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Churchill & the Titanic Winter 2012 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 The Magazine of the National Churchill Museum WINTER SUNSHINE, CHARTWELL Painted Circa 1924 Churchill & The Titanic: Guilt by association Churchill’s Relevance The accidental Churchill anecdotage: The Fertility of Churchill’s Thought Board of Governors of the association of churchill fellows James M. Schmuck messaGe FRom The eXeCuTIVe dIReCToR Chairman & Senior Fellow Wildwood, Missouri A.v. L. Brokaw, III St. Louis, Missouri Warm greetings from Fulton at this special Robert L. DeFer time of year and welcome to the Christmas Chesterfi eld, MO Earle H. Harbison, Jr. edition of The Churchillian. As we look ahead St. Louis, Missouri to 2013 there are several dates for you to mark William C. Ives on your calendars: firstly, a new temporary Chapel Hill, North Carolina exhibition drawn from our own collection that R. Crosby Kemper, III Kansas City, Missouri explores the fascinating, and little known, Barbara D. Lewington relationship between Joyce Hall, the dynamic St. Louis, Missouri founder of Hallmark Cards, Inc., and Winston Richard J. Mahoney St. Louis, Missouri Churchill. In early March we celebrate our Jean-Paul Montupet annual Churchill weekend with its centerpiece St. Louis, Missouri event the Enid and R. Crosby Kemper William R. Piper St. Louis, Missouri Lectureship on Sunday, March 3. This year we’re delighted to announce Suzanne D. Richardson that the Kemper lecturer will be Professor Peter Clarke, Professor emeritus St. Louis, Missouri at the University of Cambridge and author of a host of scholarly works The Honorable Edwina Sandys, M.B.E. New York, New York most recently, Mr. Churchill’s Profession: The Statesman as Author. This Lady Mary Soames L.G., D.B.E. theme will form the basis of his lecture and is a nice accompaniment to London, U.K. David Cannadine’s efforts last year that discussed the statesman as artist. Linda Gill Taylor Also, I’m delighted to announce that, after a hiatus of several years, in Edgerton, Missouri John C. Wade 2013 we will present our Churchill Medal for Leadership once again. This Wildwood, Missouri year the award will be presented to former United States Ambassador Hjalma E. Johnson Stephen F. Brauer of St. Louis, Mo. More details on all these upcoming Dade City, Florida John R. McFarland, Emeritus events can be found in the pages of this Churchillian. St. Louis, Missouri Harold L. Ogden, Emeritus It is worth noting that this calendar year, 2012, has been the first in which Seal Beach, California William H. Tyler, Emeritus we have produced regular, quarterly editions of The Churchillian. The Pebble Beach, California responses to our efforts, and our investment, in this much more professional Marvin O. Young, Emeritus and more substantive publication have been wholly positive. As we continue St. Louis, Missouri George B. Forsythe, Ph.D. to improve its offerings we aim to blend news and features concerning President, Westminster College the National Churchill Museum with articles about what Churchill did, G. Robert Muehlhauser and his ongoing significance, in a magazine that continues to be a by-word Chairman, Board of Trustees for quality, both in terms of content and production. This edition is no churchill institute & memorial exception as we look a number of perspectives on Churchill himself — committee of the Board of trustees, Westminster college courtesy of Richard Langworth and Bradley Tolppanen — as well as build Linda Gill Taylor, Chair on the theme of the contemporary Churchill, considered in part in the Edgerton, Missouri autumn edition, and examine his relevance in an article by Justin Lyons. James M. Schmuck, vice Chair St. Louis, Missouri It is worth noting, too, that all previous editions of The Churchillian are Heather A.T. Biehl available on our website and that this resource is a good place to direct Acton, Massachusetts Ron J. Kostich other “Churchillians” wherever you find them! Upland, California Jerry N. Middleton With that all being said, it is my pleasure to thank you all for your support St. Louis, Missouri C. Robert Monroe of the National Churchill Museum and, from all of us here and at Overland Park, Kansas Westminster College in Fulton, to wish you a very happy Christmas and John C. Panettiere Eclectic, Alabama New Year. I look forward to seeing you in 2013. William H. Roedy London, England Ronald D. Winney dr. Rob havers Edwardsville, Illinois Executive Director, George K. Parkins National Churchill Museum Prairie Village, Kansas Suzanne Richardson Jefferson City, Missouri Rob Havers Executive Director Winter 2012 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 4 About The Issue The Accidental Churchill 6 by Bradley P. Tolppanen Churchill’s Relevance 14 by Justin D. Lyons Churchill & The Titanic: Guilt By Association 20 by Richard M. Langworth Anecdotage: The Fertility of Churchill’s Thought 24 by David Dilks Famous Headgear 25 by Peter De Mendelssohn — Page 6 — From The Archives The National Churchill Museum is 26 by Liz Murphy located on the Westminster College campus in Fulton, Missouri, and designated by Congress as America's Educational and Public Programming National Churchill Museum. 