Moving right along, the 1911 Census has just been released in England. No address was “private” in those days: Winston Churchill is listed at 33 Eccleston Square (seventeen rooms) with Clementine, Diana and eight servants (cook, nurse, lady’s maid, housemaid, parlourmaid, under-parlourmaid, kitchen maid and hall boy). —A.J., NSW, Australia
Ah for the days when help was cheap. I once tried Churchill’s method of getting two days out of one by copying his daily routine at Chartwell: an hour or more of sound sleep in mid-afternoon, a little dictation, bath #1, dinner, film showing, serious work from say 11pm to 3am, breakfast at 8am, dictate letters and read all newspapers including the Daily Worker, in bed all morning, bath #2, lunch and an afternoon amble before starting all over again. I found it works fine if you have a staff of fifteen. My wife was not amused.
(Entertaining aside: a newspaper stringer keeping an eye on Chartwell had an infallible way of knowing if Churchill was not in residence: the Daily Worker was still for sale at the Westerham newsstand. The proprietor took only one copy, since his only customer was Churchill.)
