THE Queen

As an American, I’m keenly aware I am American only because a bunch of fractious, chafing British colonists chose to rebel against monarchical British rule – a bloody, protracted struggle that took two wars spanning four decades to resolve. Thereafter, it took another two centuries for Great Britain and the United States to settle into what we now call the “Special Relationship”.

And yet.

Yesterday, the text I received repeatedly from my fellow Americans was: “The Queen is dead.” THE Queen. Here in my mature democratic republic (well, OK, sometimes mature), the British monarch merited a singular article. “The”, implying a personal, cultural, and political presence that transcended social, institutional, and, frankly, even logical barriers.

Much ink will spill in memory of Queen Elizabeth II. Anything I have to say will pale in both eloquence and significance. So I’m going to let Winston Churchill speak for me.

The 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II saw 15 British Prime Ministers. Her first was Winston S. Churchill. Perhaps the coincidence of the beginning of her long reign in the twilight of his own long moment on the world stage was unexpected, but the fact that Elizabeth would prove exceptional was anything but unexpected.

While shooting with Elizabeth’s father, King George V, in September 1928, Churchill remarked in a letter to his wife that the King’s granddaughter, Elizabeth – then two and a half – was, “a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant.” (Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, p. 328) Of course he could not guess that the young princess, then third in line for the throne, would become his Queen and he her first Prime Minister. But Churchill continued to see early signs of promise in Elizabeth. During Churchill’s wartime premiership “In January 1944 he had proposed that when she became eighteen that April she should be given the title Elizabeth, Princess of Wales.”  

When Elizabeth became Queen in February 1952, Churchill was less than four months into his second and final premiership. On the day of the Coronation Churchill gave a speech introducing the Royal Broadcast, “Here, at the summit of our world-wide community, is the lady who we respect because she is our Queen and whom we love because she is herself.” This was not mere dutiful hyperbole. “Churchill established an early and excellent rapport with the new monarch, with whom, as all his entourage immediately spotted, he became besotted.” (Roberts, Walking With Destiny, p.929-930)

The regard was mutual. It was Queen Elizabeth II who invested Churchill as a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. The night before Churchill resigned his premiership, on 4 April 1955, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip paid Churchill an unprecedented honor, dining with him at 10 Downing Street. Churchill’s after-dinner speech that evening was his last as Prime Minister. (Gilbert, VIII, p.1120) The notes from which he spoke read now as both commencement and valediction. “Your Royal Highness… I was a Cavalry Subaltern in the Reign of Your Majesty’s Great-great-Grandmother, Queen Victoria…. Madam, I should like to express the deep and lively sense of gratitude which we and all your peoples feel to you… for all the help and inspiration we receive in our daily lives… Never have we needed it more than in the anxious and darkling age through wh we are passing and which we hope to help the world to pass. Never have the august duties wh fall upon the British Monarchy been discharged with more devotion than in the brilliant opening of Your Majesty’s reign. We thank God… and vow ourselves anew to the sacred causes and wise and kindly way of life of wh Your Majesty is the young, gleaming champion.

This Elizabeth, in whom so early Churchill recognized remarkable qualities, became “The Queen” to whom Churchill spoke these words more than 67 years ago. Her long life and reign will be celebrated, her loss mourned, and her like seems unlikely to be seen again.

“I wanna be like you” – what the apes miss when aping Churchill

When I hear contemporary politicians invoke Churchill, I usually feel like I’m watching King Louie, the Orangutan who wants to be a man, sing “I wanna be like you” in the 1967 Disney version of The Jungle Book.

“You!” sings King Louie,

“I wanna be like you

I wanna talk like you

Walk like you, too”

Yeah. Not so much.

IF you happen to draw a comparison between King Louis and another loud, big-headed, oddly orange, wanna-be-king with impulse control issues and destructive inclinations, well, that’s up to you. I refer you to another Disney movie. Cinderella. If the shoe fits… But I digress.

“I’m tired of monkeyin’ around!”

Sure, there’s a lot of ways in which most of those who self-flatteringly invoke Churchill fall short. Intelligence. Eloquence, Historical perspective. Foresight. Principle. Conviction. Courage. General capability. But, to me, none of these are the biggest shortcomings of the chorus of King Louie/wannabe Churchills. In my book, here’s the most important and most regrettable thing the Louies typically lack – a presumption of shared purpose and the primacy of decency.

Churchill could be fiercely partisan and relentless in pursuit of a policy or cause. And he was a true combatant by nature, whether on the battlefield, at the rostrum, on the backbenches, in Cabinet, leading a Government, or leading the Opposition. But Churchill did not confuse mere opponents with actual enemies. He regarded sincerity of convictions that he did not share. He was able to pursue cooperation in greater cause over petty conflict and momentary aggrandization. He was able to disagree without demonizing.

And, critically, he was not the only one.  We were reminded of this recently by “Manny” Shinwell. Or, more accurately, by – of course – a book inscribed to him.

The book in question (found HERE) is Great Contemporaries, Churchill’s famous collection of character sketches, first published in 1937. At the time Churchill had been out of power and out of favor, frequently at odds with both his own party leadership and prevailing public sentiment.

But, in April 1943, Churchill was wartime Prime Minister. This finely bound presentation copy is a wartime reprint inscribed to “one of Churchill’s most persistent Labour Party critics.” Inked in blue in five lines in blue on the blank recto preceding the half title, the inscription reads “To | Emanuel Shinwell | from | Winston S. Churchill | 1943 April.

A barbed gift?

In April 1943, the British were on the cusp of their first decisive Second World War victory over Hitler’s Germany, and by mid-May would declare “One Continent Redeemed” when Axis forces were expelled from North Africa. In the House of Commons, Emanuel Shinwell, the Member for Seaham Harbour, was apparently feeling less than celebratory, leaning into his role as a leading Parliamentary critic of Churchill’s Government.

Let’s not sugar-coat it. Churchill and Shinwell disagreed strongly, frequently, and were often unstinting in their criticism. A review of the House of Commons records for April 1943 – the month Churchill inscribed this book for Shinwell – indicates that in that month alone Shinwell personally questioned Churchill directly in the House regarding U-Boat losses, wartime suspension of elections, and compensation for ministers. That same month, Shinwell also questioned various ministers of Churchill’s Government regarding post-war planning, property rented by the Royal Air Force, Armed forces, civilian, and old age pensions, operations in Burma, and pay for Army chaplains. And that was just April. (Hansard)

We cannot know precisely what precipitated the gift of this inscribed volume, but it does seem plausible that Churchill may have presented this particular title – Great Contemporaries – with a sense of barbed irony to one of his most vigorous and persistent backbench critics. Another irony is that Churchill might have eventually chosen to include Shinwell’s own profile in this book.

Two pugnacious personalities

First elected to Parliament in 1922, Emanuel Shinwell, Baron Shinwell (1884-1986) was – not unlike Churchill himself – “a major personality over sixty years” and “always a pugnacious member of parliament” as a vocal and influential member of the Labour Party. (ODNB)

In 1935, two years before Great Contemporaries was first published, Shinwell had turned on and defeated former Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Not unlike Churchill, Shinwell would spend his long career at turns vexing and serving – sometimes both at once – the leadership of his own party. Like Churchill, he was guided by a strong sense of what was right, and what was not, and of greater priorities than politics or political party.

Pugnacity was literal as well as electoral for Shinwell, who in 1938 actually struck a Conservative member of Parliament – a former naval boxing champion. During the Second World War, “Shinwell was a vigorous, though always patriotic, critic of Winston Churchill’s coalition government.” (ODNB) Hence it is plausible to sense some cheek and irony in Churchill inscribing Great Contemporaries to Shinwell in 1943, even as Shinwell was regularly assailing Churchill and his Government in the House of Commons.

