by David Lough
Churchill’s vision of imperialism was founded on the mutual progress towards liberalism and democracy of members of the empire, not on a shared economic self-interest. Although he was born into the landed class, which almost always identified with the Tory Party, Churchill had never owned an acre of land. His experience of having to earn his own living through personal enterprise led him to identify just as closely at this stage of his life with the new breed of ‘plutocrats’, many of whom were friends or friends of his parents: the bankers Nathaniel and Alfred Rothschild and Sir Ernest Cassel; the newspaper owners Alfred Harmsworth and Oliver Borthwick; the mining financier Abe Bailey.*2 Although keen to acquire many of the trappings of the aristocracy – a country home, a shoot, a stretch of river – many ‘plutocrats’ identified politically with the values of reform, enterprise and free trade, as championed by the Liberal Party.
Churchill was associated with a small group of Tories known as the ‘Hooligans’*3 who nursed hopes of a realignment at the centre of British politics and kept in touch with leading Liberal Party figures. Many fellow politicians suspected the motives of the ‘Hooligans’ to owe more to ambition than to principle; however the issue of ‘free trade’ provided members of the group with the cover of principle. Within a month of the leading Conservative Joseph Chamberlain announcing in May 1903 his conversion to a policy of trade tariffs loaded in favour of imports from Britain’s colonies, Churchill signalled his opposition was sufficiently deep-seated to cause a break with the Tories and a move towards the Liberal Party.
By the middle of 1903 Churchill was so exhausted by his twin careers of writing and politics that he underwent a course of twenty-three ‘Galvanic Medical Treatments’,30 a harbinger of growing medical expenditure during his late bachelor years. At least he had little tax to pay: the combined rate of direct and indirect taxes was still around 20 per cent for those on the highest or lowest incomes,31 but Churchill was told that he should not have to pay more than £50 for either the 1902/3 or 1903/4 tax years*4 – he was still unpaid as an MP, and was allowed to spread his literary earnings over three successive years and to deduct all his bank interest and insurance payments.32
City markets had remained so depressed since the end of the Boer War – one commentator reported stockbrokers picking up cigarette ends in the street33 – that two years of comparative peace on his mother’s finances came to an end late in 1904, when Norwich Union took fright at the dwindling value of investments backing its £17,000 loan to the family trusts. Preoccupied at this time by politics as he prepared the ground for crossing the floor of the House from the Tory to the Liberal benches, Churchill asked his brother Jack to deal with the insurers. At the same time he reassured Jennie that Cornwallis-West family money would eventually come to their rescue: ‘I have no doubt that when Papa G.*5 is at length gathered to Abraham, you will be able to renew your youth like the eagle.’34 The duke chastised Churchill for not taking a closer personal interest in his mother’s affairs, prompting him to set aside two days for what he called a ‘Grand Inquisition’. Jennie welcomed the gesture. ‘I am sure it will save you & Jack a lot of bother later on,’ she wrote to him; ‘it is really such a heavy, difficult estate to understand.’35
Churchill’s ‘Inquisition’ failed to live up to the rigorous standards of its Spanish namesake; too many of his energies were bent on establishing a new political identity. His biography of Lord Randolph had also made little progress, but he gave it more of his attention during August when he stayed at Sir Ernest Cassel’s mountain-top retreat above the Swiss village of Mörel. ‘I divide [the days] into three parts,’ he told his mother. ‘The morning when I read and write: the afternoons when I walk – real long walks and climbs about these hills or across the glacier: the evenings, of course 4 rubbers of bridge – then bed.’36
Whenever he could during the autumn, Churchill continued writing, whether at a moated house near St Albans rented by the Cornwallis-Wests, at Blenheim Palace or in London, the location where politics and Jennie’s finances proved most distracting. By March 1905 Churchill felt sufficiently confident about his biography to discuss terms with the publisher of his first five books. However, Thomas Longman’s offer of a £4,000 advance fell so far short of the £8,000 or £10,000 that he had been told to expect that Churchill decided to look elsewhere once the book was more complete.37
Meanwhile his former colleagues in the Conservative Party were not making the task of finishing the book any easier. They forced his resignation from the Carlton Club and blackballed his application to the polo club at Hurlingham.38 When Churchill dried up during a House of Commons speech in May, sympathy flowed from many quarters, but no one was as practical as his aunt Cornelia, who sent money. ‘Now I know elections and Parliament in general all means a great deal of expense & so we want to enjoy the prerogative of standing in the relation of uncles and aunts to send a little present which we feel may be useful at any rate at the present time,’ she wrote, unable to resist adding: ‘When the heiress*6 is found, I think the good fortune will not only be on your side.’39
Despite the blackball at the Hurlingham, polo weighed heavily on Churchill’s time and finances during the summer of 1905. He had sold two ponies for ten guineas each earlier in the year,40 replacing them with four of a much higher pedigree, each costing at least £100.41 Although Wembley Park Polo Club allowed MPs to play in the mornings for a reduced membership fee, housing each pony cost three shillings a day and moving them cost a minimum of nineteen shillings whenever he played elsewhere.
