Resemblances - My father and Churchill

Especially when Churchill was a youngish man, he looked like my father. My father also looked like Peter Ustinov, and had the same kind of voice. But the Churchill thing is the strangest - they also had exactly the same handwriting. I saw Churchill's writing in the War Cabinet Rooms and could hardly believe the close resemblance.

Sometimes they dredge up a new old pic of Churchill and I have the odd feeling I am looking at my father - or even my brother. There is the same moody intelligence, an abstracted look. I know him so well I almost am the same person - that's how I felt about my father, sometimes.

My father could make you believe he was an amazing, wonderful man, and he traded on this ability, without actually being in any way amazing or wonderful, but he was competent and intelligent, a professional engineer. It was a pity he wanted so much to be more than that, and messed up in business, losing all his money. That was not his only problem. He also like to charm women and to have their admiration. He liked making them laugh. Women of his own class tended to see through him and find him lacking in substance - and he hated their low opinion, so he always went for women of a lower social strata. He used to say he hated "school marms" (educated middle-class women) and refused to come to Parents' evenings. My mother used to ask me with an imploring face if she had to go? I said she had to. The "school marms" intimidated her and she had no idea what to ask them. I advised her to "ask Jackie's mum what she asks". But really, the other mums mostly gave her that excluded feeling too.

A man not unlike my father 

I read something recently about Churchill's relationship with his brother - he tended to bask in the public gaze himself, and not wish his brother to gain the limelight at all. I suppose as children they were in competition for limited parental attention, and that formed Churchill's personality. It must have been very strange to know that your mother is the King's mistress. All the rejection that Churchill suffered in his childhood later came out as depression. But he had a very brave, buoyant personality.

Like Churchill, my father went to boarding school at the age of 7, and was part of that system. He didn't look back at his schooldays with much affection. You wonder if it was emotionally damaging. The only things it gave him were a sense of superiority and the door to Cambridge University. He used to mention Cambridge a lot - but he said , when my mother criticised him for showing off, that going to Cambridge is something worth showing off about.!!

We went to Kent for some muddy walks

at this time we usually go to the Lake District but ha! we cannot so easily be predicted. The poor Lakes District is flooded and will be so boggy.  Better to go for 2 days to Kent - about 2 hours drive away to walk in the mud there and watch TV from the comfort of an enormous hotel bed. But I hated the hotel bed. It was very large and very hard and made me feel as though I was lying on a table for some kind of inspection.

So we went to Chartwell and there was not much to see but we looked at the vegetable garden, which is new, to see how they do their raspberries. In our allotment we planted 15 canes just before Christmas. We planted them in 2 lines. Clearly they are meant to be supported because a kind person had gone to the 2 original canes we planted (to make the plot look less empty) and hammered in a small log behind each. At Chartwell the supports were like fence posts and the wires were heavy gauge but not under tension.

We also saw Churchill's paintings in the studio, on a gloomy day with inadequate lighting, and I was slightly cross that the National Trust don't feel as though it would be in keeping to light the pictures properly. You can see there are pictures on shelves, but that's about all. But perhaps Churchill was right about them, perhaps they are not, most of them, very good? But they are very much to my taste.

Here is a tree at Chartwell, quite near the house, which was a really good unusual tree. I am afraid my pictures are blurred.

Cryptomeria Japonica

Cryptomeria

Genus

Cryptomeria is a monotypic genus of conifer in the cypress family Cupressaceae, formerly belonging to the family Taxodiaceae. It includes only one species, Cryptomeria japonica. It is endemic to Japan, where it is known as sugi. The tree is often called Japanese cedar in English, though the tree is not related to the true cedars.

The end of the Great War, recorded by Virginia Woolf

Before I go on to "To the Lighthouse" I want to write about this. This is where Virginia W, in her diary, starts to write for posterity, because she knew she was living in Interesting Times. It's also rather sickening, because the troops were fighting right to the very end, even though the war had been won -   they had to carry on killing and being killed. This should NEVER happen. Surely a ceasefire could have been called?

Sat 12th October
Whatever we have done this week has this extraordinary background of hope; a tremendously enlarged version of the feeling I can remember as a child as Christmas approached. the Northcliffe papers do all they can to insist upon the indispensability and delight of war. They magnify our victories to make our mouths water for more; they shout with joy when the Germans sink the Irish mail; but they do also show some signs of apprehension that Wilson's terms may be accepted. L. has just come in from Staines with a paper which says, with obvious gloom, that the rumour is that Germany agrees to evacuation. She is not, of course, they add, to be allowed to make any sort of terms.

Tuesday 15th October
I did not think I should so soon have to describe a meeting with a cabinet minister ... Herbert Fisher's visit... was very obviously due to old family affection.  ... Was I nervous or proud, or anything but interested & anxious to pick his brains for news? I don't think I felt a moment's agitation. ... he has lost his lean intellectual look; his hollow cheeks are filled; ... the number of deaths in his house caused this perhaps; but I can't help thinking that London life has rid him of his desire to say clever things to undergraduates all the time.

"We've won the war today" he said at once. " I saw Milner this morning, & he says we shall have peace by Christmas. The Germans have made up their minds they can't fight a retreat...Of course we can't accept their present terms. Why, that would leave them still the greatest military power in Europe. they could begin again in ten years time. But it rests with the French. Lloyd George is going to Paris on Monday; but they are holding out for the evacuation of Alsace Lorraine as a guarantee. We shall probably demand the disarmament of certain regiments too. But we've won the war."

