Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness

by Taylor, Robert Lewis

  A critic who especially fancied the book noted that, offsetting his chastising of the British, Churchill had unloaded some pretty personal remarks about the Pathans.

  It was true, as charged, that he had conceived a vast dislike for the tribesmen and their ungallant ways. He related sourly how they were forever trying to swap their wives for rifles, a practice that would have got a man black-listed in any club in London. “Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind,” said Churchill. He had been unappeased to learn that they fought among themselves entirely without malice, two rival sides frequently sitting down on the bodies of their slain comrades to discuss the fine points of the fracas. Their real estate procedures he considered to be ineffectual. When a piece of land was in dispute, each claimant by tribal law was compelled to take a Koran in hand and walk the boundary as he saw it, meanwhile swearing that he trod an accurate path. The results overlapped terribly. By good fortune, said Churchill, “the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned in favor of an appeal to force.”

  One aspect of Malakand that went unremarked but would stand out grotesquely in a modern report of war was the invigorating lack of attention to the author’s own activities. Though Churchill was in the thick of several battles, and could be expected to see the fighting subjectively, he wrote about the others. His account was about as opinionated as it could be, but the doings of the correspondent were subordinated to those of the main army. It was a sensible and largely unpolitical appraisal of the terrain, the people involved, their aims and tactics, and, as already stated, containing a fair sprinkling of impersonal clues to world, or military, betterment.

  Many of his descriptions were said to rank with the best war writing by the masters in this field: Stendhal, the haughty plagiarist; Joshua the Stylite, the best-known correspondent assigned to cover the war between the Greeks and the Persians, in 430 B.C.; and Stephen Crane, who had never been within ten miles of an activated battlefield in his life but who contrived, in The Red Badge of Courage, probably the vividest detail about fighting in existence. As a capper, a man who claimed to have read War and Peace clear through compared Churchill’s scene-setting touches with the sharpest in Tolstoy. “The bullets passed in the air with a curious sucking noise, like that produced by drawing the air between the lips,” wrote the subaltern at one place, and at another, “The company whose operations I watched — Lieutenant Lockhart’s — killed one of these [tribesmen] with a volley and we found him sitting by a little pool, propped against a stone. He had been an ugly man originally, but now that the bones of his jaw and face were broken in pieces he was hideous to look upon. His only garment was a ragged blue linen cloak fastened at the waist. There he sat — a typical tribesman, ignorant, degraded and squalid, yet brave and warlike, his only property his weapon and that his countrymen had carried off.”

  The sale of his book netted Churchill the equivalent of two years’ pay as a second lieutenant. Even at this young age — twenty-three — he had begun to see the many useful facets of money. In essence, it provided the vital link between the life of a gentleman-soldier and that of a man of affairs. Journalism and fighting formed a kind of cycle: with money he could buy railroad tickets to far places, kill a few natives, describe the battle, sell the story, and then be in a position to buy additional railroad tickets. Keeping this in mind, he noted with delight that the Afridis, up near the Khyber Pass, had gotten completely out of hand. His course was clear. He must join the expedition, in the name of Queen Victoria, the London Daily Telegraph, and the Allahabad Pioneer.

  Now, for the first time, Churchill ran into opposition. His exploits and notoriety began to backfire. The Daily Chronicle had been so unkind as to dub him “Pushful, the Younger,” and another paper had described him as being one of that band of “disconsolate young gentlemen endeavouring to fight their country’s battles disguised as journalists.” Moreover, his phenomenally long-suffering colonel of the 4th Hussars was at last growing restive. The colonel saw his precocious subaltern very infrequently. Now and then Churchill would drop by for some copy paper, or to pick up his laundry, or to arrange an extension to his already attenuated leave. At these times he presented such a gleaming appearance, what with his Cuban medal, the ribbon from Sir Bindon’s campaign, and his general air of Fleet Street prosperity, that the colonel had fallen into the habit of initiating salutes and escorting him around as one might receive a visiting dignitary. The colonel’s manner now frosted up. Even Churchill’s brother officers seemed out of patience. They were “extremely civil,” he later wrote, “but I found a very general opinion that I had had enough leave and should now do a steady spell of routine duty.”