Lord Randolph’s biography languished until Churchill spent another three weeks at Sir Ernest Cassel’s Swiss villa in August, after which he reopened publishing negotiations. He had a new agent, Frank Harris, an author himself and former editor of the Evening News, Fortnightly Review and Vanity Fair.*7 Harris would earn commission only on any improvement he achieved on Longman’s offer of £4,000. He sent details of Lord Randolph Churchill to several publishers, telling Churchill: ‘Properly worked this book should bring you in £10,000 or I’m a Dutchman!’42 Harris provided Churchill with a blow-by-blow account of negotiations: Heinemann was the first to decline; Methuen talked well, but ‘is not rich enough to risk a sum like eight or ten thousand’; Cassell was the richest publisher, he thought, and ought to emerge victorious; but in the end it was Frederick Macmillan, one of the doyens of British publishing, who made the highest offer of £8,000 for combined British and American rights.43
Churchill immediately met Macmillan to make some final demands: he wanted £1,000 on signing, another £1,000 on delivery of the proofs and the remaining £6,000 on publication. Forty-eight hours later, impressed by Churchill’s self-assurance, Macmillan acquiesced: ‘My partners and I have discussed the proposals you made to us on Saturday and I now write to confirm that we shall be glad to publish your Lord Randolph Churchill on the terms suggested by you.’44
There was no contract. ‘The terms contained in your letter of this day are perfectly satisfactory to me,’ Churchill simply wrote on Macmillan’s office notepaper the same day,45 before passing on details to his mother and his former publisher. Longman congratulated him on the ‘splendid price’, but told Macmillan privately that he had paid too much.46
This earned Churchill a stern rebuke from Macmillan: ‘By the way, we do not propose to tell the world at large what our arrangement with you is. It always seems to me that gossip of this kind serves no good end and is a little bit undignified.’47 Churchill claimed only to have told ‘some of my relations and a few intimate friends’,48 but his generous advance soon became common knowledge in the book world. ‘Winston Churchill is a bright young man and will make the most of his material but there is not much of vital interest in the subject,’ was the lukewarm verdict of the London office of Charles Scribner’s Sons.49
Manuscripts and proofs travelled between Churchill and his new publisher almost daily in November, although the cordial mood soured slightly when Churchill decided that Macmillan’s proofread
er was not up to the task and insisted that his agent Harris should act instead at his publisher’s expense.50 Meanwhile, Churchill prepared the ground among his newspaper friends: Sir Alfred Harmsworth ‘has most kindly promised me to push the book by every means in his power’, as long as he was sent five copies ten days in advance, he told his publisher.51
The publication date of the biography was set for January 1906 until Prime Minister Arthur Balfour resigned in the preceding December, having failed to resolve Tory differences over tariff reform. Although he did not ask the king to dissolve Parliament in case the Liberal leader Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was unable to form a government, the prospect of power rapidly united Sir Henry’s colleagues. Among those Sir Henry contacted about an appointment was Churchill himself, to whom he offered the choice of financial secretary at the Treasury (under Herbert Asquith as chancellor) or under-secretary for the colonies (under Lord Elgin, a former viceroy whom he had met in India). Churchill preferred the latter’s scope to shine in the House of Commons.
