J
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, “OCTOBER 25, 1958,
THE MOST CANDID REPORT YET ON BRITAIN'S PREMIER
·1015 January, `193.-
(Continued from Page 6)
father's anawer-or the rage, for the Macmillan temper hau alway's been violent and un- controllable. But it did not comc. Macmillan put down hia Bible, stared at hila con and enld "Never. You will nover marry Katherine Crawford."
It was the command of a patriarch to a member of his íribo,
The day of triumph: Mr. Macmillan with ble wife after accepting the Premiership. Right: In formal terms, the Court Circular records a day of great drama.
“audience of Her Majesty,"
The Queen Vale offersone sosired in audionon the Right S
Farold Woonillép, K,P, usi effared him the post of Prime Ministar
Tali Pires Lord of the Treasury,
* Thế Kight" stan, Karold Kamiljen, M.P., Boceyted
affer sad kissed bande spam bil appointerst
Kar Kajuhty Lift the Pulsed this afternoon-fer"Bankring
1916
Subaltern in the Guarda,
CROFT: ON ARRAN... a Macmillan home of three generations ago.
The family's first shop is
There must have been le sleep for tho rest of the Macmillan family that night as they lay under the ragted worn rugw
that were (keir bedclothes and nervously
One clay mils master unjustly speculatexi on the explosion accused him of mistake. that was bound to come. Daniel erupted. He snatched
his cap from the peg, run counter and pleked up u ledger, threw at his master and fled out into the main street.
The two men knelt side by side to pray each morning and evening. Together they scratched a living from the heather, but they never spoke.
Duncan
Wa
All the time meeting Katherine. The whole feland knew, the place was for 100 small for secret lovers' Macmillan The meetings. family know.
Defeated
WIS
Cow#
As he
IL
inconceivable that father Maemilan, that stere. zuff-backed man, did not know. But he sold nothing.
all the time, he Indend, wrestled with himself. drove the plough, milked the thin
with their staring ribs, he fought for the truth.
And a lolig fight it was. No covenanting Scotsman like Mac. milion could compromise with his faith, and yet in his eyes the. Crawfords were hardly Jukewarm in their worship of Gott. How could one of them be embraced in his family's
arma?
At the same time his heart was warm. The island childres would run to climb oh bl
empty cart as he drove down to
inc
He we frull boy. Hall flarved all his young already in his body was the term that was to kill him.
But ofer he quarrelled with his master he was too proud
bought on a loan
ever
They showed Daniel a side He was a very sick on when , or life that was a dream to his third child was born.
him. They took him into their
And he died on a June day country homes. He savoured
If his when he was only 44. No one luxury and good living. ambillon had
needed could have called him vaguely whetting this contrast between prosperous, let alorie rich, but the there splendid houses and the he was clear-sighted. untit he squalid croft in which he was renched, the sea coast where he born, was the hone stonc, wns nol town. Hungry and he stumbled desperately tired
fo
KO home. He walked berious hillsides
Found the fishing boats seeking
lift back to Arran.
1
He borrowed
1401
He knew that the authors he wooed and hod to carefully encouraged were finding fame.
Each year would see the firin a little wealthier. The crofter's coltage had gone for ever.
Its thoughts turned to Cam: I was there in a muintand
a book shop that
His brther Alexander become harbour that his family found bridge and
for sale. He borrowed bend of the firm and took over him. But he would not return wa
from
arch-deacon Daniel's children as though they master, an Anti Jus
honest £500
were his own. felend, and moved in. man, apologized,
For the first time be was The firm was snowballing to The
ended. reven years
master. lie Own
WAS Access. Its prestige Daniel was n
young man with
overwhelmed with Joy. He attracting other authors, famous pinched pale face, a gangling
catalogued every volume la men, and, in turn, the talk was Lody and bony wrists. He also the piace and publiened now of thousands of pounds, not had a desperate ambition.
book lak, each with his own tens and hundreds. comment.