  With his reserves thus weakened, Churchill fell back to a previously prepared position. He settled down to regimental life in Bangalore, but he did it ungraciously, and continued to send out feelers for advancement at each opportunity. The truth is that his reverence for a career of soldiering in India had faded. Among other things, he had encountered certain difficulties with the language. As a rule, when subalterns arrived in the romantic colony, they immediately set to work learning the native tongues. Churchill at Harrow had been marked as a linguistic cripple. He either wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tackle anything but English. He was a dead loss at Latin, and his French is still a subject for international flippancy. In the midst of the last war, he was showing a French minister some London military units and was asked to identify a marching company of the Women’s Voluntary Service. “Elles sont des femmes gratuités,” replied Churchill in his confident style. The Frenchman afterward repeated the curious explanation at the embassy, and added, “Mon Dieu, quelle situation!” He had apparently never before seen what he took to be female camp followers dressed in pretty uniforms and drilling on the streets.

  During his months in India, Churchill had picked up three Indian words, or, more properly, two and a half: Maro, meaning “kill,” chalo, “get on,” and “tally-ho,” the English foxhunting term which had been adopted as an Indian word meaning practically everything, like the Hawaiian aloha. With maro, chalo and “tally-ho,” Churchill felt that he could rise in India, but not very far. In consequence, and because of the rich vistas opened out by his writing, he decided against a cautious succession to eminence through the normal channels of promotion.

  Sir William Lockhart was in charge of the expedition to Tirah, where the Afridis were howling under the Khyber Pass. Churchill wrote him a letter expressing a willingness to join the outing, if the arrangements were sufficiently attractive. From a staff officer he got back a succinctly phrased telegram well within the ten-word economy limit and revolving around the word “No.” Churchill’s mother then wrote to influential government acquaintances, to Lord Roberts, to Lord Wolseley, and to Sir George White, the Army commander-in-chief in India. Their replies, no doubt tinted by the offhand advice in The Story of the Malakand Field Force, were similar in spirit to the telegram. Churchill interpreted the attitude of these functionaries as one of restrained entreaty. So he packed up, browbeat another leave out of his colonel, and shoved off for Calcutta, the seat of government, where he meant to pick up his orders. What was his amazement when the Adjutant General declined categorically to interview him. However, by applying continuous pressures, Churchill actually got himself appointed Sir William’s orderly. When the campaign proved disappointing, he saw that his only recourse was to go back to Bangalore and write a novel.

  Churchill began work on Savrola, a Tale of the Revolution in Laurania, within the fortnight. The writing went at a gallop. His comrades gave him every assistance in outlining the character of Lucile, his heroine. Their remarks were of such a crude and unvirginal nature that he was compelled to sequester himself in his bedroom and stuff cotton in his ears. His manuscript was completed in only a few weeks. He sent it to Longmans, his London publisher, and the serial rights were s
old to Macmillan’s magazine. Macmillan’s readers in general regarded the effort with interest. When the book appeared, Churchill had introduced a brief preface which said in part, “Since its first reception was not unfriendly, I resolved to publish it as a book, and I now submit it with considerable trepidation to the judgment or clemency of the public.”

  Savrola is an eventful narrative, bumpy in spots, and certainly must be rated a singular creation for a twenty-three-year-old. The scene was laid in Laurania, one of those indeterminate fictional states with which Europe was overstocked by authors around the turn of the century. The boundaries were often casually drawn, giving rise to geographic perplexities that landed more than one reader on the verge of lunacy. Sending her footman into Prague for snails, a heroine might step down the path for a dip in the Mediterranean, picking edelweiss en route and singing a beer-garden aria in Flemish. Laurania looked out on the Mediterranean in front and in the back to some mountains that could have been anything from the Apennines to the Urals. It was a pleasant spot, said Churchill, whose climate “had made the Lauranian capital the home of the artist, the invalid, and the sybarite.”

