Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN THE first time I met Ran- dolph Churchill, he was standing alone in the exact centre of what seemed an enormous patterned carpet in his Westminster draw- ing-room. He appeared to be on parade, heels to- gether, shoulders back, one cigarette-speared hand against the seam of his trousers, the other tumbler- kd hand rigidly pressed against his heart as 'Nigh carrying out some 'present-glasses' salute
all upper-class drinking ritual. I could have incti'40In that he had been holding his breath for NO least five minutes, and as I walked down main room I had the odd feeling that just before OA reached him he would skip in the air to other position, as in a game of hopscotch. Oinking back over the twelve years since then. 40W believe he was very nervous. We were meeting because he wanted an slant and I needed the money. In one of his acteristic sunbursts of optimism, Mr. Chur- had so over-extended his journalistic com- lents that even he began to wonder whether e 'Were enough hours in the day to meet the deadlines. It was two weeks before the lc:libation. and he had already contracted to a daily column to the Daily Telegraph, istra' daily report for United Press International, a ki1 article on 'Famous English Homes' for tiluta's Illustrated and a longer, more scholarly learned version of these articles for a book r"4114.in the press. He was also commissioned a Gold Stick-in-Waiting at the ceremony If (having been refused the post he really Yeted of Maltravers Extraordinary—or was it itzfulkc Pursuivant?), and he had no intention neglecting his usual occupation of purveyor terror to the Establishment. Obviously, some of aide de camp was essential—but why me? kad. it appeared, been recommended by Mr. Bonham Carter, a recommendation all the e generous, and all the more mystifying, in I I had never met Mr. Bonham Carter, nor 11 sure that I had even heard of him. Still, I ed the money : and Mr. Churchill, with a In amount of embarrassed jollity, suggested tt a weekend, a percentage of the proceeds, and Eight to keep up with him in food, drink and
rettes at his expense. I agreed immediately fell to wondering quite how as an unsuccess- left-wing, working-class freelance I could be use to this successful, right-wing. upper-class
tItante, l had heard alarming rumours of his l''dst-beast opinions, his filthy-rich arrogance, („1,uulimited capacity for alcohol and anger, his Nestructive appetite for gambling his repu- 1 II3n on a passing whim or a sudden impulse. relckoned I would last a week. But then he said two things which changed my lu4is. He saw me looking at the Lazio por- behind him (reproduced in colour on the kt of his first volume of autobiography, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 21s.) and, tlervingly, he read my thoughts, or at least il Of them. I had been thinking that only tt ,,.eGrle of immense vanity or immense honesty ''d Confront a stranger with the contrast—it as though Dorian Gray once a year changed es with his picture. 'Hard to believe that's iSn't it?' he said with great good-humour. 'I loll garcon in those days.' And he nodded
at himself, as though at his son, affectionately. I politely rejected any such incredulity and de- cided that vanity and honesty were not neces- sarily incompatible. He went on : 'I expect you've heard some off-putting things about me. Fascist- beast, spoiled-brat, rude-to-waiters, bringing-my- Father's-grey-hairs-in-sorrow-to-the-grave, and all that sort of rot. I think you'll find it much exag- gerated.' I said I was sure I would.
There was still one small point to be settled —what was I to do. exactly'? At this, he became nervous again. (This is an afterthought. At that moment, I thought he was suddenly furious and bellicose. He seemed to be arguing with some invisible opponent hovering around within the room.) 'I'd like to make clear that you are not a ghost. I do not want to hear-that word. I want to forget that you are in any way involved in what I am writing.' We journalists, especially we freelance, we underpaid journalists, are used to our employers deceiving Themselves about their motives. So I accepted in my mind that I would be a ghost, but that I should keep my existence a secret. It slightly dented my view of Mr. Churchill as a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. Still, I needed the money.
Once again, I had to change my prognosis. I read up a storm in the London Library. I rushed round to press conferences. I hung about (very enjoyably) in El Nino overhearing what other newspapermen had learned but found incon- venient o print. I tooka positive pleasure writing information as flatly and as solidly on paper as it was presented in talk. And Mr. Churchill accepted everything I typed as raw material. He would read it over aloud several times, cross-examine me closely about each de- tail, dictate his version sometimes three or four times, and then oblige several distinguished people (often at three in the morning) to listen to a rough version until their only release was to contribute something—anything—to the grow- ing landslide of words. More than my basic blueprint very rarely survived Mr. Churchill's sifting process. Occasionally, I grew excited and concerned about a topic, or an aspect of a topic, and I would insert an aphorism or a witticism or an explosive image. It was invariably deleted. 'That is terribly funny and absolutely right,' he would say. 'But it is too clever for me. They would know I could not have thought of that.' The pressure to be a ghost very soon came from me and was resolutely refused by my employer. Far from disappearing after a week. I stayed on, very happily, for about two years.
