"Attlee and I saw the two doctors who had attended Winston... we did not feel there was anything more to be done..." - A Second World War 16 December 1943 autograph letter signed on House of Commons stationery from British Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons Anthony Eden to Churchill's great friend, media mogul Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, regarding the dire health of British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, who was suffering pneumonia and heart trouble in North Africa.
Whitehall, London: 1943. Letter. This 16 December 1943 autograph letter signed from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s British Foreign Minister and Leader of the House of Commons, Anthony Eden, to Churchill’s great friend, media mogul, and Tory politician Lord Beaverbrook, is a direct window on Churchill’s dire health emergency in North Africa in late 1943, immediately following conferences with Stalin and Roosevelt.
The letter, written entirely in Eden’s hand on the recto of a single sheet of embossed House of Commons stationery, reads “My dear Max, Thank you so much for your letter. Attlee and I saw the two doctors who had attended Winston, after our Cabinet last night. Both were emphatic that the men out there were the best possible; no one who could be sent out from here could be better. In view of this we did not feel there was anything more to be done in that line.” After his valediction, Eden signs simply “Anthony”. “Attlee” is, of course, Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who would succeed Churchill as Prime Minister in July 1945.
Condition and provenance
Condition of the letter is near fine. The embossed House of Commons stationery is crisp, complete, and clean apart from a faint paperclip impression and stain at the upper left corner. A single vertical crease and a single horizontal crease are presumably from original posting. Eden’s writing remains clear and distinct. This letter was part of the Forbes family’s incomparable Churchill collection, and thereafter part of the Churchill collection of Richard C. Marsh, from whence it came to us. The letter is protected within a clear, removable, archival sleeve housed in a rigid, crimson cloth folder.
"I am completely at the end of my tether..."
Fresh from a wartime conference with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, “On the morning of 2 December 1943, Churchill left Teheran by air for Cairo,” where he had further meetings with Roosevelt and many others. By 7 December 1943, it was clear that Churchill was contending with some illness, though meetings continued. On the night of 10 December, “Churchill left Cairo for the westward flight to Tunisia, the prelude, as he hoped, to a visit to the British troops in Italy.” His plane landed at the wrong airport, where Churchill waited outside in “a very cold morning wind” before another short flight and a drive to meet with Eisenhower, to whom Churchill confided “I am completely at the end of my tether and cannot go on to the front until I have recovered some strength.” Churchill had pneumonia, diagnosed via a portable X-Ray machine brought in from Tunis.
Then 69 years old, Churchill had survived everything from Dervish spears to artillery shells in battle on three continents, and every manner of incident and accident, from falling out of a tree as a young man, falling out the sky in a plane as an adult, and being struck by a New York City truck driver. It was not clear that his luck would hold.
For some days, Churchill’s illness “continued to cause alarm” and “Churchill’s heart began to show signs of strain.” On 14 December, Churchill told his daughter Sarah, “If I die, don’t worry – the war is won.” Staff began to converge on him in North Africa, as did his wife and son. On the 15th, Churchill experienced prolonged fibrillation and his doctor recognized “we were at last right up against things.” Churchill had suffered a heart attack. His doctor sat by Churchill’s bedside, “waiting for the Prime Minister’s heart to resume its normal rhythm.” It was only on 16 December, the day Eden wrote this letter to Beaverbrook, that Churchill’s condition began to improve, “his pulse… steadier” and lungs “clearing a little.” Substantiating Eden’s reassurance to Beaverbrook about Churchill’s medical care, Churchill’s Private Secretary John Martin wrote to his wife on 16 December: “We have quite an assembly of medical talent, and everything possible is being done for him.”
The long-suffering Anthony Eden
If retrospectively pressed, Eden might have privately wished for less diligent medical care. Churchill’s equally overtaxed and indispensable ally, Robert Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon (1897-1977), was destined to become one of the most eminent, qualified, and frustrated political lieutenants in British history. In perhaps his finest hour, Eden famously resigned his Foreign Secretary post in the British Cabinet on 20 February 1938 in protest of the Government's appeasement policies. When Churchill became wartime Prime Minister in May 1940, Eden returned to power and served critical leadership roles, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons among them, throughout the War. Churchill would ultimately not yield the reigns of the Conservative Party and the premiership until April 1955. Eden's long-delayed premiership proved brief and fraught with challenge, dominated by the Suez Crisis and his own ill health, both of which forced his resignation in January 1957.
"dear Max"
Newspaper mogul and Tory politician William Maxwell “Max” Aitken (1879-1964), Lord Beaverbrook, first met Churchill in 1911 and they became close during Churchill’s 1916 First World War service on the Western Front. Their association proved lifelong, close, sometimes frictional, and both personal and professional. During and between two World Wars Churchill was supported by Beaverbrook, beset by him, employed by him, served in the Government with him, or some combination of the above. Their friendship lasted more than 50 years until Beaverbrook's death, less than a year before Churchill's own. Beaverbrook was one of the three close Churchill friends dubbed with some disapproval by Churchill's wife the "three Bs" - including Bracken and Birkenhead. When Beaverbrook died, two decades after Eden wrote him this letter, Churchill's secretary wrote privately "Sir Winston was deeply and obviously moved at Lord Beaverbrook's death, and in the last years no-one had been closer to him."
References: Gilbert Vols. II-VIII; ODNB. Item #008416
Price: $7,500.00