Clare was sculpting in her studio when she received the news. Infatuated with her romance and seduced by the prospect of being able to sculpt the heads of both Lenin and Trotsky, she blithely abandoned the promised cruise with Birkenhead and Churchill, cashed a £100 cheque, purchased her ticket at Thomas Cook’s, bought a new hat, had her hair washed and cut, scribbled a few letters, hastily packed a couple of suitcases, and left the next morning with Kamenev for Moscow. Almost the entire Soviet trade delegation saw them off. Krassin, ever the gentleman, even presented her with a large box of chocolates tied up with a red ribbon.15 The only people she told in advance were Shane and her brother Oswald. ‘I’d rather she didn’t go,’ the latter confided to his diary, ‘but she has got “Bolshevism” badly . . . and I think it may cure her to go and see it. She is also her own mistress and if I thwarted her by telling Winston she’d never confide in me again.’ Shane also kept the secret and took the full brunt of Churchill’s anger during a massive family row over the escapade. ‘Clare’s in Russia with those filthy communists,’ he raged. ‘She’s mad, I tell you. Mad! It’s absolutely typical of Clare, but this time she’s really gone too far. I’ll not forgive her.’16
*
Clare’s stay in Moscow was an artistic triumph. In the freezing cold of a makeshift studio in the Kremlin she sculpted all the top Bolsheviks including Trotsky, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky, and even Lenin himself. The Soviet leader was taciturn but ventured the opinion that Russia’s greatest enemy was the sculptor’s cousin, Churchill himself. ‘All the forces of your Court and your Army are behind him,’ he pronounced, thus revealing a cartoonish view of British politics that was to bedevil other Soviet leaders as well. By contrast, Trotsky was flirtatious and kissed her hand. ‘Even when your teeth are clenched,’ he whispered seductively, ‘vous êtes encore femme.’ ‘I will tell them in England how nice you are,’ she replied. ‘Tell them,’ he murmured back, ‘that when Trotsky kisses he does not bite.’17
But socially the venture was a disaster. News of her departure quickly leaked out and, although aunts Jennie and Leonie loyally defended their niece, London society was scandalized. Clare’s return in late November was a press sensation. The Times, under the banner headline ‘WITH LENIN AND TROTSKY’, published daily extracts from the diary she had kept in the Soviet capital. ‘There is a certain piquancy in the mere event,’ it noted in an editorial, ‘which is not lessened by the fact that Mr. Churchill’s cousin is a lady, and that her sympathies appear to be rather with her Russian hosts than her kinsmen.’ This was true. ‘I love the bedrock of things here, and the vital energy,’ she wrote on the eve of her departure from the Soviet capital. ‘I am appalled by the realization of my upbringing and the futile viewpoint instilled by an obsolete class tradition.’18
For Churchill, the timing could hardly have been worse. It was barely two weeks since the Albert Hall had echoed with cheers at the image of him being hanged from a lamp post, so it was no surprise that she quickly received word that he would refuse to meet her. A similar message came from Birkenhead and others who rapidly ostracized her. Instead, new friends of a very different ilk came forward. Many were members of the ‘Hands Off Russia’ campaign, such as William Coates, its secretary, Cecil Malone, the Communist MP who had conjured up the lamp post image, her cousin’s nemesis George Lansbury, and William Ewer, the Daily Herald’s foreign editor. ‘I like my new friends,’ she noted happily, ‘I talk heart to heart and soul with them.’19 Early in the New Year, while Churchill was painting happily on the Riviera, Ewer and Lansbury took her out for lunch, and before the meal was over she agreed to sculpt Lansbury’s head. Yet the company and sympathy of her new-found friends was not enough to guarantee her financial future. She needed wealthy patrons. The London Times extracts of her diary had also appeared in the New York Times – Churchill family news was always good copy in the home of the Jeromes – and when she received the offer of a lucrative and all-expenses-paid speaking tour of the United States, she leapt at the chance.
