Churchill used to go to Moriarty’s house in the evenings to discuss essays and history; also, the two fenced at the gymnasium. “Probably Mr. Moriarty was the master who had the greatest influence on Winston Churchill’s future career,” says Siddons, the housemaster. In the years after Harrow, Churchill and Moriarty kept up a regular correspondence; the former’s letters were all signed, “Your affectionate pupil.” Moriarty wrote a congratulatory note when Churchill was named Undersecretary for the Colonies, in 1905, and Churchill replied, saying, “Almost the only valuable and pleasant part of my instruction there was received at your hands, and though I fear I am sadly lacking in scholarly education, the taste for history which I acquired or developed in your Army Class has been very pleasantly indulged by me in the years that are past.”
His qualifying for Moriarty’s Army Class in the first place involved a stroke of high fortune, as Churchill has admitted. It was among the few examinations he ever passed without difficulty at Harrow. Furthermore, many boys of high scholastic standing had failed it. To begin with, Churchill was in top spiritual condition for the ordeal. Offsetting his several incapacities, he had just learned 1200 lines of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (as mentioned in Chapter 1) and recited them without a single error, winning a prize. For the Army test, he and the others knew they would be required to draw from memory a map of some country. The night before, he put all the maps of his atlas into a hat, then he withdrew one, which proved to be New Zealand, and set about learning it. The next day, the first question asked him was to draw a map of New Zealand. His memory was in well-oiled shape; he filled it in with such specificity, including streams of a dozen yards’ breadth and whistle stops on the narrow-gauge railroads, that Moriarty never quite got over it. “This was what is called at Monte Carlo an en plein, and I ought to have been paid thirty-five times my stake,” Churchill said afterward.
One of the most curious aspects of his rampage through Harrow was the extraordinary interest taken in him by the headmaster, Dr. Welldon. There can be no doubt that the boy was permitted breaches of conduct that were denied to anybody else. Besides tutoring him and taking him into his house, Welldon kept a sharp personal eye on Churchill’s general progress and development. The doctor’s forbearance is the more admirable in view of Churchill’s attitude toward him, which was, charitably, offhand. At one time, haled in to the headmaster’s study, the boy was told, “Churchill, I have very grave reason to be displeased with you.” The unpenitent reply was, according to excellent sources, “And I, sir, have very grave reason to be displeased with you.” Welldon, himself an Etonian, was a religious man, noted for his powerful sermons in Chapel, and the theory has been advanced that he accepted his brush with Churchill as on the order of Joshua’s wrestle in the Wilderness. In any event, he buckled to his duty like a Christian martyr, and did his best in the face of stunning odds. The rumor got around that Churchill’s vocabulary included a number of words not ordinarily recommended for public school use. Welldon wearily sent out another summons. “Now, my lad,” he said, “when was the last time you used bad language?” “Well, as I entered this room, I tripped over the door mat and I’m afraid I said ‘damn,’ ” Churchill replied.
Despite his cavalier behavior, he evidently had a lasting affection for Welldon. Much later, when Churchill was stationed as a young soldier in India, Welldon, then Bishop of Calcutta, fell dangerously ill. His old pupil made a long and hazardous trip in a period of civil strife to look him up and give comfort. At many points in his life, seemingly oblivious of past favors done him, Churchill has made generous and unexpected gestures of appreciation. A taxi driver who had often served him at Westerham, the village near Churchill’s house of Chartwell, tells of an interesting trip they once made. Proceeding down the road — fairly rapidly because Churchill was late for an engagement — the driver was suddenly quizzed from the rear seat.
“Did I not hear that your wife was ill?”
“She’s in the hospital and will be operated on this afternoon, sir.”
“Stop the car!” cried Churchill, leaning forward and brandishing a stick. “Turn around and drive to the hospital and don’t leave until she’s out of danger.”
While some of the Harrow boys found him a nuisance, all of them left with vivid impressions of him and have been competing with Churchill anecdotes ever since. L. C. M. S. Amery, who later rose to be one of the highest servants of the Crown, suffered a characteristic introduction to Churchill. Amery was standing beside the school pool, called “Ducker,” when “I suddenly felt myself propelled into the water by a foot in the small of my back, while unseen hands reft me of my towel. I emerged spluttering to see which of my friends had done this, only to meet the gleeful grin of a small, freckled, red-haired boy whom I had never seen before.” This act of Churchill’s turned out to be very rash indeed, since Amery was a member of an upper form, was one of the best athletes at Harrow, and was altogether disinclined to accept duckings from upstarts. He scrambled out of the pool, took after Churchill, who was now energetically alarmed, caught him, and carried him back to the pool, where he gave him a businesslike dousing. But it was notorious in the school that nobody could stay peeved at Churchill long. “Next day at Bill [roll call] Winston came up to me,” says Amery, “and with the same ingenuous frankness that has so often disarmed an angry opposition in the House, explained that he had not realized that I was in the Sixth Form, but only that I was small enough to be the most suitable victim to hand, adding: ‘My father, too, is small and he also is a great man.’ ”
It might be noted concerning “Bill” that roll call at Eton and at Harrow are conducted on somewhat different lines. At Eton, it is the custom for the boys to line up and, as their names are called, to lift the top hats which are such a well-known part of their school dress. At Harrow, the boys walk past the authorities in single file and themselves announce their names. At Churchill’s first roll call, his family and a number of other visitors were present. For reasons of scholastic deficiency and other considerations, he had been placed last in line. The visitors were astonished to see the son of Lord Randolph pacing along in this ignominious position, but his demeanor effectively took the curse off it. “He was totally unconcerned and in fact seemed to suggest that it was the post of honor,” said a man who was there.
