Jennie died on June 29, 1921, at the age of sixty-seven, from a sudden hemorrhage after the amputation of her leg. She summoned the nurse, complaining she was wet; when the nurse drew back the bedsheet, she found Jennie drenched in blood. Jennie lost consciousness by the time Winston and Jack were alerted. She passed away within an hour of their arrival at the hospital.
She was buried in the Churchill plot at St. Martin’s Church, Bladon, Oxfordshire, near Blenheim, beside Randolph, with whom she began her grand adventure nearly fifty years before.
Winston left a wreath of red roses on her casket.
Jennie’s last will, dated from 1915, was deemed invalid. It fell to Jack and her widower, Montagu, to sort through her debts, as Winston had been named Secretary of State for the Colonies in February and was embroiled in the political roller coaster that would define his long career.
In her last letter to Montagu, Jennie wrote, “I love you better than anything in the world.” It could be said that of her marriages, the third had been the charm, the man most suited to her volatile temperament and sexuality. Montagu remarried in 1926 and retired to the countryside following a successful business career in East Africa. He died in 1964, never volunteering to discuss or capitalize on his romance with Jennie.
John Spencer-Churchill, known as Jack, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur, as well as the British Distinguished Service Order for his wartime service. He continued to work as a stockbroker, outliving his wife and losing his home on Downing Street during the Blitz. He died in 1947, at the same age as his mother, and was buried near his parents.
In most historians’ estimation, Winston became the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. Plagued by bouts of severe depression, as well as monumental victories and defeats that he took very personally, he described himself as “a man of destiny,” perhaps a trait instilled in him by his mother. His recklessness could often overcome his reason, again something he likely inherited from Jennie. But his lifelong horror of war and his passion for Britain cannot be denied. Though he made remarks that can only be interpreted as racist, he was also known to have expressed genuine intolerance for the subjugation of Ireland and the sufferings inflicted on Africa and India by the British Empire. This afterword is too brief to extoll Sir Winston’s many accomplishments and drawbacks, but in his greatest hour of steering Europe through World War II, he exceeded every ambition that his mother had for him and fulfilled his beloved nanny’s belief in him.
Sir Winston died on January 24, 1965. He was laid to rest in St. Martin’s Church after an outpouring of international mourning. Never reluctant to state his pride in his American heritage, he is one of only eight people to have received honorary U.S. citizenship.
Clarita Jerome Frewen outlived her estranged husband, Moreton, and died in 1935. She was eighty-four years old and fought to the end to retain the manor she’d restored as a legacy for her children. In her later years, she dodged penury, the bane of all three sisters.
Leonie Jerome Leslie died in 1943, also at the age of eighty-four. Her grandson Jack Leslie inherited his paternal family’s Irish estate.
The Jeromes also had a fourth daughter, Camille, born in 1855, after Jennie and before Leonie. In 1863, at seven years of age, during a family vacation in Newport, Camille died of a sudden fever. Childhood mortality was very high in this pre-antibiotic age, and her bereaved parents’ reaction to the devastating loss was to never refer to their daughter again. Clara made a specific point of evading any mention of Camille. Due to the constraints imposed by a novel of this size, with so many characters and events to cover, I did not mention Camille either, though her death must have left a lasting effect on both her father and mother. Jennie was eight years old at the time of her sister’s passing; it’s unknown whether that exerted a lifelong impact on her.
Documentation about Jennie is plentiful. Her memoirs, however, are far less revealing. To protect her family, she published a romanticized version of her life, in which she bypassed various controversies, particularly those concerning Randolph, to whom she remained devoted.
To date, the cause of Randolph’s death remains under question, giving rise to speculation about his sexuality. Based on my research, in which most reliable sources concur, it’s almost certain he contracted and died of syphilis. I found no evidence to support that Randolph was gay; indeed, it seems vaguely homophobic to suggest that being a closeted gay Victorian made one more predisposed to what was then an untreatable and fatal venereal disease. In reality, syphilis was endemic throughout Victorian society, and Randolph was known to be promiscuous, bedding women from all social classes, including prostitutes. He may have slept with men, too, but exactly when or from whom he contracted the disease can never be known.
Regardless, Jennie Jerome became celebrated during and after his life as one of the first American women to wed into the British aristocracy. Her triumphs and setbacks became fodder for international gossip that cemented her legacy as a daring, often contrary, but always courageous woman who never allowed the era’s restrictions to impede her. The daughter of a self-made millionaire who squandered as much as he earned; the wife of Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, whose eccentricity, political aspirations, and achievements she encouraged and abetted; and the mother of Sir Winston Churchill—while others followed in her footsteps, none achieved her level of fame or accomplishment.
As Winston once said of his glamorous mother, “She made a brilliant impression upon my childhood life. She shone for me like the evening star.” While he doubtlessly made his declaration with unvoiced pain, given her undeniable neglect during his childhood, they had grown closer in adulthood than they’d ever been while he was growing up, and he remained loyal to her memory. What he suffered as a boy never overcame his abiding love for her.
Jennie made many mistakes in her life. She wasn’t a caring mother to her young sons. She could be vain and self-absorbed, as well as insensitive to how her actions affected those around her. In both her faults and her virtues, she laid bare the hypocrisies of her society and the struggle that so many women endured to find independent fulfillment. Thus, Winston’s description of her holds true. She was indeed the evening star that personified the brash spirit, baffling contradiction, and evanescence of her era—and in doing so, she transcended them.
While I’ve endeavored to adhere to the facts and documented personalities, besides those already mentioned, I admit to certain liberties, such as shifts in time or place to facilitate the narrative, as well as the omission of people and events to maintain cohesive pacing. My insight into these characters is my fictionalized interpretation, based on what is known. Any errors I may have made are inadvertent. To depict Jennie’s life in its entirety poses a challenging feat for a novelist with a limited word count, and I hope I’ve done her spirit justice.
I RELIED ON many sources to research this novel. While not intended as a full bibliography, the following list contains the works I consulted most often to portray Jennie and her world:
Goodman, Ruth. How to Be a Victorian. New York: Liveright, 2013.
Higham, Charles. Dark Lady. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006.
Kehoe, Elisabeth. The Titled Americans. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004.
Lee, Celia, and John Lee. The Churchills. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Leslie, Anita. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill. London: Hutchinson, 1969.
Martin, Ralph G. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, 2 vols. London: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
Sebba, Anne. American Jennie. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.