 |
| Jeanette “Jennie” Jerome, was the American-born English wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and the mother of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. |
Editor’s Note: This
excerpt on Jennie Jerome (1854-1900, who became Lady Randolph Churchill, is
from the the book “Famous American Belles of the 19th Century” by
Virginia Tatnall Peacock. Thanks to Project Gutenburg (www.gutenberg.org) for
bringing this work forth from the public domain. The excerpt’s voice is that of 1900. Because of its length it has been split into
two parts. Part 2 will appear on
this blog September 14, 2014.
For a modern
journalistic biography click:
http://nowweknowem.com/2013/01/the-mother-of-winston-churchill-was-born-january-9-1854-in-brooklyn-new-york-now-we-know-em/
JENNIE JEROME
(LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL)
Part One
"Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft before was thought,
But ne'er so well expressed."
Today, when there are so many American
women adorning high places and filling more or less leading rôles in British
society, it is difficult to realize that only a little more than a quarter of a
century ago there was a strong movement afoot, among certain leaders of that
society, to exclude their fair transatlantic cousins from London drawing-rooms.
As to the oft-recurring Anglo-American marriage, while there
are yet many people who look askance upon any sort of an international
alliance, that prejudice that frowned so ominously upon it some years ago has
wonderfully abated on both sides of the water. The Queen [Victoria] herself
recently confessed that she had regarded it at one time as rather a hazardous
experiment, but realizing that, with her broad education and elastic
temperament, the American girl adapts herself to a new environment with a
facility which would scarcely be possible to the less flexible English girl, Her
Majesty's apprehensions have been gradually allayed.
 |
| Lord Randolph Churchill |
One of the first American women before whom these later-day
barriers of social prejudice gave way was Miss Jennie Jerome, of New York. As
the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, and ably championed by his mother the
Duchess of Marlborough, she penetrated the innermost recesses of British
society, opening the way more than any other woman to the position her
countrywomen occupy there at the end of the [19th] century, and
holding herself a place second to that of no other American woman in Europe.
The admiration she attracted as a young girl, the wonderful
part she played in the life of her husband and is at present playing in the
lives of her sons, the unusual influence she has undeniably exercised in English
politics, the intimate contact into which the events of her life have from time
to time thrown her with the crowned heads of Europe,—the Czar of Russia, the
Emperor of Germany, and the Queen of England,—have all tended to give her a
unique place in the history of the latter days of the Victorian era.
In England there is no woman below the royal family whose
name and personality are so generally known as Lady Randolph Churchill's.
Her prominent identification with the Primrose League has
carried her fame into the colonies and into India. Many people in Russia and
Germany follow her career with keen interest, the press of both countries
bringing her frequently before the public, and even in self-centred France the
women of the aristocracy, in imitation of her political achievements, have from
time to time essayed to "jouer la Lady Randolph Churchill."
She is the eldest of three daughters of the late Mr. Leonard
Jerome, and was born in Brooklyn, on the 9th of January, 1854. There and in New
York she passed her early childhood.
Her mother was a woman of independent fortune and her father
an enterprising and successful man of affairs. He was the founder, in New York,
of the Jockey Club, and his name figures conspicuously in the annals of the
turf of both England and America, he having been one of its active patrons in
the former country, whose racing system he introduced into America.
His family migrated to Paris when his eldest daughter was 11
years oldd, and there Mr. Jerome’s children grew up and were educated. Miss
Jennie Jerome's artistic and musical gifts were carefully trained, and she has
been considered ever since she made her entrée into English society as one of
its most accomplished pianists. Her name appears frequently on the programmes
of concerts given in behalf of charity, and is always a powerful drawing card,
for she plays with a clearness and delicacy of touch rarely attained by an
amateur.
France was at the height of its glories under the second
empire when the Jeromes took up their residence in Paris. The court, presided
over by one of the most beautiful women who ever wore a diadem, was
characterized by almost unprecedented magnificence. Paris then, as now, led the
world in all matters of personal adornment, and one feature in that régime of
luxuriant display, inaugurated by the Empress, is still felt to-day in every
quarter of the globe where women make any pretence of following fashions in
dress.
