1895
Jennie, it’s time.” Clarita stood on the threshold of my bedchamber at Blenheim. I sat before the mirror, trying to affix a cameo to my black collar. I couldn’t seem to make any sense of the latch, pricking my fingers repeatedly until Clarita came to me and clicked it into place.
She gave me a tired smile, submerged in mourning. Averting my eyes from my reflection, in which I saw the same, I stood, swaying for a moment before I started across the room for my veiled hat.
I heard her say, “Are you wearing any shoes?”
I hesitated before hiking up my hem to reveal my black-stockinged feet. “Apparently not.” My voice choked. “My husband’s burial and I’ll be branded a Godiva.”
Clarita hastened to fetch shoes from the wardrobe, kneeling so I could slip my feet into their contours. She used a hook to fasten the buttons. “Scandal averted.” She stood. “You always look wonderful in black. Remember how he used to say no other woman could wear such an unbecoming hue and appear draped in midnight?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You must remember him as he was, Jennie. The man who refused to take no for an answer. To bid him farewell is a mercy. He suffered so much, yet to the very end, he was fighting to stay with you.”
Despair coiled in my chest, bringing back sharp memories of our peregrination from America to Singapore, Madras to Egypt, and finally back to London when it became apparent his end neared—a yearlong blur of seas and misplaced luggage, of hotels with cracked ceilings and suffocating changes in climate; and, inescapably soul-rending, Randolph with his decaying teeth and ulcerated skin, the tip-tap of his cane on ship promenades and the chipped marble of ruined temples, his haunting desire to take in every sight of our final voyage together. Though Dr. Cheever had predicted insanity, Randolph clung to his lucidity until the very end. He did not die ranting and oblivious. He died exhausted, his body too ravaged to endure any longer.
“What will I do now?” I said haltingly. “How do I live without him? I never thought . . . I never imagined we would end like this.”
She linked her arm in mine. “You will find a way. I’m here. Moreton is selling the ranch and I’ve rented a house in Aldford Park. Leonie is not far in Ireland. You have Mama, too. I know she’s no comfort, but she’s mourning Papa; she understands what it means to lose a husband. And you must be strong for your sons. They’ve lost their father. We know how painful that is.”
Papa had died the previous year, felled by weakness from his pneumonia. At his burial in Kensal Green in London, my sisters and I were distraught, unable to conceive that our irrepressible father was gone. Mama insisted he’d wanted to be interred in Brooklyn, where they’d acquired their first home, and we must see to the transfer of his remains. I’d been bereaved by his loss, forewarned by it of what was yet to come as Randolph succumbed to his illness. Now I longed to launch a vociferous grief that would shatter this palace, crack its frescoes and unhinge its last remaining masterpieces from their frames. But I couldn’t weep, as if the flood behind my eyes was held back by an intangible wall.
How could I not shed a tear, as if I’d lost any capacity for crying? As my sister led me to the staircase and I saw my sons waiting in the foyer below, the funeral cortege gathered in the outer courtyard beyond, I balked.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t watch him be put in a tomb.”
Winston was gazing up at me, stalwart in his black frock coat. Now in his twenty-first year, he bore a shocking resemblance to Randolph when we first met. Beside him, fifteen-year-old Jack was lanky, too mature, already an adolescent without my having taken notice of it, while Lady Frances and my mother flanked them like decaying artifacts.
Clarita paused. “You must. You’re not the distraught widow who must keep to her bed lest she faint. Would you be like Lady Frances?”
I snorted. “She only deigned to keep to her bed after she oversaw her husband’s funeral like a general. And not for long, once she heard Albertha plotted to seize the estate.”
“Well, there you have it. The British can’t abide self-indulgence.” She released my arm so I could descend alone. “Show them what Lady Randolph is made of.”