*
It was this domestic wrangle and social scandal that, at 8 a.m. on the icy morning of 22 January 1921, brought Lady Randolph Churchill to the platform at Paddington Station, bidding farewell to her tempestuous niece as she boarded the train for Liverpool. As if deliberately flaunting her notorious Moscow escapade, Clare was wearing a Cossack hat and a Siberian ponyskin coat. As the family matriarch, Churchill’s mother was in protective mode. ‘If you are not happy,’ she said, putting her arm affectionately through her niece’s as they walked down the platform, ‘come straight back. You have a powerful family who love you and we are all here to open our arms to you.’ But she also offered a blunt admonition. ‘Remember,’ she wrote in a farewell letter, ‘that you are the nearest thing to a sister that Winston ever had, and apart from the embarrassment you can cause him when your unusual doings are associated with his name – he can be deeply wounded. So don’t do that again.’20
Clare was thankful for their loyalty. But she, too, was wounded and felt badly let down by her cousin’s refusal to see her. Although they were at loggerheads over Bolshevism, she genuinely admired his qualities of boldness and bravery. In Moscow, she had even discussed them with Trotsky and noted afterwards in her diary: ‘Winston is the only man I know in England who is made of the stuff that Bolsheviks are made of. He has fight, force, and fanaticism.’21 Why, she wondered, could he not admire her sense of adventure that matched his own in younger days, venturing off to distant and exotic places to bring back news, and even risk his life?
Once on board the Aquitania and bound for New York, she took pen and paper to write him a bitter and emotional letter about her feelings of betrayal and disappointment. Whereas she had always told people that he had heart and was loveable, she could say that no longer, she lamented. ‘You never waited to hear what I thought,’ she raged. ‘You did not want to know what I had seen. What I could tell no-one else, but would have told you, did not interest you . . . you just turned your back on me.’ She would never forget his unkindness, she continued, and he should know that if she now had Bolshevik tendencies these were the result of her treatment in England, not in Moscow. ‘I will only think of you as in the past,’ she concluded, ‘with affection, Your Cousin Clare.’22
But to Churchill family was important, and even though Clare had maddened and embarrassed him he had an essentially forgiving nature. Despite her angry outburst, he sent her a gracious reply explaining that having nothing to say to her that was pleasant on her return from Moscow, he had thought it better simply to remain silent until a better time arrived. But he still regarded her with affection, admired her gifts, would always do his best to help her, wished her well in America, and hoped she would come back ‘with a healthy gap between you and an episode which may have faded and to which we need neither of us ever refer’. Privately, he also felt deeply protective towards his younger wayward cousin. Without telling her, he found her a guardian angel in New York in the form of Bernard Baruch, who had been his opposite number in the United States dealing with munitions production. The American had made his fortune before the age of thirty on Wall Street, chaired the United States’ War Industries Board, and served as a staff member to Woodrow Wilson during the Paris peace talks. He and Churchill had first met at the Hotel Majestic when their talk quickly turned to the atmosphere of revenge clouding the negotiations. ‘I remember how he turned from the mirror, before which he was adjusting a black satin tie,’ recalled Baruch, ‘and said to me earnestly: “I was all for war when it was on. Now it is over, and I am all for peace.” ’ Now, writing to his wartime friend, Churchill asked him to keep an eye on ‘this wild cousin of mine – she’s brave,’ he added, ‘but has no judgement and might get into trouble.’23
S P R I N G
SEVEN
‘THE FORTY THIEVES’
Churchill left London on the evening of Tuesday 1 March and travelled by train to Marseilles, where he met up with Clementine. Here they embarked on the Sphinx, a steam
ship of the French company Messageries Maritimes that regularly serviced the route between Marseilles and Beirut and had recently served as a hospital ship. It was large and comfortable and Churchill escaped sea-sickness. Six days later they arrived in Alexandria and booked into the Savoy Palace Hotel. The idea of accompanying him to Cairo had been Clementine’s. After several weeks alone on the Riviera she was missing him badly and longed for more time basking in the Mediterranean warmth. She also knew that they could now comfortably cover her own expenses as well as those of her personal maid.
