Randolph and Jennie arrived back in England in late December. Randolph was in a coma. Once home he rallied one final time, but he was in great pain and distress. As long ago as 1 October Jennie had warned Winston that his father was seriously ill. In early November nineteen-year-old Winston, suspecting from what he heard from friends that he had not been told all there was to be told about his father’s illness, confronted Dr Roose and insisted on being given the truth.* ‘He told me everything,’ Winston wrote to Jennie, ‘and showed me the medical reports. I have told no one.’17 Years later he confirmed to Anthony Montague Browne, his Private Secretary, that Roose had informed him that his father suffered from ‘locomotor ataxia,† the child of syphilis’.18
Three weeks after returning to England, on 24 January 1895, Lord Randolph died.19 He had suffered greatly with attacks of acute mania and delusions lasting for several hours at a time, alternating with comas. His end came quickly when he developed pneumonia and his lungs filled up. Jennie was with him.
On the day of the funeral the body was transported by train to Oxford, and he was buried in the family plot at Bladon churchyard near Blenheim. It was so cold that the Thames almost froze over. Winston, who had spent his entire childhood and early youth attempting to please his father in order to forge something approaching a normal father–son relationship, was devastated at the loss. Most of their recent exchanges had consisted of angry tirades from Randolph criticising Winston for his lack of application and his failure to achieve, yet Winston was still proud of his father. Probably their last intimate moments together had been when Randolph took him to the races and then to Lord Rothschild’s house at Tring in Hertfordshire in October 1893. Winston was then a cadet at Sandhurst, and his father wrote to the Dowager Duchess that he had smartened up considerably and was quiet and well mannered. This was against the usual trend of bulletins about Winston, for he was normally reported as being badly behaved, while Jack, a gentle and tractable child, was generally praised. On the day their parents set out on the world trip, 27 June 1894, Winston and Jack had accompanied Randolph and Jennie to Southampton, where they were to sail for New York. Lord Rosebery, then Prime Minister, was also there, and even then Winston could see that his father was seriously ill. ‘His face looked haggard and worn with mental pain,’ he recalled. ‘He patted me on the knee in a gesture which however simple was perfectly informing…I never saw him again except as a swiftly-fading shadow.’20 In My Early Life Winston mused that he would rather have been born to a plumber, a grocer or a bricklayer – for then ‘I should have got to know my father, which would have been a joy to me.’21
As an old man, Winston told his nephew Johnny that when he was told of his father’s death he was prostrate with grief for a day and a half. Even then he spoke of Lord Randolph as a dashing hero, whose certain path to the position of Prime Minister had been prevented only by his early death at forty-six; Winston still disregarded the errors Randolph had made.22 ‘All my dreams of comradeship with him, of entering Parliament at his side and in his support, were ended,’ he wrote in a memoir of that period. ‘There remained for me only to pursue his aims and vindicate his memory.’23
This ambition was to be the driving force in Winston’s future life. He already knew that he wanted to go into politics rather than the Army, but he had no money to campaign; and even assuming he could gain a seat, backbench Members of Parliament were not salaried in those days, so first he needed to find some means of supporting himself. He concluded that he would have to ‘do something’ to gain public acclaim, but at least any plans he might make were no longer dependent upon his father’s likely reaction: ‘I was now in the main the master of my fortunes.’24
This romantic, idealistic and, above all, ambitious young man would never lose his feelings of love for his father. Lord Randolph’s political downfall, the diagnosis of syphilis, his often cold-hearted treatment of Jennie – Winston knew of all these things, but neither they, nor the fact that he and Jack had had no emotional relationship with their father, ever affected his lifelong pride in Randolph. Similarly, he identified strongly with his father’s heritage; Blenheim was not merely his family home but his spiritual base, and his descent from the famous 1st Duke of Marlborough was always there for him as a sort of bastion when life got tough. On one occasion, when he was checking on the construction of the War Rooms in London, he jumped over a steel girder only to land in a pool of liquid cement. His Secretary humorously remarked that Winston seemed to have met his Waterloo. ‘Certainly not,’ Winston replied. ‘My Blenheim.’
There were no surprises in Lord Randolph’s will: he left £500 and his personal effects to Jennie, and the residue to his sons with a life interest to Jennie in the income. Had Randolph outlived his mother, the Dowager’s estate would have come to him and eventually to Jennie, with the intention that it would filter down to their sons. But now, on the demise of the Dowager, that capital would go directly to Winston and Jack, skirting Jennie. There was some £75,000 invested in South African mines which should have set his sons up nicely in life, but unfortunately Randolph and Jennie had continued their old lavish lifestyle funded by loans raised during his illness, and these loans were secured against the South African shares. After all debts were paid there was very little left to be shared between Winston and Jack, and Jennie now depended solely on the settlement made by her father on her marriage.