MY LONDON HOUSE was too large. Too empty. Countless times, I started in my seat, my book shifting in my hands, imagining I’d heard the front door open, the wet sough of his umbrella, his grumble about the dreadful weather and his party’s indecisiveness. It had the eerie feeling of the time he’d been in India, as if he’d return, except I knew he never would. The silence was too immense as I wandered through rooms decorated to exalt our prestige, populated by memories of our parties, the intrigues of our guests. The table in the foyer overflowed with bouquets and condolences sent by everyone who’d known him; I couldn’t bear to open a single one until my butler took it upon himself to set the most pressing before me, alongside preaddressed acknowledgment cards I must sign. Even in death, appearances had to be maintained.
Bertie wrote to me in genuine affection, again offering his support in whatever I might require; his missive so warmed my heart, I sent him one of Randolph’s watches as a token of appreciation. Karl also conveyed his condolences in a perfectly composed letter that included the offer for me to visit Vienna, where he had a house at my disposal. It kicked up the passion for him that I was determined to put behind me. I knew he had toured England and Ireland with his exuberant empress and champion horse, winning the steeplechase, and I’d been abroad with Randolph in Egypt when I read in The Times that Karl had wed a titled heiress, as ordained by his family. It came as no surprise to me.
Much as I wanted to, I did not reply to him.
Then Winston came to see me, on leave from his regiment to visit his beloved Woomany, whom Lady Frances callously discharged upon Jack’s entry in school. She’d barely given Mrs. Everest notice to pack her bags, enraging Winston, who posted to me furious grievances that arrived months after the fact, as his father and I were traveling. Upon his graduation from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he’d been accepted into the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars.
Now my son strode about my parlor in his braided red and gold military dress, a lock of his thick hair, turned darker in adulthood, escaping its pomade to furl across his forehead.
“We must give her a proper severance for her years of service. She was devoted to us and now she’s living as a tenant in her sister’s North London home. It’s appalling.”
I nodded in commiseration. “Yes, I agree her discharge wasn’t handled well at all, and I do feel for her. But we’ve nothing to offer her. Your father’s testament—”
His quicksilver swerve to me took away my breath, it was so like Randolph’s. “What of it? You were named joint trustee of his estate. I was present at the reading of his will.”
I met his indignant stare. “Yet you apparently failed to hear that after his debts are paid, the capital share of his estate is held in trust for you and Jack until you both wed, with the profit from the proceeds provided to me for my expenses. Winston, we’re not wealthy. How do you expect us to help Mrs. Everest?”
“We have that pile in Oxfordshire full of treasures no one cares about,” he retorted.
“Blenheim and its neglected treasures went to your cousin Charles upon your uncle George’s death.” I refrained from adding that Lady Frances had also seen to Charles’s engagement to Consuelo Vanderbilt, the New York heiress—an irony not lost on me, except this time, my mother-in-law had made certain the American fortune was intact and sufficient to shore up Blenheim. After losing her husband and both her sons, she’d resolved to keep the estate where she believed it belonged, which was nowhere near her half-Jerome grandchildren.
Winston went still. “Are you . . . ?”
I made myself shrug. “I’ll make do. I’ll have to sell this house and find a smaller residence. A widow doesn’t need so much space, or so your father’s solicitor has informed me.”
He scowled. “That ferret. How could Papa leave us in such a state? And it would seem poor Woomany must suffer for it as well.”
“Your father,” I said quietly, “often failed to think matters through. In any event, we must get on with the business of living. I am very sorry about Mrs. Everest, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do. I must put this house up for sale and travel to America to rent out our mansion. It will bring in extra income, which your aunt Clarita sorely needs. She’s living here now, with three children to raise, and—”
“A ne’er-do-well of a husband,” cut in Winston, his scathing insight once more reminding me of his father. “Did Moreton’s expedition to mine—what was it again, diamonds in Australia?—fail to yield the fortune he anticipated?”
I had to curb sudden laughter. “I’m afraid so.” As silence fell over us, he sat on the sofa opposite me, folding his long hands. He had refined fingers, like mine. Fingers made for the piano, which he’d never taken to, despite the vaunted music curriculum at Brighton.
“I must seek employment then,” he said. “Work for a living, like any honest man.”
I started in my chair. “What of your military commission? You can’t abandon it. Winston, it took three separate attempts for you to gain admittance. I won’t hear of it.”
