For those of a certain age, my friend Dave Turrell sent a message under this title on January 24th. On that day fifty-nine years ago, the Great Man departed.  I saved the words for today’s anniversary, six days, later: the interment at Bladon.

Recalling January 30th, Lord Moran reached what Anthony Montague Browne described as “the top of his stylistic form.” As did dear Anthony himself, and the irreplaceable Grace Hamblin.

The poem “At Bladon” was read by Robert Hardy at the gravesite during our penultimate Churchill Tour in 2006. It is today fifty-nine years since Richard Dimbleby made the words indelible.

Charles Wilson, Lord Moran MC PRC

“He was taken at night to Westminster, to the Hall of William Rufus, and there for three days he lay in state, while the people gathered in crowds that stretched over Lambeth Bridge to the far side of the river, to do honour to the man they loved for his valour.

“On the fourth day he was borne on a gun-carriage to St. Paul’s. There followed a long line of men in arms, marching to sorrowful music. With all the panoply of Church and State, and in the presence of his Queen, he was carried to an appointed place hard by the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, under the great dome, while with solemn music and the beating of drums the nation saluted the man who had saved them and saved their honour.

“The village stations on the way to Bladon were crowded with his countrymen, and at Bladon in a country churchyard, in the stillness of a winter evening, in the presence of his family and a few friends, Winston Churchill was committed to English earth, which in his finest hour he had held inviolate.” [1]

Grace Hamblin OBE

“At the end, I went down with the family to the funeral, near his beloved birthplace, Blenheim, and to me that quiet, humble service in the country churchyard was much more moving than had been the tremendous pomp and glory of the state ceremony in London. As the train made its slow journey through the snow-covered countryside on that bitterly cold day, men and women were standing in their little gardens behind their cottages, out in the fields or in the stations as we passed, the men with their heads bared, saying a silent farewell to their hero.

“I thought of these people at home, and I thought of you, and the hundreds and hundreds of letters Lady Churchill received from all over the world. And I pondered on what had made this dynamic but gentle character so beloved and respected—and such a wonderful person to work for. I think what one found first was courage. He had no fear of anything, moral or physical. There was sincerity, truth and integrity, for he couldn’t knowingly deceive a cabinet minister or a bricklayer or a secretary. There was forgiveness, warmth, affection, loyalty and, perhaps most important of all in the demanding life we all lived, there was humour, which he had in abundance.

“I hope I shan’t be infringing any copyright or displeasing anyone if I slightly misquote a passage from one of those many, many letters Lady Churchill had received on his death. It came from a distinguished member of your community here in America, and it has always been in my mind. ‘That he died is unimportant, for we must all pass away. That he lived is momentous to the destiny of decent men. He is not gone. He lives wherever men are free.'” [2]

Sir Anthony Montague Browne CBE DFC

“The procession to the graveyard at Bladon was brief, and we were few in number. We filed past the grave for the last time before it was closed. I was astonished to see a small and not particularly distinguished row of medals lying on the coffin. I could only suppose that it had fallen from the chest of one of the military coffin-bearers, and wondered if it would remain there to perplex archaeologists of many centuries hence.

“We took our departure for London in the freezing dusk…. At the back of my own mind there was the old quotation from WSC himself, of the death of Richard Coeur de Lion: ‘Worthy, by the consent of all men, to sit with King Arthur and Roland and other heroes of martial romance at some eternal Round Table, which we trust the Creator of the Universe in His comprehension will not have forgotten to provide.’

“On the way home, my mind was a blank. I tried to say some silent prayers for that brave and generous soul, but they were choked and confused, and came to nothing. I could not mourn for him: he had so clearly and for so long wanted to leave the World. But I was submerged in a wave of aching grief for Britain’s precipitous decline, against which he had stood in vain. When I reached our flat in Eaton Place it had been burgled.” [3]

“At Bladon”: Robert Hardy CBE

Drop English earth on him beneath
do our sons; and their sons bequeath
his glories and our pride and grief
at Bladon.

For Lionheart that lies below
that feared not toil nor tears nor foe.
Let the oak stand tho’ tempests blow
at Bladon.

