[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] (OT) Churchill

[Peter Buxton]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 12:58:41AM -0400, Robert G. Brown was only escaped
   alone to tell thee:

> Here's possibly the BEST quote of Churchill about the Lady Astor:
> 
>   "She combines a kindly heart with a sharp and wagging tongue, denouncing
>    the vice of gambling in unmeasured terms and is closely associated with
>    and almost unrivaled racing stable. She accepts Communist hospitality and
>    flattery and remains the Conservative member for Plymouth. She does all
>    the opposite things so well and so naturally that the public, tired of
>    criticizing, can only gape."

I can never pass up an opportunity to quote from a favorite author,
though I have to leave the other arguments for a later post, as, after
typing all this in, I HAVE to go to bed (all ellipses are the author's):

It was at Jakie's that I met his mother, Nancy Astor. A Virginian who
still spoke with a southern accent, she had married an Astor who had
become English and bought a title, "back in the days when," as she said
to me, "it really meant something to buy one." She then became the first
woman to be elected to Parliament, where her eccentric wit gave joy to
the world.

At table, she and Jakie would constantly address parliamentary insults
to one another; he generally outwitted her, but she was the more
startling. Furiously temperance -- she would take long sips from
everyone's glass, making a terrible face with each gulp. "It is beyond
me how people can destroy their systems with this vile stuff." She was
against divorce -- and had, of course, been divorced from a first
husband in order to marry Astor.

Our first dinner at Hatley, I sat on her right. There were only five at
table. Suddenly, Lady Astor was seized with missionary zeal -- to
convert us all to Christian Science. She thundered away as the rest of
us ate and drank and spoke under, as it were, her tirade. Then she
turned on her daughter-in-law, the pale, ethereal Chiquita. "Look at
*you*! Sickly, always sickly. Yet it's all in the mind, I tell you. All
in the mind. Change your thoughts."

Jakie murmured something soothing -- Chiquita had had a hard time in
childbirth...

That did it. The game was now afoot. "All those doctors, those unhealthy
medicines. Why, when I had my three sons by my beautiful Waldorf --"
(discouraged glance at Jakie) "-- all three ended up looking like
rabbits -- even so, I had them without medicine or chloroform or
anything at all and all three were born *without* pain..."

"Yes, Mother," murmured Jakie. Disraeli now to his mother's Gladstone:
"We were born without pain and conceived without pleasure."

Like a jack-in-the-box, Nancy was on her feet; raced to the head of the
table; cracked Jakie across the face; returned to her seat beside me and
drained the glass of brandy beside my plate. "I can't think how you let
yourself be poisoned by this."

Next morning in the garden. Nancy was in benign mood. The ancient head
gardener from Cliveden was in charge of Jakie's gardens. He moaned about
his comedown in the world. Nancy was brisk. "Cheer up. World's changed."
She turned to me. "Well, here's the ring-tailed wonder." An allusion to
my having turned down a Senate nomination. "Let's walk." I noted that
she was carrying a golf club with which she'd practice whenever we
paused. "The English are the best people in the world. I mean, what
other people could've put up with me all these years? Marshal Stalin
asked me the same thing. Doesn't that sound fine? Marshal Stalin and me!
But there we were together in his office. Bernard Shaw and I had made
this trip to the Soviet, and there was Shaw on the train, busy reading a
book, never once looking out the window because he knew, of course,
everything in the world and so never looked at anything. Anyway, Marshal
Stalin, after listening to Shaw for a while, gets up and goes to a map
and points to England and then to all that pink which was our empire
back then and says, 'How did this little island manage to take over so
much of the world?' Well, I was inspired. I said, 'Because, Marshal
Stalin, we had given the world the King James translation of the
Bible.'"

"What," I asked, "did he say?"

"Well, he just changed the subject. Anyway, as we were leaving, I said,
'Marshal Stalin, when are you gonna stop killing people?' And he said
directly to me, 'Lady Astor, the undesirable classes do not liquidate
themselves.'"

"What did you say?"

"As I had run out of small talk, we got out of there fast."

  -- Gore Vidal, _Palimpsest,_a_memoir_, 1995.

-- 
I am not a Pillar, but a Buttress, of the Established
Church. I support it from without. -- Lord Melbourne