More of the panther than of the woman in her look.
—SIR EDGAR VINCENT, VISCOUNT D’ABERNON
Banished to Ireland as a result of Randolph’s part in the Aylesford scandal, the Churchills had thrived in exile. Jennie remembered Ireland with fondness for the rest of her life, developing a real affection for the magnificent landscapes and friendly people. Jennie was also genuinely shocked at the dire poverty that persisted decades after the famines of 1846–47, and Randolph developed a sympathy for the Republican cause. And both Jennie and Randolph enjoyed the hunting, which became their ruling passion.1 Jennie would “beg, borrow or steal”2 any horse she could get her hands on, with little regard for her own safety. On one occasion, after her mare had sailed over an iron bedstead used as a gate, Jennie had to crawl out of the ditch she had fallen into, and was hoisted into the saddle by farm boys, screaming with laughter.3 Years later, Winston Churchill remembered his mother “in a riding habit fitted like a skin, and often beautifully spotted with mud; she and my father hunted continually on their large horses; and sometimes there were scares because one or the other did not come back for many hours after they were expected.”4 But, however wonderful the hunting was in Ireland, this was not the future that Jennie had envisaged. Ireland was even more remote than Blenheim Palace. When the Duke of Marlborough, Randolph’s father, retired as viceroy of Ireland in 1880, Randolph and Jennie came back to London and Jennie resumed her duties supporting Randolph’s political career. Returned to Parliament in 1880, Randolph positioned himself as a “radical Tory” scourge of the Tory frontbench and outspoken critic of the prime minister, Lord Salisbury. Clearly intent on becoming prime minister himself, Randolph set out to create a “Fourth Party,” a new form of “Tory Democracy” appealing to working-class men. He even campaigned in the radical citadel of Birmingham, a Liberal stronghold. With his charismatic personality, Randolph could work a crowd, cramming halls full of “boisterous working men”5 who were captivated by his oratory. A born actor, Randolph knew how to manipulate a scene in the always lively Commons debates. On one occasion, he even threw an offending pamphlet to the floor of the House and stamped on it.6 Randolph’s mood swings became the stuff of legend: he vacillated between euphoria and gloom, and could be viciously rude to those he considered his inferiors, particularly women. Despite increasingly ill health, which colleagues attributed to the burdens of office, Randolph continued to be a committed and ambitious MP. When the second Salisbury administration was formed after the general election of 1886, Randolph became chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, a role in which he was uncharacteristically tactful and discreet.
Spoken of as a rising star, widely tipped to be prime minister someday, Randolph Churchill “stalked elegantly through [the] London of the ’Eighties” although as “a febrile being without heart,”7 he had inherited the Marlborough disdain for affection. Jennie’s sister, Leonie, by now married to Sir John Leslie, an Irish baronet, noticed that Randolph would shoo away his little sons with his newspaper when they were brought down to say good morning to him. “The two pairs of round eyes, peeping around the screen, longed for a kind word.”8 This froideur extended to Jennie, who confided in her sisters that Randolph had ceased to visit her bed after 1881.9 Jennie suspected that Randolph had become involved with Lady de Grey, a society beauty, although she had no evidence of this. Puzzled and hurt by Randolph’s neglect, Jennie attempted to “keep her mortification to herself.”10 Jennie also embarked on a string of affairs; it was widely believed that her second son, John, was actually the son of Viscount Falmouth. As is so often the case with politician’s marriages, Randolph’s floundered as his career flourished. The Liberal MP Henry Labouchere noted that “though [Randolph] gets on pretty well with his wife when they are together he is always rather glad to be away from her,”11 while the writer Frank Harris witnessed this scene between the couple:
The door opened and Jennie walked in. Out of courtesy, Harris stood up as Jennie entered the room, but Randolph remained seated.
“Randolph!” said Jennie. Randolph did not reply and in spite of his ominous silence, she came across to him. “Randolph, I want to talk to you!”
“Don’t you see,” he retorted, “that I’ve come here to be undisturbed!”
“But I want you,” she repeated tactlessly.
He sprang to his feet. “Can’t I have a moment’s peace from you anywhere?” he barked. “Get out and leave me alone!”
