Churchill had attended the funerals of the slain policemen in December and understood when he raced to Sidney Street in January that the culprits would probably be using the same weapons that had already cost three lives. “The circumstances were extraordinary,” he recalled of his decision to visit the scene of the gun battle, “and I thought it my duty to go and see for myself what was happening.” He was right to do so, and was uncharacteristically modest about his part in helping to minimize the casualties. He never mentioned the importance of his firearms expertise, and for a hundred years no one else did.17
This affair should have been one of Churchill’s finest moments. Instead he was ridiculed as a grandstanding egomaniac who didn’t have any business inserting himself into an armed police operation. Even one of his most distinguished biographers has called the episode “Churchill’s great mistake.” It didn’t help that he wore a top hat to the gunfight. In the newspaper photographs his hat made him look like a ballroom dancer who had wandered into a crime scene by mistake. When Eddie Marsh—who had bravely accompanied his boss to Sidney Street—went to a cinema, he was surprised to see the screen begin to flicker with newsreel images of Winston at the siege. He was even more surprised—and a little mortified—when the audience reacted with boos and shouts of “shoot him.”18
Arthur Balfour—who knew little of the episode, and even less about Mausers—enjoyed casting Churchill as a vainglorious fool whose presence at the shoot-out put lives at risk.
In the House of Commons he said of Winston in his supercilious way: “He was, I understand, in military phrase, in what is known as the zone of fire—he and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing, but what was the right hon. Gentleman doing?”
Stung by such criticism, Asquith made only a halfhearted effort to defend his Home Secretary. Winston was sitting beside him on the Front Bench when he looked at him and told the House, “My right hon. Friend, if he will forgive me for saying so, suffers from the dangerous endowment of an interesting personality.” It was a memorable and amusing remark, but not particularly helpful.19
It was far better, however, than Rudyard Kipling’s comment in a letter to a friend. A rabid opponent of Churchill, Kipling thought that Winston should have shown more gallantry and stepped in front of a bullet. “Three hours small-arms fire,” he said of the Sidney Street episode, “and devil a shot where it would have done some good to the nation.”20
* * *
Hating Winston was becoming a national pastime. Some Conservatives now saw him as the greatest traitor since Judas. Keir Hardie was continuing to paint him as a brutish reactionary, and another male supporter of the suffragettes was threatening to ambush him. In December 1910 he had received a letter from a man calling himself Alex Ballantine, who closed his three-page screed with the words “I intend to wait on you at my earliest convenience with a dog-whip to give you the chastisement you deserve.” The letter was passed along to Scotland Yard for investigation, but as if that threat weren’t enough, there was also a disgruntled ex-policeman blaming Winston for his dismissal from the force and suggesting that he might kill the Home Secretary to even the score. “I intend exposing Mr. Churchill’s injustices,” he vowed. “Must I kill my opponent with my own hand in order to force a crisis?”21
Winston had every reason to keep looking over his shoulder. He didn’t know who might be coming after him next.
When he was asked to join a group of officials, and various lords and ladies, in a carriage procession around London to celebrate George V’s coronation, he was booed as much as he was cheered. No one wanted to ride with him. When the Duchess of Devonshire and the Countess of Minto were asked to share a carriage with him, they quickly regretted accepting the offer. “It was rather embarrassing for these two Tory dames,” Winston wrote Clemmie. “They got awfully depressed when the cheering was very loud, but bucked up a little around the Mansion House where there were hostile demonstrations.” Incensed by the experience, the Duchess of Devonshire told Lord Balcarres she would never “again agree to drive in procession with Churchill: for she says she is sure she shared the hooting directed against the Home Secretary.”22
Even old friends—under the increasing pressure of political differences—were showing Winston a nastier side. At four o’clock in the morning, during an all-night sitting of the House in March 1911, Linky Cecil lost his temper and turned all his fury on Winston, who was the minister in charge on the Front Bench. Lord Hugh thought that Winston had misled the opposition on some minor procedural point. He made it seem, however, as if his old friend had violated all known standards of decency.
“It is open to a Government as to any other person to break their pledged word,” declared Lord Hugh, “but what is not open to them is to escape the imputation of dishonour which attaches to promise-breaking. Such a proceeding, if it involved pecuniary matters, would lead them to prison. Such a proceeding, if done in the ordinary course of private life and intercourse, would drive them from the society of gentlemen.”23
This was the kind of rhetorical overkill that Winston and Linky had made their specialty in the Hooligan days, but at four in the morning the Home Secretary didn’t want to hear it.
The reporters in the gallery came to life as Winston and the best man at his wedding fought like Cavalier and Roundhead. The press captured some of the fireworks:
Mr. Churchill, pale, heavy-eyed and rumple-haired, glared angrily at Lord Hugh.
“I am so much accustomed to the controversial methods of the noble lord,” hissed the young Minister.
A storm of protesting shouts cut the sentence up. Mr. Churchill stood silently waiting at the table.
“I am so much accustomed to the controversial methods of the noble lord,” persisted Mr. Churchill, “who deals always in taunts and insults—”
For five minutes he battled unsuccessfully against a torrent of protesting shouts.
