By all outward appearances, when he was growing up, Winston Churchill had everything a boy could want—wealth, privileges, servants, education—all that accompanies aristocratic status. He was the Kennedy or Bush of his generation. However, under the surface there was a hollow cavity. Servants and orderlies raised him, and, at the earliest possible age, he was sent off to boarding school. His interaction with his world-famous father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was sporadic. It is reported that he never ate with his parents until he was a teen and even then only on rare occasions.
As a young man, Winston was thrilled when he was accepted into Sandhurst Military College. Although a public school and not the same as his dad’s alma mater, a private cavalry school known as the Sixtieth Rifles, it was nonetheless prestigious and quite an honorable accomplishment for young Winston. He eagerly awaited his father’s favor. On hearing the news, Lord Randolph sent his son the following letter:
You should be ashamed of your slovenly, happy-go-lucky, harum, scarum style of work. . . . Never have I received a really good report of your conduct from any headmaster or tutor. . . . Always behind, incessant complaints of a total want of application to your work. . . . You have failed to get into the 60th Rifles, the finest regiment in the army. . . . You have imposed on me an extra charge of some 200 pounds a year. . . . Do not think that I am going to take the trouble of writing you long letters after every failure you commit and undergo. . . . I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. . . . If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days, . . . you will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence. . . . You will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes. . . . Your mother sends her love.
Taken with permission from Parenting At Its Best by Fred A. Hartley.