Kinship even in fierce opposition

But however fierce and occasionally sharp their political battles, in the placement of country before party Shinwell and Churchill shared a kinship. During the Normandy invasion in early June 1944, Shinwell wrote a note to Churchill: “I should like you to know that at this time, when the thoughts of all of us are turned on grave events, I and others, whose views do not always accord with Government policy, are with you and your colleagues to a man.” (Letter of 8 June 1944, quoted in Gilbert, Vol. VII, p.800)

As for Shinwell’s criticism, Churchill had ample opportunity to return the favor. Churchill’s government fell to Labour in the General Election of July 1945. Shinwell served in Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Government, eventually becoming Secretary of State for War in October 1947 and Minister of Defence in February 1950. Shinwell thereby fell squarely in Churchill’s own crosshairs, given Churchill’s extensive experience as wartime leader, architect of the Second World War, and stints as First Lord of the Admiralty (in two different world wars), Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Minister of Defence (ultimately thrice).

You can kick me in the Shin(well) and I’ll still respect you…

Shinwell left office after Churchill’s Conservatives regained a majority in late October 1951, returning Churchill to the premiership. On 6 December 1951, Churchill asked the indulgence of the House in order to speak in praise of Shinwell: “We have our party battles and bitterness… but I have always felt and have always testified.. to the Right Honourable Gentleman’s sterling patriotism and to the fact that his heart is in the right place where the life and strength of our country are concerned… I am so glad to be able to say tonight… that the spirit which has animated the Right Honourable Gentleman in the main discharge of his great duties was one which has, in peace as well as in war, added to the strength and security of our country.”

David Hunt, Churchill’s Private Secretary who had accompanied the Prime Minister to the Commons, recalled that “The House was stirred” and in the car on the way back to Number 10 Churchill reflected on his comments. … there’s a lot of good in Shinwell and I’m glad I took the chance of saying something about him.” Churchill’s fellow Conservatives were not so glad – “For the next week and more, letters of complaint continued to arrive… Churchill was robustly impenitent, and the more that people protested the more certain he felt that he had spoken well.” (Gilbert, Vol. VIII, pp.667-8)

The two men continued to disagree with frequency and vigor throughout Churchill’s second and final premiership. But in July of 1964, the day after Churchill went to the House of Commons for the last time, Shinwell was among a small group of House leaders and elders who called on Churchill at his Hyde Park Gate home to present him with a Resolution of the House of Commons conveying “unbounded admiration and gratitude for his services to Parliament, to the nation and to the world…” (Gilbert, Vol. VIII, p.1354-4)

Shinwell’s own career was far from over, and justly recognized in his own twilight. By the time of his hundredth birthday, which was celebrated in the House of Lords in 1984, Shinwell was “a legendary figure.” Perhaps even, had Churchill had opportunity to retrospectively revise and expand his book, a “Great Contemporary”.

“What I desire is man’s red fire”

Alas, greatness is elusive, and certainly cannot be conferred by appropriation and false equivalence.

“I wanna be a man…

What I desire is man’s red fire

To make my dream come true…

Give me the power of man’s red flower

So I can be like you.”

So sings The Jungle Book’s King Louie (voiced by the incomparable Louis Prima). To make himself more of a “man”, and to enforce his dominion over his unruly kingdom of monkeys, this primate populist wants fire. Poor Louie does not understand that power without purpose and some sense of propriety will not make a man of an ape.

Neither does aping Churchill’s stature without regarding his character.

It is, and has always been, a proverbial jungle out there. There’s nothing new about politics being a rough and tumble affair. There’s nothing special – now or in the past – about vigorous disagreement, scheming and maneuvering, and even saying profoundly unflattering things about politicians in a different camp than your own. Likewise, there is nothing new about self-aggrandizing unworthies trying to elevate themselves by association with their betters.

No one appointed me keeper of Churchill’s reputation. I am not empowered to adjudicate invocation of Churchill’s life and legacy. But there is something cartoonishly clumsy and not the least bit entertaining about watching vaunting pretenders try to rally the rabble to them by invoking Churchill. It would seem more fitting – and better serve the public good that so animated both Manny Shinwell and Winston Churchill – if Churchill were invoked less for flagrant self-justification and more for courageous conciliation and cooperation.

Cheers!

“…I feel I can count upon you at any time when a need may arise…”

One hundred years ago this Sunday, then-Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston S. Churchill accepted the resignation of his chief Arab affairs advisor T. E. Lawrence “of Arabia”. This ended the collaboration of two titanic twentieth century personalities in securing post-First World War peace and political stability in the Middle East. It did not end their friendship, which lasted the rest of Lawrence’s life.

We are positively delighted, not to mention privileged, to offer for sale Churchill’s 17 July 1922 letter to Lawrence. The letter is accompanied by the original franked envelope addressed and initialed in Churchill’s hand. Both the letter and envelope are archivally framed with a limited and numbered intaglio drawing of Lawrence and Churchill by Curtis Hooper, signed and numbered by Churchill’s daughter, Sarah. Details about this item and the opportunity to purchase are found HERE.

But the longer story of the letter and underpinning collaboration and friendship is told in this blog post.

An unlikely basis for friendship

Churchill and Lawrence first met in the spring of 1919, after the First World War, which had profoundly tested and shaped the fortunes of both men.

Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) had begun the war as First Lord of the Admiralty, a Cabinet position and the political head of the British Royal Navy. There he had led a significant and successful effort to modernize and ready the fleet for the war. But May 1915 saw Churchill scapegoated for failure in the Dardanelles and slaughter at Gallipoli and forced from his Cabinet position at the Admiralty. By November 1915 Churchill was serving at the Front as a lieutenant-colonel leading a battalion in the trenches. Before war’s end, Churchill was exonerated by the Dardanelles Commission and rejoined the Government, first as Minister of Munitions, then as Secretary of State for War and Air. When Churchill was appointed Colonial Secretary in early 1921, he had substantially recovered from both his political and corporeal near-death experiences in the First World War.

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) arguably never recovered from the war. Lawrence’s remarkable odyssey as instigator, organizer, hero, and tragic figure of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War transformed him from an eccentric junior intelligence officer into “Lawrence of Arabia.” He spent the rest of his famously short life struggling to reconcile, reject, share, and repress this indelible experience.

Lawrence was catapulted to fame while acting (and arguably exceeding his role) as British liaison tasked with coalescing, coordinating, and supporting Arab revolt against Ottoman rule. In early 1918, Lawrence was captured in photographs and on film by American writer and promoter Lowell Thomas. The glamorous and romantic image of Lawrence became a transatlantic sensation and permanently alloyed with the man and his accomplishments. Lawrence, who never rose above lieutenant-colonel, vaulted all notions of military rank and restraint, propelled into legend. The fame thrust upon him became a hair shirt that Lawrence never shed.

These are the proximate arcs of the two men who met for the first time in the spring of 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference following the First World War. As Churchill recalled many years later, Lawrence’s exploits were brought to the attention of Churchill. Hence the then-Minister for War and Air invited Lawrence to lunch – where he upbraided Lawrence for not accepting decorations from the King. Lawrence received Churchill’s rebukes with grace, and Churchill later learned that he had misunderstood the incident. It proved a suitably unlikely basis for an equally unlikely friendship.

Together at the Colonial Office

In early 1921, Winston Churchill accepted his eighth Cabinet appointment, becoming Colonial Secretary. Churchill’s brief included setting up a new Middle East Department. Swiftly after accepting the post, Churchill recruited T. E. Lawrence as a chief adviser on Arabian affairs and convened the Cairo Conference to settle borders of the Middle East. Together, Churchill and Lawrence rectified some of Lawrence’s unrealized wartime promises and aspirations by setting Lawrence’s First World War friend and comrade Feisal on the throne of Iraq, and making another comrade, Abdullah, Emir of Transjordan (and then, eventually, Jordan’s king). Of the effort, Lawrence would later write that the settlement was “the big achievement of my life: of which the war was a preparation.” (1927 letter to Robert Graves) During the year following the Cairo Conference, Lawrence continued to act as Churchill’s essential liaison and emissary to the Middle East, repeatedly dispatched thence to meet with key leaders, often alone, sometimes in secret and with plenipotentiary authority.

Nonetheless, “his mentality was that of a crusading politician rather than a civil servant.” That, combined with other complex factors, including “disinclination to follow a conventional career”, his authorial ambitions, and the tormented feelings he had about his sense of integrity and public adulation, limited Lawrence’s time in the Colonial Office. (Wilson, pp. 665-8) As Churchill himself later observed, “Lawrence was one of those beings whose pace of life was faster and more intense than the ordinary… He was not in complete harmony with the normal.” (Great Contemporaries) Lawrence had promised Churchill a year and given him just over that. Churchill granted Lawrence three months leave beginning 1 March 1922 to afford Lawrence time to work on his Seven Pillars of Wisdom manuscript. Lawrence never really returned.

