A work of art on Churchill’s art

This beautiful book combines Churchill’s favorite French painting venues with fastidious research on their locations. The horizontal format blends quality binding with brilliant color on thick, coated paper, and the price is a bargain. Paul Rafferty, himself an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s personality. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in verifying quotations.)

The book’s forte is its “then and now” juxtaposition of Churchill’s art with photos of the precise venues. Again and again, the eye feasts on double-page spreads nearly two feet wide, showing a Churchill painting alongside the very spot today. Finding those spots often required exhaustive research and exploration.

Sometimes, Rafferty relied on photos Churchill had snapped to allow him to finish a portrait back at his studio. Familiarity with the area helped locate many spots. Occasionally a passerby would know where Sir Winston painted. But more often, it required Sherlockian sleuthing, sometimes resulting in bizarre adventures.

In search of the “Red Rocks”

Rafferty carried 100 laminated cards of elusive paintings to help him “reacquire” Churchill’s targets. Among the elusive was “Red Rocks, L’Esterel.” There the whole coastline is red rocks! With two artist friends he drove along, vainly searching. Finally they stopped at one last lay-by. There they were! Paul and his friends decided this was one scene they would try their hands at painting themselves:

Venturing down to see if access was possible, we came upon a nudist beach, much to our—and their—surprise…. We climbed over the cliff and down into the empty cove, with only piles of driftwood lying around. We began painting and after an hour or so I looked up to see a naked woman on top of the ridge we had just climbed over. She waved, probably wondering what we were doing: I waved back, certainly wondering what she was doing. I returned to my painting and suggested to the others, “You don’t see that, painting in Trafalgar Square.”

Mentors and paraphernalia

The depth of research is not confined to venues. Rafferty devotes pages to Riviera artist mentors, like Sir William Nicholson, John and Hazel Lavery and Alfred Munnings. Other pages illustrate his equipment, including his traveling easels, brushes, paintboxes and oils, even his Stetson hat.

Most of Churchill’s oil paints came from his “colourman” Willy Sax. Having tried Sax’s oils, WSC became devoted. In his famous essay, Painting as a Pastime, he compared oil painting to a military campaign:

You have a medium at your disposal which offers real power, if you only can find out how to use it…. You need not build downwards awkwardly from white paper to your darkest dark…. strike where you please, beginning if you will with a moderate central arrangement of middle tones, and then hurling in the extremes when the psychological moment comes. Lastly, the pigment itself is such nice stuff to handle (if it does not retaliate).

In one of his letters to Sax he asks for “six tubes garance (Rose Madder), Rose Dorée or Pink Madder, two tubes Neutral Tint, four tubes Pale Violet Cobalt.” This reminds us of his dialogue with Field Marshal Alexander, painting together at Lake Como. “I always use just a touch of Rose Madder; do you use Rose Madder, Winston?” “But of course, Alex, I always use Rose Madder.”

Rafferty on the Churchill trail

A double page spread (right) offers a map showing the amazing breadth of the Riviera places Churchill painted. Some are familiar: Three favorites were Roquebrune-Cap-Martin: “La Pausa” (Emery and Wendy Reves) “Les Zoraïdes” (Daisy Fellowes) and “La Dragonnière” (Lord Rothermere). Then there were Lord Beaverbrook’s “La Capponcina” at Cap d’Ail, and Maxine Elliott’s Chȃteau de l’Horizon, in Golfe-Juan.

Rafferty also tracked the more obscure places, such as Consuelo Balsan’s villa near Eze, and Ralph Curtis’s “Villa Sylvia” at St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Churchill painted churches and chapels, like St.-Paul-de-Vence, and loved water scenes. The River Loup in the Alps Maritimes whetted his passion for depicting water. He loved and painted certain preferred restaurants, like Restaurant Philip at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in Provence. Its proprietor, aged 92, still remembers him: a gourmet who would order from the menu. He particularly fancied the trout that abounded in the cold river—which again excited his artists’s eye.

The work continues

Satiated with this vivid display of artistry and erudition, the reader is disappointed to get to the end. No worries. Just flip the book over and start again. There is so much detail, so many amazing comparisons of then and now, that it always seems fresh and new. Even trivia, such as Churchill’s motorcars (a sideline of this writer) gets some attention.

