First Lady
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When the French leader arrived, she was waiting for him. She quickly diverted him away from his aides and into the garden, where she could speak frankly. Sarah overheard part of the conversation, during which Clementine remarked pointedly: ‘Mon Général, you must take care not to hate your allies more than your enemies.’69 The subsequent lunch and discussions with Winston played out more amicably than expected, with de Gaulle most unusually insistent on speaking English.
By 18 January 1944 Winston was fit enough to return to England and resume his prime ministerial duties. Clementine’s appearance in the House of Commons gallery reflected a degree of concern about the reception he might receive. She smiled down at him as he entered the chamber and saw the House rise to cheer him, but the MP Henry ‘Chips’ Channon found the welcome, for a man who had cheated death, merely ‘courteous’, even ‘curiously cold’. He thought Winston looked ‘disappointed’, observing that he was ‘not loved’ by MPs. The next day Winston complained of more pains around his heart, although he ascribed them to indigestion.70
*
Despite a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation in May 1943, there was never any real hope for Pamela’s marriage with Randolph. She was enjoying her freedom – and doing too important a job for her country. ‘She was honey drawing flies,’ noted a CBS correspondent.71 The so-called flies were mostly American.
She had moved out of the Dorchester and, after sharing a flat in Grosvenor Square with Harriman and his daughter Kathleen, had made a new home opposite the Connaught Hotel. Three-year-old Winston had his own room, but he and the accoutrements of infant life were rarely in evidence. Her softly lit drawing room was painted a flattering peach and furnished, Clementine-style, with antiques, silver-framed photographs and fresh flowers. Here most evenings she presided over small groups of American generals, diplomats and journalists, interspersed with the odd infatuated Brit whom she ignored (as they were obviously of little use). Sometimes a call would come in to her number – Mayfair 5975 – from Downing Street and she would say to her guests: ‘I have to go. He’s calling me now.’ Over a game of late-night bezique she would then pass on to Winston whatever she had gleaned.72
Pamela’s flat was a rationing-free zone and her male guests treasured their invitations to five-course dinners of oysters, salmon, beef and whisky. Much of the food came courtesy of the American military; one general from Eighth Bomber Command routinely dropped off cartons of prime juicy steaks. Ed Murrow’s wife Janet recalled feeling out of place: ‘Unless you were important in some way, you weren’t very welcome.’73 Few other women were invited; those who were gazed at Pamela’s couture dresses and wondered how she paid for it all. Most thought Harriman was picking up the bill – her biographer has suggested he also provided her with a car, petrol and a £3000 yearly allowance – but by then he was not the only American seeking her favours. Some suspected the real paymaster was Beaverbrook, and that he was buying information, either for his own benefit or the Churchills’.
Along with others in their circle, the Duff Coopers, long-term intimates of the Churchills, thought that Winston and Clementine themselves were behind the arrangement. ‘They set Pam up in a very luxurious flat . . . where her job was to give dinner parties to the top American brass and if necessary go to bed with them afterwards,’ says John Julius Norwich, who remembers his parents discussing the matter. ‘Winston wanted her to do pillow talk. He wanted her to get messages to them and from them, but not through his own generals. He also wanted to get to know more about their characters . . . Pamela was absolutely superb at doing this. I’ve no idea how many generals she took to her bed. I should think probably several.’74 The likelihood is that Pamela had more than one source of income; what is certain is that Winston, who never kept anything from Clementine, directly benefited from her ‘work’.
When Harriman was reluctantly posted to Moscow late in 1943 (thereby exiting the Churchills’ sphere of influence), Clementine acknowledged the impact of the move on her daughter-in-law. It was still unusual to use the phone casually but Clementine called her immediately and ‘was very sweet and said I must be very sad’.75 On that and another occasion when the two women discussed Harriman’s departure, Randolph was never mentioned. Yet Pamela was not ‘very sad’ for long. She ‘sort of cried’ on handsome Ed Murrow’s shoulder, and hypnotised by her sexiness and the aura that came with being close to the Prime Minister, the journalist fell hopelessly in love.