The end of their collaboration

Churchill finally allowed Lawrence to leave the payroll of the Colonial Office at the beginning of July 1922.

The permanent Under-Secretary of Churchill’s new Middle East Department was Sir John Evelyn Shuckburgh (1877-1953), previously a senior official at the India Office. So it was that Lawrence, officially an adviser on Arabian affairs, addressed his 4 July 1922 letter of resignation to Shuckburgh:

My Dear Shuckburgh,

It seems to me that the time has come when I can fairly offer my resignation from the Middle East Department. You will remember that I was an emergency appointment, made because Mr. Churchill meant to introduce changes in our policy, and because he thought that my help would be useful during the expected stormy period.

Well, that was eighteen months ago; but since we ‘changed direction’, we have not had, I think, a British casualty in Palestine or Arabia or the Arab provinces of Irak. Political questions there are still, of course, and wide open; there always will be, but their expression and conduct has been growing steadily more constitutional. For long there has not been an outbreak of any kind; and while it would be foolish to seem too hopeful, yet at the same time I think there is no present prospect of trouble.

As I said, I think of myself as an emergency appointment. There are many other things I want to do and I came unwillingly in the first place. While things run along the present settled and routine lines I see no justification for the Department’s continuing my employment – and little for me to do if it is continued. So if Mr. Churchill permits, I shall be very glad to leave so prosperous a ship. I need hardly say that I am always at his disposal if ever there is a crisis, or in any job, small or big, for which he can convince me that I am necessary.”

Although the letter was clearly pitched to Churchill, despite the formality of being addressed to Shuckburgh, Lawrence concluded:

“I have to thank you personally for the very pleasant conditions under which I have worked in the Department itself.

yours sincerely,

T. E. Lawrence”

Churchill replied to Lawrence directly on 17 July 1922 in the letter we are privileged to offer.

The autograph letter signed by Churchill fills the entire 8 x 10 inch (20.3 x 25.4 cm) front panel of a single, folded sheet of Churchill’s “Colonial Office. Downing Street, S.W.1.” stationery with the Colonial Office embossed seal at the top center. Dated “July 17, 1922” with the salutation “My dear Lawrence”, the letter reads: “I very much regret your decision to quit our small group in the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office. Your help in all matters and your guidance in many has been invaluable to me & to your colleagues. I should have been glad if you would have stayed with us longer. I hope you are not unduly sanguine in your belief that our difficulties are largely surmounted. Still, I feel I can count upon you at any time where a need may arise, & in the meanwhile I am glad to know that you will accept at least the honorary position of Advisor on Arabian Affairs.” The two-line valediction is “With every good wish | yours sincerely” followed by Churchill’s signature, “Winston S. Churchill“. At the lower left corner is written “Lt Colonel T. E. Lawrence.”

Accompanying the letter is the original, 8.875 x 3.75 inch (22.5 x 9.5 cm) franked envelope in which it was sent. The envelope flap features the same embossed Colonial Office seal as the stationery. In four lines, the letter is addressed: “Lt Colonel T. E. Lawrence | 14 Barton St | Westminster | S.W.1.” – the address of the attic room which was Lawrence’s London base for several years. Churchill initialed the lower left of the envelope “WSC”. The red ink “PAID” stamp at the upper right indicates that the letter was posted at “8:15 PM” on “JUL 18 1922”.

Lawrence’s official biographer, Jeremy Wilson, records that both letters were published in the 20 July 1922 edition of the Morning Post.

Lawrence’s expressed desire to depart from the Colonial Office with Churchill’s willing approval seems genuine. Lawrence wrote to a friend on 23 July “I liked Winston so much, and have such respect for him that I was determined to leave only with his good-will – and he took a long time to persuade!” As testified by Churchill’s letter of 17 July, Lawrence secured Churchill’s goodwill, along with his respect and appreciation. And four days after Churchill wrote his letter to Lawrence accepting his resignation, on 21 July Churchill also agreed to Lawrence’s desire to enlist in the Royal Air Force ranks. (Wilson, p.674)

After the Colonial Office

The end of Lawrence’s political partnership with Churchill marked the deliberate end of Lawrence’s brief, meteoric, and dramatic presence on the geopolitical stage. His remaining years would be spent on literary aspirations, in tortured efforts to encapsulate his First World War experience, in the feigned obscurity of his assumed names and enlistment in the Royal Air Force, on his diverse friendships, and, of course, on his motorcycles.

Though he was already two decades into his political career, Churchill’s own presence on the geopolitical stage would long continue to ramify and resonate, not reaching its storied apex until long after Lawrence’s death.

An enduring association

Their association remained warm for the rest of Lawrence’s life.

When Lawrence gifted his friend, Churchill, one of the precious few, magnificent copies of the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence addressed his presentation letter to “Winston Churchill, who made a happy ending to this show.” Churchill wrote to Lawrence with a level of effusive praise and enthusiasm hardly befitting a sober and seasoned statesman:

“I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to read it… Having gone on a three days’ visit to Paris, I never left my apartment except for meals… and lay all day and most of the night cuddling your bulky tome. The impression it produced was overpowering… The copy you gave me, with its inscription, is in every sense one of my most valuable possessions.” (letter of 16 May 1927)

Churchill had begun his career as an itinerant cavalry officer and war correspondent, eager to prove his mettle both on the battlefield and in print. And though he chose politics as his lifelong vocation, Churchill was, within his sphere, conspicuously headstrong and unorthodox. Hence it should be little surprise that Churchill so regarded such a remarkably literate, conspicuously gifted, iconoclastic, intrepid, and heroic paladin.

What is perhaps a bit surprising is that Churchill’s admiration was reciprocated by Lawrence. When Lawrence’s dear friends, Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, deprecated Churchill, Lawrence admonished them to be “kind to Winston”, telling them “I know that he is a bogey-man for all the left wing of the House of Commons… give him time, and the atmosphere to think, and he takes as gently broad a view of subjects as ordinary human kind can expect… his Colonial Administrations did more solid good to our native clients than all the good wishes of their loudest advocates… Winston in office does a great deal: and he is as fond of his friends as they are of him.” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw, 27 May 1927)

Diffident, ascetic, and distinctly uncomfortable in the limelight, devoid of political ambition, masochistic, and defined as much by personal demons as by any public persona, Lawrence was a different creature than Churchill. They differed in upbringing, temperament, education, and even stature – physical, social, and political. And yet the two men seemed to recognize in one another fundamentally kindred sensibilities and an unusually stubborn commitment to the integrity of their internal, often unconventional, sense of direction. For all the differences between them, these two men shared even greater differences from those around them. Perhaps that allowed them to appreciate one another.

An understanding

Churchill, famously a politician, was also a prolific and celebrated writer, a soldier and journalist, an ardent social reformer, an icon of the Conservative Party, a staunch defender of British imperialism, a pioneering internationalist, a bellicose adversary, a fair-minded peacemaker, a painter, a pilot, and even – though a poor one – a bricklayer.

In short, Churchill was capable of recognizing a polymath in Lawrence. Certainly, Lawrence became best known for his First World War role in Arabia and for the famous expression of this time and experience in his magnum opus, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But Lawrence’s literary and intellectual reach far exceeded the world and words of Seven Pillars.

Churchill may have said it best: “Lawrence had a full measure of the versatility of genius. He had one of those master keys which unlock the doors of many kinds of treasure-houses. He was a savant as well as a soldier. He was an archaeologist as well as a man of action. He was an accomplished scholar as well as an Arab partisan. He was a mechanic as well as a philosopher. His background of somber experience and reflection only seemed to set forth more brightly the charm of and gaiety of his companionship, and the generous majesty of his nature.” (Great Contemporaries)

Despite the fact that his span of years was only half that of Churchill, Lawrence’s published works span crusader castles and ancient Greek translation to technical manuals on high-speed boats. His published volumes of correspondence reveal his engagement with an incredibly diverse array of foremost intellectual and political luminaries of the early twentieth century.

