Working with Winston

by Working

  She also had to make certain he had his ‘speech box’ with him. She explains this was ‘a box with a slot in it which he’d have on the table in front of him when he was making a speech, and as he read a card he’d put it through the letter box.’ This way he could be sure that ‘he never… got to the end and found himself beginning the speech again… He invented that, really.’ None of the other secretaries mentioned this, so perhaps the habit came later. It is another example of a Churchill invention which he used to smooth out his working life, like devising the psalm format, or the ‘Bellybandoes’ for his cigars, or the sunken Mulberry Harbours used in the Second World War, based on a 1917 sketch by Churchill. ‘Churchill,’ writes Ferdinand Mount, ‘was always a sucker for gadgets.’3 More precisely, he was a ‘soldier-scientist… His appreciation of technical progress, coupled with his powerful but controlled imagination… led him to demand weapons for the war after next, and his energy and his administrative ability have sometimes resulted in his getting them most successfully!’4

  Because there was less pressure than in earlier years, Snelling recalls, ‘I knew it wouldn’t be twenty-four hours or eighteen hours a day or anything like that, because it wasn’t Number 10 and he was retired [as prime minister], although he was still doing quite a lot of things.’ She also undoubtedly noted that his staff now included three nurses, one of whom was Roy Howells, a male nurse and valet, to look after him when he travelled,5 and – no surprise – he, too, was asked to feed the pets. Churchill was still going to the House of Commons ‘pretty well every day’, and continued to try to do so until his decision in the spring of 1963 not to stand for his Woodford seat in the 1964 general election. As always, he would work in bed until noon or so and then appear for lunch, which was leisurely, but always ended in time for him to rush off, as Pugh describes it, smartly to the House at half-past two in the ‘bullock car’, again a Churchill pun on an employee’s name. A secretary always travelled with Churchill in his big Daimler, as did Rufus II, Toby the ‘chattering budgie’, and the Special Branch detective. Snelling had a notepad at the ready should Churchill want to dictate – although she points out that by now that was rare. The Daimler flew the flag of the Cinque Ports as he was still Warden of the Cinque Ports,‡ so traffic was stopped along the way, allowing for people to wave as they recognized the flag. It was quite ‘a travelcade… like a royal progress’. There was always a detective with Churchill. As his hearing was slipping away the House had accommodated his regular seat with a built-in hearing aid, which provided some but not unlimited ability to follow the debates. And another hearing device was eventually installed in the Chartwell dining room.

  In addition to making certain that the right things ended up in the right place, and were ready for Churchill’s use, Snelling had to see to his comfort on the back-and-forth trips. That included making certain that her boss’s hand-warmer or ‘beaver-skin muff’ was available and ready for use. Churchill, who during the war always sought technological solutions to problems, and who at this age wanted to keep his hands warm, had purchased a muff that had a warmer inside. Snelling describes it: ‘the muff-warmer is a little thing like a cigarette lighter, but filled with petrol. Highly dangerous… covered in a leather case… It slipped into a pocket in the muff, so that the muff was lovely and warm,’ which Churchill needed even though the car was by now heated. Like her predecessors, Snelling reports an act of kindness and consideration: Churchill always asked her if she was warm enough when travelling in his car – even though both were covered with ‘a beautiful mohair rug’. As did all the other secretaries, she made sure his black eye band was on hand in case he wanted to nap.

  Grace Hamblin, now managing Chartwell, ordered weekend supplies of wine, food and other things from London. On trips from London to Chartwell, Snelling was responsible for sorting and packing the supplies, which would be transported in the convoys of cars that regularly went back and forth between Hyde Park Gate and Chartwell. On return trips to London there would be baskets of flowers and vegetables in season. ‘A very cosy outfit, really.’ In addition to foodstuffs and flowers, office supplies and correspondence moved back and forth between Churchill’s London and Chartwell operations.