گرام
Als
There
peated
dictum that It was messes. It was one of mud, of ceaseless labour and a facility agony, and of ice. Leave was for counting pennies that had rare, but Harold Macmillan had brought the Macinillans from little time for hysterical gaiety rags and poverty..
In those days, at the turn of the century, educailon depend- ed on far more than the chance result of an 11-plus Intelligence test,
involved day-in-day-out studying, in term Unte and on holidays. And the three brothers It was Harold who thrived.
of
So proud
attool find béén repulsed an started to read again,
Twelve olită inter, « in the darkness, his sergeant major found him. In Guards fashion the N.C.O, stiffened to atten- tlon, saluted, and said: "Per- mission to carry you (away,
When a man becomes famous sir." all who cross his path; are
By the time they got Mac-
Inclined to sprinkle glitter on millan back to the fine ho the occasion in the hope that Wur very ili Indeed. a little of the reflection will gild their own lives
So it has become with Harold Macmillan..
Altogether, in that war, was wounded three times.
Ro
On the third occasion he lay one night make. with pain ois abod in Earl Bathurst's, house Many stories are told about In Belgrave Square. This noble this period in the trenchen..... home hat bean converted into many magnified by the years. a hospital for officers.
But one story I know is true. Macmillan, seeking company, It is this,
turned his head in the darkness who The war was at its bloodiest to the Canadian officer He concentrated on
pre and most desperate. Harold was in the next bod, serving his world of careful Macmillan was lending his com culture Even back in the pany against the Germans In, morning when Macmillan misery of 'Frasice he had the an attack that failed. same ambition.
and endless champagne,
It is true
With his men dead around him he was severely wounded. Carefully he rolled into the alth and the mud at the botton' of a shell crater.
It was two o'clock in the asked: "Have you any ideas an parliamentary reform??
He conlinned: "I inve The only bloke who ever had a workable policy for partis. Guy mentary reform 1948. Fakes."
The spirit of his grandfather.
Hull conscious he lay there from
It was an old jolte even then, who struggled so hard the hearth of a Scottish craft and realised, he could not be but startled the Canadian who - became Sir Beverley to build a bright new world rescued until darknese fell. He later for himself, flooded Harold groped in a pocket and found. Baxter, MP, Macmillan. With Just the a copy of Aeschylus.
though I was delirious," did not difference that he was trying He was reading it when the he says. I certainly was
Germans counter attacked. Out know I was being addressed by to save an old world.
of the corner of his eye be the future Prime Minister." It was only a month after raw the men in field grey he joined the Army that, he uniforms, their bayonets NEXT WEEK first went into action with the savagely poised, running pus
HIS BRIDEA DUKE'S Fourth Battalion. With them he his shell hole. He pretended to
DAUGHTERSDA Scarriane earned an immense reputation, be dead, When tho
He won a scholarship to Eton, Out of all the 15 Prime Minis, ters that have come from that school, Macmillan and William F are the only two who have shown such brightness so carly Like so muny Scotsmen
hardship in in life. was no Els age he was burning to get In those day's the bookseller store for Daniel's children. They to London and make his for and the publisher
Since the scholarship were often did not have to educate them- ahip at tune. He boarded
the same man.
that his parents would not have Macmillan elves by candlelight. Lelth and set pall.
to pay the full fees althoughi started to print the works of his
they could have afforded to They were He was sensick nearly all the theologian friends.
ponderous essays, llowing over
Nellie with religious controversy.
the bench to collect reaweed for way.
the land,
They weren't lianld with him. Yet inger burned in his own
son's face,
Foreigner!
རྞ
ife was now in his thiriles and despite his frequent sick- Was kill- Jess-consumption
was growing
Macmillan milked at GREEN-FACED and wide- ing him he thought, ploughed and thought, eyed at the city hubbub, 17- more handsome as his life be- Then one evening when the year-old Daniel found his way came more comfortable. family had sung their last hymu
to their derco God, Mucmillan
to his lodgings.