So Churchill sleeps, yet surely wakes
old warrior where the morning breaks
On sunlit uplands. But the heart aches
at Bladon. [4]

Credits

1. Charles Wilson, Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (London: Constable, 1966), 842.

2. Grace Hamblin, “Frabjous Days: Chartwell Memories 1932-1965,” International Churchill Conference, Dallas, 20 October 1987.

3. Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill’s Last Private Secretary (London: Cassell, 1995) 328.

4. Richard Dimbleby read the poem “At Bladon,” by Avril Anderson, in a breaking voice over the BBC on 30 January 1965.

Revision and redraft

We are asked: “As I recall Churchill labeled his manuscripts something like “draft,” “almost final draft” and “final draft.” Do you recall what those categories were?”

We cannot establish that he routinely used those labels. Instead he tended to use “revise” or “revision.” Frequently his finished draft was marked “final revise.” It often took a long time before, with a sigh of relief, his private office staff reached that point. But the amount of revision varied with the project.

Whether the product was profound or simple, his first iteration was close to the mark. Grace Hamblin, a longtime secretary, recalled: “His dictation wasn’t difficult because it was very, very slow and he weighed his words. As one knows he had a tremendous command of the English language, but he didn’t use it loosely. He considered very carefully what he was going to say.”

Articles

Churchill’s articles saw less revision than his books and speeches. He wrote over 2000, notably in the 1930s, when constant income was needed to sustain his expensive lifestyle. In Artillery of Words, Frederick Woods wrote that some articles “were unashamed potboilers [which] sometimes sank to the level of ‘Are there Men on the Moon?’ and ‘Life under the Microscope.’” But others, like “Mass Effects in Modern Life” and “What Good’s a Constitution?” were profound reflections on statesmanship and government—both of the present, and (with some foreboding) the future. In Churchill Style, Barry Singer notes that during his 1931-32 North American lecture tour, Churchill contracted for twenty-two magazine articles. Ultimately “they would generate income in excess of £40,000.”

Michael Wolff, in a thoughtful introduction to Churchill’s Collected Essays, says his articles offer “the authentic Churchill in a way that can otherwise only be captured in his speeches.” His method of composition didn’t vary, Wolff writes. But assembling a major history or memoir was far removed “from the original Churchillian utterances as he dictated the first paragraphs in the middle of the night perhaps many months before…. But Churchill was never a dull man, was almost incapable of writing or speaking a dull sentence, and his ideas were nearly always imaginative.”

“Delayed-fuse chortle”

Robert Lewis Taylor’s excellent biography, Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (1952), highlights another purpose of Churchill’s articles—influencing public opinion: For magazines in England and America, Taylor wrote,

he spoke up with authority on subjects high and low, but always at high prices. Collier’s was the outlet for most of his American articles. He struck some provocative notes. In one issue he casually predicted the return of silent movies, basing his stand on the enjoyment he recently had derived from a film of Charlie Chaplin’s. The piece was, in fact, substantially a minute biography of the comedian, with side lights on pantomime, then and now. Churchill gave credit for the art to the Emperor Augustus, and added that “Nero practiced it, as he wrote poetry, as a relaxation from the more serious pursuits of lust, incendiarism and gluttony.”

Many Collier’s readers took the notion, right or wrong, that the great statesman was hitting his ripest vein—a kind of genteel, delayed-fuse chortle—in the pages of the popular weekly. The humor that would seem ill timed in a history of war, or a treatise on his father, often sprang into joyous life in his rapid-fire potboilers.

Social media, 1930s style

Today, people read more social media than lengthy articles. Similarly, Churchill noticed the “popular press” replacing long newspaper columns of speech transcripts. After the First World War, wrote Michael Wolff,

it was not enough to appeal to the country through verbatim reports of speeches in the columns of The Times or the Morning Post…. Churchill felt that he had to address himself directly to the new electorate, taking the battle against Socialism and Communism straight into working-class homes…. So it is that we find him writing in a new style for popular Sunday newspapers [and] in the years leading up to the Second World War, for the News of the World and the Sunday Chronicle as well…. But more than anything, Churchill—rejected, as it seemed, by the “establishment”—needed a new audience and a new political base….

Does that not remind us of the Twitter and Facebook campaigns of modern politicians? Some, apparently, are as aware of the changing face of communication as Churchill was a century ago.