Churchill immediately seized the opportunity to visit Aboukir (Abu Kir) Bay, just east of the city. Here, just before sundown on 1 August 1798, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s ships had surprised Napoleon’s French fleet at anchor, sunk his flagship L’Orient and eight other ships, and destroyed the future Emperor’s grandiose hopes of vast Eastern conquests. For Churchill, battles marked the tectonic collisions that shaped the destinies of nations, and he treasured exploring them in person. ‘The British Fleet was once again supreme in the Mediterranean,’ he wrote years later. ‘This was a turning point.’1
The Cairo Conference was also a milestone in history, building a new order in the Middle East out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Churchill and his party left Alexandria for the Egyptian capital the next day, including the ever loyal Archie Sinclair. Joining them was another young man of Archie’s age who had greeted them at the docks. Twenty-eight-year-old Captain Maxwell Henry Coote was an Eton-educated member of the Anglo-Irish gentry. Badly wounded as an artillery officer at Gallipoli, he had later flown as a fighter pilot in France and marked up several ‘kills’ of enemy aircraft. Now, posted with the Royal Air Force in the Middle East, his main duty as temporary aide-de-camp to Churchill was to escort Clementine around the sites. He found her charming and looked forward to the task.2
Few of Churchill’s overseas travels were without risk. The train to Cairo was the Sultan of Egypt’s own with a special coach containing a saloon and dining car. Clementine took out a book to read, Churchill opened one of his official boxes, and Inspector Thompson positioned himself close by. The new Colonial Secretary’s opposition to Egyptian independence was well known. An unfriendly crowd had greeted him at the docks and three of the demonstrators had been shot and killed. The British-led Egyptian police were on full alert. Sweating profusely in the heat, Thompson grew increasingly uneasy as the train crawled at a snail’s pace through the crowded suburbs of Alexandria. Suddenly, as it slowed down even more on approaching a crossing, there was the sound of breaking glass. A crowd outside was throwing stones and the carpet outside the compartment was quickly covered in debris. Thompson drew his revolver and braced himself for an attack. Churchill stopped reading, looked up briefly, and smiled. Clementine put down her novel. Both remained cool. Then the train picked up speed, quickly left the crowd behind, and they calmly went back to their reading.3
But the danger was not over. As they approached Cairo an orderly appeared with a message saying they should get out of the train at the small suburban station of Shubra because a large and angry crowd had gathered at the main terminus. The ploy worked perfectly. When the train finally arrived in Cairo half an hour late, all it disgorged of the party were five hatboxes and other baggage. Churchill and the others had duly been met by cars at Shubra and driven, unnoticed, to the Semiramis Hotel. Many of the frustrated demonstrators, shouting ‘Down with Churchill’, picked the wrong hotel and gathered instead outside the much patronized but less glamorous Shepheard’s.4
After checking in, Churchill and Archie Sinclair paid a courtesy visit to the British High Commissioner, Viscount Allenby. Egypt’s status was ambiguous. Before the war it was technically part of the Ottoman Empire under its own khedive (or ruler), one of whom built himself a grand residence in Cairo known as the Abdin (or Abdeen) Palace. In reality, however, Egypt was a quasi-British colony. British troops had occupied the country in 1882 and then formally declared it a protectorate and imposed martial law when the Turks entered the war on the side of Germany. Throughout the conflict Cairo had resembled a huge military base and recruiting ground for Egyptian labour to help the British war effort. After a nationalist uprising was crushed in 1919, General Allenby, who had captured Jerusalem from the Turks, was sent out as High Commissioner to take charge, and a commission of inquiry under Lord Milner recommended an Anglo-Egyptian treaty giving the country independence. Churchill, amongst others, bitterly opposed this. But when he arrived in Cairo the future of Egypt still remained open – a khedive and prime minister were in place but Allenby and London were still calling the shots.
