Churchill: A Nephew’s View

William Manchester has been very industrious in collecting stories about my uncle, Winston Churchill, and some entertaining ones from what my uncle would have called the Servants (“The Lion Caged,” February/March issue).

I do not think that any compilation of Churchilliana, however well done—and Mr. Manchester’s extract is very readable —can ever give a true picture of the man. There is so much falsehood mixed up with the truth.

To begin with he was not neglected by his parents any more than he was a dunce at school. These were myths he invented himself. He was a very naughty and objectionable little boy, and both his parents were very concerned with his welfare, more so than he ever was with his own children at the same age.

He admired his father enormously and based his political career on what he believed to be his father’s philosophy. Without his mother’s support, and correction, he would never have advanced so rapidly. Living twice as long as his father, he was able to make twice as many mistakes and reached greater triumphs and greater depressions.

No one will ever understand my uncle’s character and what made him tick unless he digs down to the roots. Napoleon had a remarkable mother but insignificant father. My uncle had a very remarkable mother and outstanding father.

No biography will ever be complete without a true account of my uncle’s parents and their influence. It would make an extraordinary and inspiring story.

Peregrine Churchill
Vernham Dean
Hants, England

San Francisco Mail

I have just read Richard Reinhardt’s excellent article on San Francisco in the April issue. The photograph of our Golden Gate Bridge is reversed! Inexcusable! May the ghost of engineer Joseph Strauss haunt your editorial offices on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of this magnificent span!

Brad B. Sage
Pleasant Hill, Calif.

Author, Author!

David McCullough in his article “Why I Love Washington” in the April/May 1986 issue wrote: “Not everyone, 1 realize, cares for Washington as I do. ‘Neither Rome nor home,’ somebody once said.” I am that “someone.”

My complete quotation (“How shall you act the natural man in this/Invented city, neither Rome nor home?”) is in granite in Western Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Attached to the quotation is my name, as well as the year, 1952, which was the publication date of my book Cape Horn and Other Poems. I am the only living author among the thirty-six quoted in Western Plaza, and 1 am writing to insist on the unwritten law that when quotations are used in an article, it is a sin not to furnish the name of the author.

Ernest Kroll
Washington, D. C.

Wrong Street

Rainbow Row is indeed a typical Charleston street; however, it is not the street identified as such in a photograph accompanying “The Charleston Inheritance” (April issue). The street pictured is St. Michael’s Alley, an interesting street in its own right. The building with a wrought-iron balcony housed the law offices of one of America’s most distinguished jurists, James Louis Petigru. A staunch Unionist in a hotbed of secession, Petigru once observed, “South Carolina is too small to be a republic, and too large to be an insane asylum.”

Phyllis Pringle
Sullivan’s Island, S. C.

Barbed-Wire Wars

In the article “Good Fences” (February/ March), by Alexander O. Boulton, it was stated that barbed wire was an “1873 invention.” While 1873 was the year that Joseph F. Glidden applied for his patent on an “improvement in wire fences,” it cannot be said, except in a strict legal sense, that barbed wire was invented in 1873. The invention of barbed wire, as with most successful inventions, was more a developmental process than an event.

In 1867 both William D. Hunt of Scott, New York, and Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, applied for and were granted U.S. patents on the idea of barbing wire fence. These were the earliest patents for barbed wire. In 1868 Michael Kelly, of New York City, patented the idea of holding the barb in place by another wire twisted around it. These three basic patents were important in establishing the barbed-wire industry, and there was substantial jockeying for the rights in these inventions. The barbed wire described by Hunt and Smith was commercially impractical and never went into general use. There is no doubt, however, that Kelly invented a practical barbed wire. Sales of the Kelly wire approached three thousand tons per year in the early 1870s.

The race was on. A frontier industry was developing. Before the dust settled, more than four hundred U.S. patents were issued for this invention and its variations and improvements.

Glidden’s idea, in 1873, was to use a wire barb, rather than a flat piece of metal, coiled around one of the wires, and it was a valuable contribution to the industry. Sales of Glidden wire by the patent owner, the Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company, rose rapidly from 50 tons in 1874 to 44,000 tons in 1886, and licensees of the patent sold 173,000 tons in 1887.

The struggle for control of the barbed-wire industry wound through the federal courts during the decades of the 187Os and 188Os and culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892, when the Glidden patent was held to be valid, confirming Washburn & Moen as the dominant company. It is interesting to note that three months before the date of the Supreme Court opinion, the Glidden patent had expired, and anyone was free to manufacture or sell Glidden wire. Still under patent protection, however, was the automatic machinery used to make the wire. Glidden wire carried the trade name The Winner. The Supreme Court made it a fact.

Edward B. Watters
Registered Patent Agent
Newberg, Oreg.

Can Yankees Spell?

Otto Friedrich’s article in the April issue, “Traveling with a Sense of History,” was well written, factual, and entertaining. However, you should never send a Yankee to write about the War Between the States in Virginia. Friedrich refers to “half-forgotten” battles his great-grandfather recalled. For the record, the fighting prior to surrender at Appomattox was at “Sayler’s Creek” (named after Mr. V. Sayler), not “Sailor’s Creek” as printed. After all, the “sailors” were on the Monitor, and their battle ended in a tie with the Merrimac.

Elliott Calisch
Bon Air, Va.

Mr. Calisch is quite right about Sayler’s Creek; Otto Friedrich spelled the name of the town as his great-grandfather had spelled it in his list of battles. Incidentally, it has always puzzled us that the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac is considered a draw. After all, the Monitor drove off the Merrimac and saved the Union fleet, and the Confederate ironclad subsequently was scuttled by her own crew.