(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)
In Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship Jon Meacham provides a beautifully written account of Churchill’s March, 1946 visit to the grave of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The grave is in a small garden a few hundred feet from the Hyde Park house where Roosevelt was born, and which remained his home throughout his life.
Meacham (pgs. 361-362):
Eleanor met Churchill and Clementine, and they walked to the garden. The former prime minister stood, hatless, staring at his friend’s grave. Watching Churchill, Eleanor “felt sure that he was thinking of the years when he and my husband had worked in such close cooperation to win the war.”
Only the clicks of newsmen’s cameras capturing the scene broke the silence as Churchill contemplated the white tombstone and the flowers before it. “I think it was a day of great emotion for Mr. Churchill,” Eleanor wrote. “Besides the respect he had for my husband as a statesman, which made it possible for them to work together even when they differed, he also had a real affection for him as a human being, just as my husband had for him.”
For three minutes Churchill said nothing, his hands in his overcoat pockets. Franklin Roosevelt had been perhaps the most complex human being he had ever known – difficult and demanding and frustrating, but compelling and warm and sparkling. Dark and light, mixed up together.
1 comments:
I've read that book (and several others on FDR and Churchill) and I have to agree with that conclusion.
Churchill was widely hailed (well, except when he gave away a bunch of islands for lend lease) for his partnership with FDR.
Tony Blair isn't exactly getting the same reaction today.
-AC
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