Emboldened by the ease with which he had formed his administration, Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman asked the king himself for a dissolution of Parliament and set the general election date for early in January, just as Lord Randolph Churchill was due to be published. Churchill wanted to delay the launch while he stood for the first time as a Liberal in northwest Manchester (and comfortably beat his Tory opponent),52 but Macmillan pressed ahead, in the hope of capitalizing on a wave of political interest.
Lord Randolph Churchill was published as the first election results were declared. British sales reached almost 5,000 in January, before slowing down sharply.53 Macmillan admitted disappointment, but felt that Churchill’s expectations had always been too high.54 The Times Book Club had just been established in an effort to restore the newspaper’s flagging sales and Macmillan sold it 1,900 copies from surplus stock; he had not realized that the newspaper would then offer the book to its Book Club members at one fifth of its bookshop price.55 ‘I am very sorry to see by a cutting which has reached me that The Times have played you a shabby trick,’ Churchill wrote to his publisher.56 Nevertheless, Churchill had his generous advance and he told his tax adviser Theodore Lumley to submit a profit on the biography of £7,250 after expenses, easily the best profit of his writing career thus far.57
Before Churchill submerged himself under the cares of office, he earmarked £6,000 of the sum for investment by Sir Ernest Cassel and the balance for the lease of a larger London home, of the class expected of a rising young minister. It was Jennie who found the four-storey home at 12 Bolton Street in Mayfair, while the duke of Marlborough agreed over Christmas at Blenheim that Churchill could leave Mount Street at short notice. With Jennie’s help, alterations were agreed over the New Year – the architect’s initial estimate of less than £250 being revised to £850 after he had met Churchill and his mother.58
Then there was the £750 cost of a library, which Churchill wanted but could not afford until Sir Ernest Cassel offered to pay for it – a fact that would emerge seventeen years later, during the libel trial of Lord Alfred Douglas. Churchill set about filling the bookshelves, spending more than £300 on hundreds of new and secondhand volumes procured from the bookshops of Charing Cross Road.59
He was discovering the cost of home ownership: Harrods’ bill alone was seven pages long, covering kitchen, bedroom and bathroom items ordered by his mother.60 There was annual rent of £250 to pay to the freeholder, plus local property income taxes, and bills for insurance and utilities.61 Two male servants, a housekeeper, cook and a housemaid looked after the new minister, although his long-established laundress Mrs Thornley still collected his washing, which she took to her emporium in Earlsfield for the not inconsiderable cost of £100 a year.62
*1 ‘It’s a guinea a number, too little by half, / For the crowned heads of Europe are all on the staff,’ ran a contemporary satirical rhyme.
*2 Abraham (‘Abe’) Bailey (1864–1940), born in southern Africa, educated in England; woolbroker 1879; goldmining in southern Africa 1881; mentored by Cecil Rhodes, stock-broking of mining shares; later owned his own mining properties; baronet 1919.
*3 Also known as the ‘Hughligans’, taking their name from a leader, Hugh Cecil MP.
*4 In Britain the tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April of the following year.
*5 George Cornwallis-West’s father.
*6 The ‘rich heiress’ was a rare but much sought-after Victorian creature: she had wealthy parents, but no brothers and as few sisters as possible.
*7 Frank Harris (1856–1931); best known for his explicit memoirs, My Life and Loves (1922–7).
6
No ‘rich heiress’
Junior Minister and Marriage, 1906–8
Exchange rate $5 = £1
Inflation multiples: US x 25; UK x 100
THE NEW UNDER-SECRETARY for the colonies paid £5.10s. for his first red Moroccan-leather dispatch box.1 Churchill’s in-tray in December 1905 was dominated by southern Africa’s continuing problems, particularly the need to devise a self-governing constitution for the Transvaal. In addition the Liberal Party’s election manifesto had promised to bring to an end the local administration’s controversial use of 50,000 Chinese labourers in the mines.