When Lawrence died, Churchill was among those at the small ceremony at St Nicholas’ Church in Moreton on 21 May 1935, and was reportedly moved to tears.

Postscript

In his 1937 posthumous profile of Lawrence in Great Contemporaries, Churchill wrote “I always felt that he was a man who held himself ready for a new call. While Lawrence lived one always felt – I certainly felt strongly – that some overpowering need would draw him from the modest path he chose to tread and set him once again in full action at the centre of memorable events.” Five years after Lawrence died, on 10 May 1940, Winston Churchill became wartime Prime Minister of beleaguered Britain. Had he lived, Lawrence would have been 51 years old. It is difficult to believe that his friend and former boss would not have called Lawrence back to service, invoking the phrase from his letter of 17 July 1922: “…I feel I can count upon you at any time when a need may arise…”

Winston on the hustings as a Liberal in 1906: TO THE ELECTORS OF NORTH-WEST MANCHESTER

Recently we had the privilege of acquiring a compelling artifact from the first political campaign Winston S. Churchill contested as a Liberal in January 1906. This extravagantly rare leaflet publication – potentially unique thus – is the first edition, only printing, of Winston S. Churchill’s Address to the Electors of North-West Manchester, published on 1 January 1906 specifically in preparation for his campaign.

Of the three copies known to us, this is the only privately-held copy of the four-page leaflet. But this is the sole known to retain the canvassing leaf insertion inviting “the undersigned” to declare intention “to support the candidature of Mr. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL at the forthcoming General Election.”

The single-sheet, perforated leaflet insert is clearly meant to accompany Churchill’s message. The upper two thirds is a message from the local Liberal committee introducing Churchill as a “Free Trade and Liberal Candidate”, urging support for him, and stating “Mr. Churchill’s views… will be found in the Accompanying address… To simplify the work of the canvassers, will you please fill up the annexed slip and send it by first post to the Central Committee Rooms.” The bottom portion is perforated, meant for detachment, signature, and submittal in declaration of support for Churchill’s candidacy. The solicited voter is asked to append their signature and address to the statement “Gentlemen, I, the undersigned, intend to support the Candidature of Mr. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL at the forthcoming General Election.” Both the leaflet and insert state “Printed and published by Wm. Hough & Sons” of “Swan Court, Market Street, Manchester.”

In the first days of 1906, Winston Churchill was 31 years old. Already he had been in Parliament for half a decade. Yet already he was on his second political party.

On 31 May, 1904, Churchill left his father’s Conservative Party, crossing the aisle to become a Liberal, beginning a dynamic chapter in his political career that saw him champion progressive causes and branded a traitor to his class. That year, the Liberal candidate for North-West Manchester died and the MLF noted that “it is hoped that in the immediate future another name may be put before the North-West Division.”  It would be Winston S. Churchill.

On 2 January 1906 he published his two-volume biography of his father. Immediately thereafter, he campaigned for eight days in North-West Manchester, hoping to win his first election as a Liberal. Churchill’s party defection was on the minds of the voters. His father’s history was much on his own mind.  “…I have changed my Party… I am proud of it.  When I think of all… Lord Randolph Churchill gave to… the Conservative Party and the ungrateful way he was treated… I am delighted that circumstances have enabled me to break with them…” 

Churchill arrived at Manchester on 4 January 1906 to campaign; this election address had already been published on 1 January. “It was a sober and realistic statement of the Government case and of the general failure of the Tories in the previous Parliament. His strongest arguments turned on the case for Free Trade”. (RS, Vol. II, pp.114-5)

The leaflet consists of a single sheet folded once vertically to form four panels. The upper left of the front panel features the same iconic image of a stern and earnest young Churchill later featured on the dust jacket for Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909) and the wraps edition of The People’s Rights (1910). To the right of Churchill’s image is the statement “NORTH-WEST MANCHESTER | PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION, 1906.” and the titular “TO THE ELECTORS OF NORTH-WEST MANCHESTER”. Churchill’s address, with bolded sub-headings, fills the lower half of the front panel, two inner panels, and two-thirds of the rear panel, terminating in his printed name and “Colonial Office, New Year’s Day, 1906.”

It was a distinctly pointed political document, full of the vehemence of a strident, confident young Churchill, hyperbolic on the hustings: “Few Parliaments in our modern experience have been less deserving of respect… It has spent public money with careless, unexampled profusion. It has hurried to place retrograde legislaton upon the Statute Book. It has consented to every abrogation or infringement of liberty, constitutional or personal, at home or abroad, that was suggested to it. Under its hand the procedure of the House of Commons has been mutilated, and respect for Parliamentary institutions has been notably and notoriously diminished. Jealous of nothing save the leisure of its members, it has bartered Parliamentary rights for longer holidays and easier hours of session, and shirked urgent public business at the promptings of personal indolence… grudged the freedom of speech, conspired against the freedom of trade, parodied the freedom and the dignity of labour… enabled a Minister to maintain in office himself and a small clique of favourites – mostly incompetent – and to rule in default of national esteem and in defiance of popular authority for upwards of two whole years… It is wonderful that a Ministry with so ill a record, and such doubtful and divided aims should fear to present themselves at the bar of public judgment.”

The bold subheadings encapsulate many of the issues that led Churchill to cross the aisle – among them “Free Trade”, “Liberal Policy”, “A Degenerate Parliament”, “The Tory Record”, and “A Fair Chance”.

Manchester had been a Conservative Party stronghold for nearly fifty years. Nonetheless, on 13 January 1906 Churchill, at the age of 31, won the traditionally Conservative seat with 5,639 votes out of a total of 10,037 votes cast with 89 percent of the electorate voting. “His efforts… helped… other Liberal candidates to overturn Conservative seats” in what became a Liberal landslide.

Churchill’s Address was published the same day in The Times and the Manchester Guardian, but this is the only stand-alone publication.

This conspicuously political leaflet and canvassing leaf is a tangible reminder of the bare-knuckle electoral underpinnings of a life spent in politics. Churchill’s political career would last nearly two thirds of a century, see him occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. All of that depended on the support of the voters that he needed to place and keep him in office, and who he was already learning to cultivate in this 116-year-old piece of political ephemera that has – remarkably -both survived and made its way to us.

Cheers!

Celebrating the Forthcoming Publication of Churchill in Punch

Gary Stiles has done something really cool. Who’s Gary? Well… Gary is a physician, medical researcher, corporate executive, and student of history. But most relevant to this post, Gary is a lifelong collector of Winston S. Churchill’s memorabilia and writings. And Gary is the author of the soon-to-be published Churchill in Punch. His book is the first ever effort to definitively catalogue, describe, and contextualize all of the many Punch cartoons featuring Churchill.

Why is that a big deal? After all, Churchill was cartooned in myriad publications. What’s so special about Punch? Well, Punch was… Punch. “It is hard to escape the legacy of Punch Magazine. From 1841 to 2002, the magazine cast a satirical eye on life in Britain. It charted the interests, concerns and frustratons of the country and, today, it stands as an invaluable resource for social historians… Punch combined humour, illustration and political debate with a fresh and radical audacity… In the Western world, Punch played a significant role in the development of satire. In the field of illustration, it practically revolutionised it.” (Illustration Chronicles: How Punch Magazine Changed Everything)

Punch or The London Charivari began featuring Churchill cartoons in 1900, when his political career was just beginning. That political career would last two thirds of a century, see Churchill occupy Cabinet office during each of the first six decades of the twentieth century, carry him twice to the premiership and, further still, into the annals of history as a preeminent statesman. And throughout that time, Punch satirized Churchill in cartoons – more than 600 of them, the work of more than 50 different artists. So in both a visually compelling and historical sense, a chronicle of Churchill’s appearances in Punch is a chronicle of Churchill himself – how he waxed and waned, strove and succeeded and failed and strove again, all in the public eye, during an incredible span of decades reaching from the end of Queen Victoria’s reign into the beginning of that of Queen Elizabeth II.

