F.E. Smith
1872-1930
UK barrister, politician
1. Introduction
‘F.E.’ was Churchill’s closest friend from 1906 until F.E.’s death in 1930. He studied law at the universities of Liverpool and Oxford, becoming an Oxford lecturer and fellow. He was one of the best known and highest paid barristers of his day. Entering politics in 1906, he made an audacious and impressive maiden speech, and went on to become attorney general, lord high chancellor (the youngest since 1685) and secretary of state for India. He was instrumental in the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He was a keen sportsman but heavy drinking and smoking led to his early death, aged 58.
2. Stories
- Birkenhead’s cleverness, ambition and manner caused mixed reactions, ranging from admiration to contempt.
- Birkenhead’s friendship with Churchill was a cause of concern for Clementine.
- Churchill loved Smith’s cutting wit, particularly his verbal exchanges with judges as a barrister.
- Churchill and Smith co-founded The Other Club in 1911 for enjoyable dining and conversation.
- Smith was arrested after a riot in Oxford in 1897 and again while visiting Churchill on the Western Front in 1916.
- Smith’s and Churchill’s sons served together in Yugoslavia during World War II, along with the writer Evelyn Waugh.
- Birkenhead died aged 58 of pneumonia following cirrhosis of the liver and general ill health caused by his lifestyle.
Birkenhead’s cleverness, ambition and manner caused mixed reactions, ranging from admiration to contempt.
The historian George Dangerfield wrote in 1935, five years after Birkenhead’s death: ‘He was tall, dark, slender and a little over-dressed. His eyes and hair were lustrous; the first from nature, the second from too much oil. His mouth had always a slightly contemptuous droop, his voice was a beautiful drawl. He had acquired, not diligently but with too much ease, the airs of a fox-hunting man who could swear elegantly in Greek. Many people loved him, most distrusted him, some despised him, and he despised almost everybody. […] He was without question the most fascinating creature of his times.’1
Churchill acknowledged that Birkenhead’s public image was of ‘a robust, pugnacious personality, trampling his way across the battlefields of life, seizing its prizes as they fell, and exulting in his prowess’.2 Margot Asquith, wife of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, said that ‘Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head’.3 The satirist David Low referred to him as ‘Lord Burstinghead’.4 Churchill had a different perspective, and saw ‘a sincere patriot; a wise, grave, sober-minded statesman; a truly great jurist; a scholar of high attainments; and a gay, brilliant, loyal, lovable being’.5
Birkenhead enjoyed inviting Oxford University staff and students to his home in Charlton, Northamptonshire, for tennis and conversation. These included John Masterman, a tutor who was later provost of Worcester College and the university’s vice-chancellor. During World War II he was chairman of MI5’s Twenty Committee which oversaw the turning of German spies in the UK into double agents (the Roman numerals for twenty ‘XX’ signifying ‘double cross’). He was also a Wimbledon quarter finalist in 1923 and 1924. In his autobiography 45 years after Smith’s death, Masterton noted – even after all his encounters with academic and other luminaries in the intervening years – that ‘Good though the tennis was [at Charlton], the evening talks were even better; his [Birkenhead’s] was, I am convinced, the most powerful mind with which I have ever been brought into contact.’6
Birkenhead’s friendship with Churchill was a cause of concern for Clementine.
Churchill did not get to know F.E. until he was 32 years old and Smith was 34. Smith initially shunned him for defecting from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904. They were introduced in 1906 at the bar at the House of Commons, and ‘from that hour our friendship was perfect. It was one of my most precious possessions. It was never disturbed by the fiercest party fighting. It was never marred by the slightest personal difference or misunderstanding. It grew stronger as nearly a quarter of a century slipped by, and it lasted till his untimely death.’7
Birkenhead’s death caused Churchill considerable grief, saying to Clementine repeatedly through tears, ‘I feel so lonely’.8 A month later, he bent the rule against speeches at The Other Club (see below) to give a eulogy, including the declaration, ‘I do not think anyone knew him better than I did, and he was, after all, my dearest friend’.9
In addition to Beaverbrook and Bracken, Birkenhead was one of the three ‘B’s’ whom Clementine thought were a bad influence on Winston. He drank and smoked heavily, gambled and was somewhat vulgar in her view. She enjoyed a bit of gambling herself but was always concerned about Winston’s impulsiveness and their inability to fund serious losses.
