Chartwell, Churchill, a Dream, some Art.

Chartwell is beautiful, Kent at its most beguiling. The house is pleasant, and if it is something of a shrine to its most famous owner, perhaps it would be impolite to point out the man's personal flaws in his own home. Here lived Winston Spencer Churchill, a man who, given everything, managed to make something of himself. I can't be too awed. He was of great use to this country in world war II, but he did help bring about the conditions for it. When WWI commenced, no melancholic stuff about the lights going out all over Europe for him, oh no, he was delighted and excited. Churchill himself admitted that he loved war. He was a racist, anti the suffragette movement, dismissive of democracy, supported using extreme force against those who had no such weapons, and the shadow of genocide still follows him. Also he had an awful, awful, habit of bullshitting.

Still his house is kind and the gardens are this close to Narnia. It was a beautiful day. But what a night!

'All right then,' I had said in my head as we entered his sweet old domain, 'Show yourself to me...'

'Oh I will, ' said the imagined voice in my head, and all else was a loved and lovely house surrounded by roses and fine trees, a small lake and black swans, meadows full of buttercups and the green hills smiling. England the Beautiful. When we retreated to bed that night, back at the Old Forge Cottage near Ashford, I had a ghastly waking dream. Staring out of the window pre dawn, I saw the rolling banks of what are normally green ferns. I looked and they were a jumble of terrible dead faces. Some had hats/helmets I think, but all were grotesque in decay. I blinked and turned away, not knowing if I was dreaming, and then I recognised the twistangles of myriads of fronds, nothing more. I lay down again on the rose patterned duvet and tried to... to what? I was already asleep, yet awake!

One interesting aspect of Churchill's life was his painting. Was he good? His best was that of a gifted amateur, his usual was pleasant enough. The studios and house at Chartwell were full of his work. Art was a passion he shared with Hitler. Their styles were very different, Churchill splashing blobs and dashes and dissolution, shade and colour and warmth which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, compared to Hitler's tints and meticulous architectural accuracy, and yet the latter's work is... what? Who loves art for its precision?

Winter Sunshine was Churchill's pseudonymous entry for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. It did well, got exhibited, won some sort of prize. https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/winter-sunshine-chartwell-218648

Hitler's work is tellingly different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler#/media/File:Adolf_Hitler_Der_Alte_Hof.jpg

Their work has two grounds of commonality; the first is that people feature very little in either repertoire. If they are there at all, Hitler's folk are stiff little dolls. His Virgin and child is an exception, and it's painfully bad, Mary cuddling her aryan cartoon-eyed Jesus. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler#/media/File:HitlerMaryWithJesus.jpg )

Churchill's folk are streaks of colour within colours, warm and sometimes a bit rubbish. Credit to him for trying something with 'Mary's First Speech.' (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/winston-churchill/11461768/9.4m-Churchill-paintings-given-to-the-nation-in-lieu-of-inheritance-tax.html)* God alone knows what the hands-on-hips gent is about, or why Sebastian Flyte saw fit to saunter into the pic and stare mournfully at Winnie's bricklaying.*

The second thing their work has in common is that, though competent, no-one would buy it if it was done by some random just trying to sell their talent. The paintings of Churchill and Hitler are celebrity souvenirs, little more. Chartwell, though, despite its elements of shrine... Chartwell is a creation worth loving.

* The article says, 40 Churchill paintings were given to the nation instead of inheritance tax. I cannot believe the nation accepted a deal like that. I'm a part of the nation and no-one asked me about it.