Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill (25 page)

Churchill’s bravery was not just mentioned in every article about the attack on the train, it was the heart of the story and, usually, the headline as well.
Instead of commenting on the fact that five men had been killed and nearly sixty taken prisoner, the headline in the
Yorkshire Evening Post
had shouted, “MR. CHURCHILL’S HEROISM.” The
Standard
had reported that “
Mr. Winston Churchill is said to have behaved during the skirmish with the greatest coolness and courage.” He had “
rallied the party frequently, and fear
lessly exposed himself,” the
Daily News
wrote, and the
Daily Telegraph
informed its readers that this “young man of brilliant promise” had not just helped to free the train but “manfully help[ed] to carry the wounded.”

Churchill’s own paper, the
Morning Post
, had not let the opportunity go to waste, boldly broadcasting the heroism of its man in the field. Its headline on the day of Jennie’s benefit, “OUR CAPTURED CORRESPONDENT,” was followed by a subtitle, in only slightly smaller type, that touted, “Mr. Winston Churchill’s Gallantry.” It also quoted from other newspapers’ accounts of the attack, including the
Daily Mail
, the paper that had attempted to hire Churchill first. “
The dangers of the modern war correspondent’s work,” the
Daily Mail
had argued, “are strikingly exemplified by the capture of the
Morning Post
’s brilliant young special, Mr. Winston Churchill.”

Talk of Churchill’s political career was also revived, with predictions for his soaring success, should he make it out of South Africa alive. “
We wish him a safe return to England to contest Oldham in the Conservative interest,” the
Nottingham Evening Post
wrote, “successfully we trust.” Not surprisingly, Atkins had also chimed in, predicting in the
Manchester Guardian
that his friend and fellow correspondent would make a triumphant return to politics. “
This is the way to Parliament,” he wrote, “whither [Churchill] will carry, if he survive these perilous days.”

So loud and universal was the praise for Churchill, in fact, that one newspaper felt it necessary to point out what the others in their excitement seemed to have forgotten: He wasn’t even a member of the military. “
We are very sorry that Mr. Winston Churchill should have been taken prisoner, and we have no doubt that he behaved with hereditary gallantry,” an editorial in the
Globe
began sulkily, before launching into a bitter complaint. “But we protest against despatches which represent him, a correspondent, and therefore properly a mere spectator, as ‘rallying’ the troops and calling upon them to ‘be men,’ while no mention is made of the officers actually on duty. One might suppose, from such a message, that Mr. Churchill undertook the con
duct of the fight, and that the real commanders were doing nothing while it was in progress.”

Even at Jennie’s sumptuous fund-raiser, the conversation revolved not around the
Maine
, or even the war, but young Churchill. “
Everyone naturally discussed the achievement of Mr. Winston Churchill,” the
York Herald
reported. There too, however, controversy was already brewing. Would Lady Churchill use her connections to try to free her son, as she had so often used them to send him to war? “The talk about the highest social influence being exerted in order to secure [Churchill’s] release in preference to that of prisoners unconnected with noble families,” one reporter wrote, “is most strongly deprecated.”

At home, for once in the spotlight not because of her own exploits but those of her son, Jennie suddenly found herself the object not of admiration, disapproval or jealousy, but pity. She was inundated with letters and telegrams, filled with a strange mixture of condolences for her son’s capture and congratulations on his bravery. Among the letters was one from Thomas Walden, once her husband’s valet and now her son’s, who had joined the Imperial Light Horse after Winston’s capture so that he could remain in South Africa to await, he hoped, his employer’s release. “
I came down in the armoured train with the driver, who is wounded in the head with a shell,” he wrote to Jennie. “He told me all about Mr. Winston. He says there is not a braver gentleman in the Army.” The editor of the
Daily News Weekly
apparently agreed, writing to Lady Churchill to ask if she would be willing to write a caption for a sketch he wanted to publish depicting “
the gallantry of WSC.”

The only letter Jennie took much notice of, however, was from her young lover, George Cornwallis-West. An officer in the Scots Guards, George was by then also in South Africa and had written to Jennie as soon as he heard the news of Winston’s capture. “
I am so grieved to
see by today’s paper that Winston has been taken prisoner,” he wrote to her from the Orange River Camp. “I do hope he will be released soon as a non combatant and that nothing will happen to him—how anxious you will be, my poor darling. How I wish I could help you.”

Had Churchill had his way, George would remain as far away from his mother as it was possible to be. He had known before leaving England that the dashing young officer wanted to marry Jennie, and that, despite some reservations, she was seriously considering the idea. “
Of course, the glamour won’t last forever,” she had written breezily to a friend, “but why not take what you can?” The thought of his mother marrying a man who was not only his age but, as one of Jennie’s later biographers would write, “
a bit short on brain,” made Churchill miserable, and he had not hidden his feelings on the subject. “
I hate the idea of your marrying,” he had told her.

George had not endeared himself to Churchill in recent months, as he had already begun to adopt the manner of a disapproving stepfather. After running into Winston a few days before he boarded the
Dunottar Castle
, George had reported the encounter to Jennie, clicking his tongue in avuncular dismay. “
Don’t tell him I said so, but he looked just a young dissenting parson, hat brushed the wrong way, and at the back of his head, awful old black coat and tie,” George had written. “He is a good fellow but—very untidy.”

