Books: Dear Kat

CLEMENTINE CHURCHILL: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A MARRIAGE by Mary Soames Houghton Mifflin; 732 pages; $16.95

When Winston Churchill married Clementine Hozier in 1908, more than 1,000 guests jammed St. Margaret's, Westminster, in London. It was the marriage of the season, indeed for 57 seasons to come. Clementine's Edwardian dignity proved to be the perfect foil for her husband's tempestuous brilliance. She played her part so well that Oxford University, in 1946, awarded her an honorary degree as the "Soul of Persuasion, Guardian Angel of our country's guardian."

But behind Clementine's correct facade was a heroine worthy of Jane Austen, as her daughter Mary Soames reveals in this fluent, dispassionate biography. The daughter of Colonel Henry Hozier and Lady Blanche Hozier, her upper-class but financially precarious parents, Clementine was a shy and teary child. But by the time she married Winston, she had blossomed as one of London's acknowledged beauties—and a lady who could speak her mind. She would interrupt dinner guests who monopolized the conversation—especially if their views did not agree with her own. She even upbraided Charles de Gaulle, when the general testily said that the French fleet would like to attack the British as well as the Germans. Nor was Winston spared her temper. Once after a battle over his spendthrift habits, she hurled a dish of spinach at his head. She missed.

Clementine was as staunch a Liberal as Winston was a Tory. Yet, as Soames tells it, his political career benefited greatly from the shrewdness and discretion of his "Clemmie." When Churchill was removed from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I, Clementine wrote Prime Minister Asquith an anguished protest: "Winston may in your eyes ... have faults but he has the supreme quality which I venture to say very few of your present or future Cabinet possess—the power, the imagination, the deadliness to fight Germany." Her further efforts managed to keep her husband from openly breaking with the powerful Prime Minister. Later, when Winston himself occupied No. 10 Downing Street, she did not hesitate to criticize him. During the worst days of World War II, word of his rudeness reached her. She dropped him a note: "I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; you are not as kind as you used to be."

Clementine's wifely career, as one might guess, was not easy. At times, says Daughter Soames, Churchill behaved like "a spoiled and naughty child." Clementine, for her part, was almost too responsible; she drove herself and others mercilessly. In addition to running several residences, entertaining and helping Winston win elections, she took on huge administrative jobs: organizing canteens during both wars and heading fund-raising drives.