Journal of the International Churchill Society - Winston Churchill

Edited by John G. Plumplom
130 Collingsbrook Blvd. Agincourt, Onl, Ml W1M7
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL BY
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL,
M.P. AUTHOR OF 'THE STORY OF THE
MALAKAND FIELD FORCE, 1897,'
'THE RIVER WAR,' 'LONDON TO
LADYSMITH VIA PRETORIA' ETC. IN
TWO VOLUMES. LONDON: MAC-
MILLAN AND CO. LIMITED. NEW
YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
1906. 8,000 copies published on 2 January
1906, prices 36s. both volumes.
Times Literary Supplement, 5 January 1906.
With a single exception, Lord Randolph
Churchill's rise to the first place in the House
of Commons is the most dazzling personal
triumph in English Parliamentary history. In
January 1781, Pitt was only a proud boy who
had inherited the greatest of all political
names. Three years later he was Prime
Minister. In 1881 Lord Randolph Churchill
was the leader of a party of four, and he and
his party were the established practical joke of
the day. In 1886 he was the leader of the
House of Commons with every eye fixed on
him as the man of the future. But there, except
for the brevity of the two lives the parallel ends
altogether. Lord Randolph's fall was even
swifter than his rise. And it was final.
It is a pleasure to be able to say that a life so
well worth writing has been admirably written.
Sons have not always proved the most
judicious of biographers and Mr. Winston
Churchill's warmest admirers would not ask
us to think him the most judicious of men. But
here is a book which is certainly among the
two or three most exciting political biographies
in the language. The book is a son's
book, of course, written from a particular
British and US (gilt top edges) Firsts.
point of view; and there are, of course, things
which might be said against Lord Randolph
Churchill, but are not said here. That is inevitable;
but the worst kind of biographer is
not he who has a point of view but he who has
not — and certainly Mr. Winston Churchill
has not unduly obtruded his. One hears the
son's voice ... but the voice of a politician
one hardly ever hears.
Good taste has not generally been considered
the strong point either of the
biographer or of his father; nor has either of
them been conspicuous for self-restraint. But
the severest critic will find very few lapses of
taste in this book; and for those few it is not the
writer's pen, but the subject's tongue, that is
responsible.
And as for self-restraint, who could have
believed that Mr. Winston Churchill could
write a book that is full of Mr. Chamberlain
and not altogether empty of Mr. Balfour and
yet write it like an historian, and not at all like
a man on a party platform? But he has.
A biography is more as well as less than a
history; its business is not merely to relate
events but to paint a portrait — what sort of
portrait of Lord Randolph is it that this book
ultimately leaves in the memory? In some respects,
that of a more complex personality
than has generally been believed. The rudest
man, perhaps, who ever sat on the front
benches had in private ' 'an old world courtesy
of manner" and was called by Gladstone "the
most courtly man I ever saw."
The man who in four years completely transformed
a great party, and prepared it for twenty
years in power, will not be forgotten so long
as English parties exist and English political
history is read.
17
The Eindburgh Review, No. 417, July 1906.
Whatever judgment men may pass on the
career of Lord Randolph Churchill, no one can
dispute the great literary talent shown by his
son in the brilliant biography he has given to
the public. However important historically the
events which he describes, he has known how to
make the personality of his father always the predominating
interest of the book. It is biography,
not history, at which the author has aimed.
The story is told, if not without partiality,
yet with very commendable frankness and with
little attempt to keep back from the public extravagances
of behaviour and language which in
his own day, if they delighted a large section
of the democracy, certainly estranged from
him no small portion of the steadier elements
in the community. Mr. Churchill has succeeded
in painting a striking and we believe on the
whole a true portrait of a very remarkable
man.
Mr. Winston Churchill has evidently inherited
many of his father's great gifts and his
own life has enabled him to understand and appreciate
the varied experiences of Lord Randolph's
career. The son has trodden in his
father's footsteps and if in addition to the great
gifts which he has inherited Mr. Winston
Churchill proves that he possesses certain
qualities in which Lord Randolph was lacking
— the capacity to work and cooperate with
other men even when they are not his subordinates,
and the power of inspiring the public
with confidence in his character as well as with
admiration of his cleverness and courage — it
is not easy to set limits to the height to which
the son's abilities may yet raise him.
Mr. Winston Churchill is naturally a little
inclined to overestimate the work done by his
father in restoring in a few years the Conservative
Party to the position of prolonged
ascendency over its Liberal and Radical rivals.
But he has told the story of the Fourth Party
with brightness and verve.
Mr. Churchill also estimates too highly his
father's services in popularizing or democratizing
the Conservative Party and he greatly
exaggerates his influence in bringing about
that alliance between Conservative and
Liberal-Unionists which provided the majority
of the House of Commons.
A man of moods, with fixed principles, cannot
be expected to give steady guidance to the
State. To excel in the party game will not suffice.
Lord Randolph Churchill was greatly
gifted, but it was not possible for him to play
the part, or leave behind him the reputation,
of a great statesman.*