ACTION THIS DAY

125 YEARS AGO Summer 1894 • Age 19

 “Bring Molly”

In My Early Life, Churchill wrote a misleadingly benign account of his fatally-ill father’s departure on a round-the-world tour. He received by messenger, Winston wrote, “the college adjutant’s order to proceed at once to London. My father was setting out the next day on a journey round the world….We drove to the station the next morning—my mother, my younger brother, and I. In spite of the great beard, which he had grown during his South African journey four years before, his face looked terribly haggard and worn with mental pain. He patted me on the knee in a gesture which however simple was perfectly informing. There followed his long journey round the world. I never saw him again, except as a swiftly-fading shadow.”

The disagreement between Winston and his father as to whether he would go into