Meanwhile, Lord Aylesford had died in America, where he had fled after the scandal of Edith’s desertion and their separation. In his will he left a small pension to her but this was all she had to live on, and for her it was poverty. It evidently assuaged Blandford’s conscience, however, and he did nothing else either for her or for the son he had professed to love. Edith’s reputation was totally destroyed: a return to her family and her life in England was simply not possible. This did not disturb Blandford; he did not even mention Edith in his will, though he rather sensationally included another mistress. He died before Edith; there was no wreath from the Churchill family at her funeral in 1897, but there was one from the Prince and Princess of Wales. There must have been some contact, however, for immediately after his mother’s death sixteen-year-old Guy Bertrand went to stay at Blenheim for a short time. It is difficult to know how and where he fitted in there, but he soon left to make his own way in the world and lost touch with the family.*
At the strong urging of the Duke and Duchess, and probably because he was – as usual – very short of money and being pressed by creditors, and because Goosie was persuaded it was her duty, Blandford and his wife were reunited for a short time. But this relationship was long dead and Blandford soon returned to his old ways and adulterous affairs. It ended with him being named as co-respondent in the sensational Lady Colin Campbell divorce case. Her portraits depict Lady Colin as a seductive and sultry beauty. When he was asked under oath what he had looked for in so continually seeking her company, Blandford coolly replied, ‘Her conversation’, which statement caused great merriment in the courtroom.† A year or so later he bought Lady Colin a Venetian palazzo on condition that she allowed him to make an annual visit to her there.
Goosie had now come to the end of her considerable tolerance, and she decided to divorce Blandford for infidelity and cruelty. It was not the first time she had decided upon this course, but she had previously been talked out of it. With her husband’s reputation so irreparably damaged, she was advised that she would have little difficulty in obtaining a decree. Blandford, however, counter-sued, surprisingly citing Goosie’s infidelity with the Duke of Alba. In the early summer of 1883 this was the talk of London, and Randolph was not best pleased at the adverse publicity which reflected badly on him; nor were his parents and sisters, who all felt stained with the flying mud.
It all proved too much for the sixty-one-year-old Duke. On 4 July that year, though ill and tired, he spoke passionately in the House of Lords on the unfortunately named Dead Wife’s Sister’s Bill,* which he bitterly opposed; indeed, he is credited with helping to ensure its defeat. Afterwards, he took the train to Oxfordshire and that evening dined at Blenheim with Randolph and Jennie. He seemed in good spirits over dinner but during the night, possibly worn down by long-term worries and the stress and shame of the scandal surrounding Blandford’s divorce case, the 7th Duke suffered a massive heart attack and died.
The death of his father removed all vestiges of restraint on Blandford as he succeeded to the title of 8th Duke of Marlborough, with poor Goosie his very unwilling Duchess. Eventually, her evidence prevailed in the courts and the Marlboroughs’ marriage was duly annulled on 20 November 1883. Although she was legally entitled to the title of Duchess, Goosie spread it about that she wished to be known by the name she had used throughout most of her married life, Albertha, Marchioness of Blandford.
The evidence revealed by Goosie’s lawyers during the divorce hearing, together with the fact that Blandford was still not recognised by the Prince of Wales, was sufficient to ostracise the new Duke from polite society, but now he had access to the Blenheim coffers he lived even more extravagantly than before. His twelve-year-old son Charles Richard, formerly known as Lord Sunderland, became the new Lord Blandford, but the Duke continued to be called ‘Blandford’ by his friends and Charles continued to be known as ‘Sunny’ (from his former title ‘Sunderland’). Sunny’s sisters Frances, Lilian and Norah remained with their mother after their parents divorced, but Sunny was made to live with his father. There is a sustained pattern of unhappy elder sons throughout the Marlborough family history and Sunny did not escape it. He had already endured a wretched childhood due to his parents’ long estrangement, and as an adult he would claim that from the time he embarked on his adolescent years and went to live at Blenheim with his father he was ‘given no kindness and was entirely crushed’.