I’d never seen a photo of his 1956 Humber Hawk estate car, presented by his friend Lord Rootes. Churchill was rumored to have used it to haul his painting gear on the Riviera. Sure enough, Rafferty shows him seated in the Hawk, arriving at Villa La Pausa, no doubt driven by his faithful bodyguard Sergeant Murray.

And the work is not complete. In the back of the book Raffety offers a dozen Churchill paintings not yet pinpointed. They are “the elusive ones still to find.” Perhaps there will be a future addendum, with these paintings matched to vivid photographs of the venues today. It would be fun, even if only online, perhaps here. We’ll be hoping for it.

“We go back a long way,” Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn recently reminded me. “I knew Dal Newfield.” He realized that would invoke a fond memory. A few still remember the man responsible for where some of us are today.

Dalton Newfield was a Sacramento army veteran who had admired Winston Churchill since he saw him live during World War II. In 1970, I shrank away from Finest Hour after the first eleven issues. I was clearing the decks for an automotive writing career in New York City. Dal rescued the thin little newsletter of the “Winston S. Churchill Study Unit” and produced 22 issues. His first cover was memorable: a replica of The Times front page for 30 November 1874. In the upper left corner, each copy was marked with a hand-applied red dot. It was an announcement: “Born at Blenheim Palace, of The Lady Randolph Churchill, a son….”

The Newfield era

Dal’s increasingly interesting editions extended far beyond the original scope of stamp collecting. We never had more than $300 in the bank, but he found a friendly printer. Here he begged or borrowed what we then called “half-tones”—photos to liven it up. We couldn’t afford typesetting, so he typed each issue on a carbon ribbon Selectric. Running out of space, he’d continue articles up and down the margins. It was a happy, eclectic little news-sheet, brimming with Churchilliana.

“Look,” Newfield said early on: “Stamps are fine, but they don’t do justice to this grand character. We need a broader approach. You came up aces with the title Finest Hour. Now let’s rename the organization.” I suggested “International Churchill Society.” It seemed like a good idea at the time.

High among Dal’s priorities was Sir Winston’s deep literary heritage. He produced many articles about Churchill’s books and books about him, especially Winston S.. Churchill, the Official Biography. (Actually there was nothing “official” about it, except that it was based on Churchill’s archive. But the biographers were never asked to follow a particular line.) Martin Gilbert had just succeeded first author Randolph Churchill, who had published seven volumes. I invited Randolph to be our first honorary member, two weeks before he died in 1968. Martin, a stamp collector, remembered when my letter arrived.

Books, books and more books

Books were Newfield’s forte—he was the world’s first Churchill specialist bookseller. He worked to get member discounts on Martin’s first volume, The Challenge of War 1914-1916. By 1975, when Martin published the “companion” or document volumes to that work, the book business was taking all Dal’s spare time. He gave up editing, and Finest Hour vanished. Meanwhile he was selling me books and reigniting my Churchill compulsion. In 1981 he slyly suggested: “You’re freelancing now, so why not revive FH? There’s enough in the treasury for one issue, and I have a pretty good promo list.”

He sure did. One of our first subscribers was U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. We returned his check and made him an honorary member. “That way,” Dal said, “he can never get away.” I later came to know this fine man personally. He was the first of many introductions to “the good and the great” through the magic name of Churchill.

Alas only a few months later, Dalton Newfield suddenly died, leaving his many friends bereft. One of those was a scholar named Larry Arnn. They had met in the late 1970s, when Larry was Martin Gilbert’s chief of research, while studying at the London School of Economics and Oxford.

The Official Biography falters

Larry had joined Martin in 1977, after publication of biographic Volume 5, Prophet of Truth 1922-1939. Martin and his staff developed the document volumes for Prophet of Truth. Working with them was a Lancashire girl named Penny, the future Mrs. Arnn. They left for the States in 1980, and the third and last of the Volume 5 documents did not appear until 1983.

Martin and his team were fastidious, and would not be rushed. They interviewed anyone who knew Churchill, vacuuming every archive and resource. Originally Randolph had envisioned five volumes of biography and ten of documents, but the job was exploding. At 1106 pages, Prophet of Truth was nearly double the size of the first narrative volume. At 4592 pages, its accompanying documents nearly quadrupled the page count for the “companions” to Volume I.

