Violet Bonham Carter

Violet Bonham Carter was the grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, the daughter of British prime minister Herbert Asquith, and close friend of Winston Churchill. In 1965, when she was almost 80 years old, she published her memoirs of Churchill, entitled "Winston Churchill, an Intimate Portrait". They are fascinating to read, if a bit dense at times.

Churchill was about 15 years her senior and they met when she was a teenager. She was taken by his charismatic personality from the beginning, as were most people. She tells of his early life, and the adventures he found as a soldier in India and a reporter in Africa, including his escape from a Boer prison. And his start in politics as a Conservative, before his defection to her father's Liberal party. Irish home rule, and World War I are important parts of this story, including Churchill's failure at leadership in connection with the fall of Antwerp, and the loss at Gallipoli where 40,000 British soldiers died.

Churchill was always sure of himself; he was also often inconsistent. Although he became a great war leader (as a soldier, as head of the Admiralty and eventually as prime minister), he early on said of war: "when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individually severallyl embittered and inflamed--when resources of science and civilization sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of Kings".

Violet Bonham Carter was a very bright woman. In another era, she would have been a politician in her own right. In early 20th century England, she was an intimate advisor to her father, and an intimate (not physical, but in every other way) friend of Churchill's. Her story is an insider's story, and you can see how close many of the issues and emotions facing politicians and their relationships with each other are to those facing politicians today. But, England being England, their dialogue was sharper, "rapier-like" you would say.

Her writing is incredibly well crafted; this seems to have been an early English trait. On the death of Lord Kitchener: "To the nation, to whom Kitchener was a legend, it was as thought Nelson's Column had suddenly fallen at their feet." On C

Her quotations from Churchill (on painting "just to paint is great fun. The colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out"), from her father's diaries and speeches, from her father's rival within the party Lloyd George's speeches, and from Conservative Arthur Balfour's speeches are equally elegant. What has happened to this type of rhetoric and oratory?

The book ended abruptly, and I assume that she was anticipating additional volumes. It is 1917, and the Americans have not yet entered World War I. Bonham Carter says:

"In the years that followed, thought we never lost our way into each other's minds, and though at moments nothing counted but the unbroken bond between us, there were times when our passionate disagreement was vehemently expressed; others when our differences seemed too deep to be bridged by words and silence fell between us--times of incomprehension and bewilderment. Until at last a day came when the paths that for so long had parted us suddenly met. And as they brought us face to face we knew that we were once more side by side."