Blandford, the 8th Duke of Marlborough, is known to history as ‘the wicked Duke’, and very little has been written about him outside of his disposal of Blenheim’s assets. So it comes as rather a surprise to find that in spite of his personal problems, Blandford regarded himself as an economist, and a number of well written papers by him were published in magazines of the day.6 He was intelligent, but unfocused in his thinking. Nor did he have the gift of great oratory, but the scandals in Blandford’s life would anyway have prevented his going into politics as Randolph had done. Had he done so, however, the result would have been interesting, since he disagreed with his brother on almost every point of policy. Had Blandford not been born into the Churchill family he might have made a first-rate scientist, but he was too privileged to have ever needed to make the most of his innate abilities. Nevertheless, there is evidence that some of his later inventions with electricity and the telephone predated those of Thomas Edison, and were developed by him in parallel.
He soon realised that the estate income could not meet the expenses of the lifestyle he espoused and the laboratories and equipment he needed for his scientific experiments, as well as the cost of running Blenheim. His late father’s action in contravening the entail made it conveniently easy for him to dispose of further art and literary treasures to meet the increasing demands of his creditors.7 Consequently, he is mainly remembered now for the items he sold off: eighteen Rubens paintings, three of which were purchased by the Rothschild family; ten Van Dycks including the renowned equestrian portrait of Charles I;* and dozens of exquisite works by Raphael, Rembrandt, Brueghel, Gainsborough, Claude, Watteau, Stubbs and Reynolds among others were sacrificed along with most of the fine china collection – all to the dismay of every other member of the family. Only family portraits were kept. This massive sale raised £400,000 (over £19 million in today’s values) and helped to underwrite projects that would occupy the remainder of Blandford’s life: modernising his farms, building hothouses for his collection of orchids and laboratories for his experiments, and installing electricity at Blenheim. Randolph unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the sale, and later complained that as he travelled around the world he was frequently confronted with one of the former Blenheim works of art with which he had grown up.
Soon after the death of his father, Randolph had taken Jennie and nine-year-old Winston to the spa town of Bad Gastein in Austria for the summer months. Winston, always prey to chest complaints, had been seriously ill and it was thought that the air would do him good. Both Randolph and Jennie also had serious health problems. In 1882, Randolph had succumbed for months to a mystery illness that his previous biographers have concluded was possibly an early stage of syphilis. The features of this phase of the disease are flu-like and include headaches, fever, sickness, loss of appetite and lack of energy, lasting from a few weeks to many months. Randolph was unwell from March to September 1882 and unable to attend the House, although his parliamentary colleagues visited him at home where he spent his days lying on a sofa while he recuperated. He made several trips abroad for convalescence that summer, but returned home no better. It would be October before he made his return to the House. But while he was holidaying in Nice in December, Jennie contracted typhoid. She had no idea how dangerously ill she was when Randolph wrote affectionately to her advising her to join him in Nice to recuperate. Jennie replied that she was eager to join him, but not immediately for she had been forbidden to wear stays,8 and she also hoped that Randolph would not spread it about that she would be twenty-nine years old on 9 January: ‘26 is quite o
ld enough!’9 In all their letters it was tacitly acknowledged that he was the more unwell of the two of them.