Churchill said “cartoons are the regular food on which the grown-up children of to-day are fed and nourished. On these very often they form their views of public men and public affairs; on these very often they vote… But how… would you like to be cartooned yourself? How would you like to feel that millions of people saw you always in the most ridiculous situations, or portrayed as every kind of wretched animal, or with a nose on your face like a wart, when really your nose is quite a serviceable and presentable member? How would you like to feel that millions of people think of you like that? – that shocking object, that contemptible being, that wretched tatterdemalion, a proper target of public hatred and derision! Fancy having that process going on every week, often every day, over the whole of your life… But it is not so bad as you would expect. Just as eels are supposed to get used to skinning, so politicians get used to being caricatured. In fact, by a strange trait in human nature they even get to like it. If we must confess it, they are quite offended and downcast when the cartoons stop…” (Thoughts and Adventures)

Churchill and Punch was a near-perfect relationship between satirists and subject. That Churchill was distinctive in both persona and physical appearance helped make him easy to caricature. To his persona and appearance he added myriad additional satirical temptations, not just props, like his cigars, siren suits, V-sign, and hats, but also a variety of ancillary avocations and vocations, like polo, painting, brick-laying, and writing. All these were occasionally exalted and most often skewered as well.

Some Punch cartoons were laudatory, some critical, and many humorous, like the man himself. Nearly always, Churchill was distinctly recognizable, a larger-than-life character whose presence caricature served only to magnify.

Now, thanks to Gary, we can see the complete, coherent arc of that character throughout his long public life as portrayed through the myriad cartoons of multiple generations of Punch artists.

Our appreciation and congratulations to Gary for this splendid effort!

Churchill in Punch will be published by Unicorn Publishing Group. We are informed by the publisher that the UK publication date is 9 June, with U.S. publication following on 5 September. Copies may be pre-ordered.

HERE from Amazon.co.uk

HERE on Amazon.com

HERE via Book Depository (They offer free worldwide shipping)

Discovering a pioneering female archaeologist and other poetic ironies

An archaeologist’s job is to rescue the past from obscurity. So there is irony in seeing an archaeologist forgotten. That’s what nearly happened to Ann Axtell Morris (1900-1945) – one of America’s first female field archaeologists.

We have a natural affinity to archaeologists. As an Antiquarian bookseller, it’s our job to pay attention to sometimes obscure yet worthy parts of our past, and commend that past to the attention of others. Yet – with some chagrin – we confess that we did not know about Ann until a stroke of luck brought her life to our attention a few weeks ago.

That stroke of luck was in the form of a first edition of Robert Frost’s third published book of poems, featuring a charmingly creative and warm inscription to Ann. It turns out that this inscription also involves the man who was the real-life archaeologist said to have inspired George Lucas’s and Steven Spielberg’s legendary big-screen archaeologist, Indiana Jones. But most interesting to us, this inscribed copy caused us to dig into the history of an extraordinary woman who merits remembrance, and whose own inspiration to film had to wait quite a bit longer.

Ann received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1922. She clearly acquired this book while a student. In two lines in black ink Axtell wrote on the front free endpaper “Ann Axtell | Smith College 1920”. Frost later conformed his own inscription to Axtell’s, writing above in four lines in dark blue “Robert Frost | to | Mrs. Earl Morris | née”. A further two lines below Ann’s own, Frost wrote “with admiration we won’t | go into here”. Well, in this blog post we finally go into it.

After graduation, Ann Axtel undertook field training with the American School of Prehistoric Research in France and then entered professional life as an archaeologist. The field was in a golden age; archaeology “had become more scientific and professionalized in the late 19th century.” There were considerable discoveries waiting to be made, an increasingly professional basis for making them, and strong public interest in what was being discovered. In this exciting climate, 1923 Ann married fellow archaeologist Earl Halstead Morris (1889-1956).

Fortunately, Ann and Earl shared professional passion. Beginning during their honeymoon, they excavated and explored ancient Native American sites in Arizona. While their work would take them to sites spanning Mesa Verde in Colorado to Aztec Ruins in New Mexico to a Mayan city in eastern Mexico, Arizona arguably yielded their most important contributions to archaeology. “Together, Ann and Earl wrote many studies on ancient lifeways within the American Southwest and Mexico.” Ann also wrote two popular books on her own, including Digging in the Southwest, “which upended conventional thinking about the Anasazi people”. Over the course of her career, “Ann developed methods to document architecture, petroglyphs and pictographs, and landscapes. Ann’s colorful drawings captured information that then-popular black-and-white photography would have lost.”

Certainly, all three individuals present in this inscription – Robert Frost, Earl Morris, and Ann Axtell Morris – labored for their opportunities.

Frost had repeated flirtations with penury before he published his first book of poetry at the age of 40. And that only after relocating his family to England (“the place to be poor and to write poems”). In 1912 – the same year Robert Frost began his sojourn in England – Earl Morris dropped out of college to join an excavation in Guatemala.

By the time of his death, at age 66, Earl Morris had received numerous awards, including the Norlin Medal, an honorary doctorate, and the Alfred Vincent Kidder medal. And, as a notional inspiration for Indiana Jones, Earl Morris may have catalyzed legend and helped father the most famous of all archaeologists. By the time he died at age 88, Frost had won the Pulitzer prize for poetry four times, spent the final decade and a half of his life as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century” with a host of academic and civic honors to his credit, and become the first poet to read in the program of a U.S. presidential inauguration.

Ann pursued her own path with similar passion and achievement, but with quite different obstacles. When she entered the field, archaeology was offering tremendous insights to the world and exciting opportunities for archaeologists… as long as you were not a woman. In archaeology, “women faced discrimination in employment, publication, and fieldwork.” As a result, Ann “often worked without pay and was passed over for opportunities that were instead offered to her husband.” In 1924, when she first arrived in Mexico for an excavation of a Mayan city in cooperation with the Carnegie Institute, Ann was told by the lead archaeologist to babysit his six-year-old daughter and act as hostess to visiting guests. Ann had to convince him to allow her to excavate a small, overlooked temple. Initially relegated to nanny status, Ann would eventually spend four seasons copying the Temple of the Warrior murals, and her final illustrations were published in Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan, coauthored with Earl and a French painter, Jean Charlot.

Co-authorship was not just naturally collaboration, but often a prudent necessity. “Despite her accomplishments,” Ann’s work “was often buried in papers that bore her husband’s name or went entirely uncredited.” Ann wrote two books herself for which she intended to have a popular audience “in order to educate the public about the field. The publishers, however, marketed the books to older children because they did not recognize that women could write literature about archaeology for adults.”

There is poetic irony in the fact that it was the work of Ann’s life to foster greater understanding of the lives and culture of ancient Native Americans and Indigenous Mexicans whose complex societies had been overlooked.

There is further ironic poetry in the fact that this particular work is inscribed by Frost to Ann. Frost’s first decisively American publication is inscribed to one of America’s first female field archaeologists. The book and the inscription limn very different experiences for Robert Frost and Ann Axtell Morris. Mountain Interval was Frost’s third book of poetry, but the first for which the U.S. edition takes precedence; both A Boy’s Will and North of Boston – Frost’s first two books – were first published in Great Britain. When Mountain Interval was published, Frost was newly returned to the U.S. from England and establishing the reputation that would give him that rarest of experiences for a poet – to be recognized and even revered in his own lifetime. The year that Mountain Interval was published, Frost was made Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard – from which he had dropped out years before – and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In Mountain Interval, Frost’s singular voice is clearly heard in some of his finest poems, such as “Birches,” “Out, Out–,” “The Hill Wife,” and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.” The volume opens with the poem “The Road Not Taken.” We can only imagine how a young woman aspiring to become an archaeologist read Frost’s words:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Ann’s voice has been harder to hear. Ann’s alma mater, where she was an undergraduate when she acquired this book, recognized her with an honorary masters degree in 1935. Unfortunately, her life was shortened by illness and alcoholism. She died ten years later at age 45. We can only speculate what role her professional marginalization played in cutting short her life, her career, and her contributions to her field. Nonetheless, recognition of Ann’s legacy has grown in recent years and “She is widely credited with helping open the field to other women and inspiring generations of readers with a passion for archaeology.”

To the point, one of Ann’s daughters entered her field, becoming both an archaeologist and professor. A film biography about Ann Axtell Morris titled Canyon Del Muerto premiers in 2022. Notably, it is the first time the Navajo Nation allowed a film crew into the magnificent red gorge known as Canyon del Muerto and the film was produced in close cooperation with descendants of the same Navajo with whom Ann worked nearly a century ago.

