Chapter 8

I succeeded in giving Fox what his journal wanted; I got the atmosphere
of Churchill and his house, in a way that satisfied the people for whom
it was meant. His house was a pleasant enough place, of the sort where
they do you well, but not nauseously well. It stood in a tranquil
countryside, and stood there modestly. Architecturally speaking, it was
gently commonplace; one got used to it and liked it. And Churchill
himself, when one had become accustomed to his manner, one liked very
well--very well indeed. He had a dainty, dilettante mind, delicately
balanced, with strong limitations, a fantastic temperament for a person
in his walk of life--but sane, mind you, persistent. After a time, I
amused myself with a theory that his heart was not in his work, that
circumstance had driven him into the career of politics and ironical
fate set him at its head. For myself, I had an intense contempt for the
political mind, and it struck me that he had some of the same feeling.
He had little personal quaintnesses, too, a deference, a modesty, an
open-mindedness.

I was with him for the greater part of his weekend holiday; hung,
perforce, about him whenever he had any leisure. I suppose he found me
tiresome--but one has to do these things. He talked, and I talked;
heavens, how we talked! He was almost always deferential, I almost
always dogmatic; perhaps because the conversation kept on my own ground.
Politics we never touched. I seemed to feel that if I broached them, I
should be checked--politely, but very definitely. Perhaps he actually
contrived to convey as much to me; perhaps I evolved the idea that if I
were to say:

"What do you think about the 'Greenland System'"--he would answer:

"I try not to think about it," or whatever gently closuring phrase his
mind conceived. But I never did so; there were so many other topics.

He was then writing his _Life of Cromwell_ and his mind was very full of
his subject. Once he opened his heart, after delicately sounding me for
signs of boredom. It happened, by the merest chance--one of those blind
chances that inevitably lead in the future--that I, too, was obsessed at
that moment by the Lord Oliver. A great many years before, when I was a
yearling of tremendous plans, I had set about one of those glorious
novels that one plans--a splendid thing with Old Noll as the hero or the
heavy father. I had haunted the bookstalls in search of local colour and
had wonderfully well invested my half-crowns. Thus a company of
seventeenth century tracts, dog-eared, coverless, but very glorious
under their dust, accompany me through life. One parts last with those
relics of a golden age, and during my late convalescence I had reread
many of them, the