Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill Read Online Free PDF Page B

him.” Would he like to join the race?

    The only barrier now between Churchill and his place on the Conservative ticket was a trial speech, which Ascroft suggested he give in Oldham before the campaign began in earnest. Then a final decision would be made. It was a reasonable and customary formality, but for Churchill the uncertainty was almost unbearable.
    It went against every instinct Churchill had to sit still and wait to be called to the test. Desperate to do something, he decided that although he had faith in his star, it couldn’t hurt to peer into the misty future to make sure it was still shining. He was not without connections in this unusual area of expertise. The year before, his American aunt Leonie Jerome had taken him to a mysterious little house on Wimpole Street in the West End of London, just one block from the lushly green and stubbornly round Cavendish Square. This was home, at least temporarily, to Mrs. Charlotte Robinson, arguably the most famous palm reader of her day.
    Although the Victorian era is most often associated with scientific progress—the establishment of scientific principles, the advancement of medicine, the development of railroads, steamships, telephones and radios, even the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species —it was also a time of growing interest and belief in mysticism. Attempting to look into the future and to make contact with the spiritual world was considered a serious pursuit by everyone from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the editors of the prestigious magazine Scientific American , who sponsored a contest among mediums to see who could show “conclusive psychic manifestations.” Even Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, had taken part in séances, and when Albert died in 1861 of typhoid fever, the queen had invited to Windsor Castle a thirteen-year-old boy who claimed the prince had sent her a message through him during a family séance.
    Churchill’s chosen palmist, Mrs. Robinson, had risen to fame largely because one of her most devoted clients also happened to be one of England’s best-known and most infamous authors: Oscar Wilde. Robinson had told Wilde, who was already famous for his controversial and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray , that he would “write four plays, and then you will disappear. I cannot see you at allafter that.” After this prophecy, between the years 1892 and 1895,Wilde wrote Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest , all of which were enormous theatrical successes. In April 1895, just two months after his last play debuted at the St. James’s Theatre in London, Wilde was arrested and later convicted of “gross indecency” for his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. He died three years after leaving prison, having written, as Mrs. Robinson foretold, no other plays.
    In the wake of Wilde’s conviction, Robinson gained a power and prestige that set her apart from even the most celebrated palmists. She charged exorbitant rates, “expecting four guineas for the first visit, two for the second, and ten if she writes down her prognostication,” one contemporary newspaper marveled, and refused to appear at parties or private homes, demanding that even her most exalted clients come to her. She had even begun to write a book, The Graven Palm , which would become the standard for palmistry in its day.
    Unlike her predictions for Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Robinson saw in Winston Churchill’s pale young palm so extraordinary a future that she wanted to describe it in her book. In early May 1899, soon after taking leave of Robert Ascroft in the House of Commons smoking room, Churchill sent Mrs. Robinson a check for £2 2s., presumably in payment for a second, more recent session, and wrote in a letter labeled “Private” that he wished to take the opportunity to compliment her on her “strange skill in Palmistry.”