We will offer this book for sale later this year.

References: American National Biography, National Geographic, The Smithsonian, The U.S. National Park Service

Preparing for spring

Most times I try to put words to a notion, it turns out that a poet has already done it, and done it better. So it is with Robert Frost today, just a few days from the official start of spring here in the northern hemisphere.

… Bring the singer, bring the nester;

Give the buried flower a dream;

Make the settled snowbank steam;

… Bathe my window, make it flow,

Melt it as the ice will go;

… Run the rattling pages o’er;

Scatter poems on the floor;

Turn the poet out of door.

(from Robert Frost’s “To the Thawing Wind”)

On the cusp of spring, we’ve been heeding Mr. Frost. Recent weeks have often found us as busy out of the library as in. Hence we have some (mostly) non-bookish news to relate.

First, Everett Spencer Shelley

This week saw the birth of Paul’s son. We are thrilled to report that Everett, Mom, and Dad are out of the hospital and home. Those of you accustomed to email responses from Paul at virtually all hours of the day may need to temper expectations for a while. Everett, it seems, is having a go at being a nocturnal mammal. Paul, alas, is not. In fact, he is so sleep-deprived he’s even lost his reflexive gift for terrible puns.

Some of you may note Everett’s middle name and wonder if that is a nod to Mr. Churchill. Hmmm…

In the meantime, while Paul was preparing to become a father again, Marc was in Richmond, Virginia, competing in U.S.A. Fencing’s North America Cup as a Veteran (a respectful term for “old guy”). This is one of three national fencing tournaments held in the U.S. each year. Think thousands of people dressed in white trying to stab one another in a convention center.

There were months of training, daily workouts, diet adjustments, and all rest you’d expect from an aging athlete. Despite this, Marc made a poor showing the first day of competition. In classic “adapt and overcome” spirit, he tried a different strategy for the night between the first and second competitions. This cunningly crafted plan involved three different bars, late night (well, technically early morning) fried chicken, brief, inebriated sleep, and then being up at 6:00 AM to compete. Apparently, that’s the winning recipe, since he made the podium at a national tournament for the first time.

If you’re ever in Richmond, may we recommend The Jefferson Hotel bar. Strikingly beautiful place. Strikingly good bartenders. Suffice it to say that given the indulgences of the night preceding and the podium the following morning, the conventional training regimen is officially under review…

But for now, spectating is on the agenda. Track season just started and Marc’s 15-year-old daughter has eyes on the hurdles. A league champ as a freshman last year, Dessa is aiming higher this year. If you happen to be a hurdle, don’t get in the way…

If there is a bookish flag being carried, it is by CBC’s own Aaron Styza. Last year, Aaron founded, edited, and oversaw publication of the inaugural issue of Thuya Poetry Review. For those of you unfamiliar, it is a huge effort to launch a credible literary review. There’s not only the considerable setup and logistics, but the necessity of securing a ludicrous abundance of submissions, all to be carefully read, and from which to cull a select few for publication. All this Aaron and his team did. Click HERE to check it the Thuya Poetry Review website. 

Note that Thuya’s submission period for the forthcoming Issue #2 recently opened…

For those of you sharing a hemisphere with us, our best wishes for coming spring. In Marc’s final minutes in Richmond, just before he caught a ride to the airport, he caught this Cherry tree just beginning to bloom – quite a beautiful herald of the impending season. Spring is a headlong thing, full of urgency, with no patience for hesitation. May the heady thaw and rush of spring find you likewise, making haste in pursuit of your own passions.

Holiday Salutations and Meditations

Seasons greetings from our library to yours!

You know you’re getting older when you become self-referential. Nonetheless, we write to share comments prompted by another blog post, one we wrote last year at this time.

We had just offered for sale an item related to the famous First World War “Christmas Truce” – a remarkable moment of holiday season humanity in the midst of remarkably inhumane conflict.

The point today is not our year-old post, but rather the message we received in reply from one of our customers (in red below) and our own reply (in blue).

Amid the vagaries and vicissitudes of this never-quite-post-pandemic world, we remain mindful of the small, fragile, but hopefully enduring place of books within it. Knowing that any of you reading likely share our bibliophilia, sharing these year-old messages seems appropriate.

Dearest Gentlemen,

20th December 2020, COVID Christmas. Sunday, 5.30am (CST).

First, let me begin with wishing you and your families, a very joyous, healthy and fabulous holiday season with a new year that will not ‘go down in infamy’ as 2020 most certainly will. In times of fright and stress you have brought a respite that was most needed and welcomed. Offerings from a great man and many other great authors gave me a chance for escape, and not to mention, moments of restraint in not pushing the buy button and turning over my first and second born in exchange for your most sought after treasures. I thank you, most deeply.

Second, it was early this dark, damp Sunday morning whilst the household still slept that I made my pot of tea, tended to the pups, sat at the dining room table surrounded only by the illumination of the Christmas lights, and began to read the blog you had so brilliantly written on the truce. Not without saying, it managed to produce a slight lump in my throat and cloud my vision. I would have liked to attribute that to the fog that engulfed the house but I cannot attest to that, honestly. It was moving, to say the least, as was the actual moment in history. I suspect you have all seen the movie Joyeux Noël. This is a must in this house at this time of year…and at any time that we feel things spiraling out of control and leaving us with feelings of hopelessness. Thus, your blog brought me joy to know that there are others out there that appreciate the efforts of men such as Churchill, Buchanan-Dunlop and others not mentioned.

Alas, when I realised that the volumes for offer were sold contentment and, admittedly, a bit of envy settled in. But, I had to give a satisfied nod knowing that these great works are being well looked after.

Not wanting to take anymore of your time, I shall conclude with my heartfelt wishes for you and yours during the holidays. Be well and safe. Looking forward to many more books, emails and blogs in 2021.

Yours,
G*****

Our reply, which ended up being a (hopefully pardonable) florid meditation, follows.

My Dear G*****,

I must respond selfishly to your most extravagantly generous missive. You are a reason that we do what we do.

There are lots of ways to sell books. Frequently, I’m reminded that doing lots of research, writing lengthy descriptions, and then composing even lengthier blog posts may not be the most *efficient way to engage in the antiquarian book trade. But, for better or worse, that’s our way.

Yes, we did indeed sell the set yesterday. And we’ll certainly appreciate the revenue, which is essential not only to keep body and soul knit, but to keep doing what we do. But a message like yours is arguably just as essential as the revenue.

Arguably even more essential.

That you would sit down to write to us on a Sunday morning is simply, exclusively, and unequivocally an act of expansive grace. Of course we owe you thanks for your artfully framed and exceptionally kind sentiments. But – and here’s the selfish part – we owe you a deep gratitude for the affirmation and encouragement.

At its best, bookselling is a conversation – a ranging, intermittent, and only vaguely coherent, but nonetheless constant conversation about the conceptions and expressions of who we are and who we hope to be as a species. As the books and ideas therein age and mellow, so too does the conversation. It becomes a susurration, a sort of quiet cultural undercurrent, consistently masked by the prevailing daily tides and wind and weather. But that doesn’t mean the conversational current is either irrelevant or unnecessary. Want of it, one feels, would still the great ocean of our experience, losing it by failing to gently stir its depths while the majority of our energy is always focused on disturbing the surface.

Thank you for stirring, G*****. Both us and the great, quiet sea.

May good fortune, high spirits, worthy efforts, and more pleasant trials attend you and yours in the coming year.

Best,

Marc

Again, at the risk of further self-reference, we wish you and yours good fortune, high spirits, worthy efforts, and more pleasant trials in the coming year.

Cheers!

“…but they will linger.” – Poets and Poetry of the First World War

This post, prompted by new additions to our inventory, touches on four First World War poets – Brooke, Graves, Owen, and Sassoon – and the wounds, exhaustions, extinguishments, and scarred endurances these poets lived and expressed. 

103 years ago tomorrow, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the First World War ended. Much ink has spilled analyzing how the unprecedented carnage of the First World War fundamentally disrupted and reshaped social, political, and cultural conceptions. It turned out that even the spilling of ink was altered; the romantic conceits of poetry numbered among the many casualties of the First World War, and the changes wrought in some of the leading poetic voices became both reflection and herald of a terribly altered world. “Modernity”, with all of its cruel candor, was born of – and borne by – poetry and poets as much as the battlefields.