573-592-5369, 27 by Mandy Plybon www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org Copyright material by Winston S. Churchill Message From The Director Of Development is reprinted within The Churchillian with the permission of Curtis Brown, London, on by Kit Freudenberg 28 behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. Cover: “Winter Sunshine, Chartwell” (Coombs Churchill in the News 142), oil on canvas by Winston Churchill, circa 29 1924. Art historian Coombs comments, “a famous little picture that in 1925 was entered anonymously in a London exhibition The Churchillian Crossword open to amateur painters and won first 30 by Richard J. Mahoney and Brendon Emmett Quigley prize; and in 1947, when entered under a pseudonym, it gained Churchill his first entry at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.” Letters to the Editor 32 by Dr. Rob Havers Special thanks to Churchill Heritage Ltd. for their kind permission to publish “Winter Sunshine, Chartwell” (Coombs 142) from the collection of The National Trust, Chartwell. 35 Calendar of Events abouT The Issue At a glance the articles in this issue may have no apparent connection, combination of fatalism and optimism. Repeatedly but after preparing them we discern a relationship: the Churchill mused that science marches on, while man element of chance, and how Churchill coped with events is still the same, frail creature—capable at once of the he couldn’t control. heights of glory and depths of depravity. Yet Churchill, Professor Lyons explains, believed humanity could Bradley Tolppanen’s “The Accidental Churchill” overcome the worst aspects of its nature. He explained compiles Sir Winston’s numerous close calls and why in his famous essay “Fifty Years Hence,” and other brushes with death, from school days at Harrow to old writings. age—a remarkable assortment, occasioned in part by his active life. For someone regarded as a high-living Well we may wonder how Churchill lived in the times devotee of fine cuisine, cigars and drink, Churchill he did to emerge with any hope at all. (To suggestions was remarkably agile, playing polo until his mid-fifties. that her father was bi-polar or a manic-depressive Lady scrambling along on wartime rambles with much Soames snorts, “The things he went through would younger staffers puffing to keep up, and riding to depress anybody.”) And yet he retained hope. “For myself hounds in his mid-seventies,. But in doing so he I am an optimist,” he said in 1954—“it does not seem to courted disaster on many occasions. be much use being anything else—and I cannot believe that the human race will not find its way through the The nearest brush came on Fifth Avenue in New York problems that confront it, although they are separated in December 1931, where he looked the wrong way by a measureless gulf from any they have known before….” while crossing the street and was hit by a car moving We could use that kind of optimism today. at 35 mph. Suppose he had been killed, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. mused—or that Lenin had died Returning to accidents of fate, we review a book of typhus in 1895 or Hitler had been cut down on the blaming Churchill for the loss of the Titanic—which Western Front in 1916? Surely history would be different. would never have been lost at all had the watchers in Whole novels could be written about alternate scenarios. her crow’s nest been just a little earlier or a little late (Churchill wrote one himself: “If Lee Had Not Won the in signaling the bridge. It is amazing what a preciese Battle of Gettysburg,” The Churchillian, Autumn 2011.) combination of fate and weather was needed to produce that tragedy—and still more amazing how anyone In December 1931 Churchill did think his life was over. could manage to pin it on Churchill. But we’ve heard “I am going to be run down and probably killed,” he similar things before. thought before the car struck. He survived—but even Churchill did not expect a similar near-miss just a few The reader must decide whether Churchill’s final weeks later in the Bahamas, where a car nearly ran him optimism for humanity was warranted, or whether down again! “…he leaped out of the way and grabbed fatalism should have been his dominant view. “We the top posts of a board fence,” recalled his bodyguard. remember the sardonic war-time joke about the optimist “This was the only time in my life that I have seen and the pessimist,” he wrote just after Munich in 1938. Churchill in the clutch of old-fashioned fear.
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