The Empress never permitted any woman to appear twice in her
presence in the same gown. As a result, there dates from her brief era of
leadership an extravagance in woman's dress that was before undreamed of, and
which has had the effect of raising the details of a toilet from a subordinate
to a ruling position among women in fashionable life, with a loss of much that
gave a truer beauty to existence under a system when the sparkle of a woman's
mind was of greater value than the flash of her jewels.
Mrs. Leonard Jerome, a woman of wealth and taste, easily
acquired a position of distinction in the fashionable life of the French
capital at that time. Jennie meanwhile grew up with a reputation for great
beauty, her fame increasing as the unusual gifts of her bright mind unfolded
themselves. She was one of that group of clever and beautiful young girls with
whom the Emperor and Empress from time to time surrounded the little Prince
Imperial, and she participated at Compiègne in the memorable celebration of one
of the few birthday anniversaries which fate accorded him.
The Franco-Prussian war drove the Jeromes across the
channel. They tarried in England during the days that marked the fall of the
empire and the uprising of the Communards with their awful deeds of
devastation. The summer of 1873 they passed at Cowes.
Miss Jennie Jerome was then 20, tall, slender, with a
thoughtful countenance denoting both talent and character in its broad brow and
square chin. Her mouth was grave and sweet, while her great dark eyes, that are
yet the most striking feature of her face, her purple black hair, and her clear
olive skin gave her a distinctive place among the blonde daughters of England.
Always a striking figure in their midst, the contrast was
perhaps never more marked than upon the occasion of the marriage of Princess
Louise of Wales to the Earl of Fife, when the blonde type of the British women
was so much in evidence in the demi-toilettes commanded by the Queen, and when
Lady Randolph Churchill's brunette coloring was so well set off by her yellow
satin gown, with a diamond star twinkling above her brow against her black
hair.
Though the nomadic tendency of Americans frequently leads
them abroad, where they mingle for awhile in the life of various European
capitals, there were fewer American women at that time forming a permanent part
of foreign society, and one so gifted mentally and physically as was Miss
Jerome soon became a noted figure. She attracted everywhere the most evident
admiration, never impairing the effect her appearance produced by the least
manifestation of vanity.
To the Isle of Wight also that summer there betook himself a
young English nobleman, the second son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough. But
three years out of college, where he had not been distinguished as a student,
but rather for the irresistible attractiveness of his personality and for the
enjoyment he extracted from existence, there was little in Lord Randolph
Churchill's life in the summer of 1873 that foreshadowed the greatness he was
destined to attain.
Restless, ambitious, full of energy, with no specific object
upon which to expend it, he hesitated between a diplomatic and a military
career, and meanwhile, since taking his degree in 1871, he had travelled over
the whole of Europe.
He was already an idol to his mother, towards whom he ever
showed that thoughtfulness that is the acme of gallantry. He had much of her
dash and spirit, and she entered sympathetically into all the events of his
life; he on his side never failing to report to her immediately, either in
person or by message, all his successes. When he met Jennie Jerome, and for the
first time the future assumed a tangible and very beautiful form, he confided
in his mother and at once solicited her interest in the young American girl.
To Miss Jerome's mother, however, Lord Randolph Churchill, a
younger son, with no particularly bright prospects in life, did not appeal as a
desirable match. She returned to Paris with her daughters. Lord Randolph
followed, and there at the British Embassy, in January, 1874, he was married to
Miss Jerome.
With an ambition and talent equal to his own, she entered
completely into his desire to make for himself a place of distinction in life.
The dissolution of Parliament early in the year of his marriage offered the
opportunity for a political career. He began at home, in the borough of
Woodstock, in which Blenheim Palace, where he had been born 25 years before, is
situated, and secured his election to a seat in the House of Commons without
being asked any questions as to his political creed, which, it was taken for
granted, was identical with that of his family.
