I have spent a fruitless few hours trying to find a quote by Churchill about bathing. I interpret his remark, “why stand when you can sit down?” as suggesting that he preferred baths to showers, but recall that when he visited Russia, he said a bath there was “like lying in one’s own dirt.” Did he say that? The reason for my interest is that I want to give up baths for a month and would like to enlist the help of someone like Sir Winston. —P.P., UK

A: No, and he probably would not approve…

I trust you are not giving up showers! Alas I can find no reference to “lying in one’s own dirt,” or similar phrases. I searched the Hillsdale College Churchill Project digital reference to 100 million words by and about Churchill. This is not dispositive: he certainly might have made that wisecrack about Russian bathtubs to a colleague whose account escaped our net.  On the other hand, there are recorded instances of his bathing in places like Yalta or Moscow. Filthy or not, Russian tubs apparently didn’t stop him. After returning from the Yalta Conference, he did have his clothes fumigated—but that was a separate problem!

Leading advocate of baths

Churchill was a famous bather—twice a day when he had time. On 8 December 1900, beginning his lecture tour of North America, he addressed the New York City Press Club. “England and America are divided by a great ocean of salt water,” he declared, “but united by an eternal bathtub of soap and water.”

Baths were a lifetime habit. Even on sojourns to wild parts of Africa or the trenches of Flanders, a bathtub would be found—or packed along. Orderlies were kept busy filling baths with hot water, for Churchill preferred a precise temperature: 98 degrees. In the tub, WSC practiced “full immersion,” like a Baptist christening. He would sound like a porpoise, sending up bubbles as he exhaled. At Chartwell, this sometimes caused the bath to overflow, flooding the downstairs hallway. After a few accidents like this, a plumber installed a drain channel at the base of his tub. A famous butler, Frank Sawyers, was appalled at his bathing habits, frequently shouting, “Dear, dear, Mr. Churchill.” (That was about as censorious as Sawyers got.)

“LOUSY as a Parliamentary expression”

Neither did Churchill hesitate to apply his bathing standards to others. One victim was Hugh Gaitskell, Minister of Fuel and Power in the 1945-51 Labour Government. In 1947, with energy in short supply, Gaitskell rose to urge conservation of water. “Personally, I have never had a great many baths myself,” he told the House of Commons, “and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less.”

Churchill found this outrageous. Gaitskell was defying WSC’s lifetime habits and solemn beliefs. Quickly he rose from his corner seat below the Gangway on the Opposition benches:

Mr. Speaker: When Ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour. I had even asked myself, when meditating upon these points, whether you, Mr. Speaker, would admit the word LOUSY as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration.

Further reading

“Churchill’s Daily Routine (Or: You Can’t Get Good Help Anymore),” 2020

A friend sends a letter from a planning firm, “reaching out” to his homeowners association. The planners seek a consultant contract. They promise “awesome” results. Their proposals are so full of jargon that my friend wondered what Churchill would make of it. The letter contains many sentences Churchill would have deplored:

“The committee tasked us with the planning and completion of an inclusive and productive process.”

“General understanding offers guidance for the implementation committee.”

And: “An outward and honest marketing position achieves awesome goals…”

“Tasked,” of course, is a new verb, converted from the noun “task” by modern Newspeak. Like the noun “effort”—”We are going to effort that.” Such English may be familiar to readers. It is just the kind of boilerplate that usually precedes a consultant’s bill for $150,000.

“Reaching out” on “awesome” “issues”

Not restricted to planning consultants is the popular term “reaching out.” It has replaced the plain, simple, “contacting,” apparently because it’s more touchy-feely. We must vow never to use it.

While we’re at it, let’s also chuck that over-used adjective, “awesome.” St. Paul’s Cathedral is awesome. A well-made pepperoni pizza is merely “satisfying.” And “issues,” a PC euphemism for “problems,” used for fear of “offending” the problem, can also go.

When people write jargon they are trying to hide what they are really thinking. Or they have not thought at all, and are just trying to be trendy. Or they are subconsciously showing casual respect for the recipient. Moral: Always demand more bona fides from any anybody using lingo like this.

My friend asks for relevant Churchill remarks about jargon. There are some.

Churchill on Jargon

The writer quoted above is like a certain British premier. He “has the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought.” (Churchill on Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, 1933.)

Besides, he “stumbles over the truth and hastily picks himself up and hurries on as if nothing has happened.” (Churchill on Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, 1936.)

How Churchill would react to such writing is easily seen under the Jargon heading of my quote book, Churchill in His Own Words, aka Churchill By Himself, the chapter on “Writer and Speaker.”

In 1948 (a memorandum to “My colleagues and their staffs”):

Let us have an end of such phrases as “It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations.” [or]  “Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect.” Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.

* * *

In 1950 (replying to the Labour Party’s Hugh Gaitskell, who was educated at Winchester):

In this Debate we have had the usual jargon about “the infrastructure of a supra-national authority.” The original authorship is obscure. But it may well be that these words “infra” and “supra” have been introduced into our current political parlance by the band of intellectual highbrows who are  naturally anxious to impress British labour with the fact that they learned Latin at Winchester. Although we may not relish the words, no one will wish to deny the old-school-tie contingent their modest indulgence in class self-consciousness.

* * *

In 1951 (reviewing a wartime memorandum by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov):

This grimace is a good example of how official jargon can be used to destroy any kind of human contact or even thought itself.

The right, short words

Denis Kelly, a literary assistant, helped Churchill abridge his World War II memoirs for a one-volume edition. Kelly wrote of a “Germany outmatched, outfought, isolated, surrounded by superior forces, occupied and disarmed.”

Mr. Kelly told me Churchill blue-lined all of this, saying, “The words  you want are: ‘Germany was crushed.'”