CHAPTER SEVEN

In which Mr. Winston Churchill loses his Temper, and Mr. Horatio Bottomley wins his Debate

You may, or you may not, have heard of the Oxford Union Society. It has a habit of producing future Prime Ministers. Among its past presidents it numbers such illustrious names as Gladstone, Salisbury, Asquith, Birkenhead, etc., etc., to say nothing of such minor fry as occasional Archbishops, diplomats and ambassadors.

Among its past presidents it also numbers myself. A matter again of no importance, except for the people with whom it brought me into touch.

Now, every president of the Oxford Union Society can invite, during his term of office, not more than two distinguished statesmen to address the Society. As soon as I had been elected I looked round for two men who might bring a little live blood into our somewhat academic discussions, and there seemed no better couple, for this purpose, than Winston Churchill, the Secretary for War, and Horatio Bottomley, M.P., who is at present languishing in gaol. Both expressed themselves as delighted to accept, and dates were fixed for their respective appearances.

A terrible problem faced me as Winston’s arrival drew near. I had to give a dinner, not only to him, but to his guests (four of them), and about a dozen others. When one dines in this fashion, one has to dine well, with Moët 1914 and all the usual things which go to make good oratory. Being quite devoid of funds, and having long before exhausted my allowance in riotous living, there seemed no alternative but to make a descent on an already overburdened parent. Then suddenly, a charming friend, who is now brightening a not very brilliant House of Commons, suggested that we should all dine with him ... a suggestion which was carried _nem. con._

Winston was the first great English statesman who ever dined with me (probably the last also). Remembering that it was he who had, on his own responsibility, given orders to the British Fleet at the outset of the War which were probably instrumental in saving the Empire, I sat gazing at him in a sort of awe. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘is the face that launched a thousand ships.’ And yet there was something a little incongruous about Winston Churchill in this tiny room. He was so vigorous, he breathed so hard, and spoke so quickly that one feared he might at any moment seize all his knives and forks and glasses and arrange them in the form of a field of battle to illustrate his martial theories.

This he actually did. I happened to mention that, in order to help our memory of the campaigns of Napoleon, I and several others who were working together, had composed a series of rhymes round the tributaries of the Po, which we found of the greatest value.

That set Winston off. He seized a knife, a fork, and a salt cellar and made with them a little plan round which he marched the imaginary armies of Napoleon. I have never heard anybody talk of war with such gusto. With each martial adjective, a light seemed to be turned on inside his head, his eyes gleamed, his lips parted, and he talked so vividly that the slight impediment in his speech, which he has always so pluckily fought, was forgotten. And when he had finished he gave me an exhaustive list of military treatises on Napoleon, which, needless to say, I did not attempt to read.

Winston was a wonderful talker that night--not only of war, but of other arts, notably of literature and painting. He asked how long it had taken me to write my novel _Prelude_.

‘I haven’t the least idea,’ I said, ‘because it was done in bits and patches over a period of about five months.’

‘Didn’t you work at it regularly?’

‘No. I don’t see how you can do work in that manner if it is to have any sort of claim to be emotional.’

‘Nonsense.’

I sat up, and Winston began to put forward some very interesting theories on the writing of books.

‘You should go to your room every day at nine o’clock,’ he said, ‘and say to yourself, “I am going to sit here for four hours and write.”’

‘But suppose you _can’t_ write? Suppose you’ve got a headache, or indigestion....’

‘You’ve got to get over that. If you sit waiting for inspiration, you will sit there till you are an old man. Writing is a job like any other job, like marching an army for instance. If you sit down and wait till the weather is fine, you won’t get very far with your troops. It’s the same with writing. Discipline yourself. Kick yourself. Irritate yourself. But write. It’s the only way.’

Advancing years have taught me that there is a good deal more than half of the truth in what Winston said. The ideal combination would seem to be a little of both spirits--the spirit that enabled Mozart to sit down, like an accountant, and write his divine melodies at his desk, and the spirit that urged Beethoven out into the woods and forests when the storm was at its height.

To return to Winston. He made a very good speech--(it was about Russia)--quite as good as those of the undergraduates who were opposing him--won his motion, and then trotted off to bed, with the cheers of a thousand young throats ringing in his ears.

The next day I called on him after breakfast and suggested that it might amuse him to walk round some of the colleges. ‘All right,’ he said, and we set out forthwith, while I tried to recall the names of the various buildings which one passed every day, but never recognized.

