Young Titan

by Michael Shelden

  In the end Winston did exactly what he said he would do, ruling out any action against Milner and moving instead to condemn the flogging, but “in the interests of peace and conciliation in South Africa, to refrain from passing censure upon individuals.” This motion received overwhelming support from the Liberals and smaller parties, though not from the Conservatives.16

  The opposition members could complain all they wanted, but Winston’s composure in the face of their attacks gave the prime minister greater confidence in him. When, in the early summer, Campbell-Bannerman needed to attend to his ailing wife, he sent for Winston and asked him to lead the final debate on self-government for the Transvaal. As expected, the Liberals easily prevailed on the question, but what especially pleased the prime minister was the calm, patient way that Churchill handled the debate. Even the king was impressed. He thought that Winston was finally showing some maturity and commended him for it. “His Majesty,” Winston was informed, “is glad to see that you are becoming a reliable Minister and above all a serious politician.”17

  * * *

  While he was busy at work on South African matters, Churchill received a letter from an American war correspondent who had spent time with him during the Boer War. Actually, Richard Harding Davis wasn’t just a war correspondent. He was one of the most celebrated journalists in America, a ruggedly handsome, square-jawed man who had covered the Spanish-American War, the Russo-Japanese War, several sensational crimes, the Johnstown Flood, and dozens of other major stories. He wrote fiction and travel books and had interviewed Walt Whitman, and was an honorary member of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

  In his youth—before cynicism had fastened its grip—H. L. Mencken was such an admirer of Davis that he considered him “the hero of our dreams.”18

  In 1906, however, Davis wanted to make Winston Churchill one of the heroes in a new book. “I am writing a book called ‘Real Soldiers of Fortune,’ ” he explained in a letter from his farm in Mount Kisco, New York. “Of the six soldiers I want to include you. A boy who has been in four wars . . . is a child of fortune, and a soldier of fortune, and ought to make most picturesque reading.”

  A year or two earlier, Winston might have been delighted by this idea, but now he was doing his best to be taken seriously as a statesman, and as an advocate of peace and understanding in the empire. It wasn’t the best moment to revive the image of the swashbuckling Winston, especially under the title of “soldier of fortune.” There were already many critics who thought he was a reckless opportunist who didn’t belong in office.

  There wasn’t much Churchill could do to stop the project. The chapter about him was “half written” already, Davis told him, and he boasted that he had most of the information he needed after digging through all the available newspaper files in New York. “I wager,” he wrote, “that I know more about your young life than you do yourself.”

  Such a statement would normally make any politician nervous, but as Winston was aware, Davis also knew very personal details of his life, and not simply because of their encounters in South Africa, and later in London. Davis had been a friend of Ethel Barrymore since her youth and was like a brother to her. In his letter of May 4 he told Winston, “Miss Barrymore has been very ill. She is just recovering from an operation for appendicitis, and has been up at our farm here getting strong.”

  So here was a famous American journalist at his desk writing the story of Churchill’s life while one of the loves of it was recuperating a few steps away. Winston could only hope that both Ethel and his surprise biographer would say nice things about him. He could at least take some comfort from Davis’s comment “Don’t forget me when you are Prime Minister.”19

  XII

  PRIVATE LIVES

  After a few months of trying to behave himself and ignore the taunts of his Tory foes, Churchill took a long holiday at the beginning of August 1906 and misbehaved a little. At the invitation of an old childhood friend, he spent the first week of his holiday at the fashionable resort of Deauville on the Normandy coast. Baron de Forest, his friend, had a beautiful wife, a large fortune, and a steam yacht said to be one of the largest afloat. Winston went sailing and played polo, but in the evenings he headed to the Grand Casino, “gambling every night till 5 in the morning.” He was lucky, ending his stay with £260, essentially the same as two months’ salary at the Colonial Office.