Martin Gilbert was not independently wealthy, his pay for the biography low. Often he would set it aside to take on other assignments. Like Sir Winston himself, he was “living from mouth to hand.” The Official Biography was repeatedly delayed. The last three narrative volumes were done by 1988, but of their accompanying documents, there was no sign. After the last biographic volume the publishers, Heinemann and Houghton Mifflin, lost interest. They saw the job as essentially finished; the slow-selling documents were unprofitable. Yet from a scholarly standpoint, they were the heart of the work.

Stepping up

Here was where the seeds Dal Newfield planted took root. Born among two-dozen stamp collectors, the Churchill Society by the mid-1980s had acquired some serious visionaries. “If you want to do something lasting,” they said, “find a way to publish things commercial publishers won’t touch.” In 1986, launching the Churchill Literary Foundation, we set out to do just that.

It began small, with a booklet by the aforesaid Caspar Weinberger. Through it we raised support for more. By 1992 we’d produced ten specialized publications including Churchill’s The Dream and his Chartwell Bulletins, even a series of fifty-year calendars (1940-90, and so on). The last special publication, The Churchill Companion (2013) brought the total to twenty-four. The Foundation (part of the Churchill Centre after 1995) worked with publishers to reissue long out-of-print books. In short order we saw the Malakand Field Force, Savrola, The Boer War, the six-volume World Crisis. I even published one myself—India, Churchill’s rare book of speeches. But the question remained: how to finish the Official Biography?

Wendy Reves and the War Papers

Fortune then smiled in the person of Wendy Reves, vivacious widow of Emery Reves, Sir Winston’s literary agent. The devoted Reveses had hosted WSC in his old age at their Riviera villa, “La Pausa.” Emery died in 1981 but Wendy still lived there. I met Wendy at the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1986. There was no mistaking the former fashion model: smartly dressed, dark glasses, trademark headband. She became an enthusiastic supporter.

In 1990 we began seeking to restart the document volumes. They had ended in 1939—tantalizingly, the eve of Churchill’s finest hour. To cover 1940-65, Martin Gilbert said, would require at least six more. We passed his thoughts to Wendy—she always referred to him in French as Monsieur Geel-bear. “How much will it take?” she asked. We told her. She said, “When can he start?”

Thus followed three huge document volumes, The Churchill War Papers, covering September 1939 through December 1941. The publisher was W.W. Norton. Heinemann in London tagged along, popping their logo on the spine and selling their version at twice Norton’s price, pleasing nobody.

Martin’s output, vast and wonderful as it was, didn’t please the sponsor. The first two volumes arrived in quick succession in 1993 and 1994. Then Martin became sidetracked again, and we didn’t see the third until 2000. Wendy had faithfully kept her bargain, paying the bills for each (mainly secretarial and research staff). But the six-year delay exhausted her patience. “I’m done,” she declared. I recall that Martin himself didn’t greatly object. I think he was fairly exhausted, too.

Larry Arnn raises the Tattered Flag

Now what? Unbeknown to us, another champion was in the field who would finish the job. Happily, it was somebody we knew and trusted, a man who has never let us down. So it was that Larry Arnn, by now president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, set out to finish the longest biography in history. In so doing, as Churchill said, he raised “a tattered flag found lying on a stricken field.”

The task ahead was daunting. Raw material for the remaining document volumes was mainly assembled. It comprised thousands of papers covering 1943-65. Indeed Martin Gilbert had compiled a “wodge” of documents for almost every day of Churchill’s life. But all had to be edited into a coherent whole. Sources needed to be checked, cross-references listed, rejects weeded out, additions pondered, facts verified. A comprehensive index and footnotes were needed, including thumbnail biographies of every person mentioned. And Martin wasn’t getting any younger.

The rescue

So Hillsdale College arranged to buy the Gilbert Papers, to work out rights and permissions, and to publish the volumes—not with an outside publisher but through Hillsdale College Press. Martin Gilbert would remain editor, with this proviso: “If for any reason you are unable to finish it, we will.”

Dave Turrell, my former associate editor at FH, recalled the  “heart-stopping moment” when we realized Dr. Arnn’s full plan: “Not only would Hillsdale produce the remaining seven documents of the Official Biography. It would first go back to the beginning, reissuing all twenty-four previous volumes in a uniform edition, modestly priced within everyone’s pocketbook. Those of us waiting for new material would have to wait awhile longer. It was frustrating, but in hindsight it was the correct decision. It incidentally broke the hearts of secondhand booksellers around the world. The Churchill Documents 11-13 sold for $60 each, compared to thousands for the old Companion Volumes to Volume 5.