  As the story opened, the capital was predominantly the home of an articulate rogue named Antonio Molara, the “President,” who had raised himself up to be dictator and was making things tough for the workers. Tension prevailed throughout the nation. Brisk rifle fire broke out on page 13, and an unidentified man in a straw hat was killed. The President himself was beaned by an accurately thrown rock as he descended from the official carriage. In response to hopeful inquiries from his staff, he said, “It is nothing. They threw stones; we used bullets; they are better arguments.” Then, ignoring his streaming temple, he stepped on into the palace, presumably to raise everybody’s taxes another 12 per cent.

  While Molara was nothing special to look at, his wife Lucile was an angel in very thin disguise. She was as saintly as her husband was rapacious. Churchill’s low barracks-room friends had made no headway in shaping either her looks or her character. She had “perfect features,” her “tall figure was instinct with grace,” and her nature was mellowed by a yet unmatured passion for the workers. Within the limits of her unconsciously democratic persuasion, Lucile was a good wife to Molara. “Her salon was crowded with the most famous men from every country.” This wanton depletion of other countries of their personages made for very gay doings in Laurania. Reactionary balls were the order of the day, and there were other entertainments nearly as pleasant. Lucile had a pretty wit, and she kept things moving, but she recognized faintly, even if her husband did not, that something was missing. Her life was courtly, polysyllabic, and hollow. All unawares, she awaited the onset of Love.

  It was at this point that Churchill’s readers were introduced to Savrola, the leader of the opposition, who has been mentioned as being perhaps the most relentlessly political hero in literature. He was thirty-two and “looked magnificent,” with a “high and ample forehead” and a promising air of election triumphs just around the corner. From some unstated source, possibly kickbacks, he was a man of means, and his apartment was “tasteful and luxurious,” built around a library coincidentally featuring the very authors that Churchill himself had been reading at Bangalore: Darwin, Macaulay, Gibbon, etc. Though an idealist, Savrola fitted in perfectly with the Lauranian scene. The country itself was an administrative nightmare. Ballot-stuffing, oratory, graft, and assassination were the main occupations, and the nation’s foreign policy was a model of universal bad will.

  Like most politicians, Savrola hoped to repair the confusion while retaining the politics. President Molara had other ideas. He preferred to keep the confusion while jettisoning Savrola. And here, as the dictator pondered a more permanent method of subduing his rival than outstuffing him at the ballot boxes, he had what proved to be a uniquely frail idea. Why not sick the ravishing Lucile onto Savrola, learn his secrets, undermine his strength, and then, eventually, snip off his locks, even as Delilah had barbered the muscle-bound Samson? Molara’s wife was naturally reluctant. She argued that she had her principles, same as anybody else. When Molara insisted, in the iron-jawed style that had accounted for his rise to power, Lucile made plans for a gigantic state ball and sent an invitation to Savrola.

  Churchill’s description of this resplendent social function was confident and sound. His childhood had been spent in close proximity to the pomp and glitter of Blenheim and other big houses, and he knew what he was talking about. His familiar mention of trumpets, powdered footmen, stringed bands, and potted plants provided a believable backdrop for the dirty work that Molara had mapped out for Lucile. Savrola almost didn’t go. His advisers, an extremely shifty collection, felt that his presence might be an affront to the trade unions.

  The evening got off to a radiant start. The Russian ambassador arrived, kissed Lucile’s hand and entered into one of the cerebral exchanges that distinguished the amenities of that period.

  R: The scene is an appropriate setting to a peerless diamond.

  L: Would it sparkle as brightly in the Winter Palace?

  R: Assuredly the frosty nights of Russia would intensify its brilliance.

  L: Among so many others it would be lost.

