Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

and earnings, ready to begin his career as a Member ofParliament. In the meantime, Mark Twain turned his fullattention to anti-imperialist polemics.Perhaps the impact of the meeting on Churchillcan best be seen in his swiftly-changing attitudes aboutthe Boer War. WSC’s maiden speech in Parliament, just afew months after his tour, was on British policy in SouthAfrica, in which he advocated a conciliatory approach tothe Boers. In 1904, as he contemplated bolting the Conservativesfor the Liberal party, he railed against Britishimperial policy and called the war “a public disaster.” 15Had he heard that speech, Twain would likely have ledthe applause for the now-renegade Conservative.The two men never met again and last year markedthe centenary of Twain’s death. But Churchill didnot forget the great novelist. As Martin Gilbert revealsin the official biography, Churchill joined the InternationalMark Twain Society in 1929, and suggested thatTwain’s The Prince and the Pauper be one of the “GreatStories Retold” which he and his secretary, Eddie Marsh,were preparing for the press. 16Twain’s work was always in Churchill’s mind.In 1932, when his second appearance on an interruptedlecture tour brought him to Twain’s longtime home ofHartford, Connecticut, WSC declared the city “the centreof the great Mark Twain literature that has flowed outand is still flowing over all the English-speaking peoplesaround the entire globe.” 17In “Everybody’s Language,” a 1935 essay onCharlie Chaplin (FH 142), Churchill wrote of howChaplin, like himself, had a parent who died young,adding: “Mark Twain, left fatherless at twelve, had substantiallythe same experience. He would never have writtenHuckleberry Finn had life been kinder in his youth.” 18Nineteen thirty-seven found Churchill proposingMark Twain among the personages for a sequel to hisbook of character studies, Great Contemporaries. 19 Thatsame year, the Twain Society’s founder, Cyril Clemens, adescendant of the novelist, presciently wrote Churchill:“Your Marlborough is so magnificent that we feel it deservesthe Nobel Prize in Literature.” 20 In due course,Marlborough would play a powerful role in qualifyingChurchill for that award.Finally, on 25 October 1943, Churchill wroteClemens from Downing Street:I am writing to express my thanks to theInternational Mark Twain Society for their GoldMedal, which has been handed to me by Mr. PhilipGuedalla. It will serve to keep fresh my memory ofa great American, who showed me much kindnesswhen I visited New York as a young man by takingthe Chair at my first public lecture and by autographingcopies of his works, which still form avalued part of my library. 21 >>Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, 13 December 1900:“ I have already written a book about my escape from Pretoria and I trust thateveryone in the audience will purchase a copy. This is the anniversary of my escape,many accounts of which have been related here and in England, but none of which istrue. I escaped by climbing over the iron paling of my prison while the sentry waslighting his pipe. I passed through the streets of Pretoria unobserved andmanaged to board a coal train on which I hid among the sacks of coal.When I found the train was not going in the direction I wanted, I jumped off.I wandered about aimlessly for a long time, suffering from hunger, and at last Idecided that I must seek aid at all risks. I knocked at the door of a kraal, expectingto find a Boer, and to my joy, found it occupied by an Englishman,who ultimately helped me to reach the British lines.”—Extract, Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), I: 63.FINEST HOUR 149 / 43