Winston received his commission a month after his father’s death, and it cost just under £1000 to join his regiment, the 4th Hussars, buy a charger (he was given another horse by Aunt Lily and her husband Bill Beresford*) and a couple of polo ponies. He was never, throughout his Army career, out of debt, and for some years after that money was a struggle. This was a young man who had to make his own way, and in a hurry. He burned with ambition, though no longer with the military world in his sights, for his every instinct was to follow his father into politics. He knew, though, that his youth was against him – he was still only twenty – and he wrote to his mother that ‘four years of healthy and pleasant existence, combined with both responsibility and discipline, can do no harm to me – but rather, good. The more I see of soldiering the more I like it, but the more I feel convinced that it is not my métier. Well, we shall see.’25 Meanwhile, he took seriously the fact that he was now the senior male in the family and, as far as he was able, took responsibility for his mother and younger brother.
After the funeral and a month spent with her mother-in-law in the deep mourning prescribed for widows, Jennie travelled to Paris. She had reserved a suite in the Hotel Imperial and was still travelling in some style, accompanied by her maid and butler. Did she know that Charles Kinsky and his bride were honeymooning in the same hotel? Did she, even now, think that she could revive the relationship that had meant ‘everything’ to her for the past eleven years? She was addicted to Kinsky, she wrote to Leonie, as some people were to opium or drink although they would not wish to be so.26 It seems an impossible coincidence that of all the hotels in Paris Jennie hit upon that very one by accident.
Jennie and Charles met in Paris, but it was clearly too late for them, and Jennie quickly moved from the hotel into an apartment where Leonie and her children came to join her. It is probable that Jennie was never again alone with Kinsky and her misery over losing him could be explained away as mourning for Randolph. But the pain of the parting was not confined to Jennie, for in a letter written many years later by Kinsky’s cousin to Anita Leslie, it appears that when Charles Kinsky heard of Randolph’s death he attempted to break off his engagement, and ‘it was only under heaviest pressure from his family that he gave in’.27 In the event his marriage was not a happy one; there were no children and Charles was said to be always agacé (irritable) with his wife. Winston remained his admirer, and in his rooms he always hung a picture of Count Kinsky riding his Grand National horse Zoedone.
Jennie did not stay long in Paris; within a few weeks she and Leonie hurried to Tunbridge Wells in Kent, to join sister Clarit
a at the bedside of their dying mother. Clara Jerome died on 2 April 1895.
There was a further death that year but it affected Jennie’s sons more than Jennie herself. In July their old nanny, Mrs Everest, became seriously ill. Winston was summoned by wire and she was ‘delighted’ to see him, but her condition was grave and he called in Dr Keith, the physician who had accompanied Randolph on the world voyage, and engaged a nurse. It was a hopeless case; Everest sank rapidly and died of peritonitis. Winston never left her for two days and nights, and he thought his presence at her bedside had made her happy at the last. Although it had been shocking for him to witness, he thought the old lady did not suffer greatly when she died at 2.15 a.m. on 3 July. ‘Her last words were of Jack,’ he wrote to Jennie. ‘I shall never know such a friend again…I feel very low – and find that I never realized how much poor old Woom* was to me.’28 In his next letter he wrote that he was still ‘very despondent and sad’.29 It had been the third funeral, after his father’s and Grandmother Jerome’s, that he had attended in five months. Everest had continued to write lovingly to her ‘dear precious boy’ up to a few weeks earlier. Jennie felt it was not her concern, Jack was still at school on a schoolboy’s allowance, so after the funeral it was Winston who paid for the headstone and for a local florist to maintain Everest’s grave.†
By this time Jennie was back in Paris, living in a rented apartment at 34 Avenue Kléber.‡ Winston wrote to her that he had been to see his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess Fanny, who looked ‘very pale and worn…She carped a little at your appartement in “the gayest part of the Champs Élysées” but was otherwise very amiable – or rather not particularly malevolent.’30 Duchess Fanny might have done more than carp a little had she known that within weeks of Randolph’s death Jennie was already involved in a passionate fling in Paris. The man was Bourke Cockran, a brilliant silver-tongued orator, lawyer and American Congressman. Both had recently been widowed, and they spent all their time together. Leonie, also staying at Avenue Kléber that summer, was attracted to Cockran too, but she generously ‘stepped back’ because ‘poor Jennie’ who had been so unhappy was in desperate need of a ‘romance’.