At the behest of Brendan Bracken, Winston’s most loyal lieutenant, Pamela had also signed up in the autumn of 1943 to work at the Churchill Club, a gathering place for Americans arriving in London based in Ashburnham House, a stately old mansion behind Westminster Abbey. Pamela had no assigned role beyond representing the Churchill family, but she laughed with the officers, put them at their ease, and her come-hither style made her appear available even when she was not – ‘Often though she was.’76 She made the best of the liberties of wartime, simultaneously enjoying herself and aiding the British cause. ‘It was a terrible war, but if you were the right age, the right time and in the right place, it was spectacular.’77
Pamela’s sources on both sides were unparalleled. One of her conquests was General Frederick Anderson, the young head of the US Eighth Bomber Command. According to the writer and Washington player Bill Walton, a good friend of Pamela’s, the Churchills knew about this affair as well and ‘would question her on . . . [Anderson’s] position on certain key bombing strategies’.78 The American historian Lynne Olson notes that ‘rarely – before or since – has diplomacy been so personal’,79 or, indeed, so sexual. Harriman, Winant, Anderson, Murrow and many others had all become involved in love affairs with Churchills – and there can be little doubt that Winston and Clementine knew about these relationships, and good reason to believe they also condoned them. What underlay this acceptance, however, was not moral permissiveness, but strategic necessity. When confronted with wartime adultery that was of no use to the British cause, the Clementine of the Second World War was no less disapproving than that of the First. She once reportedly refused to sit next to the writer Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of Time magazine owner Henry Luce, at dinner because of an alleged affair she had conducted ‘with one of our best generals’ (author’s emphasis).80
Randolph had formally left Pamela in the autumn of 1942, and towards the end of the war she would sue for divorce on the grounds of desertion. This was granted in December 1945, leaving her with custody of young Winston. She concluded that Randolph ‘needed someone like his own mother, who lived entirely for her husband’.81 Sadly there was no one else quite like Clementine, and long ago she had chosen Winston and his career over her son. But by then the war was over and so was the great ‘business transaction’, although the grateful Churchills gave Pamela £500 a year for the rest of their lives.
Winston had misgivings about D-Day at every moment until its success was assured. He was haunted by the possibility that tens of thousands of British, American and Canadian lives might be sacrificed on a hastily conceived European incursion merely to meet Stalin’s incessant demands for a second front that would divide the Wehrmacht’s resources and so alleviate Russia’s suffering. It was a fear shared by Commonwealth leaders who assembled to discuss the progress of the war in London in May 1944; all were intent on avoiding a repeat of the Dardanelles. But it was equally clear that the conflict was moving into a new phase and that Operation Overlord – as the invasion of northern France was codenamed – was the inescapable next move. The US was scoring significant victories against the Japanese in the Pacific, the RAF and American Eighth Air Force had joined forces to flatten German cities, and Allied troops were continuing their gruelling northward slog through the Italian peninsula. By 1944 Winston had run out of excuses to delay the Allied landings in Normandy and had devoted much of the early part of the year to planning the armada of 7000 vessels and 11,000 aircraft that would transport the first wave of 150,000 men.
By the spring, the whole of Bri
tain was in a state of alert for the landings, but the supreme lockdown on their timing and location ensured the key details were kept secret. After the commanders were informed of the planned date – 5 June – the camps holding the assault troops and the ports of departure were sealed. Telephone calls were forbidden, mail impounded, foreign embassies cut off from their home countries. The tension was unprecedented and Clementine witnessed its emotional and physical toll not only on Winston but also on General Eisenhower, the American supreme commander, who was smoking and drinking too much and began to suffer from headaches, recurring throat infections, sky-rocketing blood pressure and low spirits. When he came to dine with Winston, Clementine fussed over Eisenhower and made sure to feed him his favourite dishes. She saw the agonies of command intensify still further when the operation had to be postponed until 6 June because of bad weather.