In 2006, forty years after they had first appeared, Hillsdale reissued Volume 1, Youth 1874-1896 and its two volumes of documents. It wasn’t until 2013 that new ground opened with The Churchill Documents Volume 17, Testing Times, 1942. Dear Martin Gilbert died in 2015, leaving the majestic legacy of eighty-eight books on Churchill, Jewish and 20th Century history and a global following. He lived to see all his past volumes back in print, and one new volume too. Testing Times bore his name as editor. All six volumes published since his death carry his and Larry Arnn’s bylines.

“History lived and made in real time”

Careful attention to detail makes these books invaluable. Start with pagination: each reprint carries the same page numbers as the originals. So citations are always the same, regardless of edition. The scholarly endnotes were largely the work of Hillsdale’s Churchill Fellows: students engaged in Churchill classes or research, under the supervision of Dr. Arnn and Research Director Soren Geiger. My own role was to read the manuscripts, querying points, providing new references, or possible additional material.

The indexing is exhaustive, far deeper than the earlier volumes. Indexer Sheila Ryan won the American Society for Indexing Excellence 2019 Award for The Churchill Documents 21, The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945. E-book versions of the eight narrative volumes are available, and electronic document volumes are forthcoming.

A expanding endeavor

Scores of scholars have testified to the historic value of all this labor. “We will never again have so thorough a record of any statesman’s decision-making, so vast and consequential,” wrote Eliot Cohen. “Accompanied by a full apparatus of footnotes identifying persons mentioned, correcting dates, and clarifying obscure references, the document volumes contain an extraordinary array of materials: official memoranda, correspondence, speeches, diary entries by friends (and enemies), reports, instructions, recollections, and even dinner lists.” They also have a use beyond research, Dave Turrell added: “They can also be read in their own right. Not only do they tell their own story, but the voices we eavesdrop on increase our understanding. They read as a radio play, where we get to hear history being lived and made in real-time.”

Publishing the world’s longest biography would be enough for many, but it didn’t stop there. Simultaneously, Dr. Arnn started the Hillsdale College Churchill Project to exploit and apply the lessons of Churchill’s rich, inspiring life. “The study of statesmanship,” he says, “is central to Hillsdale’s mission, which includes cultivating the moral and spiritual values. The classics teach that we can best understand the art of statesmanship by studying those who have a reputation for it. One sees prudence, the virtue of the statesman, most clearly through the words and actions of those who pursued justice in the midst of the obstacles and necessities of political life.”

End of the beginning

What better model for teaching statesmanship? “Churchill’s career was long, the facts so well recorded, the quality so very high. It spanned the largest wars, the greatest depression, the worst tyrannies, and the most rapid advancement of technology and therefore of human power. As he faced these crises, Churchill wrote with profuse detail and with great ability about his doings, thereby leaving one of the richest records of human undertaking.” Its legal structure ensures that the Churchill Project will continue long after all of us are gone. For that reason I joined the team in 2014. Working with Hillsdale’s bright young students is a privilege and an inspiration. A center for Churchill Studies is something I dreamed about for 40 years. Dalton Newfield dreamed about it too.

“A right understanding of Churchill’s record” requires deep resources. Along with the Gilbert Papers, the Project acquired the Ronald Cohen collection of Churchill essays, forewords and contributions—Sections “B” through “G” of his Bibliography. Ron himself donated his collection of recordings, the authentic voice of Churchill, now being digitalized for online access. The College has received or is in line for other collections of Churchill books, artifacts and papers, my own included.

These materials combine to teach statesmanship through the best teacher of modern times. The method includes national conferences, symposia, scholarships, online courses and an endowed faculty chair. A steady flow of new publications will follow. One is an electronic version of the Cohen Bibliography. We hope to do more publishing of original texts, obscure writings not seen since first publication. Most recently, the Project marshaled a battery of scholars to defend Churchill’s good name from an outburst of defamation. Suitable, I think, for a college whose motto reads, “Pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844.”

