Working with Winston

by Working

  Almost all of the food faddists I have ever known, nut-eaters and the like, have died young after a period of senile decay. The British soldier is far more likely to be right than the scientists. All he cares about is beef. The way to lose the war is to try to force the British public into a diet of milk, oatmeal, potatoes, etc., washed down on gala occasions with a little lime juice.15

  Lord Cherwell was not the only one of his oldest friends to visit. Two others, Brendan Bracken and Lord Beaverbrook, were frequent guests, as were Lord Ismay and Field Marshal Montgomery.

  When Churchill’s powers began to fail, Monty was not one to desert… His mission was one of companionship and comfort. His name appears twelve times in sequence in the visitor’s book at Chartwell. There the two old men would sit together, Churchill mainly silent while Monty reminisced about the triumphs and tragedies of days gone by. It was a radiant and peaceful evening.16

  Pugh recalls that Montgomery ‘was quite a difficult friend, but he was a close friend… and there [visiting] a lot… one of the most companionable friends… One of the ones that bothered to come at the end of the day when things weren’t so much fun.’ The difficult years of their relationship had not been forgotten only a few years earlier, when Churchill, aged eighty-seven, was recovering from a broken hip at Middlesex Hospital in London. Lady Churchill and Montague Browne carefully protected the patient from visitors who might upset him and cause a stroke. Because the two old warriors – a term later used by Peter O’Toole to describe Churchill17 – had had ‘heated discussions’, ‘It was decided that Monty should not come.’ Nor should Randolph18 – no surprise there. The field marshal did send a large ‘V’ of red, white and blue flowers.19

  Pugh notes that a young Ted Heath, who was disliked by the Garden Room Girls, perhaps because he ‘could not get on with women [and] never knew what a single one of them was called’,20 was a great admirer of Churchill and visited often. Intermingled with men at the various dinners and lunches were many of the women with whom Churchill had remained friendly for decades. Lady Juliet Duff, Violet Bonham Carter and Lady Lytton were all old friends, all welcome at Chartwell. Among the oldest of his friends, only Montgomery, Eden, Moran and, with the exception of a few others, his first love Pamela Lytton (née Plowden), outlived their host.

  Dinners generally did not include the secretaries. Pugh remembers that she rarely, if ever, had a meal with the family. At Hyde Park Gate the female secretaries had ‘a little cooking place adjoining their office… We could cook lunch and make tea and coffee.’ When working at Chartwell, life was a bit different, a bit slower and

  everything was done for us… tea was brought to us in the early days; we went out to lunch on weekdays into the village. At the weekend, everything was given to us on a tray in the office, and it was lovely. Dinner was always given to us in the office… Sometimes if there was a nice family gathering we might be invited. And sometimes if he was alone. But not very often.

  Churchill didn’t like to be alone, so he sometimes included Pugh in a lunch, expecting her to come to the table with pad and pencil. She recalls: ‘He was a very good host… saying “Do have some more” and that sort of thing… always wanting us to do things, like “Do go and have a swim”… Although there was so much work to do, he still wanted you to have a good time.’ She says they were spoiled – getting the best champagnes, for example. His personal and warm concern for these women – just not all the time – is echoed by all the others who worked for Churchill.

  Churchill loved to watch a film after dinner, as we know, even when he was a wartime prime minister and the movie lengthened an already long work day. In later years, when Pugh was working for him, Churchill spent weekends at Chartwell, usually a long Friday afternoon to Monday afternoon, although that could change if the House were sitting. At Chartwell, he continued to watch films, sometimes asking the secretaries to order three or four for each weekend. ‘Everybody, gardeners and all [attended the films]. And he was jolly upset if everybody wasn’t here.’ She recalls that ‘Any film with Vivien Leigh was absolutely safe to be had again.21 Anything about the American Civil War, if it was well made, was pretty safe. He liked a good western… anything in French… things about animals tended to be good [for him],’ provided nothing bad happened to them, as we saw in Chapter 10.

