Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874–1900 (Volume I) by Randolph S. Churchill

Author:Randolph S. Churchill [Churchill, Randolph S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780795344466
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2015-04-04T21:00:00+00:00

It seems as if Brabazon became a little worried that there might be trouble with the War Office; Churchill was advised to consult them. He naturally applied directly to the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley (formerly Sir Garnet Wolseley), who had recently succeeded the Duke of Cambridge at the Horse Guards, the office of the military headquarters of the whole British Army, the political direction being maintained nearby in the War Office.

Lord Wolseley, like Colonel Brabazon, felt somewhat embarrassed. ‘He said he quite approved’, Churchill wrote to his mother on October 19, ‘but rather hinted that it would have been better to go without asking leave at all.’ The fact was that the popular press in England was very much on the side of the Cuban insurgents and the military authorities saw that it would be very undesirable if the expedition of the two young subalterns to the Spanish forces were to be interpreted as anything like an official mission. Nonetheless the Commander-in-Chief, thinking perhaps that he might make the best of it, sent Churchill and Barnes to see General E. F. Chapman, the Director of Military Intelligence. General Chapman furnished them with maps and background information. Moreover, Churchill wrote to Lady Randolph on October 21, ‘we are also requested to collect information and statistics on various points and particularly as to the effect of the new bullet—its penetration and striking power. This,’ Churchill concluded, ‘invests our mission with almost an official character & cannot fail to help one in the future’.

At the same time Churchill arranged with the Daily Graphic, for whom his father had written from South Africa in 1891, that he should send occasional letters from the front. For this, his first journalistic venture, Churchill was to be paid five guineas a letter. So all was now ‘Sir Garnet’, to use a popular phrase current at the time: it was the equivalent of the naval phrase ‘ship-shape’. ‘Sir Garnet’ arose from the widespread admiration for Sir Garnet Wolseley who was always sent to any part of the Empire which was in trouble.

Barnes and Churchill sailed from Liverpool in the Cunard Royal Mail Steamship Etruria. But the delights of a sea voyage which Churchill had so eagerly anticipated do not seem to have been fulfilled by events. ‘I do not contemplate ever taking a sea voyage for pleasure’, he wrote to his mother on November 8, a day short of New York, ‘and I shall always look upon journeys by sea as necessary evils which have to be undergone in the carrying out of any definite plan.’ It was not just the weather—‘though we had bad moments we were never sea-sick’—or the lack of amenities—‘our cabins are not uncomfortable—but the lack of a comfortable place to sit down and of an interesting occupation have made us look forward eagerly to disembarking’. It was the fellow passengers that most irked Churchill: ‘There are no nice people on board to speak of—certainly none to write of…. There is to be a concert

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