Winston stayed on his feet, but he looked beaten, and a young Tory MP went in for the kill, shouting from the opposition backbenches, “This is your first attempt to lead the House of Commons, and this is how you are doing it!” To this he added in a mocking voice, “The future Prime Minister of England!”24
That specific taunt was another reminder that Churchill was now having to pay a heavy price for his rapid rise to power. Jealousy, resentment, spite—he was getting it all, and it was coming from friend and foe. He had wanted to be a big national figure but now was also a very big national target. Because so much had been made of his youthful flair and brilliance, it was inevitable that as a leader he would be criticized for not being brilliant enough or for showing too much flair in dramatic moments, like those in Sidney Street.
As much as he wanted to command the respect of all, he was enough of a fighter to take the hits, dust himself off, and get back in the fray. At the end of the all-night sitting—after nineteen hours of defending the government—Winston surprised the weary reporters when he strolled into the dining room smiling and acting as if he didn’t have a care. He sat down at a table with Joe Chamberlain’s son Austen, and the two adversaries enjoyed a pleasant breakfast of grilled sole and eggs and bacon.
Nothing seemed to slow him down for long. Just before going to breakfast he sent the king a brief report of the latest parliamentary events, as was his duty. “There has been a certain amount of ill-feeling during this prolonged debate,” he wrote, “but the temperature is now again normal and the discussion is good.”25
XXI
STORM SIGNALS
On the Welsh island of Anglesey in April 1911 a man of thirty-six was absorbed in the solitary task of building sand models of dams and irrigation works on the beach. They were so elaborate that passersby stopped to admire them and to get a better look at their builder, wondering whether he was some brilliant architect on holiday or merely a visiting eccentric. To most people’s surprise, a closer look revealed the busy builder to be the Home Secretary. The news of his pr
esence spread quickly, and soon a little crowd had gathered, with more genteel spectators remaining at a polite distance where they could watch him through opera glasses.
“It was rather a shame that it got about,” Eddie Marsh said afterward, “and he had to give it up because the cliffs were lined with people looking at him.” As Eddie knew, one of Winston’s favorite ways to relax was to dig in the sand, creating battle defenses or damming pretend rivers—anything that suited his ever-active imagination. Idle onlookers weren’t welcome, however. This was serious work in its way, giving its builder a refreshing chance to create worlds of his own without having to ask anyone else’s opinion or permission.
When he was through, he would happily leave his work to the mercy of the waves and the wind, having been reinvigorated for the real jobs ahead, where nothing else would be as easy to shape as sand. It was one of the things he liked best in the world, Eddie said of Winston’s holiday digging. He would even ask Clemmie to keep an eye out for suitable beaches. “We ought to find a really good sandy beach,” he wrote her one summer, “where I can cut the sand into a nicely beveled fortress—or best of all with a little stream running down—You might explore and report.”1
This particular holiday in northwest Wales—far removed from the troubles of Tonypandy—was only a brief break for Winston before he went back to his usual marathon labors in the House and the Home Office. But for now he was enjoying a little spell of calm at the island retreat of Lord Sheffield, Venetia Stanley’s father. Clemmie was with him and seemed in especially good spirits. She was expecting their second child in May and was spending most of April resting in Anglesey before going back to London for the birth. She told Winston, “I am getting rather restless & wishing for my ‘Basket,’ ” as she called the baby. She was sure it would be a boy.2
Winston worked too hard at his career to have the time to be a model father, but he was a loving one and—in his fashion—an attentive one. When the second birthday of his daughter drew near in the summer, he applied all of his analytical skills to the job of finding just the right toys for her. It wasn’t easy for Winston Churchill to figure out what would entertain a two-year-old girl, but after searching the shelves of a shop in London he finally settled on a set of “Noah’s Ark Animals.” He had a choice of buying them in white or several bright colors.
“I hovered long on the verge of buying plain white wood animals,” he told Clemmie, “but decided at last to risk the coloured ones. They are so much more interesting.” He doubted the shop owner’s claim that the paint was harmless to children. Though he had been told of “the nourishing qualities of the paint & of the numbers sold—and presumably sucked without misadventure,” he felt that he needed to caution his wife, “Be careful not to let her suck the paint off.”3
Fortunately for his daughter’s health, Churchill couldn’t buy toys without approaching it like a government project that needed careful scrutiny before a decision could be reached—and then only with a special qualification attached. There were no insignificant problems once he turned his attention to them and invested them with the significance of his thought and energy. He was demanding in all things that mattered to him, which was often exhausting for others who lacked his intensity.