Whereas Roosevelt waited until the evening before the invasion, just as the First Lady was going to bed, to brief Eleanor on the plan, Winston had shared the details – and the dangers – of Operation Overlord with Clementine from the beginning. At one point he had expressed an intention to watch the battle unfold from the bridge of the cruiser HMS Belfast. Fortunately, though, the King had joined her in opposing the plan, forcing his Prime Minister to count down the final hours back in London. On the day itself, Winston lunched with His Majesty while Clementine ate with the head of the Army, Alan Brooke. News throughout the day remained for the most part positive. That evening, Winston was able to give a fairly confident report on progress to the House of Commons.
By the time Winston finally reached the beachhead of liberated France, on 12 June, it was becoming clear that the operation – although not yet complete – had been a success, and with fewer Allied deaths than feared (around 4000 on D-Day itself ). Here, at last, was the pivotal strike against the Nazis that he had so fervently longed for. But it signalled, too, a sea change within the Alliance: now that the Americans were out in force, and so firmly in charge, Winston’s role was to diminish – and with it his spirit. His appetite for action remained undimmed, but as the Allies rolled back the German occupation he became ever more certain he was living out his last days. In Downing Street it was becoming noticeable that urgent papers were being ignored and decisions delayed while he frittered away his time on lengthy reminiscences, often late at night. Clementine disapproved of these reveries, and would absent herself from them in protest, not least because they detained the staff. Worse, lack of sleep meant that Winston was often unable or unwilling to give his attention to complex matters, or perform well in the Commons. ‘Result: chaos’ was how Colville characterised Downing Street towards the end of 1944.82
Winston had survived years of crushing dismay, dashed hopes, disastrous losses and even national humiliation. He had been forced to take unspeakable decisions – such as the bombardment of the French fleet at Oran, or giving the command for a small force to fight to the death at Calais so that their compatriots might get away – that made him physically sick and would leave him tormented for the rest of his life. Time and again he had stared into the abyss and kept himself and his country going, but ‘the anguish of the hour’ always cut him deeply. He had worked 110-hour weeks, his sleep constantly broken by air raids; even the thought of a holiday had been a luxury. His regime as war leader would have destroyed a man of less titanic strength and ability. But at his lowest points Clementine had been there to find a way of chivvying him along. So when, one evening at Chequers in June 1944, just after the successful landings in Normandy, Winston announced despondently that he was ‘an old and weary man’, she responded brightly: ‘But think what Hitler and Mussolini feel like!’ No doubt with Vic Oliver in mind, he replied: ‘Ah, but at least Mussolini has had the satisfaction of murdering his son-in-law [Count Ciano].’ His own witticism cheered him a great deal, albeit temporarily.83
From the fall of France in June 1940 until December 1941, when America entered the war, Winston had carried the fate of Europe and the British Empire on his shoulders. By summer 1944 he had allies to share the burden and Britain’s survival was no longer in doubt; but, as his doctor noted, he was ‘less certain of things now than he was in 1940, when the world was tumbling round his ears’.84 Not only was Winston no longer at the peak of his powers, but Roosevelt was largely deaf to his point of view. This increasingly obvious Presidential indifference stoked what Moran called ‘the fires that seem to be consuming him’.85 The doctor helped Clementine to keep her husband going – he gave him barbiturates known as ‘reds’ every night to help him sleep – but ‘it was plain that he was nearly burnt out’.86
Winston was snippy and disagreeable and his government was similarly ill at ease. With renewed bombing from 13 June, London had lost its strange wartime lustre and was now deserted; schools and theatres were closed. No one bothered any longer to dress for dinner. Even with victory in sight, it was difficult to keep up morale as the V-1 flying bombs known as doodlebugs fell on the capital day and night. All those concerned with directing the war were exhausted. ‘It’s not the hard work, it’s the hard worry,’ explained one.87
Instinctive understanding of the masses had long eluded Winston, but so engrossed was he in the liberation of Europe – and so fatigued by it – that he had become oblivious to discontent on the Home Front. Many industrial workers felt the monotonous grind of their labour was overlooked and unappreciated, and the country had suffered a rash of unhelpful strikes. Winston appeared to offer little recognition of those not actually engaged in the fighting, nor any hope for a better life after the war. Upon visiting Britain in August 1944, Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau was struck by how ‘pent-up frustration was vented by angry attacks on government leaders’, noting that Winston himself ‘had been publicly jeered’.