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) rather makes the point. Among his most famous poems is “The Soldier”, published in early 1915, just a few months before his death, roughly half a year after the start of the First World War, and before the protracted horrors of the conflict tainted the poetic sensibilities and national sentiment of his poems.

If I should die, think only this of me:

      That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

As if to punctuate his poem, not long after it was published, Brooke died. His body was taken to the Greek island of Skyros, from whence Achilles had sailed for Troy, and buried in an olive grove. 

In The Times, on 26 April 1915, Brooke was eulogized by Winston S. Churchill:

“Rupert Brooke is dead. A telegram from the Admiral at Lemnos tells us that this life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watch them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger.

During the last few months of his life, months of preparation in gallant comradeship and open air, the poet-soldier told with all the simple force of genius the sorrow of youth about to die, and the sure triumphant consolations of a sincere and valiant spirit. He expected to die: he was willing to die for the dear England whose beauty and majesty he knew: and he advanced towards the brink in perfect serenity, with absolute conviction of the rightness of his country’s cause and a heart devoid of hate for fellow-men.

The thoughts to which he gave expression in the very few incomparable war sonnets which he has left behind will be shared by many thousands of young men moving resolutely and blithely forward in this, the hardest, the cruelest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought. They are a whole history and revelation of Rupert Brooke himself. Joyous, fearless, versatile, deeply instructed, with classic symmetry of mind and body, ruled by high undoubting purpose, he was all that one would wish England’s noblest sons to be in the days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable, and the most precious is that which is most freely proffered.”

Churchill’s was a lovely, panegyric eulogy, an evocation and echo of Brooke’s own poem, limning the poet’s death in the poet’s own sentimentality and glorification. But Brooke never saw front line action. He died of blood poisoning, presumably brought on by an insect bite to his lip. This may have been fortunate, as Brooke died en route to the charnel house of Gallipoli, where his Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division landed days later, and where nearly half a million Turkish and Allied troops became casualties.

The conspicuous romanticism of Brooke’s interment eclipses his undistinguished, unheroic ending – and provides a literary line of demarcation. Brooke’s ending, more than his burial, better symbolizes the bleak and bereft brutality of the First World War battlefields. Brooke’s poems proved an elegy to both himself and to his brand of poeticism, which, as the war progressed, gave way to a poeticism as mudded, bloodied, and bare of romance as the war’s trenches and No Man’s Land. Churchill, who would himself be serving on the Western Front by the end of 1915, had some inkling of the growing disillusions accompanying “this, the hardest, the cruelest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought.” But Churchill did not know – could not yet know – the full literary measure of his opening statement “Rupert Brooke is dead.

The death of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) came three and a half long years of war later and is a study in contrast. After stint at Craiglockhart War Hospital to treat shell-shock, Owen returned to the front. By the end of October, 1918, he found himself poised on the western side of the Sambre-Oise canal. Biographer Guy Cuthbertson relates how “Wilfrid Owen and his band of friends tried to cross the Canal. War veined the water with a dreadful red, before it all mingled to one tint.” (Cuthbertson, p.290) Owen was cut down by a German machine-gunner just a week before the Armistice. 

While still convalescing at Craiglockhart, Owen had written verse of soldiering experience entirely unreconciled to Brooke’s “Soldier”. Fittingly, “Dulce et Decorum Este” was first published in the Hospital magazine, The Hydra, on 1 September 1917.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

“The War to End All Wars” did not. But it changed poetry. And it made – and unmade – poets. A scrappy pugilist, Robert Graves (1895-1985) reputedly earned the respect of his fellow soldiers and his first command through erudition with his fists, not his letters. After surviving the annihilation of his Royal Welch Fusiliers, he was transferred and met Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). Graves’s senior by a decade, Sassoon’s pre-war poetry was highly romantic and imitative. “He was always ‘waiting for the spark from heaven to fall’, and when it fell it was shrapnel…” (ODNB)

Graves initially thought Sassoon too gung-ho about the war. Indeed, Sassoon, known as “Mad-Jack”, was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous bravery and considered for the Victoria Cross. But he was anything but gung-ho when he chucked his MC ribbon into the River Mersey. And when Sassoon wrote a scathing anti-war declaration that was read in Parliament, his friend Graves lobbied for his hospitalization in lieu of a court martial. At Craiglockhart War Hospital Sassoon met a young poet named Wilfred Owen. While Owen published “Dulce et Decorum Este” in the Hospital’s literary magazine, which he edited, Sassoon contributed poems, including “Dreamers” and “Wirers”, that would later appear in his collections Counter-Attack and Other Poems and War Poems. Owen met Graves during the latter’s Hospital visits to Sassoon. Upon release, Sassoon was lucky to be once again merely wounded. His life and literary career, like that of Graves, would be long. Owen, like Brooke, suffered the bargain of Achilles – glory in lieu of longevity. 

Theirs – Brooke, Owen, Graves, and Sassoon – were certainly not the only poetic voices shaping and shaped by the First World War. But these four encapsulate many of the agonies, contradictions, convolutions, and evolutions endured by the poets and poetry of the First World War. Together they span the war’s poetic preambles and its long, more knowing, less exulting and less lyrical aftermath. 

A.J.B. and W.S.C. – “friendship, across the vicissitudes of politics”

We recently had the privilege of spending some time with a compelling inscribed Churchill book – a British first edition of The World Crisis: The Aftermath. The story is one worth telling. Hence this post.

The Aftermath is the penultimate volume of Churchill’s history of the First World War. This particular copy is inscribed and dated to Arthur James Balfour, the man who replaced Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty when Churchill was forced to resign in 1915, who was Prime Minister when Churchill dramatically repudiated the Conservative Party in 1904, and beside whom Churchill worked in both Coalition and Conservative Governments of the 1920s. Of course, Churchill’s own words testify most eloquently to his association with Balfour, which both included and exceeded that of a colleague, mentor, or rival:  “…this remarkable man whom I knew, and whose friendship, across the vicissitudes of politics, I enjoyed in a ripening measure during thirty years.” (WSC, Great Contemporaries, p.240)

The inscription

Churchill inscribed this presentation copy of the first edition six days prior to publication. Using their respective initials, the tone is familiar, befitting their long association, and the first and third lines have a hint of playful versification – almost certainly intentional from a seasoned wordsmith like Churchill. Inked in four lines, the blank sheet recto preceding the half title reads:

A. J. B 

       from 

  Winston S. C. 

1 Mar 1929

This was the last book Churchill published during Balfour’s lifetime; Balfour died a year after Churchill inscribed this copy to him.

The edition

A quarter of a century before the Second World War endowed him with lasting fame, Winston Churchill played a uniquely critical, controversial, and varied role in the “War to end all wars”. Then, being Churchill, he wrote about it. The World Crisis was published in six volumes between 1923 and 1931. The first four volumes span the 1911-1918 war years, with two supplemental volumes. This fifth volume, The Aftermath, covers the postwar years 1918-1928 – a decade-long span during most of which Churchill and Balfour both served in high Government office. 

The work has both literary and collector appeal – particularly jacketed first editions like this one. But those comparatively prosaic virtues are far eclipsed in this particular copy by the singular inscription and association. 

The association

Arthur James Balfour, first Earl of Balfour (1848-1930) was among the most significant influences and associations of the first half of Churchill’s political career. The two were already tethered by friendship and politics when Winston was born, and during Winston’s first three decades in Parliament they were almost perpetually connected by oscillations of alignment and opposition, of concurrent and opposing political ascendance. 

Balfour’s early education and preoccupation was philosophy, but in 1874 – the year Churchill was born – Balfour was elected to Parliament as a Conservative. There – notably opposite to Winston – his “lifelong antipathy to the physical process of handwriting” served him well, as it “led him to develop a remarkable ability to dictate lucid memoranda on complicated subjects.” This, coupled with the “habit of rationalistic discussion and debate that prevailed within his family circle”, contributed to Balfour’s formidable capacity for political debate.

