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WINSTON S. CHURCHILL (1874-1965)
An eight-page autograph letter, signed, on Mount Street letter paper crossed through and headed "The Queen's Hotel, Manchester, 26th January 1905," to Muriel Wilson at Tranby Croft, Hull, the envelope signed with initials. Churchill first thanks Muriel for sending her photograph, though in not unequivocal terms: "It is beautiful. They are very clever in the way they photograph now. So much character and poise is presented & the result is more like a picture than a photo. This one I think is rather a tragedy Queen. It is glorious to look upon -- yet just a little sad. I shall always keep it by me & hope that by looking deeply into it I shall discover the whereabouts of that key of which I wrote some weeks ago."
Burns's life reflects his own feelings of personal despondency. Mentioning his "speech about Burns at a Caledonian dinner" the previous night, he comments on the poet's "sad life" but joyful love of poetry. "He had what that book I gave you calls 'a low pain threshold.' The marque of his existence had a low freeboard -- any depression however slight made it dip beneath the surface & the waters of the mournful deep flowed in and over-whelmed his soul. And then what years of squalor & struggle & worry & toil bringing such an intensity of suffering to this exquisite nature that hardly any tale is so full of pathos as the story of his life. Do you ever read his poetry? It is full of true love -- beautiful songs of joy rising from so much misery, like the nightingale singing .... " Muriel is advised to read three poems, 'Afton Water', 'Mary' and 'Mary Morrison'.
In implied contrast to her, he is hard at work and has had to "steal a short while to write to you with some snarling and tiresome people who intrude [on] me. Two speeches everyday -- always different -- are most wearing. I have to wrack my brains for new ideas, & strain my memory to read them. If I stop working I get gloomy. So long as I go on I have less time to think. I have no time to live -- because I have, apart from work, no life to live. You have too much life to live & not enough work to do. There's the difference."
He is "thinking of taking new rooms. Ivor has discovered a hotel in Park Place near St. James Street, which we think of renting together." He would like Muriel to be his first guest "if it comes off." Wondering if she would like to read a speech of his on Russia, he expresses his sympathy for the "poor impotent Czar" and speaks of the "Grand Duke Vladimir" as "a man of spirit. I think numbers killed and wounded will turn out to be greatly exaggerated. But after all," he comments, "as long as the soldiers shoot when told, no foreseeable resolution is possible. The change will come through the select pressure of opinion steadily working in every class of Russian society; and as these fusillades help to strengthen that opinion, I do not think their victims die altogether in vain."
"I quite undertsand about Sunday," he tells Muriel at the end of the letter, suggesting he "could come the Sunday afterwards if that would suit you." Although he has "to speak at Gainsborough on the 6th," he could "easily make other arrangements -- so don't worry in the least about my convenience. What I want is to see you." The letter is signed, "With best love, Yours always, W."