Likewise, she did not like Birkenhead’s influence on her son Randolph, Smith’s godson, who had far more of a drinking, smoking and gambling weakness than his father. Churchill was godfather to Smith’s son Frederick (‘Freddy’), who became an alcoholic, but later abstained. Randolph’s middle name was Frederick, after F.E., and Freddy’s middle name was Winston.
Despite being on opposite sides of the House of Commons, they would sometimes work together, notably during negotiations which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.* Birkenhead had been a leading opponent of Irish self-government, so his participation contributed to a spirit of compromise, as did the good relationships established by Birkenhead and Churchill with Irish negotiator Michael Collins. Some Conservatives never forgave Birkenhead and some Republicans never forgave Collins for their parts in establishing the treaty (see Éamon de Valera).
* The British delegation consisted of David Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain, Smith and Churchill while the Irish side comprised Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. Smith was lord high chancellor at the time and drafted much of the treaty.
Churchill loved Smith’s cutting wit, particularly his verbal exchanges with judges as a barrister.
Churchill related with delight that in an exchange between Smith and a judge which involved escalating verbal hostilities, the judge finally exclaimed, ‘You are extremely offensive, young man,’ to which Smith responded, ‘As a matter of fact, we both are; but I am trying to be, and you can’t help it.’10
On another occasion, the same judge asked, ‘What do you suppose I am on the bench for, Mr. Smith?’, to which Smith replied, ‘It is not for me, your honour, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence’.11
In another interchange, a judge declared, ‘I’ve listened to you for an hour and I’m none the wiser.’ Smith responded: ‘None the wiser perhaps, my Lord, but certainly better informed.’12
Evelyn Waugh, in his diary in 1924, related the story of a High Court judge seeking Smith’s advice on sentencing in a sodomy case: ‘Could you tell me, what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?’ ‘Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds’, suggested Smith. ‘Whatever you happen to have on you.’13
Smith’s oratorical skills stood him well as an MP. His maiden speech in 1906 remains one of the most famous speeches in the House of Commons, primarily for its audacity in attacking senior figures of the government and for its many booby-traps. He accused David Lloyd George, president of the Board of Trade, of suggesting that if the Tories came into power, they would introduce slavery on the hills of Wales. Lloyd George interjected that he did not say that, whereupon Smith produced a newspaper with a quote by Lloyd George which did indeed insinuate it.
He read out some voting statistics that were met with derision. ‘I gather that it is suggested that my figures are wrong’, he said. There were cries of ‘Yes’ from the Liberals. ‘They very probably are’, he continued. ‘I got them from the Liberal Magazine.’14
Churchill and Smith co-founded The Other Club in 1911 for enjoyable dining and conversation.
Churchill and Smith were too controversial to be invited to join The Club, a distinguished dining society founded in 1764. Their alternative club enabled them to choose people they considered to be both eminent and entertaining, and membership of The Other Club became the highest personal honour that they could bestow. The rules included: ‘10. The names of the Executive Committee shall be wrapped in impenetrable mystery’; and ‘12. Nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics.’15
Churchill had defected to the Liberals, and Smith was a Conservative, so members tended to be from these two parties in the early years, although some Labour members were also invited. Non-politicians included John Maynard Keynes, P.G. Wodehouse, H.G. Wells and Aristotle Onassis.
The Other Club met in the Pinafore Room of the Savoy Hotel, where Churchill took a liking to a wooden black cat called Kaspar, whose presence was a Savoy tradition. In 1898, there had been 13 diners at a private dinner there, after a couple of late cancellations. The diners discussed various superstitions, including the claim that the first person to rise from a table of 13 would be the first to die. A wealthy South African Woolf Joel dismissed the idea and rose first; he was shot dead a few weeks later in Johannesburg.