  R: Among all others it would be unrivalled and alone.

  L: Ah, I hate publicity, and as for solitude, the thought of it alone makes me shiver.

  *

  The British ambassador, Sir Richard Shalgrove, turned up wearing the Order of the Garter and got off some merry jests, which had a decidedly unfestive overtone, centering on a fleet of English battleships that he hinted were lying a little distance offshore. This was presumably routine British diplomacy, since nobody paid any attention to him but just laughed at his jokes and let him maunder on. Savrola, arriving, commanded instant attention, for he was in plain evening dress, with “no decorations and no stars,” and was also strikingly “calm, confident and composed.” About three waltzes later he and Lucile found themselves tête-à-tête, and the reader sensed the unmistakable imminence of a romance. This was a skillful touch of Churchill’s; an atmosphere of jungle expectancy, of mate calling to mate, settled down over the story.

  Things now moved swiftly. With a firm but tender grasp, Savrola led Lucile out onto a moonlit balcony, edged her into a shadowed recess, and drew her into an impassioned political argument that went on for eleven pages.

  The evening was not altogether a success. The King of Ethiopia, the principal guest, a man with a “black but vivacious face,” left in a huff because of the low-cut dresses of the women, and no amount of coquetry or low-cut dresses could stop Savrola from babbling politics. As Molara reflected when he and his wife were undressing for bed, they had spent a lot of money and hadn’t got to first base. He turned in with plans for another hike in taxes.

  After this the situation went from bad to worse. If Laurania thought it had been political before, it changed its mind once Savrola hit his full stride. He made a corker of a speech in the public square and caused a full-scale riot. Lucile, who had slipped into the throng to study his style, was trivially injured in a crush of excited workers. Savrola assisted her to his home and, with his housekeeper, tried to get her into bed but she slipped away, laughing, and scampered up to the roof, where she looked at his telescope.

  “I ought to hate you,” she said when he joined her, “and yet I don’t feel that we are enemies.”

  “We are on opposite sides,” Savralo replied. “Only politics can come between us.”

  Still hacking at the same old line.

  As he was about to make some advance of a perhaps more genially political nature, the dogged Molara burst in and denounced Lucile as a “Strumpet!” This was certainly a loose choice of words, for her guilt, if any, was ideological rather than erotic. Nevertheless, Molara cursed her horribly (“The common, ugly material of his character showed through the veneer and polish”) and took a shot at Savrola, which was high.

  Savrola knocked him flat, and the revolution beg
an. A reviewer has complained that it was next to impossible to follow the twists and turns the fighting took in the capital in the next few days. At one point a fleet of ships figured prominently in the talk. They could have been those mentioned by Sir Richard Shalgrove at the ball, since Churchill earlier had caused one Lauranian to remark, “Ah these English — how grasping, how domineering!” It is known for sure that the government suffered 1400 casualties, that the Senate was seized, and that looting broke out everywhere.

  In the manner of most European revolutions, the movement got out of hand. A German corporal among Savrola’s following, a foaming maniac named Kreutze who bore a clairvoyant resemblance to another ambitious Teuton, then still a baby, screamed himself into command as the new Socialist messiah. Molara and his gang were liquidated, and Savrola and Lucile were compelled to flee into exile.

  On their way out, standing on a hill overlooking the home of the artist, the invalid, and the sybarite, Savrola expressed his determination to return and clean up the mess. If the book had a flaw, it might be that no reader in his right mind could be persuaded to believe that any one man this side of heaven was up to the job.

  The evasion and temporary cessation of politics did one thing for Savrola and Lucile: it enabled them at last to enjoy an authentic love scene. In the midst of a tropical embrace, they exchanged endearments.

  “Goddess!” whispered Savrola.

  “Philosopher!” returned Lucile.

  They went on up the alien path, headed for Graustark, or Hentzau, or another friendly, fictional haven. Politics had missed fire, but love seemed strong enough to carry them through to the next general election.