He was to be taught a lesson, and not just in French. Jennie and Welldon worked it out together. He would be sent across the Channel to learn the language by speaking with Frenchmen. The first plan was to board him with a family in Rouen. Winston objected violently: “No family! No family! Ugh!” he wrote Jennie. “I beg and Pray that you will not send me to a vile, nasty, fusty, beastly French ‘Family,’ ” adding—a sign that he knew the company his mother was keeping—that “even if the worst comes to the worst you could send me to some of your friends & not to ‘respectable creatures.’ ” That was in July, when he assumed that the distasteful experience would be behind him by autumn. Then the blow fell. He was told he would spend Christmas at the Versailles home of one of Harrow’s French masters. He was accustomed, if by no means reconciled, to his parents’ absence over the year-end holiday. But at least he could count on the company of Woom, Jack, his aunts, and his grandmother. Now he would be alone, in a foreign country, trying to cope with a language he detested. He fought back with everything he had. “Darling Mummy,” he wrote on December 6, “I shall think it will be very unkind and unnatural of you… to do me out of my Christmas. Out of all this school not 5 boys are going away at all…. Mummy don’t be so unkind and make me unhappy…. If you in spite of my entreaties force me to go I will do as little as I can and the holidays will be one continual battle.”97
Jennie struck back savagely: “Quite apart from other considerations, the tone of your letter is not calculated to make one over lenient. When one wants something in this world, it is not by delivering ultimatums that one is likely to get it.” She told him that he was “old enough not to play the fool” for “the sake of a few days pleasure,” and that “you can be quite certain my darling that I will decide for what is best, but I tell you frankly that I am going to decide not you.” Replying, he reproached her for being “so sarcastic to me since it is I not you who have to make the sacrifice…. You say it is for you to decide. I am required to give up my holidays—not you. I am forced to go to people who bore me excessively—not you. You were asked to give up a short part of the year to take me abroad—you promised—refused & I did not press the point…. Please do have a little regard for my happiness.”98
She returned this note without comment. He wrote again, asking why, and she told him: “I have read only one page of yr letter and I send it back to you—as its style does not please me…. My dear you won’t gain anything by taking this line.” It was now December 16, and he was close to panic. “Never,” he wrote her, “would I have believed that you would have been so unkind. I am utterly miserable. That you should refuse to read my letter is most painful to me. There was nothing in it to give you grounds for rejecting it…. Oh my Mummy!” Next: “I am more unhappy than I can possibly say…. Darling Mamma if you want me to do anything for you, especially so great a sacrifice don’t be so cruel to Your loving son Winny.” Then, the next day: “Please don’t be so unkind. Do answer my letter.” Then, the day after that—with Christmas a week away—he made his last pitiful effort: “Darling Mummy do attend to my letter. I am so wretched. Even now I weep. Please my darling Mummy be kind to your loving son. Don’t let my silly letters make you angry. Let me at least think that you love me.—Darling Mummy I despair. I am so wretched. I don’t know what to do. Don’t be angry I am so miserable…. Please write something kind to me. I am very sorry if I have ‘riled’ you before I did only want to explain things from my point of view. Good Bye my darling Mummy. With best love I remain, Ever your loving son Winston.” It availed him nothing. Jennie was adamant. She booked second-class passage for him for a December 21 crossing and wrote Randolph, “I can’t tell you what trouble I have had with Winston this last fortnight he has bombarded me with letters, cursing his fate and everyone. Of course it is a great disappointment to him not being home for Xmas but he makes as much fuss as tho’ he were going to Australia for 2 years.”99