The son that both parents were looking forward to arrived on May 28, 1911. He was named, of course, after Winston’s father. Little Randolph was a strong baby, with glowing health and handsome features. Clemmie was so pleased with him that it made her all the more confident that she had done the right thing in marrying Winston. A week after the baby’s birth she told her husband, “You have so transformed my life that I can hardly remember what it felt like three years ago before I knew you.”4
* * *
Only four days before Randolph was born, the family’s neighbor in Eccleston Square—F. E. Smith—joined with his young Tory friend Lord Winterton to give a costume ball at Claridge’s hotel. It was the event of the season but was also criticized as a decadent display of wealth and privilege. All the same, scores of Liberals were delighted to join the Tory festivities, and both sides tried to outdo the other in the extravagance of their costumes. The most impressive, by far, was Consuelo Marlborough. With her long neck and slender shape, she was stunning as a Dresden china shepherdess. There were the unsurprising appearances of a Henry VIII, a Cleopatra, and a Red Cross Knight. F. E. Smith came as an eighteenth-century courtier, complete with white satin and powder. But among the Cabinet ministers who attended, none wanted to compromise the dignity of office by donning a costume. They either wore ordinary evening dress or—as in Winston’s case—a simple red cape.
While the fancier couples danced past midnight in the ballroom, several of the politicians stood outside smoking and talking, tugging at their capes. The highlight of the evening came when Waldorf Astor and his pretty wife, Nancy, made a surprise entrance. Nancy was dressed in pink as a ballet dancer, but it was her husband who received the greatest attention—and a good many laughs. He came dressed in the robes of a peer. A sign with the number 499 was on the front. On the back was another with the words “one more vacancy.”5
Everybody knew what it meant. If the House of Lords failed in the coming summer to pass legislation restricting their veto—the Parliament Bill, as it was called—the Liberals would send as many as five hundred new peers to pass it for them. Though the joke was appreciated, much of the laughter was uneasy. Asquith, who was there soberly dressed in evening clothes, smiled coyly at the costume antics. He had yet to inform the opposition that he had obtained the king’s pledge to create those new peers. Balfour and others were still hoping the threat was only a bluff. They would soon learn otherwise.
Though he had no way of knowing it, F. E. Smith was giving Liberals and Tories one last chance to laugh at themselves before they started a firestorm that would consume much more than the old traditional powers of the aristocracy. The friendship between Churchill and Smith would survive the political ordeal of the next few years, but many other relationships would not. What was decadent about the costume ball wasn’t so much the gaudy display of wealth and privilege. It was the blithe disdain for the impending catastrophe—a lack of will to prevent a bitter fight that would divide and distract in a time of danger at home and abroad. Both sides could see that they were taking each other over a cliff, but neither seemed willing to inspect the abyss before it was too late.
Asquith’s coy smiles came back to haunt him. He kept the country in the dark for so long about the king’s pledge that when he revealed it in July, the opposition felt betrayed. The prime minister was accused of misleading the country and of tricking the new monarch into becoming part of an undignified political scheme. One of the most vocal critics was F. E. Smith. On Monday, July 24, he gave Asquith a much different show than the one he had staged at Claridge’s in May, presenting it in ordinary dress on the floor of the Commons with a chorus of noisy backbenchers. As pure spectacle, it was much wilder than the costume ball.
On that Monday in July, London was in the grip of a heat wave, and the chamber was sweltering when Asquith rose in the afternoon to speak on the question of the Parliament Bill. He had driven to the House from Downing Street in an open car with Winston, Margot, and Violet. The streets were lined with cheering supporters, and when Margot and Violet arrived in the Ladies’ Gallery, they found that the excitement was so great, some of the women were standing on chairs to get a better look at the scene below.
But as soon as Asquith opened his mouth, F. E. Smith and Linky Cecil were on their feet trying to shout him down. Half of what they said was unintelligible because of the uproar that broke out on both sides. Occasionally, through the din, Smith could be heard shouting, “the Government has degraded the political life of the country” or simply “traitor.” Cecil’s high-pitched voice split the air with cries of “point of order” and such disjointed phrases as “prostituted ordinary Parliamentary usage.” For half an hour, F.E. and Linky kept at it, with others joining in to shout “dictator�
� at Asquith, as well as other terms of abuse. The prime minister could barely get a word in but he refused to sit down. The whole time Lord Hugh was so agitated that he seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, his face contorted and his long body twisted into awkward positions.
In a brief pause the Labour MP Will Crooks was heard to say of Linky, “Many a man has been certified as insane for less than half of what the Noble Lord has done this afternoon.”6
Perspiring in their stuffy gallery, Margot and Violet were horrified by the verbal onslaught. Violet was torn between laughter and tears as she watched Linky taunt her father. The color had drained from Cecil’s face, and he was, as Violet later put it, “gibbering execrations like a baboon, epileptic & suffragette rolled into one.” Margot was so disgusted by the actions of Smith and Cecil (she called them the “cad” and the “eunuch”) that she sent a message to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who was sitting near her husband, to beg him to put an end to the humiliating spectacle.7
In office since the days of Campbell-Bannerman’s premiership, Grey was the most dignified member of the Cabinet—and the most respected—partly because he kept such a low political profile. Unlike Winston, he didn’t relish heated debates or public spectacles. He gave the impression that he was too fastidious and too reserved to dirty his hands in the rough-and-tumble of ordinary politics, which led one journalist to say of him, “The passions of men, the cries of the market-place, the frenzy of the conflict do not touch him. He dwells outside them in a certain grave isolation.”
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