Free Lord Beaverbrook by David Adams Richards Page A

enthusiastic imitator of others. All his life he imitated those who assumed they were his betters, even if he knew in most ways they weren’t. Winston Churchill, of course, was one exception to this rule. Still, if Winston went, he would go too. When Winston had a painting done by Graham Sutherland in the 1950s, Max had one done as well. Stanley Baldwin (Conservative prime minister of Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s) had a fine player piano at 10 Downing Street. In Max’s museum in Newcastle, New Brunswick, one sits. Hey, my boys, this is what the orphan does.
    BACK IN ENGLAND , Max now and again entertained friends at Cherkley. On many a weekend there was a party, in the good old-fashioned Miramichi tradition. I don’t know if they all sat in the kitchen, but the guest book was filled. Maxhad other interests too, besides business and politics. He set up house in apartments in the neighbourhood called The Temple, closer to town, and then, closer still, in Hyde Park, a few blocks from Opposition leader Bonar Law.
    From here he kept his eye on the shifting politics of the time and tried with some measure of success to influence events. He had many lady friends, seduced by his money, his fame and power, his narcissism, and his pretended devil-may-care attitude. For almost a year he stayed away from his family. And it was at his apartment in The Temple that his wife and children, coming to visit him one day, found him in bed with a well-known lady. These intrigues would in time help to kill his wife, and in the end turned his daughter’s love to hatred.
    Max has been criticized for a great many things. He has been accused of theft and being a womanizer. Theft maybe not; womanizer, of course. He bedded many. A moral lapse certainly, but why such reaction to the man? The last thing he pretended to was sainthood. In fact, he dabbled in that moral ambiguity so fashionable in our politics and literature and culture of today. Clementine Churchill, one of the women who hated him (which I always thought showed her distinct lack of imagination), had an affair herself, which most people neglect to mention, or tacitly approve.
    Max did not fare as well with that kind of shoddy public opinion. I for one am not saying that he should have. But so much of this was tossed his way by a society in which mores were corrupt and understood to be. The reputation of David Lloyd George, the brilliant Liberal radical who became prime minister of Britain in 1916, fares much better, though he demonstrated the same incontinence. In one letter, Lloyd George writes that Max had the blood of broken Commandments on his hands, but Lloyd George was dubbed “the Goat” by others in the House, and had a man in his employ who would pay off women who had been offended by his sometimes overt advances.
    BUT AT THIS TIME , on those grey, rainy, and tragic days, with huge dreadnoughts in the English Channel, Max was truly the main connection between the two political parties in Great Britain. Yes, apart from champagne and women and making sure the contributions of Canadians in the war effort were recognized around the world, he would do another merger. As his friend H.G. Wells, writer of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine , said, “When Max dies, he will be kicked out of paradise for trying to set up a merger between heaven and hell.” Of course the war was a terrible hell, and by 1915 this is exactly what he was trying to do.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Making of
Prime Minister
David Lloyd George
    Let’s go back to the second decade of the last century for a moment.
    Asquith’s Liberals were in power. In May 1915 they were reeling from the resignation of Sea Lord Fisher because of his dispute with Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty (the political position in the Navy), over the sinking of the battleship Goliath in the Dardanelles (it was not a huge battleship, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back) and the slaughter of the