Speeches

Churchill took more pains with his speeches than his articles. Once he told his grandson they required “one hour of prep for each minute of delivery.” That was normally an exaggeration, though his great war speeches might have taken that kind of time. He dictated, as secretaries took his words in shorthand. Typed drafts saw revision after revision. Finally came “Speech Form,” with each passage picked out by indents. Grace Hamblin remembered that

the difficulty was to know which word he really meant you to put down. You would hear him mutter so often the same phrase in a different way. You could easily put him out if you entered a line in the wrong place. Also he had a way of shortening his words. “Ch of Exch” meant Chancellor of the Exchequer, but “C of E” meant Church of England. I once transposed them. My most notable mistake was when he’d dictated “tenure of office” and I wrote “ten years of office”…. You can imagine what he said about that!

Books

Churchill constantly revised his books, before, during, and after publication. Inevitably they went through multiple impressions, issues and editions, so he had ample opportunity. Frederick Woods wrote:

Revise would follow revise, eventually to become a “Final Revise”; this title, however, rarely fulfilled its promise. More often than not “Overtake Corrections” then began to arrive, sometimes even after the presses had started running. For his memoirs of the Second World War, this complex process resulted in a situation whereby Volumes II and IV had, respectively, two and three complete and variant texts.”

This writer remembers another secretary, Elizabeth Nel, saying, “We all heaved a sigh of relief when asked to type the ‘final revise.’” But that wasn’t the end of it. The publishers heaved an even bigger sigh after waves of “overtakes.” Jock Colville, a personal private secretary, said WSC was one of the few authors for whom publishers tolerated two or three complete reprints of page proofs.

Further reading

Richard M. Langworth, “How Churchill Saw the Future: Prescient Essays from Thoughts and Adventures.”

Richard M. Langworth, “Churchill’s Collected Works.”

Justin D. Lyons, “Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Survival of Free Government by Dr. Larry P. Arnn.”

Video: Dr. Larry P. Arnn, “Churchill as a Defender of Constitutionalism.”

Grace Hamblin came to Chartwell in 1932 and served as secretary to both Churchills. After Sir Winston’s death she became Chartwell’s first National Trust administrator. Through all those years she never “wrote.” Nor, with one exception, did his other office secretaries. The exception was Elizabeth Layton Nel. Her lovely book, originally  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, was written with Churchill’s approval, and in the kindest terms.

For the record

Hamblin and many others knew their experiences would be valuable to history. Thus they cooperated by making recordings with Churchill Archives Centre. That is where Cita Stelzer first went in search of her untold story. But Mrs. Stelzer did not stop there: her nine-page bibliography testifies to the countless sources she consulted.

Nothing like this has been attempted before. There are many compilations by and about those who knew and worked with Churchill. But all those involved “the good and the great.” Stelzer instead offers the unsung heroines (and one hero) who spent their prime in Churchill’s “private office.”

The author is mindful of the vast cultural gulf between their time and ours. Today, she notes, “women of equal talent and willingness to work would have grander titles.” Today they’d be called—at the very least—”executive assistants.”

The grand triumvirate

The first three chapters cover the most stellar and important of Churchill’s secretaries: Violet Pearman, Grace Hamblin and Kathleen Hill. Between them they piled up forty years of experience.

Pearman, the imperturbable “Mrs. P.,” served from 1929 to 1938. She took ill, but continued to serve part-time from her home until she died of a stroke in 1941. Grace Hamblin “broke in” at Chartwell under Mrs. P. “She worked like a Trojan,” Grace remembered.

Hamblin herself has been often mentioned in Churchill lore. She was involved in every aspect of his affairs. There was no difference in priority, she said, either. Stopping at the Post Office for the latest page proofs was no more important than fetching the a shipment of maggots for Churchill’s goldfish. She often remembered how she would rush off to the village after summons by the postmaster. “Is that the secretary? Yer maggots are ‘ere, Miss!”

Kathleen Hill arrived in July 1937 to assist Grace and Mrs. P. as the European scene darkened and Churchill’s political and literary work built. “Hill would work for Mrs. Churchill in the mornings, rest during the afternoon, and then work for Churchill at nights, sometimes until 2 or 3 a.m.,” Cita Stelzer writes.