“I can’t drill and march forever. I need some experience in this business of living, as you say. I may as well start now. Spencer-Churchill men tend to die young.”
“You cannot live in fear of that,” I said. He didn’t know the truth about his father. I’d kept it a secret as promised, telling everyone my husband had suffered from a brain tumor. Still, Randolph had only been forty-five and his brother George forty-eight at the times of their deaths, so I couldn’t truly fault my son for believing his lineage was short-lived.
“Perhaps not, but it’s still advisable not to waste time. Cuba is fighting for its independence from Spain. I wish to go there, but I need an official credential.”
“Credential?” I echoed. War was the last thing I wanted him to pursue, but he had both the virtues and the defects of his bloodlines. Like Papa and Randolph, when he set his mind to something, nothing could dissuade him.
“As a journalist,” he explained, betraying that he must have been considering it for some time. “I could then travel to Cuba to report on the conflict.”
I was surprised. “Do you wish to be a journalist?” Even as I spoke, I recalled his numerous letters to me over the years, the ink that kept us bound. I’d read some of them aloud to Randolph as he sipped his cognac before the fire. Though my husband never had much praise for our sons, he remarked that Winston had apparently inherited my talent for words. “He writes like you, my darling. Perhaps we should hire him to compose speeches for me.”
As I recollected this, Winston said, “Yes, I think I’d like to write for a living. And you know all the newspaper editors who supported Papa.”
“Are you asking me to find you a job?” I asked wryly.
“Would you?” He leapt to his feet. “It would mean so much to me.”
I melted at his eagerness. “I suppose I owe you as much, after my years of neglect.”
“It wasn’t neglect.” He bent down to kiss my cheek. “I understand how much you had to contend with. Just allow me the introductions and I’ll do the rest.”
He sundered me where I sat. My little boy, who had never faltered at speaking his mind, was now a young man, who should have had a litany of reproaches to lay at my feet for the years I’d left him to fend for himself in Mrs. Everest’s care, at the mercy of his intolerant grandmother. Instead, he was comforting me, and it prompted me to say, “I have a little reserve in case of emergencies. It’s not much, and not nearly sufficient to change her living situation, but you must take it to your Woomany, Winston. We do owe her at least that.”
“Mama.” He blinked against sudden, uncharacteristic tears. “Are you certain?”
“I am. It’s not enough to make any difference to me, but it might be for her.” I smiled back at him through my own threatening deluge. “We are not Spencer-Churchills who think the world owes us,” I added quietly. “We must never behave as if we are.”
AFTER CARING FOR Papa in Brighton, Mama had declared her decision to stay in England. We tried to persuade her otherwise, seeing no reason for her to upend her life—she’d never expressed a desire to be closer to us in her old age—but she insisted on selling her flat and renting a house in Kent. She hired a local day maid, as Dobbie had grown suddenly very frail, her years of stoic devotion melting flesh from her bones. She passed away one morning while preparing the tea for delivery to my mother’s room, a task she’d refused to relinquish; her heart gave out, so that in her final moment, she must have been outraged that death had had the poor taste to take her then and force her to leave an unfinished duty behind. I was grief-stricken, my mourning for her so sharp and deep that I felt as if I were drowning. Mama was beside herself as well, but when I insisted that we must send Dobbie’s body for burial next to her family, my mother said, “How? We can’t afford it, if we could even locate where her family is.”
“You . . . you don’t know?” I was aghast. “How can you not know? You were the one who first hired her. Surely, you must have some idea of where her family might be.”
“Honestly.” Mama plucked at the blanket across her knees. “I hired her when I was about to marry your father. She kept in touch for a time with her family, but I never inquired or intruded in her personal life. It was not my place.”
“Then we must search her belongings, see if there are any letters—”
“There are not. When we left Paris, she had only one bag, with her clothing and her Bible. She’d stopped corresponding with her family after I gave birth to you and your sisters; three girls to raise while your father was establishing his business was more than enough for the two of us.”
