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Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965

© Mary Lou Derksen

One day he discovered an ancient school statute that caught his interest. On careful reading, it appeared to offer a way of escaping compulsory football--which he hated--during Examination Week. The statute suggested that football might interfere with study. Winston and a friend announced to the monitors that as football week might prove calamitous to serious study, they intended to act in accord with the ancient statute. To everyone's surprise, rather than being punished, they were excused from football for the duration of the exams, and that week other activities replaced football in the ruination of Winston's serious study.

Letters from Winston to his parents emphasize the affectionate distance between them. When special days were coming up at the school he would write frequent, often daily, letters begging one of his parents to attend--and if they could not make it, to send Mrs. Everest in their stead. The pleas usually went unheeded. Other times Winston's frequent letters, with infrequent responses, begged that he be allowed to come home for a week-end or holiday. When Winston was allowed to go to town, he often did not see his parents because they were out and about with their social and political obligations.

Winston's letters also contained regular requests for more money, with explanations as to the need. Responses to these requests usually gained the desired result, accompanied by parental instructions and scoldings.

Winston's only noteworthy achievements at Harrow were winning the Public Schools Fencing championship and second and third places in the House swimming races.

After Winston finished school, Lord Randolf decided that the army was the only job Winston could successfully do. Therefore, in March of 1892, Winston took the entrance exams for Sandhurst, the West Point of England. He failed. The schoolmasters gave Winston special coaching, and he took the exams again in August. Again he failed.

Lord Randolph made arrangements for Winston to attend a "crammer" school, to prepare for another attempt at the entrance exams. He was to begin in early February. In the meantime, he, his brother, and a cousin had a holiday in the country.

Winston invented a game for the three boys: eighteen-year-old Winston would be a deer, and the younger boys would be hunters. The deer successfully eluded the hunters for some time but was finally cornered on a rustic bridge that spanned a 28 foot deep ravine. One hunter blocked each end of the bridge. Characteristically, the deer never thought of surrender. He looked at the nearby pine trees, roots in the bottom of the ravine, tops near the bridge and figured he could jump to the top of a tree whose branches would successively break his fall. He would then land uncaptured and uninjured at the bottom of the ravine. Confidently, he jumped. He woke up three days later, suffering from a concussion and a ruptured kidney.