“Klop”

Hill wasn’t on the job a day when Churchill commanded: “Fetch me Klop.” She remembered seeing a lengthy study of the Stuarts by the German historian Onno Klopp. Proudly she staggered down two flights of stairs with fourteen volumes of Der Fall des Hauses Stuart und die Succession des Houses Hannover. “God Almighty!” Churchill roared.

“Klop” was a “Churchillism”—a word invented “for reasons of onomatopoeia.” It was a metal hole-punch that allowed a “Treasury tag” (a length of yarn with metal “Ts” at its ends) to secure pages together. He detested staples and paper clips, because, he said, “they are very dangerous as they pick up and hold together wrong papers.” Realizing his explosion had hurt Mrs. Hill’s feelings, Stelzer writes, “he complimented her on her handwriting.”

Their value was beyond their station

There are nine further chapters on these remarkable characters. The above gives the flavor of them all: the warm humanity, the humor and affection, between the staff and the boss.

“Secretaries” or “shorthand typists” is what they were called in their day. Sometimes with a new one Churchill would forget her name, and refer to “Miss” or “the secretary” or “young woman.” Not one of them ever felt demeaned by this. They certainly were distressed when Churchill, deep in thought, flew into a rage over some minor mistake. But their loyalty and love never diminished. None ever tried to profit by careless revelations, or by leaking privileged gossip. They respected Churchill, as he, in the end, did them.

Reading Cita Stelzer’s pages bring to mind what Churchill said when the local gypsy, “Mrs. Donkey Jack,” was hospitalized. Churchill paid for her care and sent a gardener to feed her dogs. One of them, small and fierce, stood watch over her caravan in the Chartwell Wood. “He allows Arnold to bring food at a respectable distance, and consents to eat it,” Churchill wrote his wife. “But otherwise he remains like the seraph Abdiel in Paradise Lost. ‘Among innumerable false, unmoved, Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified; His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal.’ A fine moral lesson to the baser breed of man!”

David Riddle, a National Trust volunteer at Chartwell, gave me the background of the “Butterfly House” Churchill established to propagate the insects on the grounds of his home:

The Butterfly House was first used as a game larder between 1869 and 1889 by the Colquhoun family, who owned Chartwell between 1830 and 1922, when Churchill bought the estate. Two years later Philip Tilden, his architect, converted the larder to a summer house by removing the east wall. In 1946 it was converted to a Butterfly House. Churchill used it for raising caterpillars and chrysalises. He received advice from butterflies expert L. Hugh Newman, who owned a “butterfly farm” in nearby Sidcup. Lady Churchill planted buddleia, lavender and other nectar-rich flowers in order to encourage the butterflies. Sir Winston changed the walk from gravel to turf and stepping stones in 1950.

Butterflies: A Lifetime Interest

Churchill became fascinated with butterflies as a young officer stationed in India, where they were colorful and prolific. Years later, in 1939, and again after the war, he determined to propagate them at Chartwell. L. Hugh Newman, as David Riddle states, was his chief supplier.

Ronald Golding, Churchill’s Scotland Yard detective during 1946-47, told me an amusing episode involving Newman’s first visit to Churchill:

He took the breeder for a walk round the grounds and gave a general idea of his plans. The expert then gave advice and went into technical details. Mr. Churchill said very little. Rather like a penny dropping in the butterfly man’s mind, you could almost hear him thinking: “Ah, I’ve got the old boy. He’s not nearly as clever as I thought. This is one sphere in which I know a lot more than he does.”

Mr. Newman became just the slightest bit patronizing and boomf! Mr. Churchill came back at him with very lucid comments showing that he was fully acquainted with everything being said. Visibly shaken, the expert never tried to “talk down” again. It was a pattern of conversation I’d noticed with other experts. I can’t help feeling that Mr. Churchill pretended ignorance to a certain extent, then came down like a ton of bricks if there was any attempt to patronize him.

A very successful scheme was put in hand and some of the rarest butterflies and moths of the greatest beauty were hatched out. By careful provision of the right flowers and bushes, the butterflies were kept well fed.