  With his winnings in hand, he went straight to Paris for a few days to enjoy the nightlife and buy some expensive French books. Then he was off to Sir Ernest Cassel’s retreat in the Swiss Alps, where he worked off some of the rich food he had eaten in France by climbing the Eggishorn, a peak almost ten thousand feet high. “A very long pull,” he wrote Jennie, “& I should never have got home without the aid of a mule.”1

  By the middle of September he was in Venice soaking up the sunshine and meeting up with Muriel Wilson, who had kindly consented to spend a week with the undersecretary for the colonies. They joined another couple for a drive that took them by an indirect route to Tuscany, sailing through the countryside in a motorcar at the dizzying speed of forty miles an hour. All was peace and good cheer in his relations with Muriel, but that was the problem. Their trip was full of romantic ingredients—bright vistas and sleepy villages, wine and sunsets—but no actual romance. She was as beautiful and as charming as ever, but still as remote. Winston felt they were doomed to be just friends.

  He couldn’t complain too much, however. He was living like a prince and enjoying his much-deserved holiday. But it wasn’t all play. In the middle of it he spent a week in Silesia observing the annual maneuvers of the German army. It was a chance to take a close look at the military machine that posed the biggest threat to peace in Europe, though Kaiser Wilhelm insisted he didn’t want a war with anyone—especially not with Britain, where his uncle Edward was king. “We are a military people, but not a warlike people,” one of Wilhelm’s diplomats explained to a British newspaper editor. “It is you who are warlike without being military.”2

  The idea of attending the army exercises was Winston’s, but the Germans welcomed his interest, and their embassy in London arranged all the details. The Kaiser himself issued the official invitation, asking Winston to be his personal guest for the week. The embassy also advised that, at each event, Churchill should dress in a British Army uniform, complete with sword.

  So for a week in the fields and woods of Silesia (then on Germany’s southeast frontier), Major Winston Churchill rode a borrowed horse as he followed the mock battles of fifty thousand men in the German infantry, artillery, and cavalry. For several years he had kept up his military connection through the yeomanry reserves, training in the summers for short periods with the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars at Blenheim and at other camps nearby. It was good fun, but the regiment was a proud one and took itself seriously as a fighting force, as did Winston. He made an impressive representative of it as he stepped off the train at Breslau on September 6 wearing his cavalry boots, sword, dark trousers and tunic, and a white cap with a black visor.

  * * *

  Winston’s visit troubled King Edward, who asked the prime minister to give the undersecretary a word of caution. “The K told me you were going to the maneuvers,” Campbell-Bannerman wrote Churchill, “and asked me to warn you against being too communicative and frank with his nephew.” It was good advice, because the Kaiser wanted very much to gain Churchill’s confidence. In fact, one of the more interesting tactical exercises on view in Silesia was the charm offensive directed toward Winston.3

  At Wilhelm’s command, Churchill was given a good room at “a comfortable old-world” hotel in Breslau. An army captain was assigned as his special escort, and every night he was entertained lavishly at the officer banquets. The Kaiser gave him a special pass to inspect the latest German artillery weapons and invited him to a field conference with his generals. Dressed in his full regalia, Wilhelm made a point of drawing Churchill to his side at the conference. Then he pointed authoritative
ly with his sword to some distant object, which is when a conveniently placed news photographer snapped a picture of them together as though they were in the middle of planning a big battle.

  With his commanding stare and long, bristling mustache, Wilhelm looked forbidding, but his manner with Winston was warm and almost fatherly. “What do you think of this beautiful Silesia?” he asked in his fluent English, and then began showing off his knowledge of all the great battles fought in the area over time. His history lesson had a serious point. He was clearly suggesting that blood would be spilled again if any army was unwise enough to attack Germans here. “Well worth fighting for,” he said of the surrounding land, “and well fought over.” The fields, he told Churchill melodramatically, were “ankle-deep in blood.” Though delivered in a friendly tone, the words reinforced the message of the maneuvers: Germany was ready and willing to make war if pushed.4