Like school children today, the boys at Harrow were reluctant to have even the members of their immediate family visit them. “Boys at that time were very nervous about being seen walking with a lady in the street,” says the present vicar, Edgar Stogdon. “If your mother wrote to ask if she could come down to see you, you told her what hat to wear, and if her figure was beyond the accepted standard, you suggested postponement; and above all, there should be no form of endearment.” Churchill invited his old nurse, Mrs. Everest, down for the day. Grown rather fat but intensely happy, she arrived wearing an old poke bonnet, to be effusively greeted by Churchill at the station. He showed her around the school, pointing out students in their rooms much as a zoo keeper might exhibit some interesting but unimportant animals, and spent most of the day walking arm in arm with her on the street. “It is about the nicest thing a Harrow boy has ever done,” says Mr. Stogdon.
Another source recalls that Churchill once shocked the entire school by darting up during a house debate to refute one of the seniors and then to “carry all before him with a magnificent speech.” His heritage of easy presumption expanded significantly at Harrow. He became surer of himself with each scholastic disaster. Twice during vacations he accompanied Monsieur Minssen, the French and fencing master, to his home at Versailles, where he met many officers in the French Army. On one occasion, as the officers and Minssen were discussing military history, a certain battle of antiquity was brought into the conversation.
“I know very little about it,” said one of the officers, and the others confessed that they, while they could name the victor, could add little more.
“Why, I think I can fill you in on that,” said Ch
urchill, arising with good-natured condescension from a chair some distance apart. Taking the center of the floor, he asked a couple of lieutenants to step up a little closer and then began with, “You see, the Babylonians had fifteen hundred bowmen arranged in a semicircle over the north brow of a small mountain thirty-two kilometers from the village of Mogul. The day was warm, with a mild breeze from the southeast —” and he went on to present the struggle in stupefying detail.
Later that night, Monsieur Minssen said, “Churchill, wherever did you get all that material on the battle? Did you make it up?”
“Oh, no,” said Churchill. “Mr. Moriarty explained it last term, and I was able to remember bits and pieces. My memory is rather good that way.”
Fortunately for Churchill, Amery, the boy he ducked, had an equable and forgiving disposition. He was a power in the school and exercised a strong influence over many departments of campus life. Notably, he was editor of the Harrovian, the student paper, which received from one to ten carping letters from Churchill per week. Amery read them carefully, tolerantly, much entertained, and ran as many as he could without being removed from his position. The truth is that Amery, a remarkable boy who could speak Russian and several other languages, was thoroughly amused by Churchill, and egged him on in various subtle ways. “He [Churchill] submitted a trilogy of articles on Ducker, Gym, and the school workshop, breezy, entertaining and frankly critical of the existing administration of these departments,” says Amery. “I can still see the look of misery on his face as, in spite of his impassioned protests, I blue-pencilled out some of his best jibes. However, even my pedantic zeal for the Victorian respectability of the Harrovian did not altogether save the expurgated text from criticism by the authorities concerned.” In after years, Dr. Welldon himself told friends that he had been obliged to call Churchill up on the carpet in this connection. His account of his statement to the suspect went as follows: “My boy, I have observed certain articles which have recently appeared in the Harrovian, of a character not calculated to increase the respect of the boys for the constituted authorities of the School. As the Harrovian is anonymous I shall not dream of inquiring who wrote those articles, but if any more of the same sort appear, it might become my painful duty to swish you.”
Sure enough, more of the articles appeared, and Dr. Welldon performed his painful duty. Churchill had heard him out respectfully, made a slight bow, and, demonstrating a fleetness of foot for which he was acquiring a name, sprinted back to compose a howling beef about the recent Assault-at-Arms, an athletic exhibition. “All these things that I have enumerated,” he said at length, “serve to suggest that there is ‘something rotten in the State of Denmark.’ I have merely stated facts — it is not for me to offer an explanation of them. To you, sirs, as directors of public opinion, it belongs to lay bare the weakness. Could I not propose that some of your unemployed correspondents might be set to work to unravel the mystery, and to collect material wherewith these questions may be answered?
