A PORTRAIT OF DECAY: BRITAIN IN THE POSTWAR YEARS

Abstract

4 3 A P O R T R A I T O F D E C A Y B R I T A I N I N T H E P O S T W A R Y E A R S A . N . W I L S O N We sometimes speak of corruption to mean that a government or a group of people is knowingly crooked and dishonest. But corruption is also something that happens to bodies which are dead. Britain in the final administration (1951–55) of Sir Winston Churchill was flyblown and stinking in this latter sense. Britainwastired,old,indecay,aswasitsprimeminister.InJanuary 1954, Malcolm Muggeridge, the editor of the humorous periodical Punch, commissioned Illingworth (Leslie Gilbert), the cartoonist , to draw Winston Churchill in his decrepitude and to have a caption indicating it was time he went. ‘‘It’s true, that edition,’’ Muggeridge mused, ‘‘but there’ll be accusations of bad taste.’’ Churchill was bitterly hurt. ‘‘Punch goes everywhere,’’ he moaned to his doctor. ‘‘I shall have to retire if this sort of things goes on. . . . It isn’t really a proper cartoon. You’ve seen it? There’s malice in it. Look at my hands – I have beautiful hands.’’ It was true, added the doctor, Lord Moran, but he who had so often recorded for posterity Churchill with no trousers on, Churchill ’s big white fat bottom, Churchill having strokes, Churchill 4 4 W I L S O N Y coughing, Churchill wheezing, Churchill drunk could not resist describing the cartoon. ‘‘The eyes were dull and lifeless. There was no tone in the flaccid muscles. The jowl sagged. It was the expressionless mask of extreme old age.’’ Nor could the good doctor resist copying out Malcolm Muggeridge’s ‘‘malice,’’ which compared old Churchill to the Byzantine Bellarius. ‘‘By the time he had reached an advanced age . . . his splendid faculties began to falter. The spectacle of his thus clutching wearily at all the appurtenances and responsibilities of an authority he could no longer fully exercise was to his admirers infinitely sorrowful, and to his enemies infinitely derisory.’’ Worse was to come when members of both Houses of Parliament raised money for Sir Winston’s eightieth birthday. It was agreed that Graham Sutherland should be commissioned to paint Churchill’s portrait. As the artist remembered matters, a memory not untinged with bitterness, he believed that ‘‘the portrait was to be given to [Churchill] by both Houses on his 80th birthday for his lifetime and that after his death it would revert to the House of Commons. I was even shown places where it might hang.’’ After three sittings the old man was anxious to get a glimpse of the canvas. ‘‘Come on. Be a sport. Don’t forget I’m a fellow artist.’’ But when he saw the work, he immediately protested. ‘‘Oh no, this won’t do at all. I haven’t a neckline like that. You must take an inch, nay, an inch and a half o√.’’ Once the painting was complete, Churchill did his utmost not to exhibit the picture publicly. He wrote to Sutherland that ‘‘the painting, however masterly in execution, is not suitable as a presentation from both Houses of Parliament. . . . About the ceremony in Westminster Hall. This can go forward although it is sad there will be no portrait. They have a beautiful book which they have nearly all signed, to present to me, so that the ceremony will be complete in itself.’’ In the event, Charles Doughty, the secretary of the parliamentary committee which commissioned the picture, went to Chartwell , Churchill’s country home, and told him he had to accept the picture, and accept it publicly. The eightieth birthday of the prime minister was on 30 November . Already The Times had published a photographic image of the portrait, and the paper’s art critic praised it, saying it was A P O R T R A I T O F D E C A Y 4 5 R more successful than Sutherland’s portraits of Lord Beaverbrook and Somerset Maugham. When Churchill accepted the gift on the podium he resorted, as he often did in life when threatened...