Lady Clementine

by Marie Benedict

  The men’s tones are desultory as they discuss the machinations at the fronts, and I want to shake them into action. How can they be so lackluster about strategy and hope when over ninety thousand military men and civilians have already lost their lives? When women and children are being shelled in coastal towns? When the government has received intelligence that Germany may soon let loose its zeppelins over London to bomb our citizens from the air? Complacency cannot rule the day, but the only animation I observe stems from remarks about yesterday’s appeal by Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia for assistance against the Ottomans in the Caucasus, an idea they bat about like a tennis ball. Is Winston the only one in this room with a new idea?

  I take a deep breath, reminding myself that Winston has a plan and I am here to bolster him. Despite the fact that I know this is my proper place, Nellie’s words from the holidays weigh on me.

  Nellie came to stay with us at Admiralty House for a long stint during the holiday season after a harrowing turn at the hands of the Germans. Over the summer, Nellie received some hasty, basic training in nursing so she could be stationed at the front. Assigned to a unit in Belgium to tend to fallen British soldiers, her nursing unit was taken captive in late August when the Germans occupied the Belgian town in which she’d been working. We were worried sick about her, and Winston kept close tabs on her status. He learned that the nurses were generally treated rather well and that the Germans were keeping on her unit to treat British casualties in the area. When the nurses were commanded to treat German soldiers and refused in late November, they were repatriated. Having my little sister at home with us had been a great relief to our shared concerns about her twin, Bill, who was stationed on a naval torpedo destroyer. Winston kept us well apprised of his status, but there were so many variables at sea.

  One night after dinner, she and I lolled about on the sofa in the private parlor, giggling about something Mother had mentioned over dinner just before her departure. Nellie turned to me and said, “Do you realize that this is the first time I’ve seen you sit down and relax in the three weeks I’ve been here?”

  “Surely I haven’t been standing at the dining table and eating my meals, Nellie,” I kidded her.

  “You are always running, Clemmie,” Nellie commented. Her tone was half-playful and half-serious. “Even when you’re sitting still.”

  “Winston needs me, Nellie. Our country faces the fiercest threat in its history, and he is critical to England’s success,” I answer defensively. “You of all people should understand. You were just a prisoner of the Germans.”

  “Yes, Clemmie, Winston’s work is important. But you have three young children and this vast house to run.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes were pleading. “I worry that you are running yourself ragged by managing all that and attending these endless meetings and dinners with Winston.”

  “My assistance to my husband is singular, and Nanny can tend to the day-to-day needs of Diana, Randolph, and Sarah as well as I can. Better.”

  She paused. “You know you are not the lord admiral, don’t you, Clemmie?”

  I felt as though I’d been slapped. I’d grown used to whispers and gapes critiquing my involvement, but not from my beloved sister. “You sound like Venetia.”

  “Maybe she had a point.” She reached for my hand. “But only with respect to the toll it takes upon you, Clemmie. Even if you deny it.”

  * * *

  Winston clears his throat again, and I return to the present. I recognize the sound as his attempt to wait for the other men to finish their conversation. I’d cautioned him not to launch into his plan at the beginning of the evening but to listen for an opportune opening in the men’s discussions. If you can present your scheme just after the usual lamentations about the current military state, I told him, your plan will be better received. But Winston can’t help himself, and his mouth begins opening to interrupt the men’s talk. I arch my brow and give him a pointed look. His mouth closes, and he bides his time.

  The secretary of state for war, Earl Kitchener, murmurs, “I heard that Christmas carols sparked an impromptu truce along the trenches. A meeting of the Germans’ ‘Silent Night’ with the British ‘First Noel,’ if you will.”

  “The same rumors reached me. After the singing, apparently, Christmas greetings flew across the trenches,” McKenna adds.

  “Exchanges of whiskey and cigars, in some spots,” Lord Chancellor Viscount Richard Haldane concurs.

  “I understand that a rousing game of football was played in no-man’s-land between English and Germans in one case,” Asquith says.

  “Football? Surely not,” Walter Runciman, the president of the Board of Trade, chimes in.

  “All along the trenches in Belgium. Impromptu truces and spontaneous games of football,” Asquith insists.

  As the men shake their heads in incredulity, Winston sputters. He cannot keep quiet any longer. “Why does our men’s desire for peace surprise you? It is bad enough that we left our men in the trenches of Belgium throughout Christmas, festering in the soggy ground with dysentery and snow and lice. They want to come home, and we must find a way other than these interminable trenches.”

  What about the women and children who’ve lost their lives? I think. But I file that notion away for another day and another argument.

  “I suppose you have a proposal?” Asquith answers Winston’s call to action through the puff of his pipe.

  The men chortle, as if the idea of Winston without a bold idea is unfathomable. But in their laughter, I also hear derision. A rage begins to brew within me, but I tamp it down to allow Winston to take center stage. This is his moment, one to which we have been building in our nightly discussions.

  Winston puffs on the cigar that has recently become ever-present in his mouth. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Let’s hear it then,” Asquith orders with a sigh.

