My Early Life: The Autobiography. Winston Churchill
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the poor Indians, compared with taking part in a real European war, was only like riding in a paper-chase instead of in the Grand National. Still one must make the best one can of the opportunities of the age.
I enjoyed the riding-school thoroughly, and got on—and off—as well as most. My father arranged in my holidays, or vacations as it was now proper to call them, for me to go through an additional course of riding-school at Knightsbridge Barracks with the Royal Horse Guards. I bit the tan there on numerous occasions. Afterwards when I joined my regiment I had another full five months' course, and taking them altogether, I think I was pretty well trained to sit and manage a horse. This is one of the most important things in the world.
Horses were the greatest of my pleasures at Sandhurst. I and the group in which I moved spent all our money on hiring horses from the very excellent local livery stables. We ran up bills on the strength of our future commissions. We organized point-to-points and even a steeplechase in the park of a friendly grandee, and bucketed gaily about the countryside. And here I say to parents, especially to wealthy parents, 'Don't give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses.' No one ever came to grief—except honourable grief—through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses, or through backing horses, but never through riding them; unless of course they break their necks, which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die.
Once I became a gentleman cadet I acquired a new status in my father's eyes. I was entitled when on leave to go about with him, if it was not inconvenient. He was always amused by acrobats, jugglers, and performing animals; and it was with him that I first visited the Empire Theatre. He took me also to important political parties at Lord Rothschild's house at Tring, where most of the leaders and a selection of the rising men of the Conservative Party were often assembled. He began to take me also to stay with his racing friends; and here we had a different company and new topics of conversation which proved equally entertaining. In fact to me he seemed to own the key to everything or almost everything worth having. But if ever I began to show the slightest idea of comradeship, he was immediately offended; and when once I suggested that I might help his private secretary to write some of his letters, he froze me into stone. I know now that this would have been only a passing phase. Had he lived another four or five years, he could not have done without me. But there were no four or five years! Just as friendly relations were ripening into an Entente, and an alliance or at least a military agreement seemed to my mind not beyond the bounds of reasonable endeavour, he vanished for ever.
In the spring of 1894 it became clear to all of us that my father was gravely ill. He still persisted in his political work. Almost every week he delivered a speech at some important centre. No one could fail to see that these efforts were increasingly unsuccessful. The verbatim reports dropped from three to two columns and then to one and a half. On one occasion The Times mentioned that the hall was not filled. Finally I heard my mother and the old Duchess—who so often disagreed—both urging him to take a rest, while he persisted that he was all right and that everything was going well. I knew that these two who were so near and devoted to him would never have pressed him thus without the gravest need.
I can see my father now in a somewhat different light from the days when I wrote his biography. I have long passed the age at which he died. I understand only too plainly the fatal character of his act of resignation. He was 'the daring, pilot in extremity'. That was his hour. But conditions changed with the Unionist victory of 1886. Quiet times were required and political repose. Lord Salisbury represented to the nation what it needed and desired. He settled down heavily to a long steady reign. Naturally he was glad to have the whole power in his own hands, instead of dividing it with a restless rival, entrenched in the leadership of the House of Commons and the control of the public purse. It is never possible for a man to recover his lost position. He may recover another position in the fifties or sixties, but not the one he lost in the thirties or forties. To hold the leadership of a party or nation with dignity and authority requires that the leader's qualities and message shall meet not only the need but the mood of both.
Moreover from the moment Lord Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible in large measure for the affairs of the nation, he ceased in vital matters to be a Tory. He adopted with increasing zest the Gladstonian outlook, with the single exception of Irish Home Rule; and in all social and labour questions he was far beyond what the Whig or middle-class Liberal of that epoch could have tolerated. Even on Ireland his convictions were unusually independent. The Conservative Party would not have relished any of this. Indeed I think if he had lived to keep his health, it is more than likely that he would have resisted the South African War to an extent that would have exposed him to odium with the very working-class elements of whose goodwill he was so proud. His only real card of re-entry would have been to have forestalled Mr. Chamberlain's Protection campaign. Everything that I know suggests to me that he would far more likely have been one of its chief opponents. He was not the man to take his decisions from party caucuses. When he was faction-fighting he fought to win, seizing anything that came along. But when responsible, his contribution to public affairs was faithful and original. He never sat down to play a cold, calculated game. He said what he thought. It was better so.
Mr. Gladstone's reputation as an orator depends less upon his published speeches than upon the effect they produced at the time upon the audience. Lord Randolph Churchill's place in our political history is measured not by his words and actions, but by the impression which his personality made upon his contemporaries. This was intense, and had circumstances continued favourable, might well have manifested itself in decisive episodes. He embodied that force, caprice and charm which so often springs from genius.
Now that I have been reading over all the letters which he wrote to me laboriously with his own hand after the fashion of those days, I feel that I did not at the time appreciate how much he thought and cared for me. More than ever do I regret that we did not live long enough in company to know each other. I used to go to see Lord Rosebery in the later years of his life because, apart from the respect I bore this distinguished man, I loved to hear him talk about my father. I had a feeling of getting nearer to my father when I talked with his intimate and illustrious friend. The last time I saw Lord Rosebery I said how much I should have liked to roll back the years, and talk about things with my father on even terms. The aged statesman said in a wonderful way: 'Ah! he'd have understood'.
*****
I was making a road map on Chobham Common in June 1894, when a cyclist messenger brought me the college adjutant's order to proceed at once to London. My father was setting out the next day on a journey round the world. An ordinary application to the college authorities for my being granted special leave of absence had been refused as a matter of routine. He had telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 'My last day in England' ... and no time had been lost in setting me on my way to London.
We drove to the station the next morning—my mother, my younger brother and I. In spite of the great beard which he had grown during his South African journey four years before, his face looked terribly haggard and worn with mental pain. He patted me on the knee in a gesture which however simple was perfectly informing.
There followed his long journey round the world. I never saw him again, except as a swiftly-fading shadow.
*****
I learned several things at Sandhurst which showed me how to behave and how officers of different ranks were expected to treat one another in the life and discipline of a regiment. My company commander, Major Ball, of the Welsh regiment, was a very strict and peppery martinet. Formal, reserved, frigidly courteous, punctilious, impeccable, severe, he was held in the greatest awe. It had never been his fortune to go on active service, but we were none the less sure that he would have had to be killed to be beaten.
The rule was, that if you went outside the college bounds, you first of all wrote your name in the company leave-book, and might then assume that your request was sanctioned. One day I drove a tandem (hired) over to Aldershot to see a friend in a militia battalion then training there. As I drove down the Marlborough lines, whom should I meet but Major Ball himself driving a spanking dog-cart home to Sandhurst. As I took off my hat to him, I remembered with a flash of anxiety that I had been