Debarking, he telegraphed Woom: “Arrived safe. Good passage.” Putting a brave face on what remained a desolate business, he jauntily wrote his mother, to convince her that his French needed no improvement: “We arrived at Dieppe où nous partook of de bon Café au lait. Le chemin de fer etait très incommode. Pour quatres heures I waited having nothing to do. Nous arrivames au gare St Lazare. J’ai déclaré ma boite des cigarettes. But they did not charge me anything nor did they open mon mal.” He rode three hours on hired hacks (“chevaux de louage”); then his host, M. Minssen, met him with a spare mount and led him to his Versailles home at 18, rue de Provence. “M.M. rides very well & very hard at full gallop on the ’ard ’igh road. Les chevaux ne sont pas mal. Ils son véritablement rossés. Mme Monsieur M’s mère ne dit rien que ‘Son progrés est marveilleux.’ ‘N’est ce pas extraordinaire’ etc. etc.” Christmas was quiet at Versailles, but Minssen mère turned out to be English, so they had turkey and plum pudding. “Also,” Winston acknowledged, “a little fun on Christmas Eve.” He went to the theater to see Michel Stroghoff, learned to skate, rode a great deal—once, with M.M., for three hours: “The horses are very good considering.” But his chief excitement was the “Bon Marche,” which sold toy soldiers. He wrote Jack that the shop carried French and Russian infantrymen, artillerymen, and black cannon. “They were in all positions for loading & firing. Ramming home, etc. Only 7 francs=5/–.” The soldiers were two francs for a dozen. “When I return we will have much fun and great games with the army.” He was “longing to return…. I count the hours. I won’t travel 2nd again by Jove.”100
He wrote his mother daily, heard nothing from her, and protested: “It seems to me that with you ‘out of sight is out of mind’ indeed. Not a line from anybody. You promised to write 3 times a week—I have recd 1 letter.” Jennie didn’t even acknowledge his present to her. The fact was that she couldn’t have received either letters or gift; she was away at Penn, the ancestral home of Lord and Lady Howe, preparing a party for the Prince of Wales. Winston’s one letter had been from Mrs. Everest. He had picked a good time to be away, Woom said; the electricity had failed, there was no gas, so for five days she and Jack had lived in utter darkness “in this room with a candle until I am half blind.” On Christmas Day she and the servants, in the tradition of the time, “drank to the health and happiness of Mamma and Papa”; then, after supper, “we went into the kitchen & they put aside the table & danced for dear life. There was no music, so Edney [the butler] whistled & I played the comb with a piece of paper & comb like we used to do in our good old nursery days.” Of Winston’s present to her she wrote: “It is very kind of you but you know my Lamb I would rather you did not spend your money on me.” Woom had mailed him a gift and hoped his spirits picked up: “Cheer up old Boy enjoy yourself try & feel contented you have much to be thankful for if you only consider & fancy how nice it will be to be able to parlez vous francais.” His glumness troubled her, and, nannylike, she suspected an earthy cause: “I should buy plenty of fruit & eat it if I were you keep you regular you know dear.”101
Lack of congeniality, not constipation, was Winston’s chief complaint. Before leaving England he had exacted from his mother a pledge that he would be entertained by three of her continental admirers. He wanted another Kinsky. Unaware that she was absent from London, he had written her on Christmas Eve: “Write to Baron Hirsch. Do! I have not heard a word from those ‘friends’ you spoke about.” Three days later he sent another reminder: “Not a word from Baron Hirsch—not a line from M. de Breteuil—Not a sound from Mr. Trafford. I don’t know any of their addresses, so what can I do?” He waited two more days and wrote again: “I wish you would try my mummy to fulfill your promise. Baron Hirsch may be in Jericho for all I know.” He needn’t have worried. Jennie was an adroit manipulator of men. Approaching her fortieth birthday, she still had the figure of a young girl, coupled with extraordinary social skills, and when she gave her lovers marching orders, they leapt to obey. At the bottom of a letter to Jack, Winston scrawled: “N.B. Invitations have come. Baron Hirsch Fri
