Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell

Author:Sonia Purnell [Purnell, Sonia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Operation Seduction USA

1941–42

Sallow-faced and graying, Harry Hopkins was an incorrigible workaholic even though cancer had left him with only half a stomach and thus permanently malnourished. Kept alive by virtue of a large “personal pharmacy” of pills, he looked as worn out and frayed as his sagging suits. Divorced from his first wife, left bereft by the death of his second and now at the mercy of the damp chill of an English winter, he was in evident need of a comforting female presence. The decidedly unmaternal Clementine instantly took him under her wing.

She had been puzzled by the news that President Roosevelt was sending as his envoy a diplomatic unknown. The son of a harness maker and a prime architect of the New Deal, Hopkins bridled at the very thought of the aristocratic monarchist who had concentrated so much power in his own hands. He made clear from the start that he planned to resist the prime minister’s legendary persuasive powers. “I suppose Churchill is convinced he’s the greatest man in the world,”1 he grumbled to a friend before leaving Washington. Instinctively an isolationist, he seriously doubted whether Britain was even worth saving.

Brendan Bracken, who had met him on the croquet power circuit on Long Island, now informed the Churchills that Hopkins’s fact-finding visit was of incalculable importance. Hopkins might have been anti-British, but he was closer to Roosevelt than anyone in the president’s inner circle and was regarded on Capitol Hill as the second-most powerful man in Washington. He lived just down the landing from the president’s bedroom in the White House and so endured with Franklin the notoriously unappetizing food served by Eleanor Roosevelt’s kitchen.

Hopkins’s skepticism was in any case far from uncommon in the US. American opinion—shared by most of Congress and the military—was still largely against involvement in the war. Many feared that supplying armaments to Britain would either leave America undefended or ensure that the weaponry would fall into Nazi hands once Britain was defeated. Others believed, wrongly, that the riches of the British Empire were virtually limitless, and they saw no reason to help what they still imagined to be an imperialist nation of murderous redcoats. It was clear that the US would only wade in if Roosevelt were personally persuaded to intervene. What Hopkins (and later other key Americans) would report back to the president was, therefore, vital to Britain’s survival.

Fortunately, Bracken had observed that Hopkins combined a Democrat’s concern for the many with a taste for hobnobbing with the rich and powerful few. He reveled in the attentions of beautiful highborn women and appreciated fine dining in fancy surroundings. Bombed, blasted but so far unbeaten, the Churchills thus set out to win him over with their particular brand of upper-class elegance, charm and “ambrosial” food. Britain was virtually bankrupt, but no expense was to be spared in making their American guest welcome; everything was to be choreographed for maximum effect. The “half-blind,” as Winston later referred to the Americans at this time, were to be made to see.

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