Anecdote - Sir Winston Churchill On Coffee

Lady Nancy Astor was an American born socialite who like many young girls of her day went to Great Britain to find marriage and a new life after the collapse of her father's railroad contractor business. She became the second woman to enter parliament as a Tory member of the House of Commons in Great Britain in 1919 ( The first woman MP was  Constance Markievicz, elected in 1918). In the 1930’s she headed a group of Nazi German sympathizers within the House of Commons. Thereupon, she quickly earned the distaste of her fellow parliamentarian and Liberal party member Winston Churchill. The Liberal Party parliamentarian had been speaking out against the recent German militarization and bemoaning the lack of preparedness of the English forces to deal with the growing German threat.  Winston Churchill soon came to odds with Lady Astor on several political issues. Within this context he then came to describe Lady Astor as one who  "feeds the crocodile hoping that it will eat him last" in her attempts to forge an understanding between Nazi Germany and an increasingly skeptical Great Britain. The acid between the pair is supposed to have grown from that point until one day Winston Churchill in true sexist fashion told Lady Astor that having a woman in Parliament was very much like having one intrude on him in the bathroom! Instantly offended but never lost for words Lady Astor brushed the comment aside and turned the tables on Winston Churchill with great amusement when she engaged in repartee and amusingly retorted "You are not handsome enough to have such fears!"

Thus, one evening at a dinner party at her mansion

at Cliveden, to which Winston Churchill was a guest, upon the serving of coffee after dinner, the infamous hostility ensued between the pair as their eyes met.

Glaring at Winston Churchill after dinner as was coffee was being served she then rather acidly remarked: 

"If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee."  

Never at once a laggard for words himself Winston Churchill famously quipped:  

"And if I were your husband, I would drink it!"



Indeed can it not be said that coffee does bring out the very best in people in all thoughts, manners and wits. Coffee excellence for all occasions

Cafe musings from Pieter Bergli - collector of fine coffees, narrator and bon vivant

My Art Musings