It would be silly, and perhaps far too self- depreciatory, to suggest that I had no effect on Mr. Churchill's career. But my talents were much more employed as a reader and a listener than as a writer and talker. Late at night, or early in the morning, topped up with food and afloat on drink, I would offer my changes in phrasing or my alterations in direction. I was a sub-editor, not a speech-writer. Some of Mr. Churchill's friends were reluctant to accept this interpreta- tion. But I have rarely enjoyed myself so much, playing Professor Lindemann to his Winston. as in those roaring, pugnacious days.
Lord Beaverbrook, ever devious, ever cunning, kept his glittering eye on our relationship and was not above inserting a paragraph in the 'Londoner's Diary' hinting that Mr. Churchill's style had undergone a miraculous, and mystify- ing. transmutation since the date of my appear-
ance (a note only .comprehensible by, perhaps, half a dozen readers),, but Mr. Churchill's sub- sequent and continuing journalistic progress without me has shown no signs of slackening.
Mr. Evelyn Waugh is another-loving critic of Randolph Churchill who defiantly clings to the myth that his old friend depends for his source- material on a chain-gang of slave-scribblers. (Mr. Waugh and I met with Randolph once, when my intemperate abuse of this clever, snob- bish, Woosterish novelist---in my fond conviction --undoubtedly precipitated his illusions of Pin- foldian persecution. But more of this in my auto- biography.) Postcards still arrive signed 'E.W.,' after any of Randolph's articles, beginning, 'Please tell 'ghost-to distinguish between . . . ' or 'Ghost should take more care with the use of the subjunctive . . . ' No one else is likely to believe that Randolph Churchill wears any mask but his own face or speaks any words but those cast in his own belly.
If I do not write more about his newly-pub- lished autobiography, it is that I have heard all the anecdotes over the years delivered in person. They have not been much improved or polished. And this is what makes 21 Years so impressive if you are interested in the subject. It would be silly to pretend that anyone who had never been aroused by the name of Mr. Churchill (either of them) would be likely to enjoy this short, and laconically candid. work. The amazing and ingratiating thing about this first volume is that it reads as it has so • often been spoken to close friends in private. Undoubtedly, there are some confessions left unverbalised—but very, very few. (Between the Sunday Times serialisa- tion and the book, since no one else has men- tioned it, I would point out the disappearance of a rather unsavoury anecdote about Randolph's godfather, F. E. Smith, and of a rather endearing photograph of F. E.'s daughter, Lady Pamela Berry—can the 'deletion of the two be con- nected?) The style, such an odd yet readable mixture of Gibbon-Macaulay with snatches of Stalky and Co., has a hypnotic, flowing intimacy. It is a genuine opportunity to eavesdrop on the
puberty (or, at least, the super-ego's version) of our rulers. It goes by like a snooze on a train and it leaves behind exactly that kind of half-pleasur- able, half-disturbing hangover.
I would like to add, after registering my un- expected enjoyment of this odd segment of social history, one comment on the two portraits of Randolph Churchill in the book. It is conven- tional to politely regret the transformation of the Lazio painting of the young beauty into the back- cover John Bulmer photograph of the middle- aged bruiser.
Frankly, I prefer the latter. All children have to choose sometimes between their parents. The twenty-one-year-old Randolph is still almost all his mother—conventional, handsome, very nearly prissy— while the fifty-four-year-old is modelled after his father—unpredictable, puggish, very nearly revolutionary. For a male child of a great man, it is undoubtedly the right choice. Ran- dolph is often nasty, vindictive, bullying, beastly for a passing moment to the poor, the weak, the silly, the frightened. No one regrets this more than he does, an hour later. But the essential point to remember is that the same animus will be ejected against the rich, the powerful, the clever and the brave--and never regretted or withdrawn until they mend their ways. Randolph Churchill is a Robin Hood tireship designed to equalise the rich and the poor—we observers and spectators should not complain if we occasionally burn a little finger helping him come flaring and flaming into the enemy port.
Previous page