“The School itself has an ancient history; even the Gymnasium dates back to a Tudor. In those days they were not wont to Risk [this was a pun of Churchill’s — Tudor Risk was the first superintendent of the gymnasium] the success of the School Assault-at-Arms in the manner in which it was done on Saturday last. For three years the Assaults have been getting worse and worse. First the Midgets, then the Board School, and, finally, the Aldershot Staff have been called in to supplement the scanty programme. It is time there should be a change, and I rely on your influential columns to work that change.”
The effect of Dr. Welldon’s swishing was, however, temporarily chastening. Balked at complaints, Churchill poured his literary energies into a commemorative ode to Influenza. Essentially, the poem, which had twelve stanzas, was derogatory; he did not relieve Influenza of responsibility but he paid homage to its ubiquitous journeying through the world. From every standpoint, the work is an arresting effort for a boy of his years. From his opening theme in Stanza One — “Oh how shall I its deeds recount, or measure the untold amount of ills that it has done?” — he goes on in Stanza Two to take a knock at czarist Russia: “O’er miles of bleak Siberia’s plains, where Russian exiles toil in chains.”
Churchill displays his knowledge of political geography, always profound, in Stanza Six:
Fair Alsace and forlorn Lorraine,
The cause of bitterness and pain
In many a Gallic breast,
Receive the vile, insatiate scourge,
And from their towns with it emerge
And never stay or rest.
The faint but unmistakable drums of jingoism are heard in Stanza Nine, as Influenza reaches France:
In Calais port the illness stays,
As did the French in former days,
To threaten Freedom’s isle:
But now no Nelson could o’erthrow
This cruel, unconquerable foe,
Nor, save us from its guile.
The scourge did, in fact, penetrate England, but “it came with broken force.”
For though it ravaged far and wide
Both village, town and countryside,
Its power to kill was o’er;
And with the favoring winds of Spring
(Blest is the time of which I sing)
It left our native shore.
And in peroration, the voice of the future Prime Minister:
God shield our Empire from the might
Of War or famine, plague or blight
And all the power of Hell,
And keep it ever in the hands
Of those who fought ’gainst other lands,
Who fought and conquered well.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL (1890)
*
Amery’s blue pencil was busy during Churchill’s correspondence to the Harrovian, but he also salvaged and printed much that was worth while. The two boys established a friendship that endures to the present. In the several decades since their Harrow days, their political views have frequently diverged, but their personal relationship has been steadfastly affectionate. Amery, who became at different times First Lord of the Admiralty, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, and Secretary of State for India, continues to be amused by his old contributor, who will always interest him as much for his fiery impetuosity as for his matchless talents. After Harrow, their paths crossed again in a few years, while they were mountain climbing in the Alps. Amery was relieved to find absolutely no change in Churchill, who “determined to outdo us by ascending the highest mountain within reach of Zermatt.” He had picked out the difficult Monte Rosa and stuck at the job, as Amery says, “in spite of mountain sickness and a face grievously flayed by the scorching snow glare. But I do not think the sport appealed to him, and anyhow his interests and career soon led him elsewhere.”
And they were to meet again before long — sharing a tent in the Boer War, from which one morning, as Amery overslept, Churchill crept forth to beg a ride on an armored train, and to project himself into an adventure that captured the imagination of the entire civilized world. He was to find himself famous at twenty-six, and his career properly under way.
Churchill often goes back to Harrow. He has a curious loyalty for his old school, in view of his unscintillant activities there. The sole distinction he gathered in the course of his fourteen terms was the winning of the public school fencing championship at Aldershot, in 1892. His gymnasium sessions with Moriarty and his friendship with Minssen the fencing master had borne fruit. Some of his acquaintances felt that, while he despised the classics, he considered swordplay an enterprise that might have been endorsed by the unscholastic Marlborough, whose shade was already beginning to be influential in his life. He made a memorable visit to Harrow in the early part of the recent war, not long after he had succeeded to the highest governmental post in England. What his feelings were, as he trudged around the establishment in which he had once occupied the lowest post, he did not divulge, b
ut he seemed in triumphant spirits. In Chapel, he called for the singing of some of his favorite Harrow songs, and he bawled out the words, keeping time with a stick, with faultless recollection. In his party was Mr. L. C. M. S. Amery, now Secretary of State for India in Churchill’s Cabinet, who kept watching his former correspondent as if he expected him to dash out a window with a slingshot. Nothing untoward happened. The mischievous schoolboy had given way to the controlled but always smoldering diplomat and statesman.
Stet Fortuna Domus, the song that praises Harrow’s men of state, had been enhanced with a special verse for the occasion:
Nor less we praise in darker days
The leader of our nation,
And Churchill’s name shall win acclaim
From each new generation.
For you have power in danger’s hour
Our freedom to defend, Sir.
Though long the fight, we know the right
Will triumph in the end, Sir.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 8