The hotel then provided a waiter to dine with any party of 13 until 1927 when architect and interior designer Basil Ionides crafted Kaspar, who would sit in a fourteenth seat with a full table setting and wearing a napkin. Churchill insisted that he joined every meal, regardless of numbers.
Kaspar was stolen after an RAF dinner but was recovered and today resides in the hotel lobby. There is a large topiary version of him at the hotel’s entrance on the Strand, and in Clementine’s sitting room at Chartwell there is a 1953 caricature of Other Club members depicted as cats.
Smith was arrested after a riot in Oxford in 1897 and again while visiting Churchill on the Western Front in 1916.
Smith gained a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford University, in 1891, where he excelled at sport, obtained a first in Law and developed his debating skills as president of the Oxford Union. He was elected a fellow of Merton College in 1896, teaching law there and at Oriel College.
In 1897, the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) visited Oxford to open the new town hall, and a student demonstration was expected. The local police were strengthened by Metropolitan horsemen whose methods were somewhat aggressive. Smith was present and saw his college servant being manhandled by the police. He intervened, was arrested, and was placed in a police cell, newly built. On being escorted into it, Smith raised his hand for silence and said in a dignified voice: ‘I have great pleasure in declaring this cell open.’16 He defended himself at trial, supported by two eminent lawyers. His defence was successful and his popularity as a young lecturer and don increased considerably.
In 1916, Smith was arrested and detained in Ploegsteert (‘Plug Street’ to the British) in Belgium for being in a war zone in uniform without a pass. He had dined the evening before with Andrew Bonar Law, David Lloyd George and Churchill, and had requested a pass earlier but had not yet received it. During the evening, a telegram was sent to the front with an instruction to ascertain whether Smith had a pass, and if not, to supply him with one. This was apparently altered by an unknown person, perhaps maliciously, into an instruction that if he did not have a pass, he was to be arrested and removed.
Smith was attorney general at the time and would ironically have been the highest legal authority if his own case had gone to court-martial. An infuriated Churchill ensured a profuse apology from the military authorities. In a letter to Clementine, Winston was almost able to see the funny side, but also railed that ‘Some of these potentates get more upset about an “incident” of this kind than about sending 1,000 men to their deaths’.17
Smith’s and Churchill’s sons served together in Yugoslavia during World War II, along with the writer Evelyn Waugh.
Freddy Smith joined Randolph Churchill and Evelyn Waugh in Croatia in 1944, supporting Tito’s partisans against the Germans and Italians. Randolph had been Freddy’s ‘fag’ (junior pupil doing chores for a senior pupil) at Eton College but was now his senior as commander of the mission. Randolph’s drunken and erratic behaviour had been annoying Evelyn considerably and he was pleased that Freddy’s presence would provide some relief.
Randolph and Evelyn broke out into an argument almost as soon as Freddy arrived. Freddy later wrote, ‘Both were short but sturdy, and as I watched them standing there in angry and ridiculous confrontation I was reminded of a pair of belligerent robins’.18
Freddy joined in with some of Randolph’s drinking, but soon Randolph’s incessant talk became too much for him as well. He and Evelyn bet Randolph £20 between them (equivalent to £450 today) that he could not read the Bible in a fortnight, to keep him quiet, but he kept on reading out quotes and making comments.
At dawn one day, Randolph woke Freddy in a panic. The Luftwaffe was trying to bomb and strafe the area, and Randolph was yelling that he was being targeted because of his father. They both ran outside and jumped into a trench, then saw Evelyn sauntering slowly across in a white duffle coat, attracting attention as a target. Randolph screamed hysterically at him: ‘You bloody little swine, take off that coat! TAKE OFF THAT F…… COAT! It’s an order! It’s a military order!’