  The elaborate process for selecting films is best described by Catherine Snelling and others, whose recollection of Churchill’s preferences differ somewhat from Pugh’s. (This is no surprise, given the time lapse between the events and the recording of their oral histories.) The women ordered the selected films through Alexander Korda and the Kinematograph Rental Society, an early film distributor, neither of which organizations charged Churchill for the loan of the films – it was seen as a modest repayment of the nation’s enormous debt to him. Pugh’s belief that anything about the American Civil War was likely to please Churchill proved misplaced in the case of one such film. It proved too complex or too disjointed for Churchill to follow. He knew the history of that war in some detail, and indeed described it in seven chapters of the fourth volume of his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Even with that knowledge, he could not follow the events in the film. Finally, after fruitlessly asking others in the audience to explain what was going on, he said: ‘I am watching it. I am watching it like a cat watches a mouse, but I still can’t get it.’

  There were visits from family friends as well; there were stays at Blenheim,§ of course, and at Hatfield, but rarely did Pugh stay at those houses. When secretaries did go along, they were put up in nearby hotels or, occasionally but rarely, stayed at the houses. But most of all, Pugh says that Churchill liked people to visit him at his own house, ‘to dine and sleep, because they [he and Lady Churchill] both thought that was civilized’. She said visitors to Chartwell rarely brought their own staffs with them – there would not have been room in any case, but when he visited others it was more like a royal tour, with civil servants, detectives and secretaries in attendance, even after he had resigned as prime minister.

  Although Churchill much enjoyed his social life at Chartwell, and visits to the often-grand homes of friends, as we have noted, he also took as many holidays as he could and enjoyed them enormously, especially during the winter when he sought the sun and the scenery he wanted to paint. But work went with him, as did the secretaries. They had planned to travel with him on alternate trips, but as the workload continued, often both Pugh and other secretaries accompanied him. Churchill planned his holidays, mainly to the South of France, to Lord Beaverbrook’s villa La Capponcina, on a beautiful rocky promontory close to the coast of Monaco. There he could work uninterrupted on his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Even in these circumstances, his restless desire to be at – or to participate in – a wide variety of events was still part of his life. He would frequently fly back to London to sit in the House or see his horses race¶ or to dine at The Other Club – three of his continuing outside-of-work interests. He rarely missed a dinner of The Other Club – every other Thursday when parliament was sitting – and, if out of the country, he would fly back for these dinners. Churchill continued to recommend members – Pugh recalls ‘he brought in Mr Onassis, which was probably fairly unusual’.#

  The trips, of course, required more than merely the presence of the secretaries. The ongoing work had to be transported as well: ‘mountains of stuff went. As if we were going to a desert island or something’, Pugh remembers. There was so much paraphernalia for Churchill’s routine trips that one of the secretaries went in a second car with ‘maids, luggage, black boxes and the dog and the budgerigar… Every black box in existence was packed with papers and tin trunks’ – tin, presumably so that the papers would not get chewed, mildewed or drowned.** And the large, heavy typewriters from Number 10 all went into their own specially built crates. ‘All as if we were going to a desert island, a cavalcade’ of cars, as Snelling describes it. Other secretaries remained in London to manage the daily flow of
packets of work back and forth between the two offices. Also travelling would be the detectives, and, often, Mrs Churchill’s lady’s maid, plus assorted drivers.††

  The packets of work contained hundreds of memos, telegrams and letters that staff back in London thought Churchill should see, as well as the latest proofs of his books. In the mornings, once all the mail had been dealt with and answered, memos dictated and typed, Pugh and the others were responsible for getting them to the post – she had a car and driver waiting at the door, presumably to catch the waiting courier. If they were abroad, the women were also responsible for collecting the latest proofs from the airport and putting them in order for Churchill to work on, and, importantly, for sending proofs to Mrs Churchill, requesting her comments.22 Occasionally, Denis Kelly and Alan Hodge came down to stay – for literary and historical advice23 – staying mostly at La Capponcina, which Lord Beaverbrook had bought from Captain Edward Molyneux, a well-known English dress designer with shops in London, Paris and Cannes. Pugh said the villa ‘smelled of France. We all loved La Capponcina,’ as well she might.

  Visits to La Capponcina – really working holidays – were a bit

  more relaxed… and great fun when we were there with the Beaverbrook party as well. And his (male) secretaries used to be thrown off his yacht and swim back to it. I think Lord Beaverbrook enjoyed showing off… They were thrown off the boat, it seemed miles [away], but it wasn’t really. And they swim back to the villa [or yacht].