Like his wife's father, he took an active interest in
matters pertaining to the turf, owning several famous race-horses and capturing
during the course of his life some notable prizes. His first speech in
Parliament was to call the attention of the first Commissioner of Public Works
to the hard and dusty condition of Rotten Row, and to ask that it be put in
better shape, without delay, for both horses and their riders.
During the first six almost silent years of his Parliamentary
career, while he was studying the men and measures he subsequently arraigned
with so much brilliancy, his young wife was adapting herself to the social life
of his country, whose events are as well established as those of its political
life.
In a dutiful way which gives it a dignity not possible in a
country whose social usages admit of more caprice, every one lives up to the
well-appointed order in which, beginning with the first drawing-room in the
early spring, the various functions of each season follow one another.
While there may be more refreshment and enthusiasm in the
novelty which American society admits of, it lacks that stability that emanates
from the very sameness with which one English year follows in the footsteps of
another, and that sense of ancient respectability which rises from the
consciousness of participating in the same pleasures from youth to old age in
which one's fathers similarly participated in their time.
Lady Randolph Churchill easily overcame the prejudices which
existed in the minds of some English women against all American women. Young as
she was, there was a commanding quality in her very presence which vanquished
that narrowness that harbors petty dislike on a basis of nationality.
Both of her sisters married in England, one to Moreton
Frewen and the other to the only son of Sir John Leslie, Bart., of Glaslough
Monaghan.
Jennie’s two sons were born, the first, Winston Spencer
Churchill, on the 30th of November, 1874, and the younger, John Winston
Churchill, in February, 1880.
Between the duties of her home and those of a social nature,
which her position in the world entailed upon her, the first period of her life
in England passed. From 1880, however, dated the dramatic period of Lord
Randolph Churchill's career, in which his wife bore so conspicuous a part. He
rose to the leadership of that small section of the House known as the
"Fourth Party," which, coming forward as an evidence of the vigor yet
possessed by the Conservatives, succeeded in June, 1885, in overthrowing the
Gladstonian ministry. He was frequently compared to Disraeli, and many people
prophesied for him a similar career.
In 1883, in connection with Sir H. Drummond Wolf, Lord
Randolph Churchill founded, in the interests of the Conservative party, that
powerful organization, the Primrose League. In a membership today of over 1.5
million, with Knights, Dames, and Associates, Lady Randolph Churchill stands
number 12 upon its rolls. The kingdom and empire of Great Britain are dotted
with its Habitations.
With its development there began a new phase of Lady
Churchill's life. She became from that moment thoroughly an Englishwoman,
identifying herself closely with her husband's public life and interests,
aiding him not only with the popularity she had already attained, but with the
remarkable sagacity she displayed in reference to all political questions. With
the qualities that rendered her more charming as a woman she combined those
most valuable in a man.
Ambitious, intrepid, discreet, she was yet graceful,
tactful, wise, and witty. She became at once a force among the members of the
League, and, besides being much in demand at the social events at its various
Habitations, she endeavored continually to impress upon its members the
influence each might exercise in behalf of "that party which is pledged to
support all that is dear to England, Religion, Law, Order, and Unity of the
Empire."
In her character of Dame of the Primrose League she has
participated in so many electioneering contests that she is almost as well
known in England as any man in public life. When her husband, in 1885, attacked
the seat held by Mr. John Bright for Birmingham, seconded by the Duchess of
Marlborough, she canvassed the constituency for him. Never before had women gone
thus among the workingmen of Birmingham, entering the factories as well as
their homes, and addressing them both collectively and individually. Though
they made much havoc in the ranks of Radicalism and greatly diminished his
votes, they did not succeed in defeating "the tribune of the people."
Lady Churchill is [note present tense as this was written
while she was alive] a rousing speaker, and, with her great beauty and
magnetism, evoked immense enthusiasm, her carriage being frequently surrounded
and followed for some distance by cheering crowds. In South Paddington her
efforts told with better effect, Lord Churchill securing the election in that
district.