So the trip to Bad Gastein that spring was intended for the health of all three: Randolph, still mourning his father, Jennie recovering from typhoid, and Winston. Winston always recalled meeting Bismarck and his sense of awe when it was explained to him who Bismarck was. They also met the German Emperor who was staying there, and Jennie sat next to the Emperor at tea one day, charming him and as usual trying to advance Randolph’s career, but apparently without success. Writing to a friend, Randolph joked that, although it was humiliating to admit, he believed the fame of the Fourth Party had not yet reached the ears of the Emperor.10
Soon afterwards Blandford came out to join them at Bad Gastein. At his invitation, Jennie took Winston home to spend the summer months with Jack and Sunny at Blenheim under the supervision of their respective nannies. Jennie spent this time alone in London. Blandford’s divorce case was still to come to a conclusion, but that autumn he asked Jennie if she and Randolph would move in with him so that she could act as his hostess now that the Dowager Duchess had moved out with her unmarried daughters. Jennie came to appreciate Blandford at last, and in her memoir she wrote that she enjoyed that winter at Blenheim ‘enormously’ even though apart from hunting parties not a great deal of entertaining was done. She said it was the first time she had ever felt comfortable and ‘wanted’ in the great palace. Winston, having recovered his health during the summer, was packed off back to the hated St George’s School.
Despite being short of money Randolph had decided during the previous year that he needed larger accommodation in London, and with two growing boys this made even more sense, so the couple disposed of 48 Charles Street and bought number 2 Connaught Place, which although more spacious cost less. The back of this house overlooks Marble Arch and Hyde Park, and is just a few steps away from the site of the Tyburn gallows.* When the couple had some work done on the cellars they found some ancient mass graves. Jennie was more than pleased to accept Blandford’s suggestion that they should ‘electrify’ the house and place the noisy dynamo down there. For the two little boys nothing changed: whenever they were home they still lived in the nursery with Everest – which house they were in was almost irrelevant. The way the Churchill family (and most others of their social class) dealt with their children was the same whether they were at Blenheim or in town: the children were kept strictly isolated from the grown-ups in a nursery suite ‘well out of earshot’,11 except for the prescribed hour about tea-time when, washed and dressed in best clothes, they might spend some time politely chatting with their parents or with visitors.
Not long after their move to Connaught Place, the long period of ostracism by the Prince of Wales came to an end when he agreed to attend a dinner at the Attorney General’s house at which Prime Minister and Mrs Gladstone and Randolph and Jennie were to be guests. Gladstone disliked Randolph (the feeling was mutual), but he enjoyed Jennie’s company. The other guests must have held their collective breaths on 9 March 1884 when the Prince first came face to face with the Churchills, but he was willing to be charmed, and since Randolph had the full quota of Churchill panache and allure, the evening was a glorious success. Other royal dinner invitations followed, and Jennie was always ready to fascinate and amuse the Prince.
It would be another two years – May 1886 – before the Prince actually dined at Connaught Place with Blandford as a fellow guest, and thereafter it became not unusual for the Prince to call there. It was as if the old ill-feeling between them all might never have arisen, but Jennie was always on the alert lest something should occur that might return them to social purdah. She was not slow to see that the Prince was kinder to, and paid more attention to, her two boys than did their father. Jennie’s younger sister Leonie, who stayed at 2 Connaught Place before departing for New York where she would marry a young Anglo-Irish Guards officer, John Leslie, son of the baronet Sir John Leslie, could not help noticing how whenever the children dared to approach their father he would shoo them away, waving his newspaper at them whenever they were brought in to see him. ‘Two pairs of round eyes, peeping round the screen,’ she remembered, ‘longed for a kind word.’12
The school holidays of summer 1884 provoked a small crisis in the Churchill household at Connaught Place. It is believed in the family that it was while Winston was being examined by the family physician Dr Robson Roose that Dr Roose and Nanny Everest observed the physical evidence of corporal punishment on Winston’s backside, and Everest persuaded the boy to tell her about it. It seems he had taken some lumps of sugar from the pantry and had been given a routine beating for it. Far from this making him contrite, he took the headmaster’s straw hat from its peg and kicked it to pieces. He would have known that he could not hope to escape retribution, and he was flogged severely. When an old man, Winston would tell Anita Leslie about his experiences at the school, saying that had his mother not finally listened to Everest and taken him away from there, he believed he would have broken down completely. ‘Can you imagine a child being broken down?’ he asked her.13 Winston, who had not been in full health for months,* was removed from St George’s immediately and enrolled in a less pretentious establishment in Brighton, where the air was said to be better for him. This new school, an old-fashioned ‘dame school’, was run by two ageing spinsters, the Misses Thompson, and was recommended by Dr Roose whose own son of a similar age to Winston attended there. Winston would later recall that ‘there was an element of kindness and of sympathy which I had found conspicuously lacking in my first experiences. At this school I was allowed to learn things which interested me: French,† History, lots of Poetry by heart, and above all Riding and Swimming. The impression of those years makes a pleasant picture in my mind, in strong contrast to my earlier schoolday memories.’14 His school reports improved immediately.