Evelyn continued slowly and lowered himself into the trench without taking off the coat, pausing to say to Randolph, ‘I’ll tell you what I think of your repulsive manners when the bombardment is over’. They spent the next day in silence, and Randolph finally apologised for his abruptness, but said it was his duty to ensure everyone’s safety. Evelyn decided to twist the knife: ‘My dear Randolph’, he said, ‘it wasn’t your manners I was complaining of: it was your cowardice.’19
Birkenhead died aged 58 of pneumonia following cirrhosis of the liver and general ill health caused by his lifestyle.
Sir Thomas Horder, physician to royalty and prime ministers, said of Birkenhead, ‘he’ll tear himself to pieces by the time he’s sixty’.20 Birkenhead had tried giving up drinking in his late forties. Winston wrote to Clementine in February 1921: ‘F.E. has gone absolute Pussyfoot [teetotal] for a year. He drinks cider & ginger pop & looks ten years younger. Don’t make a mock of this, as he is quite sensitive about it. He looks sad. Not for Pig [Churchill’s nickname between Clementine and himself].’21
In the spring of 1930 he was with some friends in Biarritz when he had a serious haemorrhage. ‘I think I’m done for’,22 he declared, but slowly recovered. In August he collapsed in London with pneumonia, soon passed into a coma and was dead by the end of September. Churchill’s only solace was that his friend had passed away relatively quickly. He wrote later: ‘Between the setting of the sun and night there was only the briefest twilight. It was better so.’23
Smith’s open coffin was placed in a small chapel in Gray’s Inn, central London, a professional association for barristers and judges. Hundreds of friends and strangers filed past over the next few days before he was cremated and his ashes were buried in Charlton.
Despite his earlier wealth, he left his family in considerable debt, even after the sale of his yacht and six cars. His son Freddy wrote in his biography of his father that ‘This selfishness and indifference to the interests of his family was undoubtedly the least attractive feature of his character’.24 He moderated his view in a later edition.
Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken), a good family friend, took over the remaining cost of education for son Freddy and daughter Pamela and paid an allowance to all three of Smith’s children for ten years. Freddy married Sheila Berry, daughter of Churchill’s friend Lord Camrose (William Berry), and Pamela married Michael Berry, Camrose’s son. The subjects of Freddy’s other biographies included his elder sister Eleanor (a writer), Beaverbrook’s friend Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill’s scientific advisor Professor Lindemann.
* It was blocked by Kipling’s daughter Elsie Bambridge until 1978, shortly after Freddy’s death, because she disliked its style and said that Freddy did not understand someone from her father’s era.
3. Biographical overview
| Occupation | Barrister, politician |
| Country | UK |
| Career | Oxford University law lecturer (1896-99). Conservative MP for Walton (1906-18). Appointed King’s Counsel (1908). Attorney-General (1915-19). Lord High Chancellor (1919-22). Secretary of State for India (1924-28). |
| Born | 1872 in Birkenhead, Cheshire (two years older than Churchill) |
| Father | Frederick Smith (1845-88), estate agent, barrister, mayor of Birkenhead; died aged 43 |
| Mother | Elizabeth Taylor (1842-28), daughter of a rate collector |
| Siblings | Second of five siblings: 1. Clara (1871-1936) 2. Frederick Edwin ‘F.E.’ (1872-1930) 3. Sydney (1875-1924) 4. Harold (1876-1924) 5. Louise (1877-1939) |
| Education | Birkenhead School; University of Liverpool; Wadham College, University of Oxford |
| Spouse | Margaret Furneaux (1878-1968), daughter of Henry Furneaux, an Oxford classics scholar and cleric; m. 1901 until Birkenhead’s death |
| Relationships | Mona Dunn from 1919, daughter of Sir James Dunn, friend of Beaverbrook |
| Children | 1. Eleanor (1902-1945), author; one of the ‘Bright Young Things’ (bohemian socialites in 1920s London) 2. Frederick (‘Freddy’), 2nd Earl of Birkenhead (1907-1975), author, army officer, parliamentary private secretary to Lord Halifax, lord-in-waiting to George VI and Elizabeth II; married Sheila Berry, fourth child of Churchill’s friend Lord Camrose 3. Pamela (1915-1982), museum administrator; a Bright Young Thing; married Michael Berry, third child of Lord Camrose |
