A BOTTOM OF THE CLASS BOY

A  BOTTOM  OF  THE  CLASS  BOY  BECOMES  THE  MAN  OF  THE  20TH  CENTURY.

WINSTON  CHURCHILL  WAS  BORN  TO  PRIVILEGE  AND  HICH  SOCIAL  STANDING,  BUT  IT  WAS  FAR  FROM  A  HAPPY  CHILDHOOD.  HE  WAS  NEGLECTED  BY  HIS  PARENTS,  AT  7  HE  WAS  SENT  TO  A  SCHOOL  WHICH  WAS  RUTHLESS  IN  DISCIPLE  AND  BEATINGS. HE  WAS  20  BEFORE  ESCAPING  THIS  DEPRESSING  EXISTENCE.

HE  HAD  A  DRAMATIC  LIFE....born  two  months  early  on  30  November  1874, at Blenheim Palace, the property of his gandfather, John Winston Spencer Churchill.  He arrived in the world early because his American mother, the former Jennie Jerome, suffered a fall on 24 November.

Churchill's  childhood  experiences  made  him  in  later  years  acutely  aware  of  the  need  to  engage  with  his  own  children.

The lack of parent/child relations was not unusual in the Victorian era; children were often looked upon as intrusions in their parent's lives. Winston once wrote about his mother, "She shone for me like the evening star. I loved her dearly --- but from a distance."

As like many children in those day, Winston had a very close, and loving relationship with his nurse, Mrs Everest. He nick-named her "Woom" or "Womanny."  The letters he sent her from school were very affectionate: "My darling old Woom"  and  closing with such words as, "Good bye darling...with love from Winny."

Winston was sent to boarding school at St. George's near Ascot in Berkshire. He painted it later as a place of suffering and terror. He said he counted the days and hours to the end of each term.  If you got out of line, he said the headmaster would flay a miscreant's bottom 20 times or more. Winston was flogged once after stealing sugar from the school pantry. His reaction was defiant. Once the punishment was over he snatched the headmaster's straw hat from its hook behind a door, and kicked it to pieces in a rage.

He begged his mother to visit, but after taking him to school on the first day, she never returned.

On his first holiday home from school, he carried a report card; he was bottom of his class of eleven. He was persistently late, and was "a constant trouble to everybody and...always in some scrape or other. He cannot be trusted to behave himself anywhere."
Winston later in life said, "I was what grown up people in their offhand way called 'a troublesome boy.'"

Winston was not a robust child; narrow-chested, puny physique, and as an adult stood no more than 5'6" tall. But he had eyes full of humor with a lot of mischief. He had a pale complexion that gave him a sickly look. He was often unwell and suffered a series of childhood ailments. His doctor told his parents to send him to a healthier climate. To his delight they removed him from St. George's and sent him to Brighton by the sea, run by Misses Thomson. A less punitive regime, but still failed to produce any improvement in Winston's behavior. The move to Brighton did not have any effect on his health. He came down with pneumonia and nearly died. Eventually after restoring his health he did begin to enjoy his education, and for the first time began to reveal some of his intellectual strengths.

He wrote that he got stronger in the bracing air, and was allowed to learn things which interested him: French, history, lots of poetry by heart and above all riding and swimming. He remembers those days with fondness as opposed to his first years in school.

Winston began to be an excited observer of his father's successful parliamentary career.
Despite neglect from his father, he was very proud of him.

PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE

Overall Winston's record was now showing a marked improvement on the standard of his early school life, when he had often been bottom of the class.  At age 13 when preparing to move on to Harrow, one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished public schools, he came first in English history, algebra, ancient history and Bible history, and second in geography and arithmetic. He won two prizes at school, for English and Scripture.
He met with trepidation the exam to enter Harrow, but passed. He went to Harrow in April 1888. A month later, he joined the school cadet force. Soon, he was learning to shoot with a Martini-Henry rifle that was then in service with the army. Winston had always been interested in the army, and had built up a collection of 1,500 toy soldiers, which he carefully arranged in correct battle order.

His father asked him if he'd like to go into the army. Winston immediately said yes. It was only later that Winston found out that though he had wanted to go on to study law, his father had come to the conclusion he was far from being bright enough, clever enough to go to the Bar. Actually the results Winston was getting at Harrow would have proved his father wrong. Yet not all was good for Winston; he was criticised for being forgetful, careless, unpunctual, and even slovenly; but bright enough to perform a prodigious feat of memory: reciting by heart a thousand lines from The Last Days of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay; for this he won a special prize, and in addition, received the history prize in two consecutive terms during 1888. He also the same year came first in Roman history. He also did well at Harrow in Latin and Greek.
Winston was awaking, a late bloomer as they say. But his father did not see it, and insisted he be transfered to the army class at Harrow, so that in time he could enter a military academy. But Winston did badly in mathematics exam to enter, and the result closed another door for him; it was unlikely he would ever go on to Woolwich military academy where future officers in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers were trained. Instead it had to be the less prestigious Sandhurst, and a future as an infantry or cavalry officer.

To be continued