October 14, 2008

Speaking for Themselves:
The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill
by Paul Addison

A Book Review
(Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of The Churchills in USA), edited by Mary Soames, London and Boston 1999, 702 pages, illustrated.

In the fifty-six years of their married life Winston and Clementine Churchill were often apart. Winston was never content for long unless he was off in search of action and adventure, but Clementine too was affected by wanderlust. Sometimes it was she who set off for distant parts, leaving Winston at home. In 1935 she sailed away for a three-month cruise to the Far East aboard Rosaura, a yacht belonging to Lord Moyne. VE-Day found her in Moscow at the end of a tour of the Soviet Union. Whenever they were separated, Winston and Clemmie exchanged long letters, supplemented by occasional notes and telegrams.  Hence this remarkable edition of 800 exchanges out of some 2000 written between them, which opens with a letter from Mr. Winston Churchill to Miss Clementine Hozier on 16 April 1908, and closes with a note from Clemmie to Winston on 18 April 1964.

Mary Soames is a fine editor. Her unrivalled knowledge of the subject is complemented by literary and historical skills which are gracefully worn but highly professional. Through footnotes, linking passages and biographical notes she dispenses just the right amount of necessary or interesting background information. As she explains in the Preface, many of the letters have been published before, Clemmie’s in her own life of her mother, and Winston’s in the official biography. Nevertheless there is little sense of déjà vi. In bringing together both sides of the correspondence, and eliminating everything else, she has revealed as never before the inside story of a marriage that was also a great political partnership.

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It was, of course, a marriage of its time. In the wedding ceremony Clemmie promised to love, honour and obey. A capable and intelligent woman and a strong supporter of female suffrage, she sacrificed much of her own potential for a husband who never sought to disguise his egotism or his absorption in the masculine world of politics. For him, marriage and family life were one facet of a crowded existence; for her they were a vocation. Yet the marriage worked for a simple reason, tenderly and movingly expressed in the letters of both partners. Winston and Clemmie  married for love and the passing of time served only to strengthen the bonds between them.

By the time Winston began to court the beautiful Miss Hozier in the spring of 1908, he was President of the Board of Trade and a member of the Cabinet. Though his political career was advanced he was backward with the opposite sex and never likely to rival Byron or Casanova. In one of his earliest letters to Clemmie he wrote of his cousin Sunny: “He is quite different from me, understanding women thoroughly, getting into touch with them at once, & absolutely dependent on feminine influence of some kind for the peace & harmony of his soul. Whereas I am stupid & clumsy in that relation, & naturally quite self-reliant and self-contained.”

Clemmie had grown up in a rackety, adulterous family. Henry Hozier, Mary Soames informs us, may not have been the father of Clemmie or any of the five children who bore his name. Winston might be awkward with women but from Clemmie’s point of view this must have been a virtue: he was an honest and faithful husband whose commitment to his wife and children were never in doubt. The letters which passed between the two of them in the aftermath of Gallipoli, when Winston was in the trenches on the verge of despair and she was at home fearing every day that he would be killed, display the mutual devotion which enabled them to ride out the storms which afflict even the happiest of marriages. “We are still young,” Clemmie writes, “but Time flies stealing love away and leaving only friendship which is very peaceful but not stimulating or warming.” “Oh my darling,” Winston replies, “do not speak of ‘friendship’ to me: I love you more with each month that passes.”

Clemmie knew her place in her husband’s scheme of things, but it was a marriage that enhanced and enriched her life. “I love to feel that I am a comfort in your rather tumultuous life,” she wrote on their eleventh wedding anniversary. “My Darling, you have been the great event in mine. You took me from the straitened little by-path I was treading and took me with you into the life and colour and jostle of the high-way….Eleven years more and we shall be quite middle-aged. But I have been happier every year since we started.”

At the age of fifty Clemmie fell briefly in love under tropical skies with Terence Philip, a fellow passenger on her far eastern cruise. Her letters home, which showed how much time she was spending with him, might well have aroused the suspicions of a more jealous husband. But Winston either failed to notice or, perhaps, decided to take no notice. By the time Clemmie returned to England the romance was over and the marriage as strong as ever.

Winston and Clementine wrote for one another’s eyes only, dashing off lively and spontaneous accounts of a kaleidoscope of topics. Personal affairs predominate with news of children, friends and relations, births, weddings and funerals, and anxieties about money and health. It is fascinating to see the great historical events of the first half of the twentieth century transformed into the sub-plot of a family history. Mussolini, for example, turns up as a most charming guest at a tea party during a holiday visit by Clemmie to the ruins of ancient Rome. Readers are bound to be struck by the fact that Winston and Clemmie took so many holidays apart, writing from hundreds or thousands of miles away to explain how much they missed one another. Here perhaps, was one of the secrets of a long and happy marriage: they didn’t see too much of one another but allowed absence to make the heart grow fonder.

Clemmie was Winston’s most loyal supporter. Championing him through thick and thin, she never lost faith in his genius or the sincerity of his convictions. She was, however, a shrewd observer of politics with a mind of her own and acutely aware of the reasons why her husband sometimes aroused hostility and mistrust. A lifelong Liberal with a puritan streak, she sought to restrain the cavalier in Winston the adventurer, the gambler, the rip-roaring Tory, the boon companion of Beaverbrook and Birkenhead. Within a few weeks of his appointment as Prime Minister in 1940 she wrote to warn him “that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough sarcastic and overbearing manner….you won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness.” How far Winston was influenced by her is difficult to judge, but she was always to remind him of the importance of winning the trust of the puritan and respectable half of the nation.