However, Winston strode along gloomily, smoking a cigar, tapping his stick on the pavement, and taking not the faintest notice of my chatter, which showed his good sense. Still, I wanted to know the reason for his ill-humour, and was about to ask him if he had got out of bed on the wrong side, when he said:

‘There was a shorthand reporter there last night, of course?’

I shook my head. ‘No. We don’t run to that.’

He glared at me in astonishment. ‘But there was a man from the _Morning Post_?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but he only takes extracts. Did you want a report?’

‘I should damned well think I did,’ replied the Secretary for War. ‘I said a lot of very--er--delicate things last night and it’s most important for me to know what I _did_ say.’

I remembered, with exquisite clarity, his remarks about footpads, assassins and other gentlemen with whom His Majesty’s Government, of which he was a prominent member, were at that period negotiating. And I also appreciated the fact that he was honest enough to stand up for his personal convictions at the risk of being severely censured by his colleagues. However, there seemed nothing to be done.

‘Perhaps,’ I remarked, with singularly misplaced brightness, ‘it may be a good thing in view of the delicacy of the discussion, that there _was_ a certain vagueness about what you actually said?’

For reply, he merely clasped his hands behind his back, made a clucking noise with his teeth and said:

‘Is that Lincoln or Exeter?’

That night, in the House of Commons, several indignant gentlemen rose to their feet to draw the attention of the House to the indiscretions of the Secretary for War at Oxford. Many uncomplimentary things were said before the matter was allowed to drop. For one night, at least, I experienced something of the thrill of government.

* * * * *

It is a long step from Winston Churchill to Horatio Bottomley, but not quite as long as might at first be imagined. Both men have a good deal in common--(this is meant as a tribute to Horatio rather than a reflection on Winston)--and if Horatio had been to Harrow instead of to a little school in the East End of London, it is not impossible that he would have risen to Cabinet rank, have stirred the nation with patriotic speeches, and have gone down to history as one of the great men of our times.

At any rate, he seemed to me a fascinating figure, and one who should enliven any debate in which he spoke.

I therefore wrote to him, suggesting that he might care to visit us. By return of post I received a reply, typed on the sort of notepaper that is described by stationers as ‘superfine,’ and couched in the third person. It stated that ‘Mr. Bottomley considered himself honoured by the invitation, which he had great pleasure in accepting. Mr. Bottomley would also like to know the subject of the debate. If he had any say in the matter he would prefer to speak in favour of the Independent Political Party. Failing that, he would like to attack the League of Nations, which he considered a useless and a pernicious institution.’ The Independent Party won the day.

On the night of Bottomley’s arrival, I was suddenly sent into a panic by the news that a gang of undergraduates, who considered that the dignity of the Union was being outraged by including Bottomley among its ‘distinguished visitors,’ had arranged to kidnap him. The plan was to meet him at the station before anybody else could get near, to hurry him into a motor-car, and to drive straight up to Boar’s Hill, where he would be given a good dinner, and allowed to depart in peace after the debate was over. I immediately went down to the station, seized several burly porters and informed them of the situation. Whether or no these measures had the effect of nipping the plot in the bud, history will never know. He arrived safely.

A grotesque figure, one would have said at first sight. Short and uncommonly broad, he looked almost gigantic in his thick fur coat. Lack-lustre eyes, heavily pouched, glared from a square and sallow face. He seemed to have a certain resentment against the world at large. It was not till he began to talk that the colour mottled his cheeks and the heavy hues on his face were lightened.

Was there any excitement at his coming? Yes? He smiled like a child. A lot of big men came down to speak, didn’t they? Asquith, Winston, Lloyd George? Yes? ‘And now, Horatio.’ He rubbed his coarse hands and chuckled.

At the entrance to the hotel he stood sunning himself in such publicity as was afforded by the gaping hall porter and his underlings. He stumped across to the office, his fur coat swinging open, drew from his pocket a heavy gold pen, and signed his name with a flourish. The signature was illegible, but the gesture was Napoleonic.

He dined with me that night, and kept the small gathering of undergraduates I had invited in a constant splutter of unholy laughter. ‘Do I pay my income tax?’ he said. ‘Not I.’ And he told us, with a dazzling display of figures, exactly how he managed to avoid that obligation. To my dying day I shall regret that I forget his method. He discussed religion, with his tongue well out in his cheek. He drew for us a little portrait gallery of contemporary politicians, as crude but as vivid as the work of an inspired pavement artist. Birkenhead seemed to be the sole politician for whom he entertained any genuine regard.

