THREE SCORE AND TEN
By JAMES BRIDIE
IF Mr. Churchill had not existed it would have been necessary to I invent him ; but who, in the whole catalogue of ingenious story- tellers, could have done the job? A publisher or an impresario of films would have had a bad time in searching for the right man. Homer had qualifications. He could have conveyed the " earthiness " of his hero. But he was hardly an expert on the twentieth century. The Elizabethans would have got it all wrong, for, strangely enough, Mr. Churchill is very little an Elizabethan. The anonymous author of The Book of Kings is a little too oriental, and any kind of Saga would have been terrible. Probably a committee of Scotsmen, writing on a scenario by Homer, could have made something of it. My suggestions would be Blind Harry, William Dunbar, Thomas Urquhart, James Boswell, Tobias Smollett and R. L. Stevenson. Defoe might have been brought in as editor. The Scotsmen could have done conscientious justice to the elements of Hamlet, Ariel and Puck (to say nothing of Falstaff) and would certainly have appreciated the Shorter Catechist. They, of all people, would also have noticed that they had in hand an extremely practical person.
I cannot help feeling that Mr. Churchill's English and American fellow-countrymen have missed this practicality. Those of us who have lived through the Churchill Era have been dazzled by what some journalists call a colourful personality. We have been cheered throughout our usually dull and often distressing lives by the flashing across our horizon of this filibustering, buccaneering, slambanging, rhetorical, not ungracious, one-down-and-t'other-come-on, flam- boyant, formidable soldier of fortune.* Scotsmen alone have long divined something more solid in this Playboy of the two Hemispheres.
It is true that Scottish electors have sometimes rejected him ; but electors are peculiar people. A Scottish Saint presided over his birth and a Scottish lady granted him her heart and hand. In the War of 1914-1918, a Scottish Regiment found him acceptable as a commander. Nobody at this time of day will impugn Scottish judgement, and the verdict of that country is undoubtedly favour- able. We find him a capable man.
The English are suspicious of genius. From time to time they have given him power ; but, until to-day, there has always been a stout string attached to it, and he has never held for long a position of high influence. He has held these positions long enough to set the mark of good craftsmanship on each of them and he has had little thanks for it. The part he played in Early Closing, Prison Reform and the break-up of the Poor Law was a great one and has almost been forgotten.
He has never been allowed to be Foreign Secretary ; and yet the only really great achievements in foreign affairs in the last fifty years have been partly or wholly his work. Two or three pieces of British architecture have stood up to extraordinary stresses. It would not have been surprising if our Palestine troubles had resulted in a new and terrible Islamic Revolt. Expert incendiaries laboured towards this very end. But Palestine was surrounded by well-built Arab 14" What? Shall we never shed blood? "—R. L. Stevenson.
States which stood the strain. We have T. E. Lawrence's authority for saying that the onlie begetter of these states was Churchill. I do not know how much he was responsible for the settlement after the South African War ; but the sure touches of magnanimity;artistry and common sense are obvious there, and it has been proved a good thing that they are. The same creative hand can be seen in present- day Eire. " God," they say, " made the Irish and they aren't much." But we have so far got through this war without many lethal mani- festations from that quarter. • We have Churchill and Michael Collins to thank for this state of matters. And so on. I know little or nothing of such things, but it appears to me that these are instances of statesmanship beside which even the feats of Simon, Hoare, Austen Chamberlain, Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald need not be ashamed to stand. As I say, this side of the man would appeal to my committee of inventors. We could find plenty capable of inventing our hubristic adventurer, but few who could toughen the fabric with foresight and intellectual competence.
Another difficulty is the difficulty of Period. Providence, as it happens, has chosen the correct Period to a hairsbreadth, but no prophet or poet could have placed Mr. Churchill so accurately in Time. Mr. Churchill himself has been doubtful as to which period he properly belongs. Costume is a pathognomonic symptom of Period, and Mr. Churchill has always rebelled against the current fashion. We see him in Central Africa wearing pearl-buttoned boots and, at the White House, in dungarees ; and nobody has ever been able to explain or to co-relate with the times his hats. Unless they typify an unheard-of crisis in civilisation, it is difficult to say what his garments typify. They are, however, in some singular way, dandified. Perhaps we should add Sir Max Beerbohm to the com- mittee.
It would not have been so troublesome to invent his heredity. As he must be a world' figure, the old aristocracy of England and the new aristocracy of America are quite promising stud farms. A reign- ing beauty of the one and a mettlesome genius of the other are an ideal mother and father. One of his very juvenile speeches contained something like the following passage:— " As you well know, my father, the late Lord Randolph Churchill, was known as the only Tory Democrat. His motto was ever the People's good. I come, Sir, in no way dissociating myself from the work done by my father. On the contrary, Sir, I come to raise a tattered standard that I found upon a stricken field."
Both lines of heredity speak in these words. Possibly Herman Melville and Edward Gibbon (in collaboration) could have created a Churchill in this dimension.
The Artist, the Original, and the Wit are not beyond the inven- tion of man to compose ; and here it might be wise to enlist the services of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas, with a few hints from J. B. P. Moliere. It would be necessary to construct a great comedy figure. • A few sketches by Caran d'Ache would not be amiss. Our septuagenarian leaping up pilots' ladders and waving pith helmets on top of umbrellas, or our adolescent addressing burning words to the Empire promenade could each be a proper subject for the picturesque novelist's art.
In the weeks leading up to the thirtieth of November, many fountain pens and typewriters have been attempting to do justice to this remarkable tnan. I have, hinted that this is beyond the powers of most contemporary talent. The greatest writers of the past must have boggled at him. Their only feeling of relief would have been at the reflection that he had never written any poetry. Even if their massive help was at our disposal, we should have no guar- antee that they would succeed. We should have to sit back in out chairs and call to Beethoven to play something for us—a better Eroica, we should hope. It would start with the V motif, which Mr. Churchill has chosen for his " signature theme " and then ... .
Previous page
