 |
| Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill with her sons John (left) and Winston |
Part 1 appeared on this blog, September 7, 2014
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.
To catch up or to read
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 Two
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 [year 1900] 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 from complications from a fall in 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
No comments:
Post a Comment