When Morgenthau asked to take a tour of air-raid shelters, no one could think of a single senior government figure sufficiently popular to escort him without inciting protests. Eventually, Clementine emerged as the obvious and only choice.88 Morgenthau, whose wife Elinor was Eleanor Roosevelt’s best friend, watched her in action: smiling, listening, raising spirits and providing practical help. Her easy, personable, almost motherly style was now suddenly familiar. ‘The dame is unbelievable . . . She is like Mrs Roosevelt!’89
August 1944 brought the liberation of Paris. Winston was away in Italy, so Jock Colville accompanied Clementine on the 27th to a service at St Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks. It was a moving occasion – virtually everyone went ‘red with emotion when the Irish Guards played the Marseillaise’90 – and she felt Winston’s absence keenly. Two days later she was at Northolt air base to greet him on his return, but when the plane landed a frantic Moran emerged, yelling that his patient had a raging temperature of 103° with another patch on his lung. Clementine was once again ‘sick with fright’.
Rushed home to bed, Winston was treated with a rudimentary forerunner of antibiotics known as M&Bs (or May & Baker’s, after the name of their manufacturers). This fresh bout of pneumonia was hushed up, however, and he carried on almost as normal. In just six days he was due to depart for the second Quebec conference with Roosevelt, a last-hope opportunity to resurrect himself in the President’s eyes and advance British military priorities. Winston had already briefed Clementine on what he needed to achieve – he most wanted to change the fact that ‘two-thirds’ of British forces were in his view being ‘mis-employed for American convenience’ – and made it clear that her presence would be a ‘pleasure’ but also a ‘help’ in achieving this goal.91 Knowing the matter to be delicate, he had informed Roosevelt of her attendance in advance. The President had cabled back: ‘Perfectly delighted . . . Eleanor will go with me.’ Earlier the same day he had lunched with Lucy Mercer.
Eleanor arrived in Quebec intent on more than the observation of diplomatic niceties. As a mere leader’s wife, she may have been barred from the negotiations themselves, but there was still much she could achieve, particularly in tandem with Clem
entine. A couple of days after she and Roosevelt greeted the Churchills at Quebec City station on 11 September, she announced her intention to broadcast to the Canadian people. Intent on pulling Clementine into the spotlight with her, Eleanor made clear that she was expecting her to do the same.
Clementine initially refused, writing in her diary that she felt ‘hounded’.92 Yet she was now an international celebrity; it was time to put her fame to good use. So eventually she agreed. Before that, however, they were both due to attend an official lunch hosted by the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Lady Fiset. Although anxious to plan her radio address, Clementine had to endure seven courses, four wines, several liqueurs, and introductions to sixty-five guests. ‘I am sorry to confess that I was in a filthy temper,’ she wrote later.
Her mood deteriorated even further when Lady Fiset announced that Eleanor had a few words to say. Sure of what was coming next, Clementine darted behind a potted palm, only to be ‘fished’ out from her hiding spot when her turn inevitably came. ‘I won’t repeat . . . what I said because I have forgotten, being under the influence of the luncheon,’ she recorded. Nevertheless, her later broadcast (in which she thanked the Canadians for supporting her various causes) went surprisingly well. Harriman, who was also in Quebec, said that it was ‘beautifully delivered in both English and French’. Winston, already cheered by how Mary was proving ‘natural and amusing with the President’,93 was ecstatic about her success.