Jennie continued to give her utmost loyalty and support to Randolph, but her heart was elsewhere. In that same year, when Winston changed schools and began his famous stamp collection, Jennie embarked upon a passionate relationship with Count Charles Kinsky, the man who was destined to be the love of her life. He was a handsome and debonair Austrian nobleman, a former cavalry officer turned diplomat who had everything Jennie sought in a man: good looks, breeding, charm, education, a love of music – and he was a dashing sportsman. Randolph, too, possessed many of these qualities, but he lacked the romantic passion that Kinsky had in large measure. Kinsky was not only an accomplished horseman when hunting, but to the astonishment of their circle he had won the Grand National the previous year, riding as an amateur on his own hunter. He had bought the horse, Zoedone – an unexceptional-looking chestnut mare with short legs – from a hunting stable at Oakham, to add to his string of hunters. Quickly recognising her jumping ability and determination, he put the mare into training, doing much of it himself. His unexpected win made him the toast of the town. Now he and Jennie were head over heels in love, but they were always discreet – so discreet, indeed, that whenever Kinsky visited their home he was heartily welcomed by Randolph as well as the two boys.
Conveniently, Randolph now decided he needed a long holiday to recuperate from his persistent illness. It is probable that the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury* had already hinted at a specific Cabinet position for him in his next administration, for Randolph chose to go to India and made the holiday an opportunity for some major research. Leonie and Jack (John Leslie), who had just returned from honeymoon in the USA, moved into Connaught Place ‘to keep Jennie company’, and helped to observe the proprieties when Kinsky was often to be found breakfasting there.15 When Jennie’s mother wrote from Paris in December 1884, she said that Randolph richly deserved his trip to India:
I hope he will come back well & strong to enjoy life for many long years. He has made himself such a good name so early in life…I suppose the dear children are with you for the [Christmas] holidays. Clara writes me that Winston has grown to be such a nice charming b
oy. I am so pleased. Will you give him my best love, and my little Jack…I am dying to see them again. What a delightful surprise it must have been for Jack and Leonie to be with you at Connaught Place…such a nice house & such a lot of jolly little people living together.16
Although Randolph’s letters to his family were full of reports of tiger shoots, he also spent a good deal of his time investigating India’s political system and the problems there. Because he was not afraid to voice his opinions he became popular in the Indian press, and when after six months he returned home, in April 1885, he was invited to speak at an important banquet. He chose India as his subject, and his speech was powerful enough to mark him henceforward as an expert on Indian affairs as well as on Irish problems.
In June 1885 Gladstone, harried and baited beyond endurance on the issue of Home Rule, was beaten in the House by twelve votes. He immediately resigned and Salisbury agreed, with understandable reluctance, to form a minority government.* All members of the ‘Fourth Party’ were given important Cabinet posts: Arthur Balfour (Salisbury’s nephew) became President of the Local Government Board, Sir Henry Wolff was sent to Egypt on a delicate diplomatic mission, and John Gorst became Solicitor General. Randolph had made such a good impression in the Commons that no Conservative government could be formed without him in some significant position. Soon after his return from India he was offered the post of Secretary of State for India, which embodied membership of the Privy Council and gave him a salary of £5000 a year.
The Churchills Page 10