A Daughter's Tale: The Memoir of Winston Churchill's Youngest Child Read online

  Copyright © 2011 by Mary Soames

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a Random House Group Company, in 2011.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Soames, Mary.

  A daughter’s tale: the memoir of Winston Churchill’s youngest child / by Mary Soames.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-64518-4

  1. Soames, Mary—Childhood and youth. 2. Churchill, Winston,

  1874–1965. 3. Churchill, Clementine, Lady, 1885–1977.

  4. Soames, Mary—Family. 5. Great Britain—History—

  George VI, 1936–1952. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Great Britain.

  7. Great Britain—Biography. I. Title.

  DA566.9.S57A3 2012 941.084092—dc23 2011037070

  [B]

  www.atrandom.com

  246897531

  Jacket design: Kimberly Glyder

  Front-jacket photograph: Getty Images

  Back-jacket photographs: Mary Soames Collection (top left and top right); Churchill Archives Centre,

  The Papers of Randolph Churchill, RDCH [9/2/4B], reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London,

  on behalf of The Estate of Randolph S. Churchill, copyright

  © Randolph S. Churchill (inset, top); Daily Mail/Rex Features (center); AP/Press Association Images

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note on Sources

  Prelude

  CHAPTER 1 Chartwell Child

  CHAPTER 2 A Widening World

  CHAPTER 3 Sisters and Cousins

  CHAPTER 4 Growing Up with Grown-ups

  CHAPTER 5 Family Affairs

  CHAPTER 6 A Bright Life and a Darkening Horizon

  CHAPTER 7 Clearing the Decks

  CHAPTER 8 A Year to Remember

  CHAPTER 9 At Chequers

  CHAPTER 10 Decisions … Decisions … Decisions

  CHAPTER 11 “A Soldier’s Life Is Terrible Hard …”

  CHAPTER 12 Battery Life

  CHAPTER 13 An Officer and a Gentlewoman

  CHAPTER 14 “Subaltern George”

  CHAPTER 15 Testing Times

  CHAPTER 16 Doodlebugs

  CHAPTER 17 Paris Again

  CHAPTER 18 Europe Arise!

  CHAPTER 19 Triumph and Disaster

  CHAPTER 20 “Civvy Street”

  Photo Insert

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Photograph Credits

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Note on Sources

  THE TEXT QUOTES EXTENSIVELY FROM THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL diaries, which remain in her possession, as do letters from the author to her parents. Letters from Winston Churchill up to his resignation in July 1945 are held in the Chartwell Papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge. Letters from Clementine Churchill are held in the Baroness Spencer–Churchill Papers, also in the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge. Papers in these collections are not cited individually in the endnotes.

  The author’s letter to David Lloyd George, 20 September 1937, is held in the Lloyd George Papers, Parliamentary Archives, Westminster. The author’s letter to W. Averell Harriman, 13 May 1941, is held in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Prelude

  AS THE 1920S BEGAN, CONDITIONS SEEMED SET FAIR, PROFESSIONALLY and personally, for Winston Churchill and his family. From the summer of 1917, when Winston had returned to office as Minister of Munitions after the debacle of the 1915 Dardanelles campaign had cost him his place in Asquith’s Coalition government, he had served in various ministries and permutations of Lloyd George’s Coalition governments, and in early 1921 he was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies. Winston was in his forty-seventh year and Clementine, whom he had married in 1908, ten years younger: their family consisted of Diana, aged twelve years; Randolph, ten; Sarah, seven; and Marigold, rising three.

  But 1921 was to be a year of heavy tidings for the Churchill family. In early January, Blanche, the redoubtable Countess of Airlie, died. Clementine had never been really fond of her grandmother, but her death brought back memories of childhood summer holidays at Airlie Castle with her so dearly beloved sister Kitty (who had died aged only sixteen), and the twins, Nellie and Bill. Later that month the death in a railway accident of a distant Londonderry kinsman of Winston’s, Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest, brought shock and regret if not grief; his unexpected demise wrought changes in Winston’s fortunes, the consequences of which belong to a later chapter.