  “We have been presented with an urgent appeal from Russia to help with the Ottomans, who are in league with the Germans. What if we showed our naval might in the Dardanelles? If we take control of the Dardanelles strait between the Turkish mainland and the Gallipoli peninsula, we could capture the Turkish capital of Constantinople. This maneuver would have two key impacts—it would weaken Germany by eliminating Turkey as one of its allies, and it would open up a sea route between our country and Russia to aid with supplies.”

  As he lays out the details of his plan, I gaze at the faces of the men at the table. Their brows furrow and their eyes look wary, and I even see Asquith shoot a cynical look at Kitchener. Have I erred in encouraging Winston to propose this bold course? Have I believed too much in his vision and importance to our country in this war effort? I say a silent prayer to a god I’ve much ignored that Winston has suggested the right path for the soldiers—both for their sake and for ours.

  Chapter Sixteen

  May 20, May 26, and June 3, 1915

  London, England

  When the final blow comes, I believe I am ready. Winston’s torrent of letters has prepared me, or so I thought. Yet I hardly recognize the fallen face of my anguished husband when he finally returns from the catastrophe of the Dardanelles and walks through the front door of Admiralty House.

  “I will be blamed, Clemmie,” Winston whispers into my hair. We cling to each other in the foyer, ignoring the presence of servants in the background. I think but do not say that it is my fault as well. I encouraged him to pursue the Dardanelles strategy, even when it was ill received by the senior government officials.

  The Dardanelles campaign had commenced with Winston’s usual bullish zeal. He worked around the clock with naval and military staff to convince them of his plan and to organize the onslaught. The success of the plan required both an abundance of naval forces to take the Dardanelles strait and a sizable military contingent to conquer the Gallipoli peninsula afterward. Winston set sail to much fanfare, a
nd I followed his every movement by letter and news reports.

  The naval bombardment began on February 19, but soon afterward, Winston wrote to me that Vice Admiral Carden’s efforts seemed halfhearted. This suspicion was confirmed in mid-March when Carden resigned due to illness and Rear Admiral de Robeck replaced him. De Robeck had no appetite for the attack and called off the entire naval plan after one French and two British battleships were sunk by mines. Without adequate opposition from the sea, the Turkish fleet was able to restock its troops on land with ammunition, so when War Secretary Lord Kitchener and General Sir Ian Hamilton’s army plan was initiated in April, their troops suffered terrible losses on land—a horrific thirty thousand British, ten thousand French, and more than thirteen thousand Australians, New Zealanders, and Indians.

  In an effort to get the operation back on track and give meaning to the men’s horrific sacrifice, Winston appealed for naval reinforcements first to Asquith, who deferred to the local admirals. My husband then entreated the mercurial Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher who, having supported the mission at the start, turned on the Dardanelles plan and blocked Winston’s efforts.

  If only I hadn’t encouraged him in the Dardanelles plan, the terrible loss might have been averted, I think. If only I had accepted that the government’s lackluster response from the outset meant Winston would receive lackluster support throughout the course of the campaign, perhaps I could have dissuaded Winston from the idea of taking over the Dardanelles. But I say none of this; there are others accountable as well. Others with hands on the wheel of this disaster.

  “How can you be blamed, Winston? The plan was sound. If you had been given adequate naval support, the capture of the Dardanelles would have been a success, and the Turks would never have gotten supplies through to their troops. We would have secured the Gallipoli peninsula and vanquished the Turks. Maybe even shortened the war. Asquith, Hamilton, Kitchener, and”—I can scarcely say the name, but I force myself to spit it out—“Fisher refused to send the promised help. They are to blame.”

  “You and I know that to be true. But I was the campaign’s most vocal champion, and it was the bloodiest loss in all of British military history—” His words catch, and I know he is holding back tears. “And the people quite understandably want blood in return.”

  “But why does it have to be your blood? Can the blame not be shouldered by all those involved in the affair?”

  “It seems as though I have already been made the sacrificial lamb, my sweet kitten.”

  My heart thuds so loudly, I worry that Winston can hear it. “What do you mean?”

  “Rumors are flying that Asquith was approached by the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, who threatened to undo the wartime detente between Conservatives and Liberals if a head doesn’t roll for the Dardanelles. You know the Conservatives have loathed me ever since I switched parties, and Asquith knows it too. I’ve heard from a reputable source that in order to save his own hide, Asquith made a deal with the Conservatives to form a coalition government with the Conservatives upon my removal from office. And Lloyd George agreed.”

  “No!” My hand flies to my mouth.

  “I wish it wasn’t true, Cat. But it is.” He sighs, a sound that seems to emanate from deep within him. “I am finished.”

  How could Asquith do this to Winston? After all his work and dedication. All his loyalty. All his brilliance.

  My tears suddenly subside, only to be replaced by rage. “How dare he! This is an affront not only to you but to the people of our country! You are the only one in the cabinet who has the power and imagination to vanquish the Germans. And you would have been well on your way to accomplishing that if you had been supported by your peers,” I say, seething. “By people who agreed to the plan, even if they were halfhearted in their acquiescence.”

  To my astonishment, my fury does not spark a flame within Winston. He only kisses my hair and whispers, “It matters not, my dearest Clementine. I have been eviscerated of power. And one can do nothing without power.”