| Died | 1930 in Grosvenor Gardens, London, aged 58 (34 years before Churchill); pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver |
| Buried | Charlton, Northamptonshire, after cremation at Golders Green, London; memorial service at Westminster Abbey |
| Chartwell | Visitors’ Book: |
| Other Club | Co-founder with Churchill |
| Nickname | F.E.; Lord Burstinghead (satirist David Low) |
| Height | 6’2” (1.88 m) |
4. See also
The Three ‘B’s
- Beaverbrook, Lord
- Bracken, Brendan
Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations
- De Valera, Éamon
Churchill controversies
- Ireland
- Lifestyle and health
5. Further reading
Birkenhead
- Campbell, Jonathan, F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead (Jonathan Cape, 1983)
- Smith, Frederick, F.E.: The Life of F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960)
Birkenhead and Churchill
- Churchill, Winston S., Great Contemporaries (Putnam, 1937)
- Freeman, David, ‘The Friendship Between Churchill and F.E. Smith’, The International Churchill Society, 2010
- Tolppanen, Bradley, ‘Great Contemporaries: F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead’, The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2015
The Other Club
- Glueckstein, Fred, ‘The Other Club: Founded by Churchill and F.E. Smith’, The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2016
- Wain, Louis, ‘The Cats’ Dinner’, National Trust Prints, 1953
Legal humour
- Bander, Edward J., ed., Legal Anecdotes, Wit, and Rejoinder (Vandeplas Pub., 2007)
- Davis, Jessica Milner, and Sharyn Roach Anleu, Judges, Judging and Humour (Springer International Publishing, 2018) (sociological study)
- Gilbert, Michael, ed., The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes (Oxford University Press, 1989)
Birkenhead’s most famous case (defending Ethel le Neve)
- Connell, Nicholas, Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (Amberley Publishing, 2013)
- Smith, David James, Supper with the Crippens: The True Story of One of the Most Notorious Serial Killers of All Time (Orion, 2010)
6. References
1. George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910-1914 (H. Smith & R. Haas, 1935), pp. 53–54.
2. Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (Putnam, 1937), p. 146.
3. ‘Margot Asquith’, ed. by Antony Jay, Lend Me Your Ears: Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 13–14 (p. 13).
4. David Low, Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. 185.
5. Churchill, p. 146.
6. John Masterman, On the Chariot Wheel: An Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 166.
7. Churchill, p. 145.
8. Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), p. 31.
9. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 5: The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939 (Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p. 374.
10. Churchill, p. 145.
11. Churchill, p. 145.
12. Francis Cowper, ‘London Letter’, New York Law Journal, 28 August 1961, p. 4.
13. Evelyn Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. by Michael Davie (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), p. 168.
14. Hansard, ‘Free Trade’, Hansard, 1906.
15. Fred Glueckstein, ‘The Other Club: Founded by Churchill and F.E. Smith’, The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2016.
16. Frederick W. F. Smith, Frederick Edwin, Earl of Birkenhead: The First Phase (Thomas Butterworth, 1999), p. 71.
17. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 166.
18. David Lebedoff, The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War (Random House, 2008), p. 105.
19. Lebedoff, p. 107.
20. Gilbert Frankau, Gilbert Frankau’s Self-Portrait: A Novel of His Own Life (E. P. Dutton & Company, 1940), p. 354.
21. Churchill and Churchill, p. 227.
22. Lady Eleanor Smith, Life’s a Circus (Doubleday, Doran, 1940), p. 163.
23. Churchill, p. 151.
24. Frederick Smith, F.E.: The Life of F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead, Second Edition (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960), p. [000].