  When at Chartwell he would play cards, mainly bezique, with Lady Churchill or AMB until his hour-long nap, waking up in time to get ready for dinner at about 8.30. Only occasionally now would Churchill dress for dinner; he usually wore his siren suit if the dinner was ‘not smart’. Before he dressed for dinner, Snelling would go in to say goodnight and then go home. If she was working at Chartwell she was expected to work after dinner, which meant ‘ring[ing] up the night desk at the Daily Telegraph and the Express and… they always were ready for us and we’d get the headlines… tomorrow morning’s headlines.’ She would take the headlines into the drawing room, where dinner guests would be ‘sitting around having brandies and things in their evening dress’. Churchill would read out the headlines to his guests, or he might ask Ted Heath or another guest to read out the headlines. Then Churchill would say to Snelling ‘Off you go then, my dear.’ When working in London, the first editions of the newspapers would be delivered to his home around 11 p.m.

  Those guests included many old and some new friends. Churchill was still deeply interested in world events, although he did not discuss those with the secretaries – he never had – but he did have his usual political discussion dinners with well-connected guests such as Harold Macmillan, by then prime minister, and Ted Heath, then a Conservative member of parliament; and, of course, Christopher Soames, his son-in-law. General Montgomery ‘came over often, because he was widowed’.

  Women guests came, too, primarily Sylvia Henley, a first cousin to Lady Churchill, and a great favourite of Churchill’s because of her skill at cards and outspoken lively conversation. She lived another fifteen years after Churchill’s death, dying at age ninety-eight. Violet Bonham Carter was a frequent guest as well, as was June Osborne, Randolph’s second wife. Snelling reveals that June Osborne had often been invited to dinner, presumably to balance the table. Sarah Churchill, his middle daughter and perhaps his favourite, was often there, ‘always in some sort of pickle… she always cheered him up… His most enlivening child, demonstrative. He was very sentimental.’

  The working week remained as it always was: Monday to Friday in London, with one of the secretaries off to Chartwell after lunch with Churchill for the weekend. Until a few years before that final retirement from the House, Catherine Snelling and Doreen Pugh alternated weekends at Chartwell. When Snelling went down to Chartwell, she stayed in a cottage on the grounds: ‘Terribly comfortable… You just trotted down through the orchard… with your suitcase… sort yourself out a bit… maybe have a drink with Grace [Hamblin].’ Snelling admits being ‘frightened’ walking late at night in the dark down the road to the butler’s cottage where she sometimes slept overnight, if the house and maids’ rooms were full.

  When working, ‘Dinner was on a tray brought down to the office … Whatever they were having… delicious.’ The office ‘had a lovely big table… a book, magazine and radio. It was very, very comfortable and warm, not electric fire… we usually had dinner there.’ Although many of these women noticed that they were generally not included in family and other dinners, Snelling reports, ‘Occasionally you were invited up if there were uneven numbers… Very occasionally he had no visitors at all and Lady Churchill wanted to go to bed [and you would] go and have dinner with him just on your own, but that didn’t happen very often.’

  Snelling recalls vividly how well she was treated. Churchill and Lady Churchill ‘had a marvellous, kind way of making you feel comfortable and easy, as if you fitted in because you were part of their outfit… part of the household… absolutely naturally warm and friendly and it was a happy place to work. You never felt condescended to at all.’ She gives much of the credit for this atmosphere to Lady Churchill, saying that ‘she was very fair-minded and good at picking people to begin with and then sor
t of running them and making sure they weren’t clashing with each other.’

  Snelling tells us that her first job after arriving at Chartwell late on Friday afternoon was ‘to get him the closing prices of his shares, which involved ringing up the stockbrokers’. Churchill kept his personal accounts in a separate black box that she would bring to him; he would unlock it with a key§ that dangled from his key chain, and compare last week’s closing prices with the current week. When at the Admiralty, Churchill formed the habit of using his key chain as a place for keeping safe and handy his key to the daily buff-coloured box of intelligence intercepts.6

  His keen interest in the weekly performance of his shares reflected his long and often difficult relationship with money to satisfy creditors, the taxman and his own tastes and has been related in interesting detail elsewhere.7 If Snelling is right, those problems arose not from a lack of attention to these matters on Churchill’s part, but from a lack of skill in attending to them. Pugh says Churchill was not very good with figures, but his facility with data on shipping tonnage, food requirements and the like suggests that at least when it came to matters other than his personal finances, his statement that he ‘quitted’ mathematics forever in the year 18948 is more amusing than correct.