There are many glimpses of Winston the statesman in this book but its real value lies elsewhere. It is easy to forget that behind the great ratorical performances and the epic historical works was a man of flesh and blood who shared the joys and sorrows of the rest of the human race. For anyone curious to discover what Churchill was really like off-stage this correspondence is the best possible introduction.

The idea that Churchill had no existence outside politics is a myth. In Speaking for Themselves we see him as a husband, father, friend, host, author, painter, bricklayer, film fan, and lover of good food and drink. Even in the Second World War he somehow found the time to read novels. His letters to Clemmie display a love and concern for his children, and an interest in their fortunes, that few top executives could match today. The Churchills were both a happy and an unhappy family, a pattern reflected, perhaps, in the mixed fortunes of the children as they grew up. Randolph was courageous and brilliant but rash and uncontrollable, a bull in the china shop of his father’s reputation. Sarah had a successful career on the stage but her emotional instability was a source of great anxiety. The first of a number of crises occurred when, to her parents’ dismay, she decided to marry the entertainer Vic Oliver. “Common as dirt” was Winston’s verdict after his first encounter with his future son-in-law.

Apart from his marriage to Clemmie, the other great turning-point in his private life was the purchase of Chartwell. Although it had its uses as a political headquarters, Chartwell awoke in him an ancestral love of the land. To Clemmie’s dismay, he poured a fortune into the reconstruction of the house and grounds, and costly experiments in farming. He wrote her more than a hundred “Chartwell Bulletins” full of enthusiastic reports on the creation of waterworks and rockeries and the fortunes of a menagerie of animals and pets. Here too he was a fond parent, building a tree-house for the children; and a benevolent country squire, intervening to assist “Mr. and Mrs. Donkey Jack,” gypsies who lived in a shack on the common land above Chartwell. But for World War II, Churchill would have abandoned politics, pulled up the drawbridge, and settled down to the delights of Chartwell. Or would he?

Professor Addison teaches at The University of Edinburgh, is an academic adviser to The Churchill Center, and author of the Farrow Award-winning Churchill on the Home Front (1992).

Editor’s Choice

Lady Soames was often asked on her recent book tour for her favorite letters in Speaking For Themselves. These are the actual portions of letters she quoted on the Diane Rehm radio program, broadcast by WAMU, Washington, D.C. on March 24th 2000. (The first two were written under the same roof, carried back and forth by Blenheim footmen.) A cassette of this excellent interview, including responses to call-in questions by listeners (including one by member Christopher Fortunato of Westlake, Ohio) is available from WAMU. Telephone (202) 885-1200.

From CSC (Blenheim, 12 August 1908):
My dearest. I am very well. Yes please give me a letter to take to mother. I should love to go with the rose garden.
Yours always / Clementine

From WSC (Blenheim, probably 13 August 1908):
My dearest – I hope you have slept like a stone. I did not get to bed till 1 o’clock….But from 1 onwards I slept the sleep of the just & this morning am fresh & fit. Tell me how you feel & whether you mean to get up for breakfast. The purpose of this letter is also to send you heaps of love and four kisses. X X X X from Your always devoted / Winston

From CSC (Kensington, undated, probably September 1908):
My Darling / Thinking about you has been the only pleasant thing today. I have tried on so many garments (all of which I am told are indispensable)….My tailor told me he approved of you & had paid 10/6d to hear you make a speech about the war at Birmingham – After that I felt I could not bargain with him any more….I long to see you again – Wednesday Thursday Friday 3 long days – Goodbye my darling I feel there is no room for anyone but you in my heart – you fill every corner –
Clementine

From WSC (Admiralty, London, 28 July 1914):
My darling One & beautiful  Everything trends towards catastrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared-up & happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that? The preparations have a hideous fascination for me. I pray to God to forgive me for such fearful moods of levity – Yet I wd do my best for peace, & nothing wd induce me wrongfully to strike the blow – I cannot feel that we in this island are in any serious degree responsible for the wave of madness wh has swept the mind of Christendom….My darling one…Ring me up at fixed times. But talk in parables  for they all listen. Kiss those kittens & be loved for ever only by me.
Your own / W.

From WSC (Hyde Park Gate, London, 3 October 1962):
Darling, I hope you are going on well & that we may come together again tomorrow. I have found it quite lonely & will rejoice to see us joined together in gaiety and love. Dearest one I place myself at your disposal & intend to take a walk in the park hand in hand.
With many kisses / Ever loving / W

From CSC (Chartwell, 4 July 1963):
My Darling, The Time has seemed long without you – I shall be on the door step to welcome you Home.
Your devoted / Clemmie

Lastly, Lady Soames was given the difficult task of selecting her single favorite letter from the book. She chose Clementine’s letter from London to Winston, serving in Flanders, 6 April 1916:

My own Darling,…If you will only listen a tiny bit to me I know…that you will prevail & that some day perhaps soon, perhaps not for 5 years, you will have a great & commanding position in this country. You will be held in the people’s hearts & in their respect. I have no originality or brilliancy but I feel within me the power to help you now if you will let me. Just becos’ I am ordinary & love you I know what is right for you & good for you in the end.
Your devoted loving / Clemmie