Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [50]
He was always happy to reminisce about himself, but had no small talk, in the sense of being willing to display a polite interest in the affairs of others, save those important to the state. He was reluctant even to pretend to pay attention to people who failed to capture his interest. Leo Amery contrasted him with Britain’s First World War leader: “Ll[oyd] G[eorge] was purely external169 and receptive, the result of intercourse with his fellow men, and non-existent in their absence, while Winston is literary and expressive of himself with hardly any contact with other minds.” “Pug” Ismay shook his head in dismay when the prime minister once wantonly kept an entire ship’s crew waiting half an hour to be addressed by him: “It’s very naughty of the PM170. It’s this unbridled power.”
Churchill’s doctor Sir Charles Wilson wrote of “the formidable ramparts171 of indifference which he presents to women,” and which only his wife, Clementine, and their daughters were sometimes capable of scaling. Clementine—highly strung, intensely moral, sensitive to vulgarity—was often ignored, mauled, taken for granted. Yet beyond her fierce loyalty to her husband, she marvellously sustained her commitment to rebuke his excesses, to repair the fractured china of his relationships. On June 27, she wrote a letter which has become justly famous:
Darling Winston172, One of the men in your entourage (a devoted friend) has been to me & told me that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner … My darling Winston—I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be. It is for you to give the Orders & if they are bungled—except for the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury & the Speaker—you can sack anyone & everyone. Therefore with this terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness & if possible Olympic [sic] calm … I cannot bear that those who serve the country & your self should not love you as well as admire and respect you. Besides you won’t get the best results by irascibility & rudeness. They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality—“Rebellion in War Time being out of the question!” Please forgive your loving devoted & watchful Clemmie.
This note, of which the signature was decorated with a cat drawing, she tore up. But four days later, she pieced it together and gave it to her husband—the only letter she is known to have written to him in 1940. The country, as much as the recipient, owed a debt to such a wife. More than any other human being, Clementine preserved Churchill from succumbing to the corruption of wielding almost absolute authority over his nation.
Churchill seldom found a moment to read a book in 1940, but he addressed with close attention each day’s newspapers, windows upon the minds of the British people. His hunger for information was insatiable. Not infrequently, he telephoned personally to the Daily Telegraph or Daily Express at midnight, to enquire what their front page “splash” for the next day would be. One night at Chequers, he caused Colville to ring the Admiralty three times in quest of news. On the third occasion, the exasperated duty captain at the other end gave way to invective. The prime minister, overhearing the babble of speech from the other end, assumed that at least a cruiser must have been sunk. He seized the receiver from Colville’s hand, “to find himself subjected to a flow173 of uncomplimentary expletives which clearly fascinated him. After listening for a minute or two he explained with great humility that he was only the Prime Minister and that he had been wondering whether there was any naval news.”
He detested wanton as distinct from purposeful physical activity, and enjoyed relaxing with bezique or backgammon, which could be indulged