“Then we must acquire a plot for her in New York. And don’t tell me we can’t afford it,” I said, cutting off her immediate protest. “You sold everything you owned in Paris to move here, though I still don’t understand why, save for that ridiculous imperial porcelain. We can sell that to cover the expense.”
“Never.” Her face shut like a trap. “How I dispose of my belongings is my affair. Dobbie would never want me to sell something so precious to buy her a plot. Enough, Jennie. We shall bury her right here. Her soul is with God. Her earthly remains do not care where they rest.”
I thought her heartless and cruel, and it hardened me even more against her. But I couldn’t undertake the expense on my own to send my nanny’s body overseas, and when I rallied my sisters, they demurred, not selfishly but in genuine regret. None of us were solvent enough to do it, even if we pooled our resources, so Dobbie had to be buried in Kent.
Much as I resented my mother for refusing to honor our nanny in death, she visibly and rapidly declined without Dobbie at her side. It soon became apparent to us that our mother alone in Kent, with just the day maid to tend to her, wasn’t safe or sensible at her advancing age.
“Why not come live with Leonie or me?” Clarita pleaded during one of our visits. We always went to see her together since Dobbie’s passing. In addition to our argument over her remains, Mama had still never fully reconciled herself to my rebellious marriage, though she’d allegedly boasted of it in her salon. Even now, she eyed me askance in my black mourning, making me brace for her terse reminder that she’d foreseen this hour when I’d find myself in precisely the situation I faced—a widow, desperately short of income.
Swathed in a shawl in her armchair, her hair gone completely white, she was diminished, a shadow of the formidable woman we’d known, but her reply was firm as ever. “I have no interest in dying in an Irish castle, and most assuredly not in London with children underfoot. I’m perfectly fine here.”
“She’s given up,” said Clarita sadly as we returned to London. “She misses Dobbie and Papa too much. She lived since she was a bride with Dobbie at her beck and call, and she never stopped loving Papa. She left him, but in her heart, she always saw herself as his wife.”
We were not with Mama when she passed, Clarita weeping in anguish when news came that she’d died alone, as she’d determined to live in her final years. She left her last word in her testament, dividing her remaining estate between my sisters; according to her, my late husband had provided for me. She bequeathed minor sums to Winston and Jack, as well. Only then did we learn that to ensure our New York mansion remained ours, she’d used the bulk of the proceeds from the sale of her Paris flat and belongings to pay all of Papa’s outstanding debts. She requested burial in Brooklyn, beside Papa (she left a specific sum for it) and that her porcelain remain in the family. I dispatched it into storage, along with my belongings, as my house was under contract to be sold. I detested that porcelain with every fiber of my being, but Clarita almost wailed when I suggested we auction it off.
While Clarita saw Mama embalmed for transport to America and arranged the transfer of Papa’s casket from London, I scraped together funds with Leonie and Winston to purchase a mausoleum in Brooklyn. I thought of exhuming Dobbie, putting her in the mausoleum, too, but Winston counseled me against it, citing we only had enough to see to my parents.
Leonie accompanied me to New York. Just before we boarded our ship, Winston sent a letter. He’d been hired by the Daily Graphic and was on his way to Cuba. He would meet up with us in New York; he longed to see America with his American mother. And he enclosed the last letter he’d received from my mother. To my surprise, it appeared he’d kept up a regular correspondence with Mama and she’d always encouraged him, citing her maxim that nothing worthwhile was accomplished without endeavor, as she must have done so many times with my father.
As the ship departed England, I didn’t look back at the receding cliffs, gazing instead into the tumultuous waters, reflecting my year of loss and reconciliation, of seeking a way back to who I had been, even if that girl no longer existed. I was the widow Lady Randolph now; and if my circle continued to include Bertie of Wales, I’d still been cast adrift from the anchor of marriage.
I must learn to fend for myself, without Randolph at my side.
And I’d have to be bold. Much like those of my sons, my destiny was mine alone to forge. I would not end my days like Mama had, a cantankerous captive in death’s antechamber.
No matter the cost, life was meant to be lived.