FATHERS AND SONS

All boys spend much of their lives trying to live up to their fathers. Having had a longer road to travel than others, Randolph Churchill went surprisingly far toward success. And yet, in the end he knew as much failure as success. The question of Winston Churchill’s son Randolph is the question of how a man could fail so often — in family, in politics, in life — when he was so capable, so nobly formed, and so constantly supported by a father who was as great as any man in our century.

In this new biography, His Father’s Son, Winston S. Churchill — grandson of the great Sir Winston and son of Randolph — examines that famous father and son, two characters remarkably alike and utterly different. Seldom are we better able to isolate in two similar souls the differences that make for ordinary success in the one and the greatness that reaches beyond the ordinary in the other.

Like his father, and in a similar way, Randolph Churchill was a precocious boy. Even more than Winston, however, Randolph was, for want of application, an indifferent student. Yet he developed early strong powers of articulation, a prodigious memory, and a quick wit. After Eton, Randolph was admitted to Oxford mid-term and without taking the examination. But he abandoned Oxford before completion to begin a career of journalism, biography, war, and politics.

In the 1930s, still in his twenties, he lectured widely around the world, stood for Parliament repeatedly, wrote constantly, and talked freely with great men around his father’s table. His writings and speeches are aflame with the principles and policies of his father. He joined eagerly that small band resisting Hitler’s appeasers. His speeches and writings even from this early time set a high standard. When he was barely twenty-one, he went to Germany to cover the election of July 1932. Attending a large Nazi rally, he wrote, “I can only describe the meeting as a mixture between an American football game and a Boy Scouts’ jamboree, animated with the spirit of a revivalist meeting and conducted with the discipline of the Brigade of Guards. ” He went on to identify Hitler as a tyrant and a menace:

The success of the Nazi party sooner or later means war. Nearly all of Hitler’s principal attendants fought in the last war. Most of them have two or three medals on their breasts. They burn for revenge. They are determined once more to have an army. I’m sure that once they have achieved it they will not hesitate to use it.

Even Sir Winston himself did not write such prophetic views so early.

Like his father before him, Randolph shone at war. A commando, he went on raids behind enemy lines in North Africa. Wounded repeatedly, he impressed the bravest men with his good cheer under fire. Later in the war he was assigned, upon the request of a former commander, to the sensitive and important British mission to Yugoslavia. There he proved tireless, brave, and effective.

People named Churchill seem never to travel except in the most distinguished company, and Randolph spent his time in Yugoslavia with Tito and the satirist Evelyn Waugh. The two Englishmen were later estranged for a time. But when, after the removal of a benign tumor from Churchill’s lung, Waugh was overheard to grumble, “Trust those damn fool doctors to cut out of Randolph the only part of him that was not malignant,” the remark so delighted the recovering patient that he instantly reconciled with Waugh.

During World War II he also served his only term in Parliament, having been elected unopposed to be member for Preston — where people still speak of his impressive qualities, including, unfortunately, his arrogance. Randolph actually published a statement of his ambitions upon his twenty-first birthday. In a newspaper article he wrote, “I am not afraid . . . to reveal . . . my two main ambitions. I wish to make an immense fortune and to be Prime Minister.” He suspected enough of the future, however, to add: “In twenty years time . . . when I shall probably have fought four or five unsuccessful elections and have been bankrupted more than once, I do not see why I should then regret my youthful ambition, however laughable this will appear to my more experienced eye. Enjoy success to the full and disregard failure — only thus can life be tolerable.”

Randolph’s relations with his father were almost always friendly and hostile at the same time. He followed his father’s politics fiercely and understood himself always to be supporting the great man. Yet he spent extravagantly at a time when the family finances were precarious, and he entered by-elections that placed his father’s own strained relations with the Conservative party under additional stress. Even when Winston was very old, he insulted him grievously with his sharp tongue (and wept for having done it) . Randolph’s sensible sister Mary once wrote, “I think the great misfortune in R’s life is that he is Papa’s son.” But Winston was, against his reputation, a kind man. Having been neglected or repulsed by his own father to his deep chagrin, he indulged Randolph all his life.

Randolph lacked the ordinary virtues that are the basis of sustained effort and good relations with the world. Those dearest or most important to him suffered particularly. He lost his second wife when he called her, loudly in a restaurant, “a paltry little middle class b — .” He lost a by-election when a constituent farmer asked him how many toes a pig had, and he replied in a flash, “Take off your bloody boots and count.” He drank and smoked to excess, and eventually to death. He gambled extravagantly and teetered near bankruptcy most of his life. He never won an election in which he had an opponent. He never made a marriage work, and he violated other people’s. He had no stability in his career until his father appointed him his biographer.

It is easy to claim that these vices represent an exaggeration of the faults attributed to his father. Winston drank, but not to drunkenness. He was assertive and stubborn, but he compromised in all but the matters that mattered most. His finances were strained, but when he lost in the Depression the fortune that he had carefully built up, he went out and made himself another. He married a wife and cherished her all his life. Above all, he applied himself with a surpassing diligence and perseverance to everything he did in his adult life.

But good example is not always effective, particularly the example of a father upon a son, and we can perhaps blame Winston Churchill for some of the moral failure of Randolph. We should remember as we do it, however, that the failure stems not from malice or neglect, but from love and care wrongly bestowed. When we read Randolph’s early speeches about Hitler or India, we must be struck by how much they resemble those of his father. His speeches on the Tory party and democracy, on communism, race, socialism, and war convey precisely the same impression. His life and career operate squarely within the four corners of his father’s genius — that quality which cannot be passed from one generation to another.

Randolph Churchill was a proud man, but not too proud to follow the greatest man he ever knew. He was a rebellious son, but not in the most important things. He failed at much, but much of what he attempted was noble. Perhaps Sir Winston did not give his son all the means, but he gave him at least the end and Randolph had virtue enough to pursue it.