Age

Old age is sufficiently ugly and unpleasing without its too frequent accompaniments, capriciousness and malevolence.

1897, 21 January, Madras, India.

(OB, CV1/2, 727.)

WSC to his mother.

I am 25 today. It is terrible to think how little time remains.

1899, 30 November, Pretoria. (Pilpel, 30.)

Postscript in a letter from WSC to Bourke Cockran, while Churchill was imprisoned by the Boers after the Armoured Train ambush. Given his father’s early death, WSC long believed that he too would die young.

Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality! How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!

Circa 1906. (Bonham Carter, 15.)

WSC to Violet Asquith.

I must be the oldest man ever to have been in the White House.

1942, 14 January. White House, Washington.

(Ward, 166.)

Daisy Suckley diaries. Suckley wrote, "The Pres. said there had been someone ninety-five there, so he cheered up.”

I notice in the newspapers that the Central Office or Party Chiefs have issued instructions that no one over seventy should be tolerated as a candidate at the forthcoming election. I naturally wish to know at the earliest moment whether this ban applies to me.

1945, 19 March. (WW2 VI, 632.)

WSC to the Rt. Hon. Ralph Assheton, Chairman of the Conservative Party Organisation, 1944-46.

Who is that?

[Julian Amery: Morrison, he used to be your Home Secretary.]

Are you sure? He looks very much aged!

1956. (Halle, Irrepressible, 337.)

Julian Amery MP to Kay Halle.

I am so bored with it all.

1965, January. (Sir John Colville to the editor.)

A remark to family and friends at the end of his life.