Winston Churchill, 1908
Long
before British Prime Minister Winston Churchill became famous around the world,
another man by the same name enjoyed widespread fame throughout the United
States. The American Winston Churchill (1871-1947)
was one of the best-selling U.S. authors in the first part of the 20th
century. In this article, we will look
briefly at his career and his interaction with the Glessners.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Winston Church
was born in 1871 in St. Louis, Missouri, making him just one month younger than
the Glessners’ son George. After
attending the United States Naval Academy and serving briefly as the managing
editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, he “retired”
to devote all his time to writing historical novels.
His first
novel to appear in book form, The
Celebrity, was published in 1898. It
followed Mr. Keegan’s Elopement which
had been serialized in a magazine in 1896.
However, it was his novel Richard
Carvel, published in 1899, that brought him widespread fame and success,
selling nearly two million copies.
In 1901,
Churchill published The Crisis, set
in his native Missouri in the years leading up to the Civil War. It was the best-selling book in the United
States that year. It was also in 1901 that
the Glessners met Churchill.
THE GLESSNERS MEET THE AUTHOR
The
Glessners were visiting Boston in March 1901 when, as noted in Frances Glessner’s
journal:
“Wednesday I lunched at Mrs. Clifford Moore’s. In the afternoon we met at Mrs. Brooks’ and
went over the Longfellow house. We made
calls and in the evening dined at Dr. Councilman’s where we met Mr. & Mrs.
Endicott and Mr. & Mrs. Winston Churchill – the author of Richard Carvel.”
THE COUNCILMANS
Dr.
William Thomas Councilman (1854-1933) was a well-known pathologist, and had
served as the Shattuck Professor of Pathological Anatomy at Harvard Medical
School since 1892. He was especially
known for his work with yellow fever, and a specific globule of cells in the
liver of yellow fever victims is known to this day as “Councilman body.” He also made important contributions to the study
of smallpox, diphtheria, and dysentery.
His wife
was the former Isabella “Isa” Coolidge, the younger sister of architect Charles
A. Coolidge, who helped to complete the Glessners’ home on Prairie Avenue after
the death of H. H. Richardson in 1886. (Coolidge
and his partners George Shepley and Charles Rutan took charge of Richardson’s
practice, renaming the firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. They would later design a new campus for
Harvard Medical School). Charles and Isa
Coolidge were both close friends with the Glessners, as was their younger
brother Frederic, who married the prominent music patron Elizabeth Sprague, daughter
of the Glessners’ close friends and Prairie Avenue neighbors, Albert and Nancy
Sprague.
THE CRISIS
Frances
Glessner notes in her journal that she read Churchill’s The Crisis during 1901, while at her summer estate, The Rocks. (Other books read that summer included Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
and The Life of the Bee by Maurice
Maeterlinck). Shortly after finishing
the novel, she wrote to Churchill telling him how much she enjoyed it. In June 1901, Churchill replied to her
letter, and Frances Glessner pasted the letter inside the front cover of The Crisis.
His letter reads:
“My dear Mrs. Glessner,
Your letter was sent to me in Canada, to my
Salmon Club, and then lost. This leaves
me for the present without your address, so I am sending this to Mrs. Councilman
in the hope that it will ultimately reach you.
I appreciated greatly the trouble which you took to write to me, and it
gives me great pleasure to know that you liked the book. I am glad of the chance of telling you how
much Mrs. Churchill and I enjoyed meeting you that evening at dinner, and we
hope that we may have that pleasure again, in the near future.
Sincerely yours,
Winston Churchill”
HARLAKENDEN HOUSE
The letter
is written on stationery from Churchill’s home, Harlakenden House. That house was designed by architect Charles
Platt and completed in 1899 in Cornish, New Hampshire. It was named for Churchill’s wife, the former
Mabel Harlakenden. The home served as
the summer White House for President Woodrow Wilson from 1913 through
1915. It was destroyed by fire in 1923.
LATER YEARS
Churchill
published The Crossing in 1904
telling the story of the westward expansion of the United States, including the
settlement of Kentucky. It was the
best-selling novel in the United States that year, and the Glessners owned a
copy.
He became
deeply involved in the Cornish Art Colony and served two terms in the New
Hampshire state legislature in 1903 and 1905.
(George Glessner would serve in the state legislature a decade
later). During World War I, Churchill
toured the battlefield of Europe, writing his first non-fiction work.
Shortly
after the end of the war, Churchill stopped writing and withdrew from public
life, focusing on painting in watercolors.
He became well respected for his landscapes, several of which are now in
museum collections in New Hampshire.
Not
surprisingly, the identity of the two Winston Churchills, both of whom were
authors, became confused. Interestingly,
both also had political careers and were noted amateur painters. After the British Winston Churchill became
aware of the American Churchill’s books, he wrote to him suggesting that he
would sign his own works “Winston Spencer Churchill” to differentiate
them. The American Churchill replied
that the suggestion was a good one, and he would have done the same, if he had
a middle name.
Winston
Churchill died in Winter Park, Florida in 1947 at the age of 75.
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