When the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky reported to Beatrice Webb that Winston Churchill had told him, “Better communism than Nazism!” she was not surprised. Views of this sort were not untypical of the British ruling elite. But Churchill did not really belong in that class. “Churchill is not a true Englishman, you know,” the celebrated social scientist said. “He has negro blood. You can tell even from his appearance.” Webb went on to recount to Maisky “a long story” about Churchill’s mother coming from the American South and her sister looking just like a “negroid”.
Possibly aiming to change the subject, Maisky mentioned Henry Stanley, the explorer of Africa. At this point Webb became “agitated”, and began talking about Stanley’s marriage to a “beautiful young girl” who came “from a very good family”, while Stanley was a “real upstart, a coarse, uncouth fellow”. In support of this judgement Webb appealed to her husband, Sidney, “whose expression and gestures indicated full assent”. Maisky concludes his account of the conversation with the comment: “The crux of the matter is that Stanley was a true plebeian, and this matters.”
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