  Churchill’s secretaries were on call for late nights at Hyde Park Gate, but there were now fewer calls for them to work after dinner at both Hyde Park Gate and Chartwell. Late nights no longer meant the wee hours of the morning. On most evenings, they could leave for home at 7.30 or 8 p.m., when Churchill dressed for dinner. Of course, a work schedule that begins early in the morning and ends at around 7 or 8 p.m. in the evening and includes working weekends can be considered ‘light’ only when compared to the work schedule required to meet the unrelenting demands made on Churchill during the war.

  At Chartwell, after dinner on Friday nights there might be a film or, if visitors were expected on Saturday, the film would be held over for them and shown on Saturday night, with another one on Sunday. The secretaries bought all the film magazines, listed the choices they knew would be popular with the Churchills and their guests, and then had both Churchills approve the list. Snelling recalls ‘he didn’t particularly like westerns or war films’, a recollection different from that of Doreen Pugh, who was working at the same time as Snelling and says Churchill did like a good western. Memories can vary, of course, after so many years. The selections made, the secretaries had the task of getting the films sent down by train and, after the showing, packed up and returned. Snelling does agree with Pugh that the entire household was invited to watch, and ‘as many as were not too tired would come’. There was a ground-floor room, adapted for a cinema, which could accommodate about fifteen to seventeen attendees, armchairs in the front row, with canvas captains’ chairs in the back rows. A local man was in charge of running the projector and maintaining all the equipment. Bill Deakin ‘later recalled how, after each film show, there would be a sort of silence, then he [Churchill] would give a little verdict on the film, before we all went up to work. After watching Wuthering Heights (1939), his only comment was “What terrible weather they have in Yorkshire.”’9

  There was a television set in the Chartwell library, but Churchill watched it only occasionally – he used it most often to watch horse racing, but only if he had a horse running. Snelling confirms that he loved going to the stud and watching the horses, especially if there were foals and colts. He and the stud manager, who came to lunch frequently, would ‘go through the lists [of horses and discuss] who was going to be mated with who next year and which colts should be entered… He was very knowledgeable about it. It wasn’t just a game.’ If his jockey won, Churchill ‘of course sent him 10 per cent of the winnings’ and Snelling would write the cheque for Churchill’s signature. After a win at a French race worth some £10,000 (£250,000 in today’s money) in prize money, Churchill said to her, ‘ “Make yourselves out a cheque for £100 [each]”, and so we did, and he signed it.’ (That £100 cheque would be £2,200 in today’s money.) Churchill could sometimes be generous to those who worked such long hours on his behalf.

  His birthdays were always big events with much celebratory champagne and late-night work for the secretaries. On one of those nights, ‘quite a lot of champagne was sent down and oysters from dinner’, as they opened telegrams wishing him well. Snelling opened one and saw it was in Russian, signed by the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. ‘What to do?’ she thought. ‘Was I drunk?’ She sent it up for Sir Winston to see and asked for instructions. The message came back: ‘Deal with it.’ Snelling rang up Number 10 for translation, but, odd to say, the answer came back that no one there late at night could read Russian. So she rang the Russian Embassy, which was only too glad to help out translating Khrushchev’s birthday message. The women had to have initiative and they knew that the power of Churchill’s name would open many doors when needed.

  There were still substantial perks, by way of compensation, foreign travel being the most important. Snelling says she ‘only went to Monte Carlo… four or five times… sometimes in the spring, sometimes autumn… three or four weeks in April–May and then, if possible, again in September–October and one of us would go,’ taking turns as they all did on foreign trips. There was an important difference, especially towards the end of Snelling’s tenure. Late in his life these trips were ‘really a holiday… we did some work’. After Churchill became friendly with Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipowner arranged for Churchill and his entourage to move into the penthouse suite on the top floor of his Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Onassis owned a large share of the Hotel de Paris and the casino.