“In Durance Vile”

Churchill’s daughter Lady Soames was not sure when he stopped raising butterflies, but it might have been after an event described by longtime Chartwell secretary and administrator Grace Hamblin, at a 1987 Churchill Conference:

He had a little hut in the garden, which is still there. In those days he had the front covered with gauze, with a gauze door opening into it. A nearby butterfly farm sent him chrysalises. which he liked to see develop. One morning, I was with him spreading out the chrysalises. Upon leaving the little hut, he left the door open. I said, “Did you want to leave the door open, or should I close it?” He said, “I can’t bear this captivity any longer!” Thus we no longer kept butterflies, but they are supposed to remain in the garden once you start. It’s a lovely occupation. When he knew that Chartwell would eventually go to the National Trust and be open to the public he said, “I hope the National Trust will grow plenty of buddleia for my butterflies.”

This charming story reminds us of Churchill’s hatred of imprisonment. In his autobiography, he writes of being jailed by the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War, in a chapter entitled, “In Durance Vile.” Ten years later as Home Secretary, he strove to avoid imprisoning people for trivial offenses and was ahead of his time in his ideas about rehabilitating inmates.

====

Jill Rose…

…begins this fine World War II narrative with a friendly warning. Don’t wait till your parents are gone before preserving their memories. The parents of “baby boomers,” Rose writes, lived through the most momentous times of the 20th century. Truly we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. I have dug around to find out as much as I can about my family…but sadly there is so much more that I will never know.”

Mrs. Rose knows and shares much about her parents, Doris and Roger Miles—he a surgeon-lieutenant, Royal Navy; she a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. The book is built around Doris’ letters to the absent Roger. She knew only that he was aboard HMS Tartar, a famous ship which earned twelve battle honors during close encounters with the enemy.

Their correspondence began at their moment of separation, and continued until Roger was “de-mobbed” in 1946. It offers insight to the many ordinary Britons who served faithfully in the great battle. As Churchill said, quoting Tennyson, “Every morn brought forth a noble chance. And every chance brought forth a noble knight.”

Doris nursed throughout the war, but her noble chance came in February 1943. That was when, on orders of Churchill’s doctor Sir Charles Wilson, she was summoned to Whitehall. The PM was back in London, still unwell after a grim battle with pneumonia following the Casablanca Conference.

A significant patient

Doris was advised by Sir Charles (later Lord Moran): “I must warn you, the Prime Minister doesn’t wear pyjamas.” Sure enough, Doris found, there was only a silk vest, and a velvet jacket with diamond V on the lapel. But nurses are professionals. “I had to give him a tepid sponge as he had a high fever…. WC took great interest in this and I knew that if his temperature didn’t go down I would have very little authority. Luckily it did.”

Churchill had a loyal staff. If any kept records of crucial conversations, they did so privately. (Grace Hamblin, a devoted secretary, told this writer the boss would often say hopefully, “You’re not going to write, are you?”) But Doris was free to share the lighter moments, and with Churchill there were plenty. The patient, she wrote, “is all he is cracked up to be.”

He usually requires me to bath[e] him at night, and he holds court to Sir Charles, one or more secretaries, and any odd visitors who may be around, while I’m doing it!…. He’s very interested in his blood count, which is done every day, and now talks knowledgeably about ‘pollywogs’ and ‘Eowins.’ Actually he is a lot better now, but it’s been a fairly bad hemolytic strep pneumonia, and might have developed—after all he’s 68, although he doesn’t look it.”

Sixty-eight was a lot older then than it is now. But the patient was having none of age. When he complained of head pains, Doris rubbed his head with oil of wintergreen. This became a ritual in which the PM reverted to his beloved music-hall songs: “Wash me in the water / Which you washed your dirty daughter in / And I wilt be whiter / Than the whitewash on the wall.”

At Chequers

By March 3rd, Mrs. Rose continued, the patient was much improved, and Doris Miles was the only nurse sent with him to Chequers, the PM’s official country residence. Her letters are full of admiration for the old house which, despite its grandeur, she found homey. One night the PM called her to a window. “…those are our boys going to Germany, we can rely on them.” Overhead, writes the author, “passed a flight of British bombers from nearby RAF Abingdon heading east at the start of the Battle of the Ruhr.” Stirring times in sterner days.

