There is at this time surprisingly little in Clementine’s letters about Diana, Randolph and Sarah – and only passing mention of the fact that Diana had been suffering from neuralgia, often screaming in agony for twenty minutes at a time. In any case, and as ever, the children were largely entrusted to the care of a nanny. As her daughter Mary later noted, many women at such a time would have found ‘real consolation’ in the ‘company of their children’. Clementine loved them and was ‘devoted to their welfare’ but the whole focus of her life and her emotions was out there in France. Very occasionally, she would mention how Diana’s new haircut made her look like Peter Pan, that Sarah was ‘on the verge of voluble speech’, or how Randolph was showing a precocious interest in the war, and she once crowed with maternal pride after a birthday party when they looked ‘quite beautiful and quite different from the other children’. She wrote more frequently, however, about her concerns over Winston’s health, fretting that he was not inoculated against typhoid and waking in the night from nightmares of him shivering in the cold, a thought that made her utterly ‘miserable’.
Perhaps Clementine’s greatest worry of all in this testing time, however, was how to prevent her impetuous husband from damaging his prospects further. She could not have been more opposed, for instance, to Winston’s kneejerk desire for immediate and unsuitable preferment from Field Marshal French – a divergence of views that would generate a great deal of heat between them. But while Clementine had previously crumbled, she now saw clearly that Winston’s best interests lay in staying at the Front and being seen to rise up the ranks by merit. She was forthright in her assertion that only in this way could he begin to repair the damage done to his reputation back home. Yet still she occasionally expressed fears that she had gone too far: ‘I do hope that when you think of me, it is not a picture of a harsh arguing scold, but your loving & sad Clemmie,’13 she told him. ‘I love you very much more even than I thought I did . . . & now I feel more than half my life has vanished across the channel.’ No doubt she remained mindful of Jennie’s favourite piece of advice: never scold a husband, otherwise ‘he will only go where he is not scolded’.
Yet Clementine’s courage in standing up to Winston is remarkable. All his adult life, he dominated those around him, with many a tough general or hard-nosed minister holding back from contradicting him. As one admiral, David Beatty, would complain: ‘It takes a good deal out of me when dealing with a man of his calibre with a very quick brain.’14 Winston was forceful, impatient and loquacious. Phenomenally well briefed on a range of subjects, he also had a fierce temper and a cutting tongue. Disagreement with his point of view was ‘obnoxious’ to him; and when combined with personal affection, Violet Asquith observed, ‘it became a kind of treachery’.15 In short, it was difficult for almost anyone, however powerful or self-assured, to withstand the full force of his invective. Whenever Clementine herself lost face-to-face against this invincible opponent (sometimes because she became ‘over-emphatic’16) she would re-marshal her arguments in writing. But she would only rarely give up before the end, however exhausting the fight became.
This refusal to cede ground on important matters persisted throughout their marriage and was one of her most conspicuous traits. Often it was only Clementine who would point to Winston’s faults; his lack of real empathy with others and tendency to bully meant that he often mistook silent acquiescence for positive support. As Clementine told him, he had to learn how to take people with him by inspiring their trust rather than cowing them into submission. It would be a lesson she had to teach him time and time again.
Her campaign in late 1915 to prevent Winston taking command of a brigade – involving an indefensible promotion straight from major to brigadier-general – was particularly hard-fought. Winston was only too eager to be handed elevation on a plate, and wealth and social distinction generally still counted for much in the British Army; but the old order was fading fast and Clementine rightly feared that he would be seen once again as a character of vainglorious ambition. ‘I hope so much my Darling that you may still decide to take a battalion first,’ she had opened; ‘I prefer you to win your way than to be thought a favourite’ of Field Marshal French. ‘I feel confidence in your star.’17 French was in any case a spent force. A weak-willed womaniser, he was found out on the battlefield as slow and complacent. Whatever his failings, Winston remained devoted to him, but Clementine took a more objective view. ‘Do not my Dear be shocked & angry with me for saying this,’ she pleaded. ‘I know [French] is your friend,’ but with victory seemingly further away than ever he needed to be replaced by a ‘fresh un-tortured mind’.18
In the same letter, an increasingly desperate Clementine tried several different approaches: ‘I long for you to be not so much in the trenches . . . but everyone who really loves you & has your interest at heart wants you to go step by step . . . Do get a battalion now and a brigade later.’
Clementine’s instincts were sound, but she detected in Winston’s letters a coolness towards her – as well as a stubborn determination to have his way. ‘During this last week I feel as if I had missed your thoughts – or is it fancy?’ she asked three days later, on 9 December. He answered tersely the next day with news that he was to be given the command of the 56th Brigade, no matter what ‘criticism & carping’ came his way, and that she was secretly to order a new khaki tunic for him with the insignia of a brigadier-general. Clementine realised the battle was up; there was this time no point in trying to dissuade him further. She now affected to share his enthusiasm, however wrong-headed she still believed it to be, telling him she was ‘thrilled’ while steeling herself to defend Winston’s actions from his detractors once again. ‘Just come back to me alive that’s all,’19 were her closing words.