At once she turned and walked out of the room.12
Frank Harris also knew something that Jennie did not: Randolph had been to visit several doctors, convinced that he had contracted syphilis. This had been one of the reasons for breaking off relations with Jennie, for fear that he infect her. The frequent visits to Paris, which had made Jennie so suspicious, may have been trips to see specialists in venereal disease. Before the discovery of antibiotics, the only treatment for syphilis was mercury and potassium iodide,13 a poisonous combination. Even if Randolph had not been syphilitic, and his symptoms were due to a brain tumor, the side effects of the treatment would have been the explanation for his mood swings, nervous irritability, tremors, lethargy, and cognitive impairment. There was something else Jennie did not know: Randolph spent time with a secret homosexual coterie known as the Uranians, a group that included Lord Rosebery, John Addington Symonds, and Lord Drumlanrig, elder brother of Oscar Wilde’s lover “Bosie” Douglas.14 If Randolph had been homosexual this would have added to his stress. As well as the demands of a political career and a failing marriage, he would have had to endure the constant fear of blackmail and exposure.
As Randolph spent increasingly more time at his club, the Carlton, and traveling abroad with male friends, Jennie could at least distract herself with the world of the “Court and Social,” as The Times of London described it. In November 1885, Jennie was invited to Windsor, where the queen wished to confer the Order of the Crown of India upon her. Jennie wore a black velvet dress, so thickly embroidered with jet beads that “the pin could find no hold and, unwittingly, the Queen stuck it straight into me.”15 Jennie met the queen once again the following spring. On March 6, 1886, Jennie was presented to her in a variation of the debutante ceremony. As a married woman, Jennie was permitted to appear in a colored gown, and wore a magnificent golden dress made by Monsieur Worth to Jennie’s own design. “Diamonds flashed in her ears, on her throat and arms and her dress glistened like a glass of golden wine held to the sunlight”16 gushed one besotted journalist.
Jennie also had the consolation of her close friendship with Bertie, which she had renewed over the past two years. Following Randolph’s political success, Jennie had persuaded Bertie to forgive and forget, and Bertie had joined the couple for dinner in 1884. A more formal reconciliation took place in May 1886, when Bertie joined the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone, and his wife as guests of the Churchills at Connaught Place. It could have been an awkward evening, particularly when the electricity generator broke down and the house was plunged into a blackout,17 but Jennie handled it perfectly. Since then, their friendship had blossomed. Jennie and Randolph were invited to dine at Windsor Castle, where Queen Victoria noted that “Lady Randolph (an American) is very handsome and very dark.”18 The couple were also invited to stay at Sandringham, the royal family’s country house in Norfolk, the details of which Jennie noted like an anthropologist writing about a strange tribe, from the enormous meals, including a long leisurely breakfast,19 a picnic lunch in a tent for the shooting party, and a huge afternoon tea, to the horrors of the actual shoot itself. Although a keen foxhunter, Jennie loathed shooting, particularly when indulged in by women. “Crash, Bang! And the glorious creature became a maimed and tortured thing … if these things must be done, how can a woman bring herself to do them?”20 Jennie did at least have the opportunity to demonstrate her musical skills, playing duets with Princess Alexandra, who was particularly fond of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, or struggling with a Schumann piano concerto in Princess Victoria’s sitting room. “The pace set was terrific, and I was rather glad there was no audience.”21
Then came the delightful evenings, heralded by the sound of the dressing gong. “Off came the tea-gowns and on came the low-necked, tightly-laced evening dresses. The gentlemen wore full dress with decorations though never uniform, and the Prince of Wales led each lady in turn into dinner.”22 After dinner, there was an hour or so of whist before the princess took the ladies off to bed. “Occasionally, Princess Alix would invite one into her dressing room, which was crowded with objects and souvenirs of all kinds. On a perch in the center of the room was an old and somewhat ferocious parrot. At other times, rather alarmingly, Princess Alix might surprise you by coming into your room, ostensibly ‘to see if you have everything you want’ but in reality to offer a few words of advice, or her sympathy if she thought you needed any.”23
Plenty of friends and acquaintances were prepared to believe that Jennie and Bertie were having an affair, but Jennie was too clever to leave any explicit clues about the relationship. Notes from Bertie to Jennie are models of discretion, while Jennie’s own letters remain under lock and key at the royal archives in Windsor, and are likely to be as discreet as Bertie’s. After all, Jennie had learned the value of discretion after witnessing the fate of Lady Aylesford and others like her. Bertie’s carriage was often to be seen outside the Churchills’ house at Connaught Place, while Jennie received him alone. Notes such as “Would it be very indiscreet if I proposed myself for luncheon?”24 or “I have to sit on a Royal Commission from 12–4 tomorrow but if I can get away by 3 I will call with pleasure on the chance of seeing you?”25 certainly fit Bertie’s modus operandi for lovemaking.
