias, parasols held over their heads and, on the seat opposite, card cases and pink leather address books from Dreyfous. They might sneak cigarettes in bedrooms, but in sitting rooms they merely wiggled crochet hooks or perched sedately behind teapots, and in dining rooms, their lovely faces illumined by candelabra, they sat erect and decorative, their piled hair crowned by gems and their bare, magnificent shoulders arising from clouds of tulle. An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome. Silk stockings, carefully smoothed, went on first. Then she would rise in her chemise while her lady’s maid fitted the long stays of pink coutil, heavily boned, around her hips, fastening the busk down the front, anchoring the garters to the stockings and tightening the silk lacings. Pads of pink satin would be affixed on the hips and under the arms, to stress the narrow waist. Drawers came next, after which the maid would spread the petticoat in a ring on the floor, and the lady, now wearing high-heeled shoes, would step into it. Buttons would be buttoned, tapes tied; then she would dive into the massive gown of taffeta and tulle and stand rigid while the maid laced up the bodice. Jewels went on last: rubies at the waist, dog collars of rubies and diamonds around the neck, and the tiara on top. As she sailed forth from her boudoir, you would never have guessed how quickly she could strip for action.

Assignations depended on circumstances. Vita Sackville-West explains in
The Edwardians:
“The code was rigid. Within the closed circle of their own set, anybody might do as they pleased, but no scandal must leak out to the uninitiated. Appearances must be respected, though morals might be neglected.” The king’s mistresses had an easy time of it. No one would question a royal command, and few husbands, even in the aristocracy, were prepared to challenge His Majesty’s droit du seigneur. Indeed, some women wore, pinned to their blouses, the little watches he gave them, bearing a true lover’s knot of mauve enamel ribbon, and, on the back, the crown and the interlaced
E.R. VII
. “Of course I don’t
like
it,” they would say, “but it’s a good little timekeeper, and so I wear it.” Actually, HM’s watches gained, on the average, about an hour a day.
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Amants de coeur
of lesser rank had to be more discreet. Luckily transportation was slow; if His Lordship was off shooting partridge in September, or pheasant in October, or attending to fillies and paddocks, Her Ladyship could safely conclude that the coast was clear. It was then, after darkness had gathered, that a one-horse, rubber-tired brougham would draw up outside her private entrance and her lover, using the key she had given him, would stealthily enter. (It never seems to have occurred to them that the brougham and the horse, standing there patiently throughout the evening, or even the night, were a dead giveaway.)

They were lusty in bed and rapacious at table. Meals were enormous, beginning, typically, with ortolan within quail, a truffle within the ortolan, pâté de foie gras within the truffle—on and on, until the pallor of the exhausted diners reminded one observer of the Roman vomitoria. “Dinners,” wrote George Cornwallis-West, “were Gargantuan affairs… champagne, port and old brandy were the order of the day, or, rather, night.” No one shrank from self-indulgence, and all but a few disdained work. They played tennis and auction bridge, which was invented in 1904; they attended races, amateur theatricals, elaborate teas, private recitals, and on one occasion a private circus engaged by an imaginative host. Sackville-West quotes an elderly peeress who defended all this: “We lead the country, don’t we? People who lead deserve their privileges. What would happen to the country, I should like to know, if the people at the top enjoyed no leisure? What would happen to the dressmakers, if your mother had no more pretty frocks?” Then, defending the Victorian precept that ostentation was a form of altruism, the peeress added: “Besides, the country likes it. Don’t you make any mistake about that. People must have something to look up to. It’s good for ’em; gives ’em an ideal. They don’t like to see a gentleman degrading himself.”
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