day last Mr Trafford Sat yesterday. Baron Hirsch Tomorrow M. de Breteuil Tuesday.” They moved in a Paris unknown to Winston’s French master; they entertained him at the best restaurants, taught him wines, and introduced him to the recherché society of continental gentlemen. He also saw his first corpses: “Last Monday I went to M. de B. and B. Hirsch after. He took me to the morgue. I was much interested. Only 3 Macabres—not a good bag.” One suspects adolescent bravado here. At the age of seventeen he could scarcely have coped with massed cadavers.102
Another pledge from his mother was of a different order. Jennie had given him her word that upon his return from Versailles he would be kept out of school for a week, to provide him a decent vacation at Connaught Place. He wrote her from France on December 27: “I will remind you of the promise you made me at Harrow of an extra week [at home] if I gave up my Christmas. A promise is a promise & as I have fulfilled my part I rely on you my darling mummy to do the rest. I know you won’t chuck me like that.” On January 13 he again told her that he meant to hold her to her commitment: “I am of course counting, my Mummy, on you to fulfil your promise which was more than anything the reason of my coming here willingly.” He was nailing her to her vow, and his very vehemence suggests an uneasiness, a growth of doubt. But cutting even a day of classwork was a serious matter for a boy with his academic record. Mothers in Victorian families lacked the authority to make so grave a decision, and Winston, sensing that, decided to lay the matter before Randolph. He pointed out to him that “I have missed everything this year. Christmas, New Years Day etc.” Then he wrote: “The chief inducement Mamma held out for me to go to France was the promise of an extra week. Please do see what you can arrange for me.”103
His father was in no mood to arrange any such thing. He was in a foul temper. The party at Penn had collapsed because the Duke of Clarence had chosen this extremely inconvenient moment to die, causing HRH to cancel all his social engagements. But even if Randolph had been in the best of spirits, he believed he had the best of reasons for pulling the rug from under his wife. He wrote Winston, “I think I will not try and get you an extra week because really every moment is of value to you now before you go up for your examination in June. The loss of a week now may mean your not passing, which I am sure you will admit would be very discreditable and disadvantageous…. I do pray you my dear boy to make the most of every hour of your time so as to render your passing a certainty…. I hope you will work like a little dray horse right up to the summer examination, only about four months off.” Winston was bitter. He wrote: “How I have been tricked!” Jennie wrote him: “Papa showed me his letter to you. He won’t hear of yr asking for an extra week. I am very sorry.” So she should have been. Robert Rhodes James concludes that “behind Lady Randolph’s vivid beauty and warm vivacity there lay an essentially selfish and frivolous character.”104 That is hard but just. Winston rightly felt betrayed. Yet his affection for her did not diminish. And such is the wonder of human relationships that soon she would reciprocate. Jennie was not a faithful wife, but in other ways she was a loyal one. As the final stages of Randolph’s paresis overtook him—as he became less endearing each day—she would slowly transfer her devotion to her brilliant, eccentric elder son. Her passion would run deep and strong, and it would be of immeasurable benefit to him, though it could never be mistaken for maternal love.
The examination, a screening of candidates for admission to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, had been looming before Winston ever since his father’s decision, based on a display of toy soldiers in a nursery, to make his son an army officer. Other Harrovians were following the same star—so many, indeed, that Welldon had created a special Army Class. Winston had joined it in September 1889, when he was fourteen. In effect these boys were cramming for military exams. Moriarty and another master decided early that Winston’s math was too poor for Woolwich, the academy that prepared cadets for commissions in the artillery and engineers. Instead, they piloted him toward Sandhurst, which turned out subalterns of infantry and cavalry.