  From then on, whenever Churchill and his party visited the South of France, he stayed there. Rooms on the floor below could be used for staff such as AMB. Snelling (and Pugh) stayed in a little hotel a five-minute walk from Churchill’s hotel, which ‘was a good thing to get away, really… If you were there for four or five weeks, it was good to get away.’ But it wasn’t all a holiday: packets arrived from London. Work and messages that could not wait five weeks for a reply were all forwarded to Monte Carlo – presumably by private air courier – after vetting by the private office in London.

  By then Churchill’s health problems were increasing, as was his deafness. He walked more frequently with a stick and ‘had to hold on to a banister more… He was nearly ninety and his mind was OK’, as Snelling recalls. But Churchill admitted to Lord Moran that his memory was not what it once was.10

  In June 1962 he broke his hip while getting out of bed at the Hotel de Paris, and was flown home on an RAF plane, because he ‘wanted to die in England’, as he put it. For three weeks he was in hospital, brandy and cigars served up to him and his guests after dinner in the hospital room. We can assume, too, that the secretaries were in and out taking down dictation as always. They often found him irritable if he wasn’t allowed to get up ‘when he thought he should be able to get up to have his birthday, which was very unfortunate… So he was cross with you because – just generally. Not anything you’d done. [He complained]: “You are having my birthday,” as he so much wanted to go downstairs to celebrate with the guests.’

  Others had slightly differing memories of his anger when work was not done to his satisfaction or on his exacting timetable. But all remember his ability to forgive. He always said to never let the sun go down on your anger. Secretaries who might have been irritated by the impatience or the snappishness of his responses recall that he applied that rule to his own life as well – he never ended the day without an apology of sorts or an endearing smile if he had snapped or lost his temper.

  He’d forget things… You’d think he was having a nice little doze and he’d suddenly turn around and say, ‘Well, have you done it?’ There was no need for him to talk all the time, chat and be busy. If he wanted to sit gazing into space for half an hour, why not? He was quite often thinking about – whatever… not sad. I think he regretted not being able to sort of walk. He was much too prou
d to moan and groan… If he wanted to sit gazing into space for half an hour… he was often thinking about [something].

  In 1963 Churchill decided he would not contest the Woodford seat in the 1964 general election. Lady Churchill was relieved, but Churchill was disconsolate. If Pugh is to be believed, he simply gave up. By November 1964 he was pretty much bedridden, although able to enjoy some visits, especially from family. Snelling and other staff would go to his room and sit with him. Doctors came, bulletins were issued, and the crowds built up outside Hyde Park Gate, waiting for news. Lady Churchill spent most of the day in his room, holding his hand.

  Snelling recalls that he sort of slipped away, ‘just didn’t wake up one morning… gradually faded away’. She describes ‘a great era ending and a terrific year in my own life… I could not imagine what else I was going to do or what could ever match it.’ But then returning to the world of Churchill-work, she says ‘we were so busy afterwards’. She stayed on for about six months after Churchill’s death, ‘clearing up and sorting out… a sad winding down’. All the papers had to be filed and the secretaries had devised the filing system for all the messages and documents that came in after the death, divided sensibly into ‘Private’ and ‘Personal’, ‘Patronage’ and ‘Political’ and the ever-useful ‘Miscellaneous’; not a scrap was thrown out. Snelling’s reflections on her long association with Churchill tell us much about the man. She knew he was

  the boss… as long as you remembered that. And you made sure everything was as much as possible the way he wanted it, but not being selfish, but why shouldn’t he have the things as he wanted? He was the boss. So you spent your life really making everything work as well as possible and make him happy and all the people around him work together.

  The unwritten and unspoken rule in Churchill’s office was that the women would work out the schedule among themselves, so that Churchill’s work would get done, that he would have someone there for him, at all times, should he want to dictate, and to please him, goals they all shared.