September 25, 2024

Finest Hour 201, First Quarter 2023

Page 44

By Michael McMenamin

125 Years Ago
Winter 1898 • Age 23
“I Believe in Myself”

Churchill devoted the winter of 1898 to writing his first published book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He finished it and sent the typed manuscript to his mother in early January. Clearly conscious that he was establishing himself as a writer, he explained to his mother that “The publication of the book will be certainly the most noteworthy act of my life. Up to date (of course). By its reception—I shall measure the chances of my possible success in the world. Although on a larger subject and with more time I am capable of a purer and more easy style and of more deeply considered views— yet it is a sample of my mental cast. If it goes down then all may be well.”

Churchill was also aware that he was creating the foundation for a career in politics. In this same letter, he told his mother what kind of man he wanted to be in politics:

In Politics a man, I take it, gets on not so much by what he does, as by what he is. It is not so much a question of brains as of character & originality. It is for these reasons that I would not allow others to suggest ideas and that I am somewhat impatient of advice as to my beginning in politics. Introduction— connections—powerful friends—a name—good advice well followed—all these things count—but they lead only to a certain point. As it were they may ensure admission to the scales. Ultimately—every man has to be weighed—and if found wanting nothing can procure him the public confidence.

Nor would I desire it under such circumstances. If I am not good enough—others are welcome to take my place. I should never care to bolster up a sham reputation and hold my position by disguising my personality. Of course—as you have known for some time—I believe in myself. If I did not I might perhaps take other views.

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Publication of The Story of the Malakand Field Force was the highlight of Churchill’s life in the winter of 1898, the first substantial public evidence of the foundation on which he was to create his occupation as a writer. Still in India, he thrived on press cuttings of the reviews and begged for more.

His greatest fear about the book proved more or less well founded. When he sent the completed manuscript to his mother, he explained that, due to his desire to publish before a competitor, Lord Fincastle, he could not proofread the manuscript himself because it would take too long to be sent to India and then back again to England. Accordingly, he requested that his mother ask his uncle, Moreton Frewen, to “undertake the work of revising and correcting” the manuscript.

In the event, Fincastle’s book came out before his, and Churchill learned a valuable lesson. When he received the revised proofs, he was appalled. Churchill’s 22 March 1898 letter to his mother recounts his misery at being betrayed by his uncle.

I add this letter to tell you that the “revised proofs” reached me yesterday and that I spent a very miserable afternoon in reading the gross & fearful blunders which I suppose have got into the finished copies….

I blame no one—but myself. I might have known that no one could or would take the pains that an author would bestow. The result, however, destroys all the pleasure I had hoped to get from the book and leaves only shame that such an impertinence should be presented to the public—a type of the careless slapdash spirit of the age and an example of what my father would have called my slovenly shiftless habits.

In retrospect, Churchill need not have been so worried. His book was well received, notwithstanding the many embarrassing typographical errors. Churchill was particularly taken with the review in the Athenaeum, which read in part:

Mr. Churchill may be only a reader of Burke and Disraeli, but in many passages these writers speak again, and the application of Burke’s style in particular to the affairs of war yields here and there passages worthy of Napier’s great history—the model of military literature.

100 Years Ago
Winter 1923 • Age 48
“As the Tree Falls, So Shall It Lie.”

As Churchill had done in the winter of 1898, he spent the winter of 1923 writing about his experiences in war. This time it was The World Crisis, his memoirs of the Great War. Having lost his seat in Parliament in late 1922, Churchill left England in December for the south of France, where he stayed for six months at the Villa Rêve d’Or. Twice during that time he returned to England for brief visits to supervise the remodeling of Chartwell, as well as to discuss aspects of his memoirs with naval officers he knew while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915. His primary source was retired Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Jackson, who had been Director of Naval Intelligence from 1912 to 1913.

During one of his visits to London, Churchill stayed at the Ritz Hotel and wrote to his wife: The week is passing very rapidly away and I am so busy that I hardly ever leave the Ritz except for meals.…I am practically through the book now and have nothing more to do except to read finally through the page proofs and alter commas and odd words. We have reached the moment when one must say “As the tree falls, so shall it lie.”

In February, the first volume of The World Crisis was serialized in The Times. J. L. Garvin’s review in the Observer called the book “a whale among minnows” that had sent Churchill’s critics “to the bottom by the whacks of his tail.”

75 Years Ago
Winter 1948 • Age 73
“I Am Much Settled Down and Very Glad To Be Here”

As he had done twenty-five years before, Churchill left England in early December for a warmer climate— this time Marrakech—to work on war memoirs, those of the Second World War. A letter to his wife on 18 December described his daily regimen:

I have been working very hard, rather too hard in fact. My routine is: Wake up about 8 a.m., work at Book till 12:30, lunch at one, paint from 2:30 till 5, when it is cold and dusk, sleep from 6 p.m. till 7:30, dine at 8….At 10 or 11 p.m., again work on the Book. Here I have been rather naughty; the hours of going to bed have been one o’clock, two, three, three, three, two, but an immense amount has been done and Book II is practically finished. I am not going to sit up so late in the future.

The painting has not gone badly but I only have these two and a half short hours of good daylight … .We have followed the same routine each day, but I think we shall go for a picnic on Saturday….

Generally I am much settled down and very glad to be here, and to feel that I have a good long spell ahead of me, away from the distraction of British politics, and the sense of gathering gloom in our affairs which oppresses me.

When out of office in 1923 with no political responsibilities, Churchill had had the luxury of taking a six-month holiday in the south of France. In 1948, however, having become Leader of the Opposition, he could not do the same. He returned to London on 19 January to prepare a speech for the coming debate on foreign affairs. Speaking in the House of Commons on 23 January, Churchill could not resist reminding the House about his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946. While addressing the threat posed by the Soviet Union, he made this comment:

I was much criticized on both sides of the Atlantic for the Fulton speech, but in almost every detail, and certainly in spirit and in its moderation, what I there urged has now become the accepted policy of the English-speaking world. The language used by the Prime Minister and the Lord President of the Council about Soviet Russia, and about the dangers of a new war, exceed in gravity and menace anything which I said at the time, or, indeed, have ever said on this subject since the war.