In the event, fearing questions in the House, Asquith blocked French’s offer of a brigade, leaving Winston bitter and Clementine saddened but ultimately relieved. She quickly cancelled the tunic and tried to boost Winston’s battered spirits: ‘My own Darling I feel such absolute confidence in your future – it is your present which causes me agony.’20 In return, he sent her two letters raging about Asquith’s treachery, which he later wisely advised her to burn. He vowed to sever every last link with the Prime Minister, but despite her own enmity towards Asquith, she pleaded caution: ‘Do not burn any boats!’
Knowing that Asquith was deep down fond of Winston, she now saw that there was a greater benefit to be had from winning him back to the Churchill cause than from permanently setting such a powerful operator against them. She still believed in her husband’s ‘star’ but warned him that his constant demands for information and persistent rejection of her considered advice were becoming intolerable: ‘You must not beat your poor Kat so hard; it is very cruel & not the right treatment for mousers. I am absolutely worn out tonight.’21
Winston, though, was at rock bottom and in open despair at his exile from power, complaining: ‘I see so much to be done that will never be done . . . My Darling, what should I do if I had not you to write to when I am despondent?’ He now regretted not following her ‘counsels’ in the past, even though they were on occasion ‘too negative’. But crucially he conceded that ‘the beauty & strength of your character & the sagacity of your judgment are more realised by me every day’.22 In one of his sweetest letters, Winston talked of how his ‘greatest good fortune in a life of brilliant experience has been to find you, & to lead my life with you . . . I feel that the nearer I get to honour, the nearer I am to you.’23
*
Winston returned home on leave for Christmas 1915, a welcome family get-together and reprieve from the strains of the past few weeks. He stayed for just a long weekend, and, making use of the opportunity to see his political contacts, he had very little time, as ever, alone with Clementine. It seems she found him attractive in uniform, though. There was something virile and valiant about him in khaki. After they had cut it rather fine and had to run for his train back to the Front, she recalled
being out of breath and unable to speak, but wrote later: ‘I could not tell you how much I wanted you at the station.’24 It is probably the most explicit note between them that survives. It also raises the question of just how much time and energy there was left for their marriage when they were investing so heavily in the remnants of his career. He relied on her completely, and she was giving her all to his cause, but there was little sign that he thought much about her needs or desires.
Although exhausted after the frantic activity of Winston’s visit, Clementine immediately got back to work the next day by inviting Asquith’s great rival, Lloyd George, to lunch at Cromwell Road. Winston fancied that the Welshman was intent on toppling Asquith as Prime Minister and that herein lay his own opportunity to sweep triumphantly back to office. Sure enough, Clementine was duly able to report back on Asquith’s weakening grip on power, but although Lloyd George had previously declared to Winston that he planned to overthrow Asquith at the earliest opportunity, he was now busily backtracking.
While Winston continued to have faith in his former colleague, the meeting had placed a great strain on Clementine. Lloyd George had uttered all the right things, saying repeatedly ‘We must get Winston back,’ but she found herself incapable of believing him. In her view he was at even greater fault than Asquith in Winston’s downfall, as he had failed to stand by his once great ally in his hour of need. ‘I don’t trust him one bit,’ she reported, characterising Lloyd George as ‘fair of speech, shifty of eye, treacherous of heart’.25 So for now, Winston had to make do with promotion to lieutenant-colonel in command of a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The men had recently come out of battle, having sustained horrific casualties at Loos, and Winston tried to raise their spirits by lavish praise of Scotland. ‘A wife, a constituency, & now a regiment attest the sincerity of my choice!’ he declared to them.26
Feeling re-energised after a few days’ rest at Alderley with her Stanley cousins, Clementine decided to swallow her pride and ‘reconnoitre Downing Street’. She thought herself ‘not good at pretending’ but she would put on an act and deploy all her charms to woo the Asquiths. Sure enough, on 7 January 1916, Margot invited her to tea again at Downing Street and this time the Prime Minister’s wife was in a ‘very good mood’. Clementine bumped into Asquith himself in the hall, and although reticent at first and looking as though he had suffered a ‘good deal’, he stopped for a chat, asking after Winston with ‘compunction in his voice’.27
She spoke to him at greater length when she was invited to lunch with the Asquiths the following Sunday. It was the first time they had had a proper conversation since Winston’s departure in November, and Asquith asked her a great many questions about her husband. ‘I was perfectly natural (except perhaps that I was a little too buoyant),’ she reported back, ‘but it was an effort.’28 Clementine’s intention was to re-establish ‘civil relations’ with the seat of power, and believing she was getting the measure of the Prime Minister, she begged Winston not to do anything that might jeopardise her progress, or without first permitting her to interject her ‘valuable (!) opinion’.29
Winston was not satisfied with this account, however, and demanded a ‘verbatim report of the Kat’s conversation with the old ruffian’. Asquith had not talked much about politics, she wrote, but rather ‘trivialities and femininities which you know he adores’. She had sensed that Asquith wanted her answers to his enquiries about Winston’s life in the trenches to be ‘reassuring, & my good manners as a guest forbade me making him uncomfortable which I could easily have done’. She knew she had to behave impeccably as she would otherwise not be ‘bidden again’.30
Clementine was playing the long game, but Winston was tiring of the wait. Although absorbed in his new regiment, military service was not enough. His second-in-command was the likeable Sir Archibald Sinclair and once he would have drawn comfort from this male comradeship, but now he felt obliged to maintain a ‘smiling face’ while keeping to himself his agony at being sidelined as the country bled to death. He felt ‘remote, forgotten, ineffectual’.31 ‘It is such a relief to write one’s heart out to you,’ he told Clementine. ‘Bear with me.’