Did Jennie become another of Bertie’s sexual conquests? Given her sexual promiscuity—she was rumored to have had over two hundred lovers—her unhappy marriage, and starstruck attitude to royalty, it would scarcely have been surprising. Bertie’s friendship, whatever form it took, must have been a great consolation as Randolph’s behavior became increasingly erratic. Despite this, Jennie’s positive attitude shone through. On December 22, 1886, Jennie entertained Bertie at lunch at Connaught Place, while Randolph lunched at the Carlton Club with the minister for war. Jennie and Bertie discussed plans for the New Year, and the boys, Winston and Jack, were home for the Christmas holidays, which they intended to spend in London. Jennie had everything to look forward to.
That evening, Jennie and Randolph went to see School for Scandal and Jennie noticed that Randolph was unusually preoccupied. Randolph left their box after the intermission, saying he was going to his club, but this was not out of character, and Jennie returned home, unconcerned. The following morning, as usual, a copy of The Times was sent up with her tray of early-morning tea. The front-page news consisted of Randolph’s resignation from the government.
White and shaking, Jennie went down to breakfast, to discover Randolph calmly smiling. “Quite a surprise for you!” he commented.26
“He went into no explanation and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any or even to remonstrate.”27 Mr. Moore, permanent under-secretary at the Treasury, who had hero-worshipped Randolph, rushed into the room and told Jennie: “He has thrown himself from the top of the ladder and will never reach it again.”28
Randolph’s shock announcement rocked the cabinet. Most MPs were at home in their country houses, preparing for Christmas. Nobody had suspected that a dispute of this magnitude had been brewing. The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, who had received a copy of Randolph’s letter the previous evening, wearily asked his wife to find him The Times. “Randolph resigned in the middle of the night and if I know my man, it will be in The Times this morning.”29 Queen Victoria was furious at having to learn about the resignation of her chancellor from The Times. A misprint in an Irish newspaper announcing that “Lord Randolph has burnt his boots”30 elicited a little strained laughter in the Churchill household, but Jennie, who had spent so much time and energy supporting her husband’s meteoric rise to power, was completely crushed. As Bertie tried to comfort her, Jennie could only write that “When I looked back at the preceding months which seemed so triumphant and full of promise, the debacle appeared all the greater. I had made sure that Randolph would enjoy the fruits of office for years to come, and apart from the honour and glory, I regretted these same ‘fruits.’”31
Many explanations have been offered for Randolph’s resignation from the cabinet, but the most obvious one is that he believed that his resignation would bring down Lord Salisbury’s minority government, and that he would be invited back to form a new one on his own terms, with himself as prime minister. Randolph had often said that politics was the most exciting form of gambling, but this gesture was a throw of the dice gone wrong. Lord Salisbury reshuffled the cabinet and placed George Goschen, a financier, in the role of chancellor of the exchequer. Devastated by these developments, Stafford Henry Northcote, Lord Iddsleigh, who had hoped to become chancellor himself, collapsed and died suddenly at 10 Downing Street.
After a few halfhearted attempts to get back into the cabinet, and in increasingly poor health, Randolph switched his attention to horse racing. He proved far more successful at this activity than he had been at politics, and his mare, L’Abbesse de Jouarre, won the Epsom Derby.
L’Abbesse, named after a book Jennie had been reading by Henry Renan, was a beautiful black mare with a heart bigger than her body. Randolph loved all his horses, but especially L’Abbesse. Randolph’s friend, the Hon. George Lambton, recalled that whenever Randolph went around the stables, his pockets were always stuffed with apples and sugar. On one occasion he was talking to Lambton when they heard a tremendous kicking and squealing and neighing in a box farther down the yard.32 When they opened the door of the box, L’Abbesse rushed at Randolph like a dog, trying to stick her nose into his pockets to get at the sugar and apples. Randolph was so overcome with emotion at the sight of his old mare that tears rolled down his cheeks.33 With this anecdote, a rare glimpse of Randolph’s human side emerges, inspired by a horse. Like many Englishmen, Randolph could express his emotions to an animal, but not to another human being.
Randolph’s health went into steep decline after he quit the cabinet, and he died in 1894. Jennie went on to marry Captain George Cornwallis-West, younger than Jennie by twenty years, much to the dismay of her sons. When this marriage failed, Jennie married Montagu Phippen Porch, a member of the British Civil Service in Nigeria. Born too early for a political career of her own, Jennie never fulfilled her promise as a beauty with brains and spirit. Margot Asquith paid her a typically backhanded compliment when she commented that “had Lady Randolph Churchill been like her face, she would have governed the world.”34