Despite these tasks, the new minister still found time to play polo, which Edward Marsh,*1 his new private secretary at the Colonial Office, charitably entered as ‘equitation’ in the ministerial diary. Marsh had been private secretary for Joseph Chamberlain, but he came personally recommended by the new Countess Lytton (formerly Pamela Plowden) and by Churchill’s own aunt Leonie.
Public office failed to restrain Churchill’s private spending, which reached £1,700 in 1906, well ahead of a junior minister’s salary of £1,500 a year.2 In order to secure an expanding overdraft at the bank, Cox & Co. required Churchill to transfer some of his investments for registration under its name. On the way to observe German army summer manoeuvres, Churchill and his cousin Ivor Guest visited the Deauville casino, where his early successes might have helped reduce Churchill’s debts; but his fortunes changed as they gambled every night until five in the morning. ‘I have made a little money – had made a lot,’ he told Marsh.3 The eventual profit from his visits (£260) disappeared on a diversion to Paris, where it was split between four hundredweight of books bought for his new library and what Churchill coyly described to his brother Jack as ‘other directions’.4
Left to hold the fort at home, Marsh asked innocently whether he should pay any of the minister’s overdue private bills. Churchill explained his philosophy: ‘They may as well wait a little longer, having already waited so long.’ However, he did ask his brother to keep an eye on a couple of bills. ‘I do not want to pay them now unless I am forced, in wh[ich] case I can find the money,’ he told Jack. ‘But I do not want them to take legal proceedings and I hope you will let me know before the matter becomes urgent.’5
The truth was that Churchill could only pay by increasing an overdraft limit that he had already raised once, or by selling more investments at what he considered a bad time. One of his stockbroking friends, Cecil Grenfell, had recommended ‘Unions’ shares to him earlier in the summer, but Churchill had missed an opportunity by selling them much too soon. He admitted to Jack (who was now a member of the stockbroking fraternity at Nelke Phillips & Co.) that Sir Ernest Cassel and Grenfell had criticized his habit of darting in and out of the market.6
Churchill’s bank was no happier: Churchill had breached an increased overdraft limit and it now insisted that part of the arrangement was converted into a formal loan. ‘It seems pre-destined that money is to avoid me,’ Churchill complained to his mother, ‘except in such driblets that it cannot be enjoyed without feelings of uncertainty & anxiety.’7
Mr and Mrs Cornwallis-West were not without their own difficulties. With a little help from Lord Rothschild, George had two years earlier formed a new City partnership, Wheater, Cornwallis-West & Co. The two principals h
ardly knew each other, but the north countryman Wheater was supposed to provide the brains, and George the London introductions. ‘In the first year, merely operating in large lines of the shares in north-country steel and iron works controlled by the late Lord Furness, we made over twenty-three thousand pounds,’ George recalled in his memoirs. However, the firm started to struggle when Wheater, ‘a born gambler’, reinvested their gains in a Spanish copper mine and an Australian cultured pearls project,8 before a solicitor defrauded the business in the summer of 1906.
Left to find £8,000 in a hurry, George hid the difficulty from Jennie, but not from Churchill, who was one of those he approached to produce the balance that the bank would not lend. Churchill was in Vienna when a letter with a cheque for £3,000 arrived from Nairobi, sent by the duke of Westminster.9 Bendor (as the duke was known to friends) was George’s brother-in-law and, although his own marriage was in trouble, he made it clear that Churchill should use the cheque, rather than his own money, if George genuinely needed to be rescued. The duke’s only condition was that George should not be able to trace its source.
Fittingly, George was stalking deer in Scotland when Churchill’s letter reached Jennie, asking for private information on George’s affairs. Things were a little slack in the City, she thought, but Wheater, Cornwallis-West & Co. had earned at least £12,000 over the previous three months, as far as she knew.10 In fact, as she wrote, the Bank of England was pushing through two bank rate rises within ten days to try to stop gold draining away from London to New York.*2 Handing over the duke’s money to George, Churchill hinted heavily that it had come from Sir Ernest Cassel, with whom he had just stayed in Switzerland. He explained to Bendor that he could not pretend that he had supplied the money himself, because George would never have believed him.