As well as looking after Winston’s interests Clementine had, since the first German gas attack back in April, been spearheading a successful appeal to housewives to help make emergency gas masks for the Front (the first time a woman had ever undertaken such a role). In June she had also gone back to work organising canteens for munitions workers. Factories were working day and night to avoid another ‘shell scandal’ but management rarely provided catering for the staff. Clementine was invited to join the Munition Workers’ Auxiliary Committee formed by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and was put in charge of refectories across north London. Over the next few months, she took on responsibility for opening, staffing and running nine canteens, each feeding up to five hundred workers at a time. Although she had no previous experience in managing anything beyond the household, she turned out to be surprisingly effective. It was tiring work – not least because she was reliant on trams, tubes and trains to make her tours of inspection. Arriving home late at night, she was sometimes too exhausted to answer Winston’s letters straight away. Many replies were written at five or six in the morning, suggesting a very long day indeed.
Her new position of authority gave her the chance to advance her feminist beliefs. It was a small but significant step towards sexual equality when she introduced a rule that women workers could smoke in the same rest areas as their male colleagues. The thousands of women employed in heavy industry for the first time fascinated her. She took a great interest in their lifestyles, noticing that these often young and pretty women became ‘terribly skilful very quickly’. They expected ‘good money’ too, but even Clementine could not countenance equal pay with men. A woman earning 35/- a week felt like a millionaire, she declared, although a man earned more for the same work.
Although socially Clementine still mixed exclusively with her own class, she gradually endeared herself to the workers. Her obvious concern for the less fortunate and unusual dedication to the job of providing them with good meals distinguished her from other upper-class women drafted in to help with the war effort. Having watched her husband work at close quarters for the previous seven years, she adopted his professional approach – typically working from nine in the morning to half past seven at night. Her colleagues were ‘surprised’ at her speed and efficiency as well as her high expectations of her team, and although ‘I get very tired I find the others get tired first . . . It is no use scolding me becos’ it’s all your fault – You have taught me to work outside office hours.’32 Clementine was honing impressive leadership skills.
Despite her aristocratic origins, her relatively impoverished childhood and brief experience of work while unmarried had also fostered in her an instinctive sympathy for the worker’s point of view. Her natural reserve belied her own populist touch, including the odd harmless flirtation. In mid-December she had visited a free canteen for travelling soldiers at London Bridge station, where four hundred men were about to embark for France. ‘One very tough man talked to me a little & I asked him about his experiences,’ she had related to Winston. ‘Just as he was going he turned back & said “If you will wait for me till I come home I’ll marry you!”’33 She was touchingly proud of the compliment.
Around the same time, she began to take a similar interest in how Winston dealt with his rank and file, urging him to treat them kindly and with respect – a refrain she was to maintain throughout their marriage. And Winston did strive to improve conditions for his soldiers; he instituted a de-lousing operation as soon as he arrived, and arranged for sports days and concerts to entertain men about to return to the line. He was, furthermore, keen for her to know that he was a fair and compassionate commander. ‘My dear don’t be at all anxious about my being hard on the men. Am I ever hard on anybody? No. I have reduced punishment both in quantity & method.’34 Nevertheless, she wa
s right to worry, as his sense of natural superiority over the lower classes sometimes induced him to issue the most absurd orders. His idea that batmen – military servants assigned to commissioned officers – should also act as bodyguards and willingly sacrifice their lives for their superiors was drowned out by laughter from his men.35
More than seven million British women worked during the First World War, many of them – notably the upper-class ones – for the first time. The latter had previously lived lives free of household chores or virtually any sort of toil, leaving them with plenty of time to read, dress up and socialise. Many, like Clementine herself, found the new work onerous but also liberating and confidence-boosting. New horizons were opening up beyond husbands and homes.
Until it became essential to replace men away fighting at the Front, it had been a widely held presumption that women were simply not capable of carrying out demanding labour. Just before the war, there had been a debate in the press about the role of women, in which some seriously argued that if they were required to make decisions their ‘brains would melt down’ under the strain. Winston, although he had admired Clementine’s teaching of French when he first met her, was certainly against her being out of the home too much now that she was his wife. He had reservations, too, about her canteen work, fearing that it would distract her when she should be focused entirely on him. On one occasion, when she was absorbed in setting up a huge new refectory for a big factory at Hackney Marshes in east London, while also nursing her mother who had hurt her leg, Winston instructed her not to ‘neglect’ to ‘represent’ his interests – ‘don’t let them drift or think I have left the game’. He wanted her to spend as much time lobbying on his behalf as she did on the canteens – a request that would have excluded any time for sleep.
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