The official British Residency was a grand Victorian mansion with splendid gardens stretching down to the banks of the Nile. Allenby had a notoriously bad temper for which he was nicknamed ‘the Bull’. He was also an avid birdwatcher and kept a pet marabou stork. It, too, had its moods. While it devotedly followed Allenby around as he strolled in the gardens, and even gently unlaced his shoes, it viewed strangers with considerable animosity. Its long beak could be painful through a light summer dress and sometimes, as they were enjoying tea in the gardens, visitors would find their hats suddenly tweaked from their heads. Fortunately, Churchill and Sinclair were spared such ignominy.5
*
It was one of Churchill’s many gifts to realize the importance of theatre in politics. The conference was carefully staged with himself as the leading man supported by a cast of lesser yet still notable characters, and it had been mostly scripted in advance thanks to the assiduous efforts of numerous advisors. Some of them travelled with him to Cairo, to be joined there by governors and army commanders of various British-held territories across the Middle East. All in all, they numbered about forty. The proceedings were kept strictly secret. But the fact of the conference was highly public. Cairo, like Nice and Cannes, had its winter season for Europeans, and this was the year that also marked its recovery from the war. The Times noted the ‘Revival of Gaiety’ in Cairo, and the city was full of visitors enjoying tennis, croquet, and other pastimes. Many were staying at the Semiramis Hotel, which became almost too crowded for comfort. An exhibition of paintings by Bridget Keir, an accomplished British watercolourist, opened in the hotel but soon moved to Ciro’s, where Winston and Clementine paid it a visit.6
If the British Residency was spectacularly sited, so was the Semiramis. A vast Edwardian palace that overlooked the Nile, it was the grandest and most exclusive hotel of its day in the Egyptian capital and was named after the legendary queen of Assyria and conqueror of Mesopotamia who was reputed to have built the city of Babylon. From the rooftop garden visitors could enjoy spectacular views towards the pyramids of Giza and the desert beyond. Its vestibule was lined with marble and grand mirrors. To the austere Lawrence of Arabia, it was all too much. ‘Very expensive and luxurious,’ he complained, ‘horrible place: makes me Bolshevik.’ It had been recommended as the conference site by Allenby, who himself was no stranger to the carefully choreographed moment. When he had entered Jerusalem just before Christmas in 1917 as the first Christian to capture the Holy City since the Crusades, he did so on foot as a show of humility to reassure its people that he came as a liberator rather than conqueror – and made sure that the scene was amply captured on film and camera. Besides its spectacular location and large number of rooms, the hotel also had security advantages, protected on one side by the Nile and on two others by Residency guards and a nearby British barracks.7
Adding to the sense of an exotic and grand Oriental spectacle were two baby lions. Brought by one of the participants, Sir Geoffrey Archer, the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of forces in Somaliland which had recently crushed a revolt led by the religious leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (‘the Mad Mullah’), they were destined for onward shipping to the London Zoo. Churchill quickly sensed a photo-opportunity. In one of the many conference photographs, he made sure that the lions featured prominently, posed near his feet. They also came close to causing an avian tragedy when Archer too
k the cubs along to a party at the Residency. To everyone’s horror, they quickly spotted Allenby’s pet marabou stork and went bounding after it. They were stopped only at the last moment by Archer and their keeper, a sergeant in the King’s African Rifles.8
Churchill knew that success in Cairo was a vital step in his political comeback. Visible press coverage had a crucial role to play. Above all, it should be positive. Predictably, the hostile Daily Herald was already denouncing him as an ‘amateur Alexander’. But even the more sober Sunday Times was mocking him for strutting ‘his Eastern stage’. He had to ensure that solid results emerged from the spectacle.9
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