With the accession to office of Lord Salisbury's government,
Lord Churchill went into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for India,—the real
head of affairs of the far-away empire where the power is represented by a
governor-general. During his brief tenure of that office his wife was decorated
with the imperial order of the Crown of India, which has so recently been
bestowed upon another American woman in the person of the present
governor-general's wife.
Lord Churchill stood at this time at the very head of his
party, and when a few months after resigning the office as Secretary of State
for India he again went into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer and
leader of the House of Commons, being at the time but 37 years of age, there
seemed opening to him a future of almost unprecedented brilliancy. More than
ever was it said that he was treading in the footsteps of Lord Beaconsfield, to
whom he had been so often compared, and the Prime Ministership seemed almost
within his reach. His name was on every tongue, and when he appeared in public
places accompanied by his wife, whose tall, slender figure and clear-eyed,
interested face were as well known as his own, he was frequently greeted with
outbursts of applause. When she drove in Hyde Park her carriage was frequently
followed, and she was pointed out with the most enthusiastic admiration.
Not only in England, but accompanying her husband to Russia
and Germany, she excited in both of those countries a similar sentiment, there
being among the people an eager desire to see the beautiful American who was so
much admired by the court circles.
Attractive as she was under all circumstances, she never
more admirably reflected the fine qualities of her character than on that day
when her husband rose amidst the absolute silence of the House of Commons to
give his reasons for withdrawing from the Cabinet.
Absorbed in him, she followed intently his every word and
gesture, though aware beforehand of every syllable he would utter. With perfect
self-control she revealed nothing either of regret, disappointment, or any
sentiment upon which a guess at his plans for the future might be hazarded.
Socially her life ran in much the same channel. So great was
her beauty and so many were her talents that, though her husband gradually
withdrew from public life, she was continually in the public eye, being
constantly in demand to open fairs, distribute prizes, and take part in
concerts.
In March, 1888, she went to Clydebank to christen the
"City of New York," at that time one of the most remarkable vessels
that had been built. During the following summer she opened an electrical
exhibit at Birmingham, and a few days later conferred the annual awards at
Malvern College, her husband accompanying her and making addresses upon both
occasions.
About this time also she made her first appearance as a
literata in an article on the social life of Russia, based on the observations
she had made while in St. Petersburg with her husband. Well informed, keenly
observant, clever, and witty, she entered the lists without handicap, and her
position to-day in the world of letters is at least unique. The most costly
quarterly in existence, now entering upon its second year, is owned and edited by
her.
In 1891, when he was but 42 years old, Lord Randolph
Churchill came suddenly face to face with the beginning of the end of his
remarkable and crowded life. The utter physical collapse that followed,
terminating in death in January, 1895, threw light upon much that had seemed
inexplicable in the latter days of his public career.
Accompanied by his wife, he journeyed around the world in
quest of the health which he was destined never to find. They passed through
New York, Lady Churchill's first home, but made no stay, hastening across the
continent to San Francisco.
In Egypt, realizing how futile had been the long days and
nights of travel and exile, he begged to be taken home to pass there the last
few hours that yet remained to him.
From all who saw them they evoked pity and admiration,—pity
for the man, stricken and doomed, in the very prime of his days and with the
highest place among the statesmen of his time almost within his grasp, and
admiration for the wife who, aglow with beauty, spirit, and ambition,
manifested for him during those months of tragic gloom, in which his life
closed, all the devotion and admiration which the most successful moments of
his life, when he stood on the very pinnacle of fame, had called forth from her
gratified heart.
The untimely disappearance from the world of a man whose
magnetic nature had made him a leader of men and an idol of all classes of
society appealed powerfully to public feeling. The tolling of the funeral bell
from St. George's, in Hanover Square, a little after noon on the 24th of
January, 1895, announced his death.
