An original press photograph of British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, and financier, statesman, and presidential advisor Bernard M. Baruch meeting at Baruch's New York City home on 5 January 1953.
New York City: 5 January 1953. Photograph. This original press photograph captures British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, and financier, statesman, and presidential advisor Bernard M. Baruch meeting at Baruch's New York City home on 5 January 1953. The gelatin silver print on glossy photo paper measures 9 x 7.125 inches and is in very good plus condition, clean and complete with only light wear to the white border margins. Original pencil notation on the verso affirms that the image was captured "at Baruch's 4 E. 66 St" address and includes "Churchill Baruch Ike". In the same hand and pencil, circled, is the date "1/5/53" and, of note, "Don Rice" - presumably the name of the original photographer. Ownership of the photograph later passed to the "Photofest" agency, whose printed sticker is affixed to the lower left verso.
The Moment
"At 8:15 on the morning of January 5 The Queen Mary docked in New York. 'Pandemonium let loose,'" noted Churchill's Private Secretary and unauthorized chronicler of 10 Downing Street, Sir John "Jock" Colville. "Mr. Baruch, high dignitaries, low officials, Embassy people, pressmen swarmed on board." After a press conference, "From the Queen Mary, Churchill and his wife went to Bernard Baruch's apartment, where Churchill had stayed the year before. At five o'clock that afternoon General Eisenhower arrived. There were still fifteen days to go before he became President... Churchill and Eisenhower spent two hours alone together, before being the guests at a small dinner party given for them by Baruch, in his apartment." Colville was present, and noted the evening's conversation in his diary:
"Winston said that a protoplasm was sexless. Then it divided into two sexes which, in due course, united again in a different way to their common benefit and gratification. This should also be the story of England and America. Ike talked about Cleopatra's Needle (how Egyptians raised it), the charm of the Queen, the intelligence of the Duke of Edinburgh, and a few war-time indiscretions. After dinner I listened to the PM and the President-elect talking: Winston made one or two profound observations. For instance, 'I think you and I are agreed that it is not only important to discover the truth but to know how to present the truth'; and (apropos of the recent treason trials in Czechoslovakia) 'That they should think it good propaganda is what shows the absolutely unbridgeable gulf between us.'"
To an after-dinner plea by Baruch for an acceleration of the process of European unity, Churchill commented: 'It may be better to bear an agonising period of unsatisfactory time. You may kill yourself in getting strong enough.'"
Winston and "Barney"
Baruch and Churchill had a particular friendship. Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965) and Winston S. Churchill first became acquainted in 1918 when the latter as Minister of Munitions corresponded with the former as Chairman of the U.S. War Industries Board about supplies of raw materials for the war effort. Of Jewish parentage, Baruch was a New York financier, statesman, and advisor to U.S. presidents spanning Woodrow Wilson to Harry Truman. Churchill and Baruch were introduced in person by Lloyd George at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and struck up a friendship that would result in more than 750 letters and numerous meetings over the following decades. Their friendship deepened during the two decades of interwar peace. In 1929 Churchill travelled to the US for the first time in nearly 30 years. He wrote to Barney, as Baruch was affectionately called, for assistance. Baruch responded by introducing Churchill to luminaries across the country, including William Randolph Hearst. Baruch also accompanied Churchill in the former’s private railcar from Chicago to New York. During the Second World War, both men shared considerable influence, Baruch’s less formal than that of Churchill as a “Park Bench Statesman”; he told reporters that his only office was a park bench across from the White House in Lafayette Square.
The world changed remarkably during their long friendship and collaboration, which spanned bullets and cavalry to atomic energy. Although the two men had first corresponded over their respective roles producing war materials during the First World War, Baruch’s final formal governmental role was as American Representative of the Atomic Energy Commission while Churchill presided over the first British nuclear weapons test during his second and final premiership. Their friendship endured. Brendan Bracken once wrote to Baruch, “Nature made you and Winston Churchill for each other and it does you both great good to meet.” Baruch and Churchill met for the last time on board Aristotle Onassis’s yacht in 1961.
References: Gilbert, Volume VIII: Never Despair, 1945-1965; ANB; ODNB; LOC. Item #008941
Price: $200.00