The Churchill Series – July 13, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

On August 3, 1929 Churchill, still a member of Parliament but out of Cabinet office following the Conservative’s defeat in the recent general election, said from Southampton bound for a two month trip to Canada and America. He was accompanied by his eighteen year old son, Randolph, his brother, Jack, and Jack’s son, Johnny.

Clementine was to also have accompanied him but she had a tonsillectomy just before the trip. Her physician strongly advised she remain in England to recover. Churchill was keenly disappointed.

But as was typical of him he made the best of the situation. That included writing a series of letters to Clementine so she could "share" the trip with him. He wrote the first letter a few hours after his ship left Southampton:

All departures from home – even on pleasure are sad. The vessel drifts away from the shore & an ever-widening gulf opens between one and the citadel of one’s life and soul. …

You are quite right not to make plans till you feel yourself again. But then surely there are lots of delightful alternatives. … Do not exclude the USA.

We are plodding across a calm Channel & this goes to you from Cherbourg.

I expect to do a lot of work – Certainly 2 articles before landing & to read copiously into Marlborough. …

Send me a wireless to mid-ocean to tell me how you are getting on.

With tender love
Your devoted
W
X X X X X

On August 8, with the ocean crossing nearing its end, Churchill writes:

We have had a wonderfully good passage with only one day of unpleasant motion. …

The boys were called by the Captain at 6:30 a.m. to see a large iceberg – 150 ft. high – which passed at no great distance. They did not, however, wake me, which was a pity. …

There is a fine swimming pool on board where the youth of both sexes play water polo. I stick to the hot water. …

What thoughts passed through your mind as you read those parts of the letters?

I thought of the two sentences beginning “All departures from home …” and admired as always Churchill’s descriptive power.

“Send me a wireless to mid-ocean…” Today they’d be calling each other on their cells.
And we very proberbly wouldn't have the letters.

The 150 ft. iceberg. Churchill and everyone else on board must have thought of the Titanic. It went down less than 20 years before; he knew many of those who perished.

In tomorrow’s post, Churchill and his party – he called it the “troupe” - arrive in Quebec. He’ll tour the city and take a drive in the countryside. He tells Clementine all about it. Then the troupe heads for Montreal and points West.
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Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Edited by their daughter, Mary Soames. (pgs. 334-336)