Though she took no part in the doings of the world for some
time after her husband's death, Lady Randolph Churchill did not drop from its
memory, nor is she in any degree less interesting today than she was as the
wife of an eminent statesman. Her musical gifts and tastes gradually drew her
from the seclusion of her early widowhood, and she reappeared in public first
at concerts and at the opera, still dressing in black.
Her social graces and talents make her the genius of many
house-parties, where individual gifts and accomplishments show to best
advantage and are most in demand.
In the tableaux and burlesque given at Blenheim Palace in
January, 1898, to raise money for the Restoration Fund of St. Mary Magdalene's
church at Woodstock, she appeared as a lady journalist, portraying the
character with a realism that manifested an accurate knowledge of the original.
She was also a guest at Chatsworth House during a recent visit of the Prince
and Princess of Wales, taking part there in the private theatricals which were
part of the entertainment offered to their Royal Highnesses.
To her sons she is a congenial spirit, being interested in
the things that interest them, particularly in yachting, horses, and the
various racing events of each year. It is owing largely, no doubt, to her love
of an active out-of-door life that her figure yet retains much of the
slenderness and suppleness of young womanhood. She stands and walks with all the
grace of a girl, and is one of the most noted skaters in England.
Not only into their recreations, but into the serious side
of her sons' lives, she enters with that earnestness which made her so
inseparable a part of her husband's life.
In the summer of 1899 the elder of her sons, Mr. Winston
Churchill, made his first effort for a seat in Parliament. Oldham, in
Lancashire, the scene of his endeavors, has two Parliamentary seats, which both
became vacant at the same time. Though they had been filled by Conservatives,
the result of the balloting in 1899 showed that the cotton-spinners, who form a
large class of the voters of the borough, were tired of Conservative rule, for
both Liberal candidates came in with heavy majorities.
Towards the end of the campaign Lady Randolph Churchill went
vigorously and enthusiastically to her son's assistance. "The Liberal
candidates being married," she said, "have an advantage." Though
she won him many votes and greatly reduced the opposition, as she had done in
the days of the Birmingham contest, when her husband attacked Bright's seat,
the result was inevitable, and both mother and son accepted it with the grace
and spirit of thoroughbred woman- and manhood.
There is an anecdote frequently related of Lady Churchill's
ready wit, called forth by a situation which arose during the electioneering
campaign, in which she was taking an active interest, of Mr. Burdett-Coutts,
husband of the old Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was at the time over eighty
years of age. An old voter upon whom Lady Churchill called, and who seemed
ready enough to cast his vote for Mr. Burdett-Coutts, took occasion, however,
to relate to her, with much relish, the price which the beautiful Duchess of
Devonshire had paid a butcher for his vote in the days of the famous Pitt and
Fox contest, permitting him to kiss her lovely cheek. He concluded his
narration with a direct intimation that he would consider a similar reward as
fair payment for his own vote.
"Very well," replied Lady Churchill, smiling a
gracious compliance, "I will book your vote on those terms, but you must
remember that I am working for Mr. Burdett-Coutts, and I must, therefore, refer
you for payment to the Baroness."
In June, 1899, the first number of Lady Churchill's
quarterly, the Anglo-Saxon Review, which had been for several months the
subject of much conjecture and speculation, appeared:
"Have
you heard of the wonderful new magazine
Lady
Randolph's to edit with help from the Queen?
It's a
guinea a number—too little by half,
For the
crowned heads of Europe are all on the staff,"
ran the opening lines of perhaps the cleverest of the many
verses and paragraphs her new venture called forth.
Its contributions included papers from Lord Rosebery and
Whitelaw Reid, a poem from Swinburne, with stories from Henry James, Gilbert
Parker, and Sir Frank Sweetenham, and a drama from John Oliver Hobbes. Among
the illustrations were a picture of the Queen, as frontispiece, and a
reproduction of Gilbert Stewart's portrait of Washington.