  Then, in the spring, stark tragedy struck. In April, Bill Hozier, Clementine’s only brother, aged thirty-three, shot himself in a hotel bedroom in Paris. And at the end of May, Lady Randolph Churchill, the beautiful and celebrated Jennie—in predictably high heels—fell down a staircase: a month later, after amputation of her leg, and a sudden haemorrhage, she died, in her sixty-eighth year. She had become a legend in her own lifetime, and her death was widely mourned. Her sons, Winston and Jack, grieved deeply; and if their wives, Clementine and Goonie, had had their reservations in the past about Belle Ma-man’s extravagances and vagaries, the undaunted spirit with which she met the difficulties in her life, and her great courage in her last weeks, commanded their true and loving admiration.

  A quieter departure was the death in early August of Thomas Walden, who had been Lord Randolph’s manservant: he had accompanied Winston to the South African war, enlisting in the Imperial Light Horse, and continued in service with him after the war. He was indeed a family treasure, and his departure was a cause of great sadness for Winston.

  But the worst blow in this already dark year was yet to come. Winston and Clementine’s youngest child, Marigold, had been born four days after the Armistice in 1918. A chubby, redheaded, lively baby, “the Duckadilly” was the pet of the family. Reading her parents’ letters to each other during Marigold’s brief infancy, one perceives from passing references that she was markedly prone to sore throats and catching colds, so probably earlier action should have been taken when the child developed symptoms while in seaside lodgings, along with Diana, Randolph, and Sarah, at Broadstairs in Kent in early August. The nursery party, in the charge of a young French nanny, Mlle. Rose, was due to travel north to join Winston and Clementine for a lovely family holiday in Scotland, staying with the Duke and Duchess of Westminster: but the plan collapsed when Marigold became ill, with what developed rapidly into septicaemia of the throat. Tragically, the nanny failed to recognize the seriousness of the child’s condition, and it was only after prompting by the lodging-house landlady that Clementine was sent for. She rushed immediately to Broadstairs, to be joined shortly by Winston, and a London specialist was sent for—but alas, to no avail: the adored “Duckadilly” died with her distraught parents at her side on the evening of 23 August. She was two years and nine months old.

  Many years later my father told me that when Marigold died, Clementine gave a succession of wild shrieks like an animal in mortal pain. My mother never got over Marigold’s death, and her very existence was a forbidden subject in the family: Clementine battened down h
er grief and marched on. I was about twelve, I think, when I asked my mother who was the tubby little girl wearing a sun hat and holding a spade in the small photograph on her bedroom desk—and she told me: the picture had been taken on the beach at Broadstairs a week or two before Marigold’s death. But it was many more years before I discovered that my mother regularly visited the pathetic little grave in the vastness of a London cemetery, with its beautiful memorial cross by Eric Gill: she never invited me to accompany her. It was only during our many conversations at the time when I was beginning work on her biography—this was in the 1960s—that she at last brought herself to open up to me about Marigold.

  AFTER THIS TRAGEDY, life of course took up its rhythm again as Clementine responded to the imperatives of the other three children’s needs and claims, and of her total involvement in Winston’s career. This deep grief had brought them very close, and early in the following year Clementine found that she was with child once more. At first she and Winston kept this news to themselves. Clementine was in Cannes, holidaying and playing tennis—including taking part in the club tournament—when her expectations were confirmed: they had been out there together, but Winston had returned to London at the end of the parliamentary recess. Winston was rather anxious, but on 3 February Clementine wrote reassuringly: “Don’t think I am doing too much … after playing I go to my Bunny [bed] & eschew the Casino & its heat and tobacco smoke, not to speak of its financial danger.” She ended her letter: “Goodbye Darling—Kiss the two red-haired kittens [Diana and Sarah] for me. I wonder if the new one will have red hair. Shall we have a bet about it: ‘Rouge ou Noir’?”