Balfour was friends with Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and together with two other Conservative MPs they formed a “self-styled Fourth Party”, harrying and rebelling against their party leadership. However, Balfour’s inclination to rebellion proved less than that of either Randolph or Winston and Balfour eventually heeded loyalty to the Conservative Party. Indeed, by 1891 Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the House of Commons. Balfour led his party – either in opposition or in Government – for two decades. 

From his exalted position, Balfour supported Winston in his early endeavors. In 1897, it was Balfour who advised that young Winston entrust his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, to the literary agent A. P. Watt, who successfully made publication arrangements with Longmans on Winston’s behalf. (R. Churchill, Vol. I, p.367) When Churchill lost his first election, Balfour wrote to Winston “I had greatly hoped to see you speedily in the House… I hope… you will not be discouraged… this small reverse will have no permanent ill effect upon your political fortunes.” (letter of 10 July 1899) When Churchill ran again, this time as a famous hero of the Boer War, Balfour wrote encouragingly “I have great hopes that you will win the seat… you have had fresh opportunities – admirably taken advantage of – for shewing the public of what stuff you are made.” (letter of 30 August 1900).

Churchill won his first seat on 1 October 1900. Taking his seat in Parliament at the age of 26, Churchill was soon following family form, dissenting from, and fomenting backbench revolt against, the Conservative Party – ironically now led by Balfour. In late May 1904, during Balfour’s 1902-1905 premiership, young Winston dramatically left the Conservative Party and crossed the aisle to become a Liberal, swiftly earning a reputation as both a brash young radical and a traitor to his class. Indeed, the great political battle over The People’s Budget and the authority of the House of Lords – battles in which Winston proved such a powerful Liberal advocate – exacerbated the political pressures on the Conservatives. Hence young Winston the Liberal contributed to both electoral and parliamentary defeat of the Conservatives and to Balfour’s resignation as party leader in November 1911 – only weeks after Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.

Arguably, Balfour’s most important legacies and most potent time in power came in the decades ahead, after he no longer formally led his party. Moreover, the First World War and its aftermath – apropos the title of the inscribed work in question – tethered Balfour and Churchill even more than had the preceding decades. 

In 1911, Churchill pressed Prime Minister Asquith to make Balfour a permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence. (WSC, Great Contemporaries, p.255) Churchill’s efforts to dramatically enhance naval preparedness were supported by Balfour “who, though regarding an Anglo-German war as a virtual impossibility… saw the dominant need to maintain British naval supremacy.” (R. Churchill, Vol. II, p.571). In differing with Churchill over submarines, Balfour was more prophetically astute. “Balfour tried without success to get… Churchill, the first lord of the Admiralty, to appreciate that submarines were essentially the weapon of the weaker naval power; and in correspondence with Admiral Lord Fisher it was Balfour who pointed out that, if war should come, U-boats would probably sink British and other merchant shipping without restraint”. It is worth noting that Balfour would prove equally prophetic when, in his final time in office in 1928, “He also wanted additional spending on naval anti-aircraft weapons ahead of cruisers.” (ODNB) On both counts, Balfour anticipated the weapons that would revolutionize naval warfare in each world war – the submarine in the First and the aircraft in the Second.

On the Dardanelles, the strategic initiative that would end Churchill’s tenure at the Admiralty, the two men were in accord. Balfour had supported – indeed had “argued persuasively in favor” of – Churchill’s proposal to attack the Dardanelles with ships alone. (ODNB) When the Dardanelles disaster engulfed Churchill and forced his resignation, it was Balfour who succeeded Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty – to Churchill’s professed “great relief”. (Gilbert, Vol. III, p.468) 

Churchill eventually resigned even his nominal Cabinet posts to spend the rest of his political exile as a lieutenant colonel leading a battalion in the trenches at the Front. Then came yet another dramatic political misstep, this one with Balfour at the center. Within days of his return to London from the Front in May 1916, despite this manifest support for Balfour succeeding him at the Admiralty, Churchill decided to publicly attack Balfour. 

“Twelve years had passed since Churchill had last spoken in the House of Commons as the critic of a Government. Then, his had been the lance of youthful anger hurled, always with agility and sometimes with venom, against the Conservative Prime Minister, A. J. Balfour. It had seemed impudence for so young a Member of Parliament to attack the Leader of the ruling Party, from whose back benches he had only just migrated… When he rose to speak from the front opposition bench late in the afternoon of Tuesday 7 March 1916, it was with the accumulated experience of those twelve years behind him; but it was also with his credibility impaired by the controversies and disasters of the previous year. After twelve years, it was again A. J. Balfour whom he rose to attack.” Churchill assailed the efficacy and urgency of Balfour’s Admiralty administration. “The House of Commons had not heard such a strong indictment of a Government Department since the war began.” (Gilbert, Vol. III, p.716-718) In his attack, and in his prescription for righting the proverbial Admiralty ship, Churchill gravely miscalculated. 

Even in his politically weakened state, Churchill’s defeat in debate was a notable occasion. Balfour’s memorable rebuttal, on 8 March 1916, of Churchill’s attack, brought Churchill to admit that Balfour was “a master of parliamentary sword-play and of every dialectical art” (Mackay, Balfour, 291). As Churchill would say years later of Balfour, “Whatever had to be said, he knew how to say it; and when others blundered into foolish or offensive remarks, he knew how to defend himself or retaliate with point, justice or severity.” (WSC, Great Contemporaries, p.241) This was singular praise coming from Churchill, and it is difficult not to speculate that Churchill had this particular occasion in mind. Perhaps Churchill also remembered – maybe with a touch of autobiographical admission – his bruising House of Commons altercations with Balfour when he framed Balfour’s memory thus: “I had the privilege of visiting him several times during the last months of his life… I felt… the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience, and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling…” (WSC, Great Contemporaries, pp. 241-257)

Balfour’s tenure at the Admiralty ended along with the end of Asquith’s premiership in December 1916. By the time of Churchill’s exoneration and return to the Cabinet as Minister of Munitions in mid-1917, Balfour was already serving as Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s Foreign Secretary. During Balfour’s tenure at the Foreign Office, Churchill would also serve as Secretary of State for War and for Air. Echoing the same resolution Churchill would show a quarter of a center later during the Second World War, Balfour “never swerved from insistence on the military defeat of Germany.” (ODNB) Also echoing the future Churchill, Balfour “had for long attached much importance to Anglo-American friendship” and did much to “smooth the way for American co-operation” in the war effort. Churchill would later say of him “Never has England had a more persuasive or commanding ambassador and plenipotentiary.” (WSC, Great Contemporaries, p.256) And it was the Balfour Declaration that formally stated that the British government supported “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” – an unequivocally Zionist position to which Churchill would also commit. As Churchill would later be to the genesis of the United Nations, Balfour was committed to the U.N.’s ill-fated forerunner, the League of Nations, serving as Lord President of the League’s Council from 1919-1922. Their final service together was in the government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin; from 1925-1929, Balfour served as Lord President of the Council while Churchill served as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

On 1 March 1929 – six days before publication – Churchill inscribed this volume for Balfour. In the autumn of 1928, ill-health had finally removed the octogenarian Balfour from active work. “Out of courtesy and respect” Baldwin insisted on his retaining his office until the 30 May 1929 general election brought the end of Baldwin’s government. Balfour died the next year. Churchill would not serve in a cabinet again until the outbreak of the Second World War, more than a decade later. In 1937, two years before the war that would see him finally ascend to the premiership and cement his own place in history, Churchill devoted an entire chapter of his book Great Contemporaries to Balfour, of whom Churchill wrote:

“He acquired and possessed from earlier life profound and definite conceptions; and by a marvelous gift of comprehension and receptivity he was able to adjust all the new phenomena and the ever-changing currents of events to his solidly-wrought convictions. His interest in life, thought and affairs… was as keen at eighty as it was at twenty: but his purpose, his foundation, and his main theme were obstinate, obdurate, and virtually unchanged throughout the memorable times in which he lived, played his part, and even ruled. He was a man to whom without commonplace extravagance one might apply the word ‘Statesman.’” (WSC, Great Contemporaries, pp.238-39)

It seems worth noting that Churchill’s incisive praise might apply as well to the author as to the subject, perhaps explaining the long association that spanned and survived “vicissitudes of politics”.