He called these fits of melancholy his “black dog”—oppressive, deep depression that filled him with ennui and self-loathing. Any attempt by Clementine or anyone else to lift him from his morass was resented and met with hostility. His aide, Brendan Bracken, once asked him why he called it his “black dog.” He had answered that dog spelled backward is God—it is the opposite of God, it is hell, a black hell.
He had said, “Brendan, if death is black velvet, depression is a prickly black.”
It wasn’t simply the Labour victory, which was bad enough, but it was the size of their victory that was so humiliating and appalling. He was entitled to his black dog. Besides, he had had a premonition. It had come to him in a dream and he had awakened with his pajamas soaked with perspiration.
In the dream, he was lying in a hospital bed. He could not move. Suddenly, a white-coated attendant slowly pulled a white sheet over his head. He had little trouble interpreting the dream.
When the early returns were broadcast on BBC, Clementine had tried her best to console him.
“Winston, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.”
“If so,” he had shot back, “it’s certainly well disguised.”
Attlee of all people! It gnawed at him. Actually, he liked the man. He had been a loyal lieutenant in the wartime coalition. The problem was deeper than just a lost election. The fate of Great Britain was in the balance. Men like Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison and their fellow trade union Marxists did not understand the true depth of Stalin’s ambition. He had personally taken the measure of the man and his cohorts. Soon the Soviet Union would own Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the entire Eastern Europe. Perhaps even Germany would fall into its orbit as well, and Greece and Italy, and more — perhaps the world. Shades of Adolph.
Didn’t they understand that socialism in Moscow was a different beast from socialism in London? It was predatory, not some utopian dream of social engineering but tyranny imposed by brutality. Russian Marxists believed in revolution by tyranny. They had contempt for free elections or any other freedoms — like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. He knew in his gut what Stalin wanted: a Soviet Union that embraced the world.
He had been appalled with the Herald and The Guardian characterizing Stalin as some warm and cuddly teddy bear. Roosevelt, too, was certain he had charmed Stalin into a true friend. Did the Labour stalwarts and Franklin really believe that?
There, he told himself.
There was the seed of his discontent. There were the thoughts that stole his sleep. There was the origin of his black dog. It was neither disappointment nor rejection nor the futile expectation of his countrymen’s gratitude but fear, not merely for his country, for the world. With that epiphany, he fell, at last, into a deep slumber.
It was not the cold dawn light that awakened him but the “old man’s alarm”—the clock in his bladder. For him to sleep for eight-and-a-half hours straight was a kind of sexagenarian record. The bathroom bowl reminded him of the lake. Instead of going back to sleep, Churchill decided to take a swim. For the first time in weeks, he felt the first tremulous signs of recovery and, with them, the courage and energy to brave the morning chill.
He remembered the code flashed on every Royal Navy ship in the sea when he became First Lord of the Admiralty for the second time in 1939: Winston is Back!
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps.
He donned his old-fashioned, navy, striped bathing suit that covered his chest and made him look like a bloated balloon. Actually, he preferred no suit at all, but chuckling at the thought, decided to avoid alarming the neighbors who might think some odd blimp-like sea monster had polluted the lake.
He cautiously descended the steps of the escarpment that bordered the lake. At the lapping edge of Como’s waters, he offered a toe, then a foot. He shivered. Then, shouting lines from Macbeth—“Let me screw my courage to the sticking place!”—in he plunged.
Soon the cold became bearable, and he lay on his back to capture the visual joy of the early-morning sunrise. He knew it was a day of decision, and this brief respite in the lake would, he was certain, clear his mind of the cobwebs of depression.
As he was about to finish his swim, Churchill stopped floating and submerged himself, walking along the pebbly and sandy bottom, then rising to the top. It reminded him of the time he had explained to an acquaintance about the disaster at Gallipoli, his resignation from public life, and the trauma he suffered afterwards.
He had likened it to the experience of a deep-sea diver who has the shakes when he returns to dry land. As he climbed up the cliff steps, he felt no shakes or shivers. Exhilaration was fast replacing ennui and discouragement.
He was reminded, too, of what he had read about those river baptisms they have in the American South. The preacher dunks you and you come to the surface hearing hallelujahs from the congregation. He wanted to cry out his own version of hallelujah and a rousing Hip, Hip Hooray.
As he mounted the slope to the villa, he thought of Solomon’s words in Proverbs, “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”
When he got back to his room, he dried himself and quickly fell into a sound sleep. At ten thirty, Churchill heard a soft persistent knock on the door.
“Signore Churchill.”
It was the voice of the maid.
Churchill quickly donned his green dressing gown adorned with gold dragons. The Italian maid carried in an aquamarine tray, the color of the lake, decorated with his favorite flower, the Marigold, the name that he had bestowed on his beloved dead child. Oddly, it reminded him of his dear friend Dwight Eisenhower who had led the Allies to their military victory. Aside from their roles in the war, they had bonded deeply because of this strange coincidence of their children’s deaths. Eisenhower had lost his first son, Dwight, within three months of Churchill’s daughter’s death.
The maid placed the breakfast tray on a table in front of the window. On the tray were two pitchers, one of hot coffee and another of hot milk, two croissants, and a little plate of plum preserves.
He looked at the tray with resignation. He had not been able to get the maid to understand that an English breakfast consisted of eggs, fried tomatoes, bacon, and fried bread; it was futile. But his mood became brighter when he suddenly remembered what Somerset Maugham once told him, “Winston, the only way to dine well in England is to have three breakfasts a day.”
Smiling at the recollection, he recalled another breakfast comment when Field Marshall Montgomery came in to find him tucking into bacon and eggs in Number 10. At the sight of what he was eating, Monty fumed.
“That is an unhealthy breakfast. Look at me. I don’t eat meat, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I’m 100 percent fit.”
Churchill had growled back, “I eat meat three times a day, I smoke ten cigars a day, I drink, and I’m 200 percent fit.”
Sipping his café au lait and missing the morning English newspapers, Churchill was determined to keep his black dog at bay. Later, he decided, he would spend part of the sunny morning hours painting, a passion that he found wonderfully therapeutic.