  In the last lap of her pregnancy, Clementine and the children spent some weeks at Frinton, from where she wrote to Winston on 8 August: “I feel quite excited at the approach of a new kitten, only 5 weeks now and a new being—perhaps a genius—anyhow very precious to us—will make its appearance & demand our attention. Darling, I hope it will be like you.” But painful thoughts of the beloved Duckadilly were much in her mind—“Three days from now August the 11th our Marigold began to fade; She died on the 23rd.” Winston too had sad thoughts of those days, and was tender and understanding: “I think a gt deal of the coming kitten,” he wrote on 10 August, “& about you my sweet pet. I feel it will enrich yr life and brighten our home to have the nursery started again. I pray to God to watch over us all.”

  Winston and Clementine’s last child, Mary, was born at their London home, 2 Sussex Square, early on the morning of 15 September.

  IN 2002, IN MY eighty-first year, I received a letter from a ninety-two-year-old lady, Mrs. Alida Harvie, who reminded me that our paths had crossed way back in 1942 when, for a few weeks, we were both at the ATS OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit) at Windsor. Her father, Sir Harry Brittain, was for some time a parliamentary colleague of my father, and in 1921, soon after Marigold’s death, the Brittains, accompanied by their daughter Alida, had met Winston and Clementine at some political occasion. In conversation with Lady Brittain, Clementine said: “We are not planning to have any more children”—to which Lady Brittain replied: “Oh! Never say that—the next little one may prove the greatest joy to you all.”

  So many years on, I felt grateful that Mrs. Harvie should have wished me to know this story; and I am moved and humbled to realize that perhaps I was, for my parents, the child of consolation.

  CHAPTER 1

  Chartwell Child

  SEPTEMBER 1922 SAW ANOTHER EVENT OF EVEN GREATER IMPORTANCE to the Churchills’ family life than the birth of the “Benjamin”—myself. In the very week I was born, Winston made an offer for Chartwell Manor, near Westerham in Kent. Three years earlier, Winston and Clementine had sold a charming old house and property, Lullenden, near East Grinstead in Sussex, which they had bought in the latter part of the First World War, chiefly to get their (and Winston’s brother Jack’s) children out of London and away from the zeppelin raids. It had been a real haven for everybody, but the small farm proved a real money loser, and in 1919 they had most regretfully sold it. Since then the whole family had greatly missed their country life. Long school holidays were spent in rented houses, but these were no substitute for one’s own home, and Winston and Clementine were soon on the lookout for another “country basket” (as Clementine called it). One major problem stood between them and their dream house: money—or rather, the lack of it. However, in January 1921 a totally unforeseen event dramatically changed their financial situation: the death, already noted, of Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest. He was childless, and through the tortuous processes of entail his considerable fortune, in the form of the Garron Towers estate in Ireland, passed to Winston. Now the remote hope of a “country basket” became a bright possibility, and Winston and Clementine kept their eyes and ears open.

  Presently Winston saw Chartwell. About twenty-five miles from London, it was a dilapidated and unprepossessing Victorian house built round a much older core, standing on a hilltop commanding the most sensational view to the south over the Weald of Kent. Below the house the hillside falls away to a lake, fed by a spring—the Chartwell—and alongside the whole valley ran a wide belt of beech woods sheltering the property from the north and east. Winston fell—at once and forever—in love with this beautiful place. He, of course, hastened to show it to Clementine, whose first reaction was enthusiastic—“I can think of nothing but that heavenly tree-crowned Hill,” she had written to him in July 1921. But on subsequent visits she became aware of several major defects in its condition, and soon realized that the cost of making the house habitable would be significantly higher than the original estimates. Furthermore—perhaps most serious of all the drawbacks—she feared the house and property would be too much for them to run and maintain. Time would prove her right in both these judgements. However, to all her arguments Winston was deaf—although for a time he went “quiet” on the plan to buy this place which had so beguiled him. Then, during the second half of September, while Clementine was fully occupied with their new baby, Winston presented her with a fait accompli—his offer for Chartwell had been accepted. Clementine, contrary to Winston’s earnest hope, never came to share his love of Chartwell—and never quite forgave him for his (totally untypical) lack of candour with her at the time of its purchase.