  It was an extraordinary conversation, though Winston didn’t have the chance to say much. The Kaiser cut him off in the middle of what sounded like a speech and told him “not to make phrases,” but to speak plainly. So Winston smiled and stood straight and made agreeable sounds as Wilhelm monopolized the conversation.5

  The photograph of the two together was widely published around the world. The Daily Mirror printed it across the top half of the front page. The Kaiser was fond of posing with his British royal cousins, but in this case the dramatic scene featured merely a part-time major on holiday. Like many others, Wilhelm sensed that Winston was heading quickly to positions of greater importance, and that the young major of today might be Germany’s fiercest opponent tomorrow. Before that day arrived, it was prudent to impress on Winston the determined spirit of the German military.

  In some quarters of Britain, however, the photograph was cause for laughter. Here was the upstart at work again, now pretending that he was the equal of mighty monarchs, and completely unaware of how insignificant he looked standing next to the Kaiser with his polished helmet, long cape, and imperial sword. It presented an opportunity that Punch couldn’t pass up. A week or so later the inevitable cartoon appeared with boyish Winston pointing his finger at Wilhelm and offering him instruction in military tactics. “Now mind, your majesty,” says “Our Winston” in the caption, “if any point should arise during the maneuvers that you don’t quite understand—that you can’t get the hang of—don’t hesitate to ask me!”6

  If Churchill had dared to speak his mind to the Kaiser, he wouldn’t have made him happy. The colorful troops playing at war were impressive in a theatrical way, but not militarily. All the cavalry squadrons charging at full speed with their lances flashing in the sun was a spectacular show, but Churchill knew from experience that modern weapons could mow them down in quick order. His participation in the charge at Omdurman had taught him that such assaults were obsolete. “There will never be such fools in the world again,” he had wanted to believe after leaving the battlefield in the Sudan. Yet here were the Germans grandly displaying tactics from the 1870s, as if they would work just as well in the twentieth century.

  He had heard grumblings among some German officers that their methods were outdated, and indeed they would soon be modernized. For the time being, however, nothing he had seen was enough to alarm him. And though he had liked all the attention given him by the Germans, he came away from the exercises more exhausted than charmed. He had been worn out by Prussian efficiency and diligence. He never had a free moment and was hurried from one event to the next, starting early in the morning and ending late at night. “I have hardly ever been so short of sleep,” he said afterward.7

  In his report to Lord Elgin he noted the Kaiser’s weakness for theatrical displays and his apparent disregard for the effects of modern firepower. But he gave the Germans credit for superiority in “numbers, quality, discipline & organization.” Those alone, he emphasized, were “four good roads to victory.”

  * * *

  Winston’s travels on the Continent kept him away from home for almost two months, and when he returned he was dismayed to learn that his family was threatened by scandal. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were in trouble. After eleven years of marriage, they couldn’t stand each other, and they weren’t bothering to hide it. Sunny had a reputation for losing his temper and making cruel remarks, and Consuelo—a proud American heiress—was willing to take only so much abuse before hurling it back in his face. Each accused the other of being unfaithful, and apparently they were both right, though Sunny’s jealousy made him exaggerate the problem and imagine that Consuelo had lovers hiding under every bed.

  There were stormy scenes at Blenheim. After enduring a tense weekend as a guest at the house, the author Pearl Craigie—one of Jennie’s friends—thought its atmosphere was more like that of a prison than a palace. “I could not lead the life of these houses,” she wrote. “I’d sooner die in an attic with an ideal. There is no affection in the atmosphere: the poor Duke looks ill and heartbroken.” In October the couple separated, with Consuelo taking refuge at their London home and with her father in Paris. News of the trouble quickly spread in society. Soon it was a topic in the American press—where Sunny was gleefully attacked as the wicked English duke who married the innocent American for her money.8

  Sunny could survive these kinds of attacks, but it was bad for the family in general, and for Winston in particular. There was the possibility that the feuding couple would end up in court—Consuelo’s father, William Vanderbilt, was threatening legal action—and in that event a wave of nasty publicity wouldn’t do Winston’s political career any good. So Winston tried to arrange a truce.