After four months in the Army Class, Winston had written his mother, “I am getting along capitally…. I am going up for my ‘preliminary Exam’ for ‘Sandhurst’ in June.” His confidence, here as so often before, was wholly unjustified. Welldon withdrew his name, explaining to him that he wasn’t ready for the test; among other things, his grasp of geometrical drawing was hopelessly deficient. But the headmaster gave him the green light six months later, and then Winston had three pieces of good luck. This was the last Sandhurst preliminary in which Latin was an optional subject. Second, an essay question dealt with the American Civil War, and Jennie’s mother had seen to it that he knew a great deal about that long before he entered Harrow. The third stroke of fortune was remarkable. He had known there would be a map question, but did not know of which country. Therefore, he wrote the names of twenty-five countries on scraps of paper the night before the exam, put them in a hat, and drew one. He had picked New Zealand. He memorized it. And in the morning the geographical problem was: “Draw a map of New Zealand.” So he passed all subjects, becoming one of twelve out of the twenty-nine Harrow candidates to succeed. He wrote his mother: “I have received congratulations from scores of boys and many masters. Dudley”—Dudley Marjoribanks, the son of Randolph’s sister Fanny—“has not spoken to me. Vive la joie! He has not passed and is furious.” Jennie wrote her husband: “I think you might make him a present of a gun as a reward. He is pining for one, and ought to have a little encouragement.”105
No gun arrived, there was no pat on the back from Randolph, and the edge of Winston’s enthusiasm for a military career was briefly blunted. He toyed with the notion of taking holy orders. In a postscript home he wrote: “Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the church would suit me better.” Looking back long afterward, he reflected that “I might have gone into the Church and preached orthodox sermons in a spirit of audacious contradiction to the age.” But it had been a preposterous notion; while Churchill can easily be pictured in a pulpit, one cannot imagine him on his knees. As a boy, he would say in later life, he had to go to church every week and “this was very good. I had accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since. Weddings, christenings, and funerals have brought in a steady annual income, and I have never made too close enquiries about the state of my account. It might well even be that I should find an overdraft.” He wrote trenchantly of World War I: “Religion, having discreetly avoided conflict on the fundamental issues, offered its encouragement and consolations through all its forms impartially to all the combatants.” Toward the end of his life he said: “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready to meet me is another question.” To those who pressed him, he quoted Disraeli: “Sensible men are all of the same religion.” Asked what that was, he quoted him again: “Sensible men never tell.”106
But Disraeli had also said that “what we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens,” and this was Winston’s immediate problem in the summer of 1892, when he was seventeen. Having leapt over the preliminary hurdle, he assumed that he was as good as accepted by Sandhurst. Thus he was rudely shaken when, having taken the main entrance examination, he learned that he had flunked, and flunked badly. Not only had he failed to qualify for an infantry cadetship; his marks were also inadequate for the cavalry, which accepted lower performances. He had scored 39 percent in freehand drawing, 30 percent in Latin, and 28 percent in math, and had excelled only in English composition. Counting French, English history, chemistry, and geometry, he was 300 marks below the minimum and 700 below his cousin Dudley, who had caught up with the other successful applicants. Moriarty consoled Winston—“I think your marks and place very creditable for your first try”—but Welldon was brusque: “I feel it essential that in coming back to school you should come resolved to work not by fits and starts but with regular persistent industry.” The headmaste
r considered recommending a free-lance tutor, then decided against it. Randolph, predictably, was disgusted. He was also unsurprised. On the few occasions he had questioned his son about his education, he had been distinctly unimpressed. Once he had turned on him and suddenly asked: “What was the Grand Remonstrance against Charles I?” This had been a complicated issue in 1641, turning on parliamentary influence in the monarch’s court and the Anglican church. Winston’s reply was: “Parliament beat the king and cut his head off.” (Decapitation “seemed to me,” he later said wistfully, “the grandest remonstrance imaginable.”) But his father had sworn to himself and turned away. Now, with the results from Sandhurst, Randolph felt confirmed. He glumly awaited Winston’s second attempt to matriculate, writing Duchess Fanny that his “next try is on Nov. 24th. If he fails again I shall think about putting him in business.” Trade would have been even less suitable for Winston than the ministry, and he knew it. Thus, his last term at Harrow was clouded by the possibility of an aborted career. Welldon kept giving him pep talks and seems to have convinced himself that they were justified; on the eve of the second exam he wrote Randolph that the boy’s “work this term has been excellent. He understands now the need of taking trouble, and the way to take it…. It is due him to say that of late he has done all that could be asked of him.”107