  The autumn of 1922 was an eventful one both for the Churchills domestically and for the country politically. While Winston lay very ill from an emergency appendectomy in October, the famous and fateful meeting of the Conservative party at the Carlton Club put an end to the Coalition: Lloyd George and his government resigned, and were succeeded by Bonar Law and a Conservative administration. Parliament was dissolved, and at the ensuing general election in November the Conservatives won a large majority over the Liberals, the latter fatally divided between the followers of Lloyd George (Winston among them) and of Asquith.

  Winston’s seat in Dundee, which he had represented for fourteen years, was gallantly fought by Clementine and a band of devoted supporters until Winston, still in a very weak condition after his operation, arrived late in the campaign. It was here that I made my first entry into politics, at the age of seven weeks, when in the local newspaper a photograph of my mother arriving by train from London for the campaign bore the unhelpful (and, in the circumstances, churlish) caption: “Mrs Churchill and her unbaptized infant [my italics] arrive in Dundee.” A further ill omen was their local address in Dudhope Terrace. Winston was roundly defeated, thereby evoking his rueful comment that he found himself “without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix.”

  After all these events and calamities, Winston (liberated from the ties of government and Parliament) and Clementine took themselves and their brood off to five sunshine months in Cannes, where they rented the Villa Rêve d’Or. Winston recovered his health, painted, and pondered his future; Clementine loved the warmth and played a lot of tennis; and I (after my first singularly unsuccessful foray into politics) lay cocooned in my pram.

  I WAS NEARLY TW
O YEARS old when our family moved into a rehabilitated and largely rebuilt Chartwell, after all the usual hazards and hindrances, compromises, and final ill will between architect and clients which seem inevitably to accompany such enterprises.

  Winston, with the three “Big Ones,” Diana, Randolph, and Sarah, formed the pioneer party, moving in with a basic survival kit and minimal staff support in the Easter holidays: Winston wrote his first letter to Clementine from Chartwell on 17 April 1924. But it would be nearly another two months before she, Nana Whyte (who will figure very prominently in my story), “Baby Bud” (me), and the rest of the household took up residence. The first weekend guests signed the visitors’ book in the last weekend of June.

  My first memory is snapshot-clear, and must be from that summer. I am lying in my big pram under the great yew tree on the lawn in front of the arcaded windows of the new dining room. Woken up from my midmorning siesta, I am greatly bored: I start jiggling (I am really too big now for the pram), and (securely held by my harness) manage to rock my “boat.” Now I try a back-and-forth movement: this is great fun—except suddenly the pram pitches forward on to its handle, and I slide down, held awkwardly suspended by my straps. Suddenly grown-ups, clutching white table napkins, are running towards me—a luncheon party was in progress, and my plight had been observed: I am rescued, taken into the dining room, consoled, and made much of. I think dining-room life is very agreeable, and plan to join it as soon as may be!

  At this point I must introduce Nana. After the trauma of Marigold’s death, and the departure of Mlle. Rose, Clementine was much shaken in her confidence, and, fully aware that her life with Winston would always mean frequent absences from her children, cast about to find a more mature nanny/nursery governess figure to take charge of them. As chance would have it, she did not have far to look: her own first cousin, Maryott Whyte, was a trained Norland nurse—then, as now, the ne plus ultra in terms of child care. Maryott, known as “Moppet,” was the younger daughter of Lady Maude Whyte, a daughter of the Earl and Countess of Airlie and so Clementine’s aunt. Lady Maude Ogilvy had made a late, and—since she had next to no money herself—improvident marriage to Theodore Whyte, himself an impoverished gentleman land agent. The Whytes had four children—Madeline, Mark (who would be killed aged nineteen in Flanders in 1918), Maryott, and Felix. The two girls were well educated, but, unlike their female cousins (or indeed the majority of their female social contemporaries), knew that they must earn their living. Madeline was an intellectual artisan, learning carpentry and working at the famous Doves Press. Here, under the tutelage of Cobden Sanderson, she became an expert in bookbinding, a craft she subsequently taught herself for many years. Moppet was sensible and intelligent, but less eccentric than her elder sister: she elected to train as a children’s nurse and, at the time her cousin Clementine Churchill was looking round for someone to take charge of her lively nursery/schoolroom, was aged twenty-six and in one of her early posts after completing her Norland training.