Doris Miles left Chequers in mid-March, her work done, but not before a humorous ceremony. “I had to march into the dining-room after dinner (all male) and present him with a ruby-red capsule on a silver try, to be told, ‘The price of a good woman is above rubies.”’ The usual cynics spin this as gauche misogyny. In truth Churchill spoke with a twinkle, and both of them knew it. “He is, of course, a little naïf when he preens himself on not losing a night’s sleep,” Doris wrote. “He forgets that he takes precaution each night to prevent such a mishap, in the shape of a little red tablet.”

* * *

Doris lived to be 100, glad at the end that her last twenty-seven years without Roger were over. This is far more than a Churchill book. We cannot convey its riches in a small space. It is well worth the read. It describes two people deeply in love, separated by war, with shrewd observations of life at the top; and at the bottom, amid the blacked-out streets of shattered London. Readers will profit from Jill Rose’s exposition of those times. They truly exemplify “the Greatest Generation.”

.

Justine Hardy posted a lovely three minute video about the wrench of parting with the effects of her father’s robust, admirable life. She wrote: “My father was such a mountain in our landscape, it has been quite a shuddering since the mountain fell.”

Robert as Raconteur

Great Contemporaries

Remembering Grace: 1908-2002

Beloved by all Churchills, Grace Hamblin died at her home in Westerham, Kent, aged 94. Aware she was ailing, I had just sent her some little thing in the post; Carole Kenwright at Chartwell said it arrived in time, and she was able to read from it for a few minutes.

Grace Hamblin was the longest serving and most loyally devoted of Churchill’s inner circle, arriving at Chartwell in 1932 as an assistant to then-principal private secretary Violet Pearman. She spent virtually her entire career as private secretary, first to Winston and from 1939 to Clementine. In 1966 she became the first Administrator of Chartwell, serving through 1973. In 1974 she was secretary to the Churchill Centenary Exhibition.

She was one of the few Churchill intimates who rejected every opportunity to profit out of her long years and inside knowledge, though she was often consulted, most recently by the producers of the HBO/BBC film “The Gathering Storm.” Moreover, she loyally kept her promise “never to write,” although we were fortunate to have her as guest of honor at a 1987 Churchill Conference in Dallas, where she delivered a warm personal account of life at Chartwell. (Available by email.)

She did record her private memories for the historical record, and using these a recent book divulged that she and her brother had been the actual agents who burned a portrait Sir Winston had detested, at the behest of Lady Churchill. I knew her well enough to think she would be appalled at the media kerfuffle over this “revelation,” well known to many for years, but hardly worthy of publicity.

Grace was kind and obliging to everyone she met, but there were two kinds of people up with which she would not put: those who questioned or belittled the boss, and slapdash admirers of him who were careless with their facts.

To serious searchers for the truth, she was an inspiration to “get it right.” She was a privilege to know, one of the few alive whose experience dated to the so-called “Wilderness Years” of the 1930s, when Chartwell hummed with the writing of many books and articles, and surreptitious visits by worried confidantes as Germany armed.

The messages received at the news of her passing were touching and heartfelt. I could not however help thinking that it was time for her to go: a time when duty, honor and country seem so often to be replaced by irresponsibility, dishonor and nihilism, sacrifice by greed, unity by politics, righteous wrath by pleas for accommodation. Grace Hamblin was alive and sentient and at the center in 1940, the year Churchill said “nothing surpasses”; she could scarcely have understood the world we live in now.

In the first of his 1935 “Chartwell Bulletins,” sent to his absent wife on 1 January 1935, Churchill recalled in another context Milton’s description of the seraph Abdiel in Paradise. The words apply so perfectly to Grace Hamblin:

“Among innumerable false, unmoved;

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified;

Her loyalty she kept, her love, her zeal.”

Part 4: “Being Shouted At”

“I think being shouted at was one of the worst things to get over,” said Grace Hamblin, secretary to Winston and then Clementine Churchill from 1932, typical of the common Kentish folk who loved them. “I’d come from a very quiet family and I’d never been shouted at in my life. But I had to learn it, in time.”

In the midst of dictation one day, Grace told me, Churchill commanded: “Fetch me Klop!” Klop? she thought—what could it mean?