  She went on the yacht, but was not made to swim back, saying, ‘I wasn’t made to do that.’

  When Churchill and his extended party arrived at La Capponcina the secretaries went to work setting up the office, unpacking the typewriters and sorting the mail. If it was summer, Churchill put

  on a pair of blue bathing drawers and, walking down to the sea, down a hundred steps through Beaverbrook’s enchanted garden, [he] plunged into his holiday. He wallowed like a porpoise; he blew spouts of water like a whale, and he swam round and round like a schoolboy. He turned, and he twisted, and he lost his baggy blue bathing drawers. It didn’t matter for there was no one there to see him but Beaverbrook and me.24

  He bathed three or four times a day, when visiting other villas in the South of France.25

  Lady Churchill didn’t seem to agree with Beaverbrook’s sense of fun, and seldom accompanied Churchill when he visited La Capponcina. But Churchill wasn’t lonely – there were always many guests – selected and invited by Beaverbrook ‘to keep Churchill amused’.26 Churchill disliked social gossip and insisted on guests who could inform him and with whom he could discuss politics – and on those who admired him. As with old, familiar-face secretaries, so, too, he ‘was comfortable with old friends around him’, selected from guest lists that his hosts carefully managed.27 One guest described listening to Churchill at dinner as ‘the best feast of conversational entertainment ever enjoyed… with an infectious spirit of delight’.28

  Although Churchill liked his work routine and stuck to it regardless of where he was, while relaxing in the South of France he varied his days, among other things immersing himself in his painting. As Pugh explained, they did little work after dinner – unlike his usual London working schedule. Also, he had no after-dinner films in France, but, she goes on to explain: ‘it was very different. He was more with his hosts… more social… nice, because we had the variety.’ Pugh and the female secretaries had little to do with Churchill’s painting forays into the French countryside, as the detectives (English and French) or his personal valets usually packed his painting supplies and set up the easel, once Churchill had selected the vista he wanted to capture on canvas.

  In another change of routine in France, Churchill would get out of bed early, ‘bathing in the sea after a session with his secretary on his war books, then out to paint with his ten-gallon hat and his five-man retinue’,29 carrying his paints and brushes, including, of course, his cigars, cutters and ashtrays.

  In addition to visiting with Beaverbrook, Churchill often was the guest of Emery Reves at his South of France villa known as La Pausa, but known familiarly to Churchill as ‘Pausaland’. Reves was his literary agent, who sold the rights of Churchill’s books to publishers and magazines throughout the world with much financial success. In the early spring of 1958 Churchill stayed there, with Pugh in attendance, as work on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples was ongoing. She said that after three weeks there ‘he seemed twenty years younger’.30

  Churchill later accepted the hospitality of a new friend: Aristotle Onassis, to whom he was introduced by Randolph. Churchill often sailed with friends on Onassis’s yacht, the Christina – but never, according to Pugh, with his usual secretarial staff – a ‘dreadful disappointment’ to her. She was afraid that he would be without staff. ‘There was no mail and they didn’t need one [secretary].’ A holiday without a secretary in attendance was unthinkable in the past, but times were changing.

  Ever restless, ever curious, ever in search of new subjects for his paintbrush, Churchill at times travelled to one of his favourite hotels, La Mamounia in Marrakesh, Morocco, flying there with his party on one of Onassis’s Olympic Airways planes. Pugh had wonderful memories of that trip. The hotel was ‘lovely… all scented oranges and lemons… He just loved it and he loved painting [there]… lovely gardens… and olive groves.’ The Colvilles and Montague Brownes were invited, and they – secretaries included – all joined him on the ‘amazing picnics. A pantechnicon would go ahead of us to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains… long tables and fine linens, silver, endless tea-making things, all set up, awaiting his arrival, with delicious, marvellous meals.’ Pugh had an opportunity to take some time off and would go ‘wandering down the souks… not that he did that!’

