CHURCHILL (WINSTON)

Typed letter signed to Sir Frederick Ponsonby, contemplating life away from the House of Commons, S.S. Empress of Australia, 8 August 1929

Footnotes

'THE HOUSE OF COMMONS HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY THEATRE': CHURCHILL CONTEMPLATES LIFE AWAY FROM THE HOUSE.

Churchill had retained his seat of Epping in the general election of May 1929, although the Conservative party lost power to be replaced by a Labour minority government. Churchill had hopes of an opposition Liberal-Conservative alliance, but his support of Lord Lloyd over the Egypt question as mentioned here was his first breach with the Conservative leadership. Churchill was vehemently opposed to the recall of the High Commissioner of Egypt, Lord Lloyd and the British Labour government's decision, under Ramsay MacDonald, to withdraw its troops from Cairo to the Suez Canal, calling it a '...rough and sudden gesture... When I rose in my place on the Front Opposition Bench to interrogate the Government, he sat silent and disapproving... it was evident I was almost alone in the house...' (Gilbert, M., Churchill: A Life, 2000, p.491-2). Six days later he left England with his son, brother and nephew on the Empress of Australia, from whence he writes, and arrived at Quebec on 9 August. The party undertook a coast-to-coast tour of Canada as a guest of the Canadian Pacific Railway and travelled on to the United States where he met William Randolph Hearst and dined with Charlie Chaplin.

Although he was extremely politically active during this time, particularly over the issues of India and the government's policy of appeasement, the years from 1929 until his return to office in September 1939 are seen by biographers as 'wilderness years'. In our letter Churchill contemplates (and rejects) a life away from the House enjoying "the many more pleasing and profitable occupations which lie outside", one of which was working on his four-volume biography Marlborough: His Life and Times, and his autobiography My Early Life, published in 1930. A life enjoying the pleasures of Chartwell and his many hobbies might well have been tempting at this time but, as he recognises here, he thrived in the combative theatre of the Commons where, as history attests, he would indeed make his greatest performances.

Known as 'Fritz' since his schooldays at Eton, Frederick Edward Grey Ponsonby, first Baron Sysonby (1867-1935) was, in the words of the duke of Windsor, a 'quintessential figure of the court Establishment' (William N. Kuhn, ODNB). From a long line of courtiers, he followed his father Sir Henry Frederick Ponsonby (1825-1895) as equerry to Queen Victoria, and was thence joint private secretary to Edward VII and again under George V. This letter has remained in the Ponsonby family until recently and now derives from a private collection.