He had a long, straight nose, full lips and at high brow and his saber clothes were showing traces of elegance. He had girl, but her family turned him down. They thought he was tos ill
looked en his son and said: Ile knocked at the door and "You shall wed her."
promptly received a sharp blow The whole island come to the to his self-calcem. The two wedding and Macmillon even women couldn't understand already become engaged, in one Icoked gently upon the dancing, word he was saying,, no thick Everyone brought a present, was his accent. They looked at poor gifts but wealth to The his patheile luggage and de young couple, shawls that elded he was a foreigner. They anell of heather, rugs that kill thed to drive him away. acemed vaguely animal, ond wooden bowls.
Indignantly, Daniel puced the
The couple moved to a tiny pavement cutside until he found crumbling farm at Upper Corrie a Scotsman
interpret for
to
4
ún The Island. The roll was. him. poor, and for most of the time they were hungry, int Intern Daniel trans:ed from Look." tolled all day and In fervent seller publisher until he Gaelle read his Bible at night. found the
employer who he came children. thaught would best further his own interests.
And there
Many altogether.
fif them.
Accused
:
Twelve
There was one in London who would do. Instead he went
One of his rons, Maurice, father of the presont Prime Minister, went up to Cambridge.
Vivacious
the About this time, across Atlantic in rural Indiana, 4 timing doctor, Joshua Tarleton Belles, was feeling very proud of his daughter Helen. Her voice was the talk of the Methodist church choir.
Helen was no blue-stocking. She adored duncing and had no trouble at all in Anding escorts. When she was 18 sho married one of them-an artist bul within a year he was
dend.
When he was 37 le proposed to Frances Orridge, daughter of a local chemist, That year they were married, but soon Mac- For a while Helen, dressed in nukan u to borrow £30 from the black weeds of widowhood,,
father-in-Inw his
to meet his clung to her family, but she was 100 vivaelous to live like that off the urch for ever.
to have one
debts.
He had paid
but had
Armed with her inheritance deacon
after another, from her husband and a little sleeping partner They were men with money but money from her father, she re invariably without any know membered how the Methodists of Spencer. Indiano, had ad- ledge of the book trade.
Daniel, in great excilement, mired her voice.
10 a Cambridge bookshop, at spoke. one of them about a Along the crossed the Atlain £30 a year for a 12-hour day. wonderful foreign author he tle to have her voice trained in
aweet London
children
But the weary soil of their also humble farm defeated them.
there
over his religion.
be
It was in that elty at a party one night that she met a 30- masler from year-old classics St. Paul's School, London.
Aggressive
Duncan worked and prayed, Fron
he returned to had discovered. He wanted to Paris. at £00 and each evening his
a year. He translate his works, wife Katherine would croon the kept his budget balanced by
But nil the
with the mean soft Scottish songs to his cating heavily whenever
went to tea with friends, He money-bags would suggest was
very became
perplexed that Macmillan should write and offer £10 translation fee on the condition that the writer first Hila father's faith sulted became famous in this country, him no more so he became a The Macmillan fury, so care» Baptist, but he lett
#efully held in check, flooded over. Chapel in
anger after com- He was clawing at a fortune; plaining bitterly that he was fools were holding him back. not going
to stand in the atalen until the wealthy had taken the best bows.
Then came an epidemio and within a year of the birth of their tenth child, Dhulel, he who was to be a future Prime Minister's grandfather, the of their young family dead. Duncan finally admitted the truth to himself and decided that if they were to survive they must leave.
were
No learning
The ramshackle carts creaked their slow way from the door of the croft and as their neigh-
All the time he was reading, bours walled furewell,
the and learning, but oddly enough broken Macmilians with their it was his pre-occupation with Zew shabby possessions set off theology that was to build the to seek an cnaler fight for family fortune. existence across the mainland.
Ho wrote long letters to the
At Irvine in Ayrshire Duncan leading religious authors. They Macmillan found himself another small farm and on the were often flattering to the They first day of January 1824, Daniel point of being fulsome. Macmillan, aged ten, was bound also oozed self-abasement.
clerk
Daniel could see no solution, The firm of Macmillan was ex- panding, but the bottom of the t was painfully visible.