  With the utterance of those words, I know my husband has surrendered to a certain fate.

  * * *

  We do not receive the official notification of Winston’s removal for nearly a week, on May 26. Even though I’m unaccustomed to the ritual, I find myself praying constantly, praying that Asquith does not force my husband out. I know what this will mean to Winston. But the lambasting Winston receives at the hands of the daily newspapers, combined with the abusive calls of “Dardanelles” and “Gallipoli” I get from passersby whenever I step out in public, make clear that even if Asquith hasn’t made a deal with the Conservatives, Winston’s ousting is inevitable.

  When the notice of his dismissal arrives, we leave Admiralty House within the hour, as I’d packed our belongings earlier in the week. Our summer rental of Hoe Farm is not yet available, and we rented our house on Eccleston Square when Winston became lord admiral, so we decamp to a house on Arlington Street owned by Winston’s aunt Cornelia and her son Lord Wimborne, where we spend long hours seated in wingback chairs before the fire contemplating our future, oftentimes in silence. After five days cajoling my husband into discussion, we receive an envelope from Downing Street. While Winston wonders aloud as to why Asquith would write, I stay quiet. I am wary that the missive might reference the scathing letter I’d jotted off to Asquith, unbeknownst to Winston, just before the dismissal, in which I’d extolled my husband’s virtues—along with his importance to the war effort—and excoriated Asquith for even thinking of firing him. In fact, I called out the prime minister on his real motivation for firing Winston, namely ensuring the people’s opinion of him.

  But when a hopeful Winston slices open the envelope with the sharp sterling knife on Lord Wimborne’s desk, the letter within makes no mention of my dispatch. Instead, inexplicably, the prime minister and his wife, Margot, have summoned us to Downing Street for dinner. And I am to arrive early to take late afternoon tea with Margot.

  Smoothing my gown, an unadorned gray muslin that I consider somber enough for the occasion, I stand at the front door to Downing Street and ring the bell. A familiar-looking maid admits me but will not meet my gaze. Does she know something I don’t? Or is she like everyone I pass on the street, standing in judgment of a catastrophe that has been unfairly attributed only to my husband.

  She leads me to Margot’s sitting room, a space to which I’d never been invited before. Early on, I’d attributed my exclusion from her private chamber to her ongoing disappointment that Winston had married me instead of Violet, but now, I wonder whether it stems from my familial tie to Venetia. Until very recently, the relationship between my cousin and Asquith continued apace, and I feel certain Margot knew about it all along.

  How will she greet me? I wonder as we march up the three flights of stairs leading to the prime minister’s private residence. Will she deride me for my harsh letter to her husband? Or will she apologize for the terrible penance they’ve forced my husband to pay?

  When we finally reach the sitting room, Margot is waiting. Her features are sharp and her gray eyes hard, but she feigns softness. She stretches out her generous arms to wrap me in an unwanted embrace, saying, “Oh, Clementine, how I’ve been thinking about you. What a challenging time.”

  Her words—carefully chosen to approximate sympathy without admitting any guilt—enrage me. I keep my body rigid in the encasement of her arms, but when this doesn’t put Margot off, I push her away from me.

  “How could you?” I rail.

  “Now, Clementine, shouldn’t it be me asking you that question?” she answers coolly, her facade of softness turning brittle.

  “What on earth are you talking about, Margot? Your husband sacrificed mine over the Dardanelles. When you and I both know that the fault was not Winston’s.” My tone is every bit as hard as hers.

  “I am talking about the letter that you sent poor Hen
ry.” She pauses, and for a moment, I wonder who she is talking about. But then I remember that she calls Asquith “Henry.” “Who has already taken quite a beating over this Dardanelles mess. I forgive you for writing such hateful words, of course. Heat of the moment and all that. But I hardly think you are in a position to unleash any more anger.”

  “You forgive me?” I practically scream. “For speaking the truth to ‘poor Henry’? I don’t want your blasted forgiveness, and I’ve done nothing to forgive in any event.”

  Margot glances around the room. “Please, Clementine, take a seat and compose yourself.” As I storm toward the door, she mutters, “You are foolish to act this way. You will burn whatever bridges Winston has left.”

  Her words cut me to the quick, but I don’t turn back. Before I can reach the handle, the door pushes open. Asquith himself enters the room. “I heard voices,” he comments, clearly displeased.

  I know from Winston, and to a lesser extent Venetia, that the prime minister seeks adoration from women—not challenge—and prefers his “ladies” to have a malleable morality. In the past, he has found unappetizing my rather inflexible moral positions and even went so far as to call me a bore for refusing the gift of a couture gown from King Edward VII’s mistress. Now I surmise from his tone that he finds my unfeminine, raised voice disturbing to his sensitive ears.

  I want to hurl myself at him, but Margot’s admonitions ring in my ears. Have I indeed damaged the remnants of my husband’s career? I hesitate, even though I long to berate him for his disloyalty and his carrying-on with Venetia as young soldiers are being killed by the thousands. Although, I think with a certain glee, I suppose those shenanigans have ended now that Venetia has agreed to marry the junior minister Edwin Montagu.