  Jennie wasn’t much help. Tough and honest, she said things that Consuelo took the wrong way, and then they started fighting. Jennie wrote her a sharp note after a heated argument, saying, “I have left your house deeply wounded & hurt at your inexplicable conduct—I make every allowance for the frame of mind you must be in during such a terrible crisis in your life—but that you should turn on me who have not only been a true friend to you, but had you been a sister could not have shown you more loyalty & affection, is indeed an unexpected blow.”9

  Jennie had her own troubles at this time and wasn’t in a good position to be advising Sunny’s wife. Her own marriage to the much younger George Cornwallis-West was beginning its slow decline. George was spending more and more time away from her, supposedly on business or on long fishing trips and other country excursions. He was also losing a great deal of money in poor investments and bad management of his finances. “During all the years we lived together,” he would later say of their marriage, “the only serious misunderstandings which ever took place between us were over money matters.” He blamed Jennie, saying “extravagance was her only fault,” but in 1906 he managed to lose £8,000 entirely on his own, and a rich relation had to rescue him from ruin at the last minute.

  Her marriage troubles made Jennie short of temper and moody. She even blew up at Winston and was miserable about it. After quarreling with him one night, she couldn’t go to bed without sending an apology. “Dearest Winston,” she wrote, “I cannot sleep without telling you once more I grieve that any disagreeable words shd have passed between us tonight—I was tired & hasty—You have always been a darling to me—& I love you very dearly.”10

  In her current state Jennie just made things worse with Consuelo. But Winston was far more understanding of the young woman’s position and easily gained her confidence. She listened to his advice, and later told him how much she appreciated his help. “Everything you said was so sensible,” she wrote after one of their discussions.

  But no one found Sunny easy to deal with, and in desperation Winston asked Hugh Cecil to advise him on the best way to handle the duke’s marital troubles. Though Linky seems to have enjoyed being asked his opinion, he didn’t see much hope for Sunny ever reconciling with his wife, and thought he would end up causing “harm” to Consuelo’s reputation and his own.

  Winston didn’t give up on the couple, ho
wever, and by the early months of 1907 an uneasy peace prevailed. Sunny and Consuelo agreed to stay out of court and to maintain their separate lives in a quiet, understated way. Custody of the children was shared, and in 1921—after the two boys were grown—the duke and duchess finally divorced. Each would remarry. Rumors swirled around the couple during their long separation, and though at the end of 1906 Winston had expected the breakup to end in “catastrophe,” everyone was spared the kind of public ordeal he had feared.11

  When she wrote her autobiography in the 1950s, Consuelo had the advantage of looking back at Winston and seeing him as the future prime minister, but what she remembered most about him wasn’t any sign of the budding statesman. It was the striking contrast between his personality and Sunny’s. The duke had so many of the material things that Winston was always having to work for, yet it was Sunny who seemed stunted and bitter, the very opposite of the character suggested by his nickname. In Consuelo’s admittedly biased view, she saw in her husband the flagging spirit of an old aristocratic line, and in Winston its revitalization.

  “Whether it was his American blood,” the duchess wrote, “or his boyish enthusiasm and spontaneity, qualities sadly lacking in my husband, I delighted in his companionship. . . . To me he represented the democratic spirit so foreign to my environment, and which I deeply missed.”12

  * * *

  Just when Churchill looked to be in the clear where scandal was concerned, Richard Harding Davis published his collection of short biographical tales, Real Soldiers of Fortune. At first glance his account of Winston’s youthful adventures looked harmless. He gave straightforward descriptions of the young warrior in battle, and summarized at length Churchill’s own comments on his escape from the Boers. But as a colorful example of Churchill’s adventures off the battlefield, Davis chose an old, half-forgotten incident that was sure to raise eyebrows now.