Churchill’s only hope lay in the fact that he was not alone in trying to prevent his mother from marrying George. George’s family had done all they could to discourage the relationship. After trying and failing to keep George from seeing Jennie, and then to interest him in other, more suitable women, out of desperation George’s father had turned for help to the only person he thought might be able to talk some sense into Lady Churchill: her older son. Knowing that he had no hope of changing his mother’s mind, Winston had instead written to George. “
I cannot tell you what he said as he refused me the right to disclose a word,” George later told Jennie, but “his arguments were very strong.”

Churchill had one other ally: the Prince of Wales, who had not only chided Jennie but warned George that he was making a terrible
mistake.
That summer, the prince had pulled George aside on his yacht, the HMY
Britannia
, and urged him to reconsider marrying a woman who was so much older than he was. He had also written to Jennie, sternly telling her that he hoped she would not continue her “flirtation” with George. In response, Jennie, bristling with indignation, had reminded the prince that it was her life they were discussing, not his own. “
It has been my privilege to enjoy your friendship for upwards of quarter of a century,” he wrote to her in reply, “therefore why do you think it necessary to write me a rude letter simply because I have expressed strongly my regret at the marriage you are about to make?”

The more their friends and family pushed, the more angry and obstinate Jennie grew, and the more lovesick George became. He referred to Jennie as “
my darling little missie,” swore that he could not live without her and loved her “more & more if possible.” Churchill, however, still held out hope that the wedding would not happen. “
After all I don’t believe you will marry,” he had written to his mother not long before setting sail for South Africa. “My idea is that the family pressure will crush George.”

The resistance to her relationship with George had, of course, only made Jennie more determined than ever to marry him. In fact, she hoped to be reunited with him soon. Although Jennie had not planned to accompany the
Maine
to South Africa, she was beginning to change her mind. While throwing herself into the fund-raising (the benefit at Claridge’s alone had raised £1,500, around $200,000 in today’s money), she had been able to forget for a time her worries about Winston. “
Had it not been for the absorbing occupation of the
Maine
,” she would later write, “I cannot think how I could have got through that time.”
She also realized, however, that the ship could be useful to her in another way. Should she make the journey, she might be able to see George while she was there.

With the money Jennie and her committee had raised, the trip
to South Africa need not be as onerous as it might otherwise have been.
The ship, which had been donated by the American businessman Bernard Baker, had in its previous life been used to transport everything from cattle to baby elephants for the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and was therefore in desperate need not just of scrubbing but of an almost complete overhaul. With the help of the Royal Navy, the committee planned to add two decks, electric lighting and India-rubber flooring throughout the ship. There would be five wards, with more than two hundred beds, electric fans and refrigerators, and an operating theater with modern X-ray equipment.

Jennie, however, had some further renovations in mind that were perhaps not strictly medical in nature. Used to living in splendor her entire life, from her father’s Brooklyn four-story to Blenheim Palace, she was not about to bunk down in a tiny, sparsely furnished cabin on the
Maine
.
In the end, her room would look more like a small Fifth Avenue apartment than quarters on a hospital ship. Crowded in among the enormous silk pillows, heavy, cinched curtains and potted plants was a surprising amount of furniture, from a tall, ornately carved cabinet that had a narrow, fold-out desk on hinges, to a richly upholstered sofa and even a large wooden pedestal table, crowded with clocks, framed photographs, tea trays and a cut-glass decanter. The room was, one nurse complained, “
decorated in a manner suggestive of a lady’s boudoir, rich in…luxuries.”

What would create even more controversy than her lavish quarters was Jennie’s open resistance to accommodating any religious sentiment on board. Like her son, Lady Churchill had little interest in organized religion, and even less patience for its trappings. While she was happy to help the soldiers and officers of the queen’s army, she certainly wasn’t going to subject herself to the dour world of religious zealotry while she was at it. Before setting sail, Jennie, one outraged South African reporter would write, “
had every scrap of religious literature—tracts, bibles, periodicals, leaflets etc—brought up on deck and the whole pitched overboard for the moral instruction of the fishes.”

Lady Churchill would soon be on her way to South Africa, wearing
an unusually fashionable nurse’s uniform that she had designed herself, with a lace blouse and a wide belt that accentuated her slim waist. When she arrived, however, she would see neither her lover—who would fall victim not to Boer bullets but to sunstroke and would be invalided home before she had even set sail—nor her son. As Jennie began to oversee the packing of her bags and the decorating of her cabin, Churchill was about to begin his life as a prisoner of war. It would prove to be a strange and uncertain time, one that he would hate, he later wrote, “
more than I have ever hated any other period in my whole life.”

CHAPTER 15

A CITY OF THE DEAD

W
hen his train pulled into Pretoria, Churchill listened as the door of his car was finally unlocked. Climbing out onto a dirt platform, blinking in the sunlight, he looked at the large crowd that had gathered around the station, and, for the first time since the war began, felt hatred for the enemy. “
The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely…claimed respect, if not sympathy,” he wrote. “But here in Pretoria all was petty and contemptible.” As he stood in a small space that had been carved out of the throng, his hands clasped behind his back and a look of contempt on his face, Churchill took in the people of Pretoria with a furious, raking glance. “
Ugly women with bright parasols, loafers and ragamuffins, fat burghers too heavy to ride at the front,” he would later write, remembering with scorn the Boers who had elbowed and squirmed their way through the crowd to get a better look at the prisoners. “Slimy, sleek officials of all nationalities—the red-faced, snub-nosed Hollander, the oily Portuguese half-caste.” Glaring into their eager, curious faces, he bristled at the idea of being their captive.