“Ambassadors of Providence”

Through these endeavors, Hillsdale is building an institution for Churchill research, scholarship, and learning. You may also subscribe, with 60,000 others, to bulletins on new articles, research papers and video resources, and announcements of free online courses and events. For details visit winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu or email this writer.

The official biography is done, the work goes on, the subject is evergreen. “Great men are the ambassadors of Providence sent to reveal to their fellow men their unknown selves,” said President Calvin Coolidge. “To them is granted the power to call forth the best there is in those who come under their influence.” Here in Winston Churchill, we have the story of one man, it is true; but a man who shows us what we are, all of us, at our best.

Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937-1964, edited by Sir Martin Gilbert. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997, 415 pages, Amazon $8.95. This updated review was first published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Emery Reves, from the ground up

Admirers of Sir Martin Gilbert were pleased and touched to see his chronicle appear, now over twenty years ago. But few expected it would amount to much more than a useful research tool. We were wrong, and quickly realized why Sir Martin and Wendy Reves were so keen to get it published.

The Churchill-Reves Correspondence is marvelous reading for students of Churchill. It shows how an unknown Hungarian came to be the great man’s literary “diffuser.” (Reves himself eschewed the title of “agent.” He described himself as “Sales Department for the Production Chief.”)

Reves used Churchill’s screed like a palimpsest, spreading it to the far reaches of Europe, the Empire-Commonwealth and North America. Then, as Hitler’s influence spread, his outlets began to close: neutral countries dreaded the Führer’s wrath. Twice Reves escaped Nazi clutches. Operating from abroad, he earned Churchill millions for his war memoirs, his History of the English Speaking Peoples, and older titles as far back as Savrola. Later on, Emery and Wendy became Sir Winston’s hosts when kindly breezes brought him to the Riviera.

Reves started on a shoestring, selling Churchill’s 1930s articles (most of them readable today in Step by Step) around Europe. He charged as little as £1 to newspapers in poorer nations. By 1939 he’d built an impressive business, producing £50,000 a year in today’s money.

Churchill in those days was politically very incorrect. Reves got him on the front pages of thirty newspapers, 750 different outlets per year, with fifteen to twenty million readers in twenty-five languages. (I soon learned that Sapnis, the Latvian edition of Churchill’s short story The Dream, which I presented to Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis, was not the first Latvian translation. Reves was publishing Churchill articles in Latvian as early as 1937.)

Cooperation Publishing

Imre Révész (his father had adapted the surname from Rosenbaum) was born in Hungary in 1904, studied in Berlin and earned a degree in economics from Zurich University. In Berlin in the late Twenties he organized Cooperation Publishing, a unique organization. His goal was to publish works of European statesmen in other countries: Britons in Germany, Frenchmen in Italy, and so on.

Shunning Nazis, Fascists and Communists, Révész promoted writers who stood for liberty and freedom. After Hitler came to power, he was drummed out of Germany with only the clothes on his back. He moved to Paris, where he represented Britain’s leading statesmen: Churchill, Eden, Attlee and Herbert Samuel.

When France fell in 1940 Révész fled to London, losing his fortune but not his determination. Anglicizing his name to Reves, he soon set up shop in New York where Churchill and Eden helped him to emigrate. After the war, he was instrumental in placing Churchill’s writings to the widest possible audience.

“Gentlemen and players”

A tenacious salesman and negotiator, Reves was gentle and generous toward the statesman he respected more than anyone. In the Thirties he waived commissions to place articles with foreign publishers Churchill had contacted earlier. He was never put off by the “gentlemen and players” relationship that marked their early encounters, when Churchill kept him at arm’s length. During the war, the PM refused to grant Reves favors, thinking it might set a bad precedent. He denied Reves’s offers to help distribute Britain’s message of defiance in neutral countries. Though he passed the proposals to Duff Cooper at the Propaganda Ministry, Churchill carefully noted that he was “not wedded” to them.

In their early letters WSC is always “Mr. Churchill” and the Hungarian “My dear Reves.” Sir Winston didn’t call him “Emery” until he began to holiday at Reves’s Villa La Pausa in 1956. Yet in a 1946 meeting, when Reves told him how his mother had been cruelly murdered by the Nazis, Churchill wept in bitter grief.

Their business relationship reflected the experience of many around Churchill. The boss expected his “familiars” to be on call constantly, whether convenient or not. They repaid him with devotion.