The binding was in keeping with the contents, and was of
dark-blue morocco, richly tooled in gold, with the royal coat of arms in the
centre, surmounted by the crown of England, with supporters, a reproduction of
a cover designed in the seventeenth century by the court binder, Abraham
Bateman. It sold, as have the subsequent editions, for a guinea a number, and
was, as the enterprising editress said in her preface, a volume "worthy to
be taken up into that Valhalla of printed things, the library."
At the outbreak of the war in the Transvaal in 1899 Lady
Randolph Churchill gave another evidence of her public spirit and enterprise
which identified her once again with her native country. As chairman of the
committee of the American hospital ship "Maine," she took an active
part in the direction and equipment of one of the finest ambulance ships in the
service. The ship itself was loaned by the Atlantic Transport Company, and
named in memory of the ill-fated American battle-ship "Maine."
The contributions for its equipment were made by Americans
on both sides of the ocean. Among the American women living in England who
actively interested themselves in the matter were Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain, Mrs.
Arthur Paget, Mrs. Bradley-Martin, and both of Lady Randolph Churchill's sisters.
An appeal, issued on the 27th of October, for 30,000 pounds
met with a speedy response, and in the course of a few weeks the American
hospital ship "Maine," flying the flag that was a gift from the
Queen, and with accommodations for 200 sick or wounded soldiers, carrying its
corps of surgeons and nurses and Lady Randolph Churchill herself, was on its
way to Durban.
Though it was as the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and
through her close identification with his interests that Lady Churchill first came
prominently before the world, it is undoubtedly her own personality that has
made for her the place she holds there today.
On the 28th of July, 1900, Lady Randolph Churchill became
the wife of Mr. George Cornwallis West. Though marriages of women to men many
years their junior are by no means rare in British society, the rumor of this
engagement, which had been afloat for quite a year, excited an unusual amount
of comment and criticism.
The ceremony was performed at St. Paul's Church,
Knightsbridge, the Duke of Marlborough leading Lady Churchill to the altar.
Though widows of titled men in England may upon entering into a second marriage
retain the name and title acquired through their former marriage, Lady Randolph
Churchill settled the much-discussed question as to whether she would retain
hers by her decision to be known as Mrs. George Cornwallis West.
Not yet in middle life, and with two sons to be launched
upon their careers, in which she has already foreshadowed what her part may be,
the world may still expect to hear much of her, for there is a bracing and
vigorous quality in her individuality that renders her interesting and
inspiring to many classes and many countries. She has been frequently
reproduced in the fiction of her era, more than one English writer drawing his
material continually from her life and character.
To what extent her beauty forms part of her magnetism is
with many people a debatable question. Though Long painted her as a typical
beauty, and Sargent's canvas of her that hangs in her own library portrays an
exquisite feminine loveliness, she leans perhaps too much towards the masculine
in mental poise and temperament to be an adequate reflection of purely feminine
beauty. A many-sided, strong, self-sustained character, her outward form is an
expression of her own uncommon personality rather than a type of conventional
beauty.
Editor’s note: We pick up the rest of nee Jennie Jerome’s
life from Encylopedia Brittania: “...In 1899 Churchill founded and edited
the few numbers of the lavish but short-lived Anglo-Saxon Review. During the
Boer War she raised money for and staffed and equipped a hospital ship, the
Maine, which did valuable work in South Africa. She also turned to writing,
producing a volume of discreet Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (1908);
Her Borrowed Plumes (1909), a play starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell; The Bill
(1913), another play; and Short Talks on Big Subjects (1916), a collection of
articles originally published in Pearson’s Magazine. She married two more times
and in her later years grew increasingly eccentric...”
Editor’s note 2:
Jennie Jerome died at 67 years from complications from a fall in June, 1921.
For a 21st
century account of Jennie Jerome’s life in the fast lane as the widow of Lord
Randolph Churchill please click the following link to the London Evening Standard
newspaper:
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/winston-churchill-his-mother-and-the-philandering-prince-6783567.html
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