  Pugh, like others who worked for Churchill, not only had to attend to his extraordinary workload, his extensive social schedule, including organizing dinners and films, and endure what she called his ‘toing and froing’, while serving as a zookeeper. On drives between offices and houses, when she was frantically taking down, Toby the budgerigar was always there, ‘out of his cage and fussing about and chewing edges of papers and generally enjoying himself, which made a nice diversion’. Although one would have assumed that when the bird travelled in the car he was caged, Pugh says he was not and is supported by the complaints of the unhappy Jane Parsons, a Garden Room Girl who took dictation in the car on occasion. Toby also travelled with them on the vacations in France, requiring ‘endless forms and Minister of Agriculture permits and visas and French Embassy and everything you could think of, and you had to swear that he hadn’t met another budgie and might carry parrot’s disease.’ Once, when working and painting in France, Churchill decided

  it would be rather fun for Toby to meet another budgie, which was strictly against all these regulations. He got a lovely real, local peasant-type man to bring some young virgin budgies for Toby to meet… Anthony Eden was terribly upset, as he knew the Foreign Office wouldn’t like it and we’d sworn about parrot disease… Diana Sandys was there and thought it was wonderfully romantic… It was really dreadful, because these dear little young budgies were brought in a very humble cage and Toby was embarrassed… He had never met another budgie and [he] sat in the corner and didn’t look at them. It wasn’t a success.

  Toby, of course, was only one and probably the smallest member of Churchill’s menagerie. Churchill always insisted that no list of his friends was complete without inclusion of his animal friends, a view more common in some circles today than it was then. He had special affection for those he knew personally. In his squiggles to Clementine he depicted himself as a pig. He refused to eat suckling pig, as he had raised pigs at Chartwell and claimed to know them. During the First World War when food was in short supply, he refused to carve a goose from his farm at Lullenden, saying: ‘You’ll have to carve it, Clemmie. He was a friend of mine.’31 He made sure that bees had sufficient sugar to manufacture honey. He had a special fondness for his se
veral cats and he sometimes fed one at The Other Club dinners. He took his budgie on trips.

  Pugh tells us that ‘all his animals and birds and fish were very close friends. And he had a lion [called] “Rota” at the London Zoo, whom he used to visit… He had a photograph of him in his bedroom.’ She thinks Rota had been a gift to him. There was sadness when the zoo called to say Rota was ageing, as we all do, and ought to be put to sleep: ‘Sir Winston took it rather personally… He thought he and Rota were going along together… Pretty upsetting.’ The zoo also took his tropical fish, ‘because it was more than he thought he could look after’. Rufus I and II are famous as being Churchill’s dogs, spoiled by everyone, but mostly by Churchill. Rufus II’s successor was named Robbie, in whom Churchill insisted Grace Hamblin share ownership and responsibility. Churchill would ‘be having breakfast in bed and it was sweet, because he’d throw Robbie sugar lumps’. So much for budgies and dogs. There were also lambs, bantams, fox cubs, bees, butterflies and goats, among other members of the Churchill menagerie, a continuing source of pleasure at his advanced age. Most loved were the many cats Churchill owned during his lifetime. ‘He loved cats,’ Hamblin tells us.32 During the Second World War, Churchill said that Nelson, the Chequers cat, ‘served as the prime ministerial hot-water bottle’ – one cat’s contribution to the war effort.33 John Martin, another of Churchill’s Principal Private Secretaries, was less fond of Nelson, who in July 1943, when guests at Chequers were sleeping with their windows open, ‘flopped in at my window and woke me at 4 a.m., after I had only gone to bed at 3 a.m.’34 Churchill also had a special place in his heart for Smokey, a grey, fluffy Persian, famous in the Secret Circle.

  One morning, Churchill, still in bed, was on the telephone with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir Alan Brooke, as he then was, when Smokey bit Churchill’s exposed, wriggling toes, prompting a yell, ‘Get off, you fool!’ – followed by an explanation to the startled general that the fool in question was not the CIGS, and an apology to Smokey, who had been sent flying across the room by a mighty kick. ‘Poor little thing,’ a remorseful Churchill said.35 Months later, when Churchill left for the Casablanca Conference, he sought out Smokey from the crowd gathered to see him off, hugged him, and specifically instructed Layton ‘to see he was not lonely’.36 Finally, Jock Colville gave Churchill a ginger cat to be named Jock, ‘who was a huge success and was there when he died’. To this day there is a ginger cat named Jock living at Chartwell (see Chapter 2).