‘When Birkenhead was seriously ill a few months ago,’ he said, ‘I was the only man he allowed into his room. I would go and sit with him for hours, sometimes talking, sometimes just silent. Funny, isn’t it?’

We adjourned to the debating hall, were greeted with uproarious applause, took our places. As the debate proceeded, I looked from time to time at Bottomley. He seemed, suddenly, to have grown nervous. His face was flushed and hot, and from time to time he mopped his forehead with a large silk handkerchief. The light and airy chatter, the brilliant irrelevancies, of the Oxford Union seemed to be filling him with a certain mistrust. He had never known an audience like this. Every phrase, every gesture, he watched with narrowed eyes, leaning forward intently. And then he rose to speak. He took the wind out of our sails from the very beginning.

I had been afraid that before this, ‘the most critical audience in the world,’ he would try to assume an air of culture that was foreign to him, that he would endeavour to put on airs. He did exactly the reverse. After his opening sentence there was a moment when everything hung in the balance. He made some rather inapt historical reference, paused, and was for a moment at a loss. And then, quite calmly and deliberately, he looked round and said:

‘Gentlemen: I have not had your advantages. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life.’

Dead silence. I sat back, marvelling at the consummate stagecraft of the man. After that brief remark, any men who laughed at his pronunciation or his mannerism would be cads, and they knew it. And he knew that they knew it.

From that moment, he sailed on triumphantly. His eloquence was uncanny. For sheer force of oratory I have never heard anyone like him. Compared with him, Asquith was a dry stick. (I am talking of the manner, not of the matter.) And his aptness of retort was modelled on the best Union styles. For instance, he happened to use, during one of his passages, the phrase ‘the right to work.’ A Welsh miner who was in the gallery, and who was, as usual, on strike, cried out ironically, ‘’ear, ’ear.’

Bottomley did not look at him. He merely added, in exactly the same voice as he had used before, ‘a right which I am sure we will gladly grant to the honourable member.’ Delicious.

Nor was his repartee merely flippant. One of the preceding speakers had made a great hit by referring to him, somewhat contemptuously, as ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’ Bottomley took up the gage and hurled it with unerring skill back into the face of his opponent. ‘All my life,’ he cried, ‘I have been a voice crying in the wilderness. All my life I have battled alone, fought alone, struggled for causes that other men have deserted as hopeless. A voice crying in the wilderness! Yes, gentlemen, and I am proud of it!’ Thunders of applause.

He won his motion by several hundred votes, and when he left the hall, they cheered him to the echo.

But he did not seem particularly elated by his success. When he returned to a party I gave for him at my room afterwards, the voting had totalled about 1,100--a few less than a record attendance. ‘I’d hoped I should draw the biggest house you ever had,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Are you sure there was no mistake in the counting?’

I assured him that the tellers were thoroughly trustworthy.

He nodded. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. Still--it’s a pity.’

Further regrets were stopped by the discovery that nobody could open any of the champagne. ‘Give me a bottle,’ said Bottomley. ‘I’ll show you a trick.’

He seized a bottle in his podgy hand, went to the door, half opened it, shut it again, gave the bottle a pull, and lo!--the cork was removed. As he drank our healths he looked across and said ‘Damned fine champagne.’

He was either a liar or a very bad judge of champagne, for it was the worst wine I have ever tasted.

* * * * *

We had arranged to breakfast together the next morning, and at nine o’clock I arrived at the hotel. It was a drizzling, dreary sort of morning, with a cold wind, and an indeterminate mist over the roofs. Bottomley came downstairs looking very tired. The lustre had faded from the heavy eyes, the bulky frame had lost all elasticity.

‘And what would you like for breakfast?’ I asked him.

He protruded the tip of his tongue, paused, and then gave me a wink. All Whitechapel was in that wink.

‘A couple of kippers,’ he said, ‘and a nice brandy and soda.’

I gave the order, as gravely as possible, to the waiter, and watched him gulp his brandy, leaving the kippers untouched. He cheered up after that, and by the time his cab had arrived he was quite gay. ‘I’ve enjoyed myself,’ he said to me when I bade him good-bye. ‘Enjoyed myself like hell.’

It will need a clever man to write _finis_ to an analysis of the character of Horatio Bottomley--part genius, part scoundrel, and yet, wholly human.