May 6, 2013

WIT AND WISOM, FINEST HOUR 146, SPRING 2010

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Musing on fate and – mankind’s insignificance, the youthful Winston Churchill observed: “There are 13 million feathers on a dragonfly’s wing—yet it is but a mouthful for a bird.”

Richard Harloe sent us the perfect photograph to accompany this remark. “It was taken while talking to some young relations, fishing on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the world (5580 square kilometres, 2150 square miles),” Mr. Harloe writes. “A dragonfly landed on the tip of one of our fishing rods and a Carmine Bee Eater swooped on it. It seems quite a common fate!”

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THE CHARTWELL BULLETINS, 1935

“The digger sunk deeper into the mud and finally wallowed himself into an awful pit. It became necessary to bring four hydraulic jacks, which though they are quite small things and one man can handle them, can lift thirty tons. Then railway sleepers had to be sunk in the ground under the digger to make a foundation for these jacks, and as the jacks hoisted the digger, of course the sleepers sunk deeper.

“However after nearly a week the animal emerged from his hole and practically finished the job, though there is still a fortnight’s tidying up for five men. This animal is very strong with his hands but very feeble with his caterpillar legs, and as the fields are sopping, they had the greatest difficulty in taking him away. They will have to lay down sleepers all the way from the lake to the gate over which he will waddle on Monday. I shall be glad to see the last of him.” —WSC to his wife, 2 March 1935

CHARTWELL BULLETING NO. 7

Chartwell guide and CC-UK member Nigel Guest reminds us that 2010 is the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Churchill’s 1935 “Chartwell Bulletins,” sent to his wife to apprise her of happenings at their home during her absence in the South Seas.

Churchill despatched other “Chartwell Bulletins” from time to time before and after 1935, but these twelve were the most interesting and cohesive. We published them, together with footnotes by Sir Martin Gilbert and photos from Lady Soames’s personal albums, in 1989. Then, in 2001, we named our own newsletter the Chartwell Bulletin, and recent copies have contained short quotes from Churchill’s originals on their covers. Mr. Guest writes:

“I volunteer at Chartwell and assist with guided walks around the gardens and estate. During these walks I make extensive use of the Churchill Centre’s 1935 ‘Bulletins’ and The Churchill Centre’s modern newsletter. Some of the ‘Bulletins’ coincide with the actual walks. It adds a certain poignancy to the verbal pictures I try to paint.

“For example, it is easy to visualise the ‘mechanical digger’ (steam shovel) at work enlarging the lakes, with Churchill’s fabulous descriptions, giving the machine a human persona. I think his comment about Prime Minister MacDonald in Chartwell Bulletin No. 5 may have been prompted as he watched the digger from his study window: ‘Ramsay sinks lower and lower in the mud, and I do not think the poor devil can last much longer.’

“I appreciate Michael McMenamin’s ‘Action This Day’ entry in Finest Hour 145: 12-13, which provides further insight into 1935 and Clementine’s departure for the South Seas. Her voyage to the Dutch East Indies enables me to reference the story of the ‘Bali Dove,’ and the inscription on the sun dial in the Golden Rose Walk.* I think it would be a great idea to reprint the 1935 Chartwell Bulletins to coincide with this 75th anniversary year.”

Copies of The Churchill Centre’s 1935 Chartwell Bulletins, now rare, sell for between $25 and $80 on the used book market. See bookfinder.com.

*From Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (London: Cassell, 1979, 269-70):

…the most charming of her mementos of the East was a Bali dove, an enchanting pinky-beige little bird with coral beak and feet, who lived in a beautiful wicker cage rather like a glorified lobster-pot. He was a great pet, and would crou-aou and bow with exquisite oriental politeness to people he liked. He survived for two or three years, when, no doubt homesick for his enchanted island home, he died. Clementine had him buried under the sundial in the centre of the walled garden. Round the base are carved the following lines:

HERE LIES THE BALI DOVE
It does not do to wander
Too far from sober men,
But there’s an island yonder,
I think of it again.