What Clementine and Winston Knew About Marriage

Sir Winston Churchill was a man of many striking accomplishments.

He was a soldier who participated in five different wars, an accomplished historian who wrote more than fifty books, and, of course, as Prime Minister he rallied the British Empire to stand alone against Nazi Germany, in the process arguably saving Western Civilization itself. He himself, however, was of the opinion: “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to convince my wife to marry me.”

Well, he might, though one is tempted to reply that remaining happily married for nearly sixty years was rather the more impressive feat. Clementine Hozier, who was nearly ten years his junior, was a vivacious and beautiful young woman, as well as being intelligent and witty enough to keep up with the brilliant Churchill. It was the latter quality more than her beauty that struck Winston particularly.

After their first encounter he wrote to her to say, “What a comfort it was to me to meet a girl with so much intellectual quality and reserves of noble sentiment.” They met in March 1908, and the following September, in Churchill’s own words, “I married and lived happily ever after.”

“Happily” didn’t necessarily always mean “peacefully.”

Winston and Clementine had their fights and friction, as any married couple does, weathering the storms of two world wars, Winston’s erratic character and fluctuating career, and the births of five children and the death of one of them. Yet through it all, the two maintained a strong, healthy, and passionate romance.

Partly this was simply a matter of their being extremely well matched, but they also developed several practices that helped maintain their romance, which bear emulation.

The First Practice: Make Your Own Habits

“My wife and I once attempted to have breakfast together,” Churchill recalled. “We found it so disagreeable we never tried it again.”

Winston and Clementine, for all their intellectual compatibility, had very different habits: she was an early riser, he was a night owl. She liked outdoor sports, riding, and hunting, he liked books and writing and painting.

So, rather than trying to reconcile their differences into a kind of happy medium that made no one happy, they simply let each other pursue their own interests and set their own schedules. They slept in separate bedrooms to accommodate their different sleep habits and breakfasted at different times. They even took separate vacations, Clementine going off to the South Seas while Winston painted on the Riviera.

This plan of mutual accommodation resulted, not in drifting apart, but in remaining close. It made manifest their trust in each other and their relationship and allowed each one space in which to breathe (the eccentric, sharp-tongued Winston was not always the easiest man to live with, and Clementine sometimes felt the need for a break).

Even when married, don’t think you have to always be together or share everything with one another. Give yourselves the space you need to be the best people you can be, and you will appreciate each other all the more for it.

The Second Practice: Never Stop Writing Love Letters

Winston and Clementine wrote each other piles and piles of love letters and notes from the earliest days of their romance to the very end. It was one way they kept their relationship strong during their periods of separation, though their letters continued even when they were only short miles apart.

For instance, here is part of an exchange they wrote in 1935, after twenty-seven years of marriage. Clementine writes:

“Oh my Darling, I’m thinking so much of you and how you have enriched my life. I have loved you very much but I wish I had been a more amusing wife to you. How nice it would be if we were young again.”

 To which Winston responds:

“In your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me about my having enriched your life. I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me, because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt, if there can be accounts in love. It was sweet of you to write this to me, and I hope and pray I shall be able to make you happy and secure during my remaining years, and cherish you my darling one as you deserve, and leave you in comfort when my race is run.”

These letters were not just a way for them to constantly reaffirm their love for each other, but also a concrete way of continuing to work at their relationship. They didn’t see their marriage as the end of their romance, but the beginning, and they never rested from pursuing each other for as long as they lived.

Never stop writing love letters. Never stop pursuing and courting one another, nor cease to let the other person know what she means to you.

The Third Practice: Focus on Each Other

Though they had five children (four of whom survived to adulthood) and many weighty cares and concerns, Clementine and Winston always kept their relationship as a top priority in their lives (hence the reams of love letters).

Though Winston’s career often required him to run off at odd hours or spend weeks or months away from home, Clementine understood and supported him, while he turned to her as his first advisor and confidant during his tumultuous career.

That was one of the many strange things about Churchill: for all his grandiloquent behavior and heroic imagination he was, in the words of a friend, “tremendously domestic.” He loved being home with his wife and children more than anything in the world. It was only his iron sense of duty and honor that kept him running off to London to save the world.

Clementine understood this, of course: it was their mutual “reserves of noble sentiment” that had made them fall in love in the first place. Maintaining that flame, helping each to be all they could be, was part of keeping the fire of love alive for over half a century.