His name was Maurice Mac- millan, and they fell in love.
Ho'en he called her Nellie -married him in 1884. Mauric was tranquil and he was stu- dious. The tires of his father's ambitions burned low.
Et Nellie had enoligh enter- prise for both of them. She was
meant
Macmillan was very proud of her youngest son,
It also facilitated his admis- sion to Baillol, that graceful college, a tranquil backwater of crudition and gentle good man- ners in a world growing more brash each day.
Harold Macmillan arrived
grandfather in him. His n there with a great deal of his
his petuosity,
ambition and tometimes a brittle temper were below the surface. only just Balliol changed all that.
With good features and figure to help him, Harold bo- distinguished for JA elegance in a place where elegance was all.
came
Affectation
most im He developed a
rather ex- pressive drawl, a cruelating fastidiousness and an affectation of pausing in his conversation to find exactly the right Grecis and Latin quota- tion to underline his point of view:
Then came 1914 and the war.
Harold Macmillan, the cle- gant undergraduate, became a dandy of the Grenadier Guards. He had cheated his way into the Brigade. All his Me he has suffered from acute short- sightedness in his left eye and had worn spectacles.
This would not have done for the Guards.
So hours before his medical examination Harold Macmillan sneaked into the eye-testing room. There was the chart on the wall with the large letters until
points,
He passed
Then by sheer accident came not content to be the wife of a shrinking line by line the stroke of luck that was to schoolmaster. She was chann- they were a jumble of pin make the Macmillan fortunes. Ing, aggressive, and forthright. Two of Daniel's theologlan Maurice Macmillan Боод found himself working in the writers turned out best sellers.
One was Charles Kingsley, family, pablishing firm which who almost of handedly wrote by now had become one of the Wontward Ho!" The other biggest in London.
He was not unhappy. ww.s Thomas Hughes, who deribbled Tom Brown's sentimental Schooldays" ke excrciso.
Weakened
Scholar though he was, Mac- millan never swotted harder than be did in those frantle To the firm he brought moments is he stated for riches from the schoolroom. footsteps in the corridor out- He thought of all the dreaty ¦ üldo. textbooks ho had handlefl
‚ and 'decided that they should Ho passed the test magnial-
cently.
· be rewritten. **
as opprenties for seven years to Once he wrote: . "It may be local bookseller. Hid wages as well to let you know that I were to be 13. Od. a week with am only one of the a shiling rise every year;
species, whose singular and un-
Ho also bought himself a Irvine has grown now but the fortunete position with regard For the first time the firm's
Soon the products or his or
the tortoise-shell-rimmed monocle, 'little bookshop is still there to spiritual culture was the books looked healthy. The last genisation were flooding
and so is the memory of little cause of my first writing to you, partner was paid off and Daniel schools, and Macmillian's grew This at the time, was put down another evidence! ・ of Dantel, the faithful and indus- I have no learning, can read Macralian celebrated the occt even richer.
dandylom. Of course it, was Irious apprentice. The tiny no langunge
except English, sion by smoking his first cigar. Maurico and Nellie had three nothing of the sort and as soon back room whore, night after speak none except u parily in. At least, he started to, but the
Band Harold was the tie had mastered the, trick night, he stumbled laboriously tillgible Scatch English thought of the twopence it had youngest. He was also the of resping, it out of his whip, through every book in the shop dialect....
cost him mado him throw it
be bought a much less onfenita- away before it was halt burned toughest. - T
QUI; ulous-rimless affair.
katili as it wan
Dutiful Daniel certainly was.
In return theze.
authors, He had also had the flaring famous and often wealth clergy- temper of the Macmillans, men, were kind to hlin.
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Although he had his father's As the firm begon gently, to delictes, and had also absorbed is war was not one of rod flourish en did` Dandel ̈ weakon.. his mother's frequently tabs, start, cars and pleasant.
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