Finally, proudly, she struggled in with Onno Klopp‘s 14 giant volumes, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart. “Jesus Christ!” Churchill roared. What he meant was his hole punch, invariably called “Klop.” (He despised staples and other fasteners: piles of papers had to be “klopped” and then fastened together with a “treasury tag,” a bit of thread with metal “Ts” at each end.)

At first she found it daunting: “the strangeness of a large house, getting used not only to him, but to his family, his staff and friends who came and went. It was all very difficult. I went through many, many doubtful periods and was always comforted by the thought that I would only be there for a few months, and then go back to my old job.”

She wound up staying over thirty years until he died in 1965, and then remained as the first administrator, helping to turn Chartwell into a National Trust property:

As the weeks went by, I found myself trying hard to please him, to help instead of to hinder. He had a charisma: a way of making one feel wanted, making the most mundane task feel important.

He worked day in and day out and most terribly hard himself, and I think he drove us. He had a way of almost shaming one into overcoming a problem. His well-worn expression was “Find Out.” He would say, for example: “Do you know where Lord Beaverbrook is this weekend?” No, I’m afraid I don’t. “Well, find out!”

So one got into the habit of saying, “No, I’m afraid I don’t but I’ll find out,” which was a much better answer. Another thing he often said, if you looked a little bit doubtful about anything: “But surely you don’t find that difficult?”

Of course, one had to get on with it. He was always quite kind to the newcomer. I lately met a woman who went to him when she was 19. She’s still very pretty and in those days she must have been lovely; she is fair-haired and blue eyed, like a fairy.

Apparently he said to Lady Churchill when she first appeared, “Oh dear, she’s very young. I mustn’t frighten her!” I can well imagine him saying it. On her first dictation, he said something to her that he never said to me: “Don’t worry if you don’t get it all—I always remember what I’ve said.” He did indeed remember, more or less, but it didn’t get you out of making mistakes all the same.

The secretaries at Chartwell worked on the ground floor which Churchill called his “factory,” which he liked to visit. Miss Hamblin told Martin Gilbert: “He loved coming in and plonking down in the chair. He would welcome a guest at the front door, perhaps arriving for lunch, and say to them, “Do come in and see my factory.” I remember well one such occasion when I happened to he alone: “This is my factory, and this is my secretary“—pregnant pause—”Hmm, and to think I once commanded the Fleet.”  Grace added, “I don’t think he meant me, he probably meant the room.”

continued in part 5…

A recent book by a distinguished historian suggests that Winston Churchill disdained common people. It cites another Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, during World War I, providing a tow to a broken-down motorist and giving two children a lift in his car. The writer adds: “It is hard to imagine Winston Churchill behaving in such a fashion.”

It is not hard at all. In fact, Churchill did frequent kind things for ordinary people he encountered, privately and without fanfare. We know about them only through his private correspondence, thanks to the official biography, Martin Gilbert, or the testimony of observers.

A prominent example is the gypsy couple Churchill befriended in Westerham. Grace Hamblin, longtime Churchill secretary and first administrator of Chartwell, recalled them in a 1987 speech to the International Churchill Society:

 There was a funny old gypsy living in the district, called Donkey Jack, because he had a donkey and trap, and a wife and a dog. My father, who was a farmer, called him a parasite, because he lived on stolen potatoes, strawberries and apples. But Sir Winston had a more romantic view. He thought it was wonderful. When Donkey Jack died, and his donkey had to be destroyed, there was nowhere for poor Mrs. Donkey Jack to go. It wouldn’t be safe for her to live on common land. Sir Winston allowed her to live in his wood, in a little gazebo which had been there for years, full of earwigs and that sort of thing, but she loved it. It would have been stupid to offer her a house because she wouldn’t have understood it. He knew just what would give her pleasure.

In 1935, Mrs. Donkey Jack suffered a fractured ankle. Churchill sent her to hospital for treatment, but, realizing her camp and her two dogs would be left unattended, asked his gardener Arnold to look after them.

“Should the worst be realized I shall try and get her into a decent home,” Churchill wrote his absent wife. “Meanwhile her savage dog (the little one) still stands a faithful sentry over her belongings. He allows Arnold to bring food at a respectable distance and consents to eat it, but otherwise he remains like the seraph Abdiel in Paradise Lost:

 ‘Among innumerable false, unmoved;

Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified;

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal.’”

continued in part 2…