The Celebrity, Volume 01
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Churchill was a British military man, statesman, and Nobel-prize winning author, and, by virtue of his service during both the First and Second World Wars, is considered to be one of the greatest wartime leaders of the twentieth century. Born to the aristocracy, Churchill pursued a career in the British Army, seeing action in British India and in the Second Boer War, and later drew upon his experiences in these historic conflicts in his work as a war correspondent and writer. After retiring from active duty, Churchill moved into politics and went on to hold a number of important positions in the British government. He rose to the role of First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War and later to the role of prime minister, a position that he held twice, from 1940-1945 and from 1951-1955. A visionary statesman, Churchill was remarkable for his ability to perceive emerging threats to international peace, and predicted the rise of Nazi Germany, the Second World War, and the Iron Curtain. In his later years Churchill returned to writing, penning the six-volume Second World War series, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and many other historical and biographical works. Winston Churchill died in 1965 and, after one of the largest state funerals to that point in time, was interred in his family’s burial plot.
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The Celebrity, Volume 01 - Winston Churchill
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity, Volume 1, by Winston Churchill [Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Celebrity, Volume 1
Author: Winston Churchill
Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5383]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY, VOLUME 1 ***
Produced by David Widger
THE CELEBRITY
By Winston Churchill
VOLUME 1.
CHAPTER I
I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I had left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, which I can safely say he would have done had he written any at that time, and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricity must have arrived with his genius, and both after the age of twenty-five. Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has been set the laurel of fame!
When I knew him he was a young man without frills or foibles, with an excellent head for business. He was starting in to practise law in a downtown office with the intention of becoming a great corporation lawyer. He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.
When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not have given him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in old capitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had little time or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, and my nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out of curiosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I was soon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I had often heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. On these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn. The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its functions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me lay in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was delightful.
But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive. I have to confess that it gratified me not a