There is now a good prospect of a complete defeat of the German army; Foch says "I have not yet had my battle". Despite the extreme vindictiveness of our press and the French press, Herbert believed that we are going to baulk Foch of his battle, partly because the Germans will accept any terms to avoid it. "Lloyd George has told me again and again that he means to be generous to the Germans. "We want a strong Germany" he says. the Kaiser will probably go.... they've been taught to be brutal. But it hasn't paid. Each one of their crimes has turned out badly. ... it cost us £1,000 to kill a German at the battle of the Somme [1916]; now it costs £3,000. "

... in a little room in Downing Street, where, as he said, the wireless messages are racing in from all over the world, ... where you have to settle off hand questions of enormous difficulty and importance - where the fate of armies does more or less hang upon what two or three elderly gentlemen decide. Herbert thinks there are 2 or 3 geniuses in the cabinet (L. George, Balfour, & possibly Winston Churchill - his definition being that they make everything appear different) & a number of mediocrities.

Friday 18th October

... Wilson's second note came out on Tuesday, in which he used the word 'peradventure'; so far the Germans have not answered. But their Retreat goes on, & last night, beautiful, cloudless, still & moonlit, was to my thinking he first of peace, since one went to bed fairly positive that never again in all our lives need we dread the moonlight. [the irony could break your heart.]

24th October
We took tram to Kingston & there heard the paper boys shouting out about the President's message, which we bought & devoured in the train. The main points are that he is keeping negotiations going, though the Times came out with a great headline "No parley" this morning. He discriminates too, between the German people & the Kaiser; he will consider an armistice with the one but only complete surrender with the other.

...avoiding London, because of the influenza - (we are, by the way, in the midst of a plague unmatched since the Black Death, according to the Times, who seem to tremble lest it may seize upon Lord Northcliffe, & thus precipitate us into peace).

Saturday 9th November
Lord Mayor's day among other things, & one of the two last of war, I suppose. It's just possible that Lottie may bring us news that the armistice is signed within an hour. People buy papers at a great rate; but except for an occasional buzz round a newspaper boy & a number of shop girls provided with the Evening News in the train one feels nothing different in the atmosphere.. the general state perhaps is one of dazed surfeit; here we've had one great relief after another; you hear the paper boys calling out that Turkey has surrendered, or Austria given up, ..

but apparently Katherine Murry had heard someone say "we're giving them everything and getting nothing". Since then it is difficult to see how the most bloodthirsty citizens can squeeze anything more out of Germany.

Monday 11 November
Twenty five minutes ago the guns went off, announcing peace. A siren hooted on the river, They are hooting still. A few people ran to look out of windows. ...so far neither bells nor flags, but the wailing of sirens & intermittent guns.

Tuesday 12 November
...we were both conscious of a restlessness which made it seem natural to be going up to London. Disillusionment began after 10 minutes in the train. A fat slovenly woman in black velvet and feathers with the bad teeth of the poor insisted upon shaking hands with two soldiers ... she was half drunk already, & soon produced a large bottle of beer which she made them drink of; & then she kissed them ...but she and her like possessed London, & alone celebrated peace in their sordid way, staggering up the muddy pavements in the rain, decked with flags themselves, & voluble at sight of other people's flags. The Heavens disapproved and did their utmost to extinguish, but only succeeded in making feathers flop & flags languish. Taxicabs were crowded with whole families, grandmothers and babies, showing off; & yet there was no centre, no form for all this wandering emotion to take. The crowds had nowhere to go, nothing to do; they were in the state of children with too long a holiday. ..there seemed to be no mean between tipsy ribaldry & rather sour disapproval. Besides the discomfort tried every one's temper. it took us from 4 to 6 to get home; standing in queues, every one wet, many shops shut...

Friday 15 November
You can go to London without meeting more than two drunk soldiers; only an occasional crowd blocks the street. In a day or two it will be impossible for a private to threaten to knock out the brains of an officer, as I saw done the other day in Shaftesbury Avenue.

Churchill's Black Dog and other essays -by Anthony Storr

Churchill had a depression that was entirely explicable. He was not loved, as a child, by his parents, and although he idealised them he knew that they did not return his love. Sent to boarding school as a small boy, his letters to his mother clearly express his hopeless longing for her interest. His anger with her (or them) turned to other targets, eventually it turned inwards and became depression.

The adult Churchill found ways of coping with his depression. One of them was to set himself challenges, like building a wall, and another was to focus on creative output - writing and painting. His painting is remarkable for the bright, sunlit colours he used - and it seems he consciously used these to cheer himself up. This is one example of his practical approach to his Black Dog.

Storr was a psychoanalyst, who admired Churchill for his courage in the face of this crippling woe, and also, he came from the same kind of background - the prep school, public school elite which has to cope with emotional damage without complaint because of its commensurate privileges. An admiring, empathetic analysis is the first essay in this fascinating book that looks into the possible sources of creativity and genius.

In old age Churchill no longer had the energy - physical or creative - to keep depression at bay, and he spent days sitting in front of the fire without speaking, sunk in a depression that lasted for perhaps five years or longer. Nobody would wish this on anyone and it was a particularly sad end of life for someone whose testing hour had not found him wanting in courage.

Storr also writes about Kafka, who suffered from having a very poor self-image which prevented him from forming close and happy relationships. His sense of identity was weak, and he felt threatened by the company of other people. But his writing transformed his painful personal experiences into something that still intrigues readers. He felt that he was "to be punished throughout his life for some unspecified crime". His life pre-dates the Holocaust, but he was a Jew in Prague, and soon that was to be crime enough.

Another essay deals with the strange temperament of Isaac Newton, although I am not convinced that Newton was depressed. Initially, he was well-nurtured by his mother, but when she re-married she sent him away to his grandparents. He may have felt rejected, but on the other hand he may have become an anti-social eccentric whatever had happened to him!