Churchill’s summons

The most dramatic account in this book, in fact, starts with a perplexed Reves trying desperately to meet Churchill’s order; on one day’s notice, he dropped everything and sailed with Lord Camrose to America. The mission: to negotiate book and serial rights to Churchill’s memoirs, The Second World War.

Martin Gilbert’s connecting editorial contributions explain. Emery Reves is in Paris when the command arrives out of the blue. Sail with Camrose from Southampton at 1pm tomorrow on the Queen Elizabeth. Before you go, stop at Chartwell for a briefing. Now, please!

Fog surrounds Le Bourget airport—no commercial flights. “Can’t you get a private plane?” Churchill says impatiently. Reves finds a rickety two-seater. He sits in dread for twenty minutes, until the pilot is denied take-off “because my motor gives off sparks.” Tenaciously, he gets to Croydon the next morning, too late to stop at Chartwell. Churchill sends a car that speeds him to Southampton. He thinks he’ll miss the ship! But he has gained a vital hour because Britain has just set its clocks back. The old Churchill luck.

Reves is the last passenger on the sold-out Queen’s maiden voyage. Churchill has procured his cabin by importuning Cunard’s chairman. Reves looks up Lord Camrose—who has no idea why Emery is there! Reves cables Churchill to please explain. Churchill replies: “I am sure you will do an excellent job, but you must be very confidential and you must realize that you do not actually represent me.” Such confusion would flummox lesser men. But by the end of the voyage, Emery has made friends with Lord Camrose, and they divide the workload.

“Please wake Harry”

They decide that Camrose will deal with newspapers, Reves (“unofficially”) with magazines. Reves helps steer negotiations away from the bad deals and toward the best. The best is Henry Luce of Life, whom Camrose doesn’t wish to see. Luce, he sniffs, “hasn’t replied to my letter.”

Learning that Luce is in New York, Emery rings his friend, the redoubtable Claire Boothe, Luce’s wife. “Harry” is in bed, exhausted after a two-night flight from China. Reves tells her his mission is urgent. He  rushes to a cab, presents himself at the Waldorf Towers and asks Claire: “Please wake Harry.”

Sleepy and angry, Luce appears in his dressing gown: “You are the fifth or sixth or seventh agent who comes to me saying he represents Churchill,” he grumbled. “Now who is his representative?”

“All I can tell you,” Reves says, “is that in forty-eight hours [the war memoirs serialization] will be decided. You can talk to me today or tomorrow, but after tomorrow you won’t get it.”

Luce gets it. Reves sends Camrose, to sign the deal as “official” representative. Camrose reports: “They made a very good offer….$1,400,000 for the American serial and book rights….”

Reves replies, “Lord Camrose—No! The  American serial rights—yes—but not the book rights! You must stop it.” Reves has friends at Houghton Mifflin—and they are good for a quarter million for the book rights in addition to Luce’s $1.4 million for serialization.

Neither Camrose nor Reves charge Churchill for their services. “He did it to get the British [serial] rights for the Daily Telegraph,” Emery says. “I did it to get the foreign rights for me. But we both acted on principle.” Reves prospered on the usufruct he had earned. But he might have done it for nothing for his hero, the Chief of Production.

Precious lessons

We can learn much from this book, guided by the perceptive and sensitive Martin Gilbert, who always provides just the right supporting commentary. Example: Sarah Churchill’s note when her father is beset by critics of his memoirs. These are words every writer should heed: “Darling Papa…Don’t listen to too many critics—Each critic criticises from a personal angle. The work is yours—from deep within you—and its success depends on it flowing from you in an uninterrupted stream.”

From Emery Reves himself, after the unexpected end of his brief intimacy with Churchill, comes another piece of wisdom for anyone who, lied about, is tempted to deal in lies:

During my long life I developed the capacity to end a big cry in laughter and today I can only smile at the past two years. How childish and unnecessary all those intrigues were, how easy it would have been to maintain our beautiful relationship and to add to it anything that might have attracted you…. Should we not be able to defeat the intrigues that so unnecessarily separated us, then I am anxious to preserve the memories of our association during the years 1955-58. After all, what does one keep in life as time passes? A certain number of memories…. I do not know what memories you have of those years, but mine are unforgettable.

It is a tribute to this book, and those who saw it into print, that a memory of two unforgettable spirits is so eloquently presented.