Black Mountain – Part 1

Straub (L) & Carney (R)

Bunker and Tower of London

By James T. Carney
Photos by Detmar Straub

For reasons that I do not understand, I have always been fascinated by the areas encompassed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the neighboring lands to the south of them. Certainly, the interest is not inspired by genealogy since I have no ancestors south of the Alps or east of the Elbe. In all events over the years I have made four trips to the area on pleasure and on business. My last trip there, in October 2015, was to Montenegro (“Black Mountain”), which country was part of Yugoslavia but was for most of its history semi-independent. Today it is a small country of perhaps 600,000 people (the population of Glasgow). It was recently the scene of a Russian plot to overthrow the government and install a pro-Russian regime.

Repartees you might like to have made

George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill were not the best of friends. The following interchange may be apocryphal, but Churchill's repartee is the sort of thing you might wish you could think of on occasion.

GBS is said to have written to Churchill:

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new Play. Bring a friend...if you have one.

And Churchill is reported to have responded:

Cannot possibly attend first night. Will attend second...if there is one.

That repartee reminds me of another attributed to Churchill. To quote from The Churchill Center:

Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee."

Winston: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it."

This exchange is sometimes attributed to Winston's good friend F.E. Smith, but in Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan's The Glitter and the Gold she writes that the exchange occurred at Blenheim when her son was host. See also the American edition of Martin Gilbert's In Search of Churchill (not in the British edition). In Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor, Christopher Sykes confirms Consuelo Balsan's account.

It sounds like an invention but is well authenticated. [Churchill] and the Astors were staying with Churchill's cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, at Blenheim Palace. Nancy and Churchill argued ferociously throughout the weekend.

I like to think that both interchanges are reported accurately.