Not going gentle into the good night of retirement
PAUL JOHNSON Retirement, especially for a prime minister, used to being frantically busy in the full gaze of the public, is a melancholy thing. The younger he — or she — is, the more it hurts, with long years of inactivity and growing oblivion stretching ahead. I often think that the most successful of all British politicians, in a worldly but also in a personal sense, was Lord Palmerston. Not only did he hold offices of one kind or another for longer than anyone else, a total of nearly 60 years, but he died as prime minister. His last words, as reported, were: Die? My dear doctor, that's the last thing I shall do.' So he was confident to the end; and if the key word in the rhetorical question had been 'resign', the saying would have been even more apt. Shortly before, he had made the last of his many jokes. He accompanied the queen on a hot day, while she was inspecting the Brigade of Guards in Hyde Park. Victoria complained of the smell of the men's sweat. 'Yes, Ma'am, that's known as esprit de cops.' Not many prime ministers have died in office. Offhand I can think of only one other: Pitt the Younger. On CampbellBannerman's death, just three weeks after resigning as prime minister in 1908, Edward VII summoned Asquith to Biarritz to appoint him, the only occasion when a prime minister was invested, to suit the monarch's pleasure and convenience, at a French watering-place.
A sad case of retirement was Sir Robert Walpole's. To be sure, he had had his fill of office: two decades of power in all its plenitude. But it left a huge hole in his life. He occupied No. 10 for several weeks after resigning. But when he finally got to Houghton Hall, the splendid palace the spoils of office had built him, and ensconced himself in its well-stocked library to do the reading he had promised himself all those long years of activity, he found it impossible. He picked up one book, flicked over the pages, put it down; picked up another — the same thing. After half a dozen books he gave up. A few days later, he returned to the library and found Henry Fox, a guest, absorbed. He said to him. 'You can read. It is a great happiness. I totally neglected it while I was in business, which has been the whole of my life, and to such a degree that I cannot now read a page — a warning to all ministers.'
Instead, of course, Walpole wrote long letters of advice to his successors. Oh dear! That is another trap into which the dear departed fall. A notable case was the Duke of Windsor.
After abdicating, and retiring to France, he bombarded his successor, who after all was his much-snubbed and condescended-to younger brother, with phone calls, giving unsolicited and imperative advice. One day he was told: The King is unavailable.' It was at that point he really grasped the awfulness and finality of what he had thrown away. The experience is recurrent. A retired grandee said to me: 'There are two shocks. The first is when you go. The second, worse if anything, is when they refuse to take your calls.'
Harold Macmillan described what happened to him After his prostate operation, which precipitated his resignation, and after his frenzied activity from his bed in the Edward VII hospital (Sister Agnes', as he and other White's Club people call it) to get his chosen successor appointed, so he could hand over the seals of office in good heart, he fell into deep repose. He was awoken by 'a common little man' fiddling at his bedside table. 'Who are you, and what the hell are you doing?' asked Supermac. 'I'm a Post Office engineer, and I'm taking away your red telephone. You're not Prime Minister any more, you know.' That was a grim moment of truth. Though old, Macmillan still felt active and able. He came to think he need not have resigned at all — could have carried on perfectly well after a brief period of recuperation. He was quite bitter about this, and even had dreams of a comeback. But that happens only rarely — hardly ever — and, when it does, is nearly always a tragic, even comic, error. Macmillan, a frugal, parsimonious man, missed his chauffeur-driven ministerial car, because it was free. He sometimes travelled by Tube. I sat by him once, on the Circle Line, and asked him how he thought things were going. He smiled faintly, moving his head up and down, as if in approbation of the way events were being handled; then he frowned, and shook his head slowly from side to side. He said not a word, and I noticed that nobody else in the carriage recognised him at all.
Macmillan had consolations, however. One much valued privilege (though it had nothing to do with being prime minister) was travelling free, first-class, on the railways, which he enjoyed by virtue of having been, before the war, a director of the Great Western. The proof of his right was a solid gold seal, attached to his watch chain, which he kept in his waistcoat pocket, and produced when the ticket collector came around. By that time, such reminders of more spacious, and generous (to the already rich) days, were rare. Indeed Macmillan may well have been the last possessor of the gold token, and sometimes had difficulty in persuading, say, an Indian-born railway inspector that his free travel was indeed his right. This was likely to be followed by a disquisition on the pre-war railway system of the 'Big Four', for Macmillan, in retirement, was nothing if not prosy. If all else failed, Macmillan had Oxford, where he was chancellor, and had some kind of right to be wined, dined and put up at any college, whenever he chose. Whether he actually had the right was a matter of churlish dispute by ill-bred left-wing dons, but at any rate he exercised it. Oh the yawns, as Chancellor Harold embarked, yet again, on his account of how George Nathaniel Curzon failed to get to No. 10.
This right, if right it was, was also made full use of by Roy Jenkins, or Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, also chancellor of the University. Of course he had never been prime minister, and therefore had a smaller vacuum in his life to fill. But it was substantial nonetheless, for Roy had been very grand, and remained very grand until the end, in his gold-laced Oxford gown — not his only one either, for he had the glittering sartorial apparatus worn by the chancellor of the exchequer. How he loved dining in state at Balliol (his alma mater), Christ Church and Magdalen! Humbler colleges saw him less frequently. But Roy was not content with ceremonial and anecdotes. He produced two substantial biographies, of Gladstone and Churchill, the first in particular a magnificent achievement, well-read, well-judged and likely to remain on many shelves. Both, particularly the second, made him a lot of money too. I take my hat off to him, and reckon he made a model retirement.
So did Nixon. After resigning, he did not repine long. He too wrote books (which he used to send me, plus a Christmas garland, every year, to hang on the front door) but, more important, he made himself a master of the current scene, national and international. A few weeks before he died in his eighties, he gave a talk, and then answered questions for an hour, at the Tory Philosophy Club, on the latest goings-on in Moscow, whence he had just returned. It was an amazing and beautifully succinct display of expertise and wisdom, which those who were present will remember always. Retirement need not be a defeat, and a burden to others, if you have the courage not to go gentle into that good night.
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