Jennie’s family were fully aware that she had an affair with Cockran that summer, and in any other newly widowed woman this would have been regarded as more than shocking. But in Jennie’s case she had lived with Randolph platonically for so many years that her undeniable sadness at his death was not linked in any way to her sexual needs; and she was on the rebound from Kinsky. This latest affair between two tempestuous individuals was passionate but not necessarily very comfortable – a niece described it as ‘the clash of two cymbals’.31 But by the time Cockran returned to the USA in late summer the liaison had run its course; the couple parted fondly but without any deep regret, and would remain friends.
In October, Winston was granted leave from his regiment and on the spur of the moment he decided to visit the USA and Cuba with a fellow subaltern, Reggie Barnes. They planned to travel cheaply, by mail boat, and it would cost only £37 return, he told his mother, which would be ‘less than a couple of months hunting at Leighton Buzzard by a long way’ as well as being safer than the stiff fences in the Vale of Aylesbury. Although she quibbled a little on the grounds of cost, cash-strapped, Jennie gave in and provided the return ticket as a birthday present. She also obtained some useful introductions for him, because, she advised, ‘New York is very expensive.’ Bourke Cockran was one of these contacts, perhaps the longest-lasting, for not only was he a generous host but he would prove to be a role model for Winston for many years.
7
1892–5
Consuelo, the Dollar Princess
When Sunny became 9th Duke a few days before reaching the age of twenty-one, he inherited empty coffers and an estate whose finest art treasures had been plundered over two generations. He was still studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, when his father died, and because it was a totally unexpected event he was unprepared for his new role. However, he had been educated to have immense pride in his heritage and in Blenheim Palace, and he took on the burden as his birthright.
He was an unhappy youth despite his nickname (which clung to him for the rest of his life), who in many ways felt that he had drawn the short straw. Partly this can be attributed to his parents’ long estrangement during his childhood and their subsequent divorce, after which he was placed in the custody of his father. Sunny later stated that in his entire childhood he never received a single kind word from his father. In this he shared the experience of his cousin Winston, whose correspondence with Lord Randolph makes uncomfortable reading for present-day researchers.
The disagreements between Randolph and Blandford had resulted in an estrangement that had caused Sunny to lose touch with Winston, but after his father’s death when the widowed Duchess Lily moved out of Blenheim, one of the first things Sunny did was invite Winston to stay. Although Goosie stayed there in the first few weeks, Sunny, as the 9th Duke, lived in the great palace alone, supported by visits from his two sisters and his grandmother Dowager Duchess Fanny, who showed great fortitude, if not much empathy. It was the old Duchess who convinced Sunny that it was his duty to marry for money for the sake of Blenheim, and there was much trawling through the lists of eligible young women.
Winston spent the first Christmas of Sunny’s dukedom at Blenheim with Sunny and Aunt Berthe (Goosie), ‘who has really gone out of her way to make me comfortable,’ he reported to his mother. The two young men became firm friends and Winston was a frequent weekend visitor: ‘I rode in the park [at Blenheim] chiefly with Lady Angela* – who is not bad company,’ Winston told Jennie on one occasion. ‘I think she is trying all she knows to captivate Sunny – but it appears to me that her efforts will be fruitless.’1
Lady Angela was the seventeen-year-old third daughter of the 4th Earl Rosslyn; her two elder sisters had married well – one to a duke and the other to an earl – but while she was perfect in every other way (and it is probable that Sunny came to love her), Lady Angela’s dowry would not have enabled Sunny to run Blenheim. Indeed, there was no English girl both rich enough and eligible enough, and eventually the reluctant conclusion was reached that the only way out of Sunny’s dilemma was to marry an American heiress – not a minor heiress, as Jennie had seemed to be, but some well brought up girl to whom the upkeep of Blenheim would be a mere fleabite. Jennie was consulted as to the most likely candidates and, curiously, Goosie’s sister, Maude, Lady Lansdowne, had already met one of the leading contenders, sixteen-year-old Consuelo Vanderbilt, daughter of William K. Vanderbilt and his wife Alva.
Mrs Alva Vanderbilt had been a childhood friend of Consuelo Yznaga and Minnie Stevens, and Jennie knew her reasonably well as a member of the coterie of American expats in Paris. Like Jennie, Consuelo and Minnie, Alva (née Erskine Smith) had been partly educated in Paris and had absorbed a taste for European grandeur and design, but her family, who had been plantation owners in Alabama, were ruined by the Civil War and had been obliged to return to America in the hope of recouping. They never recovered their former wealth, so Alva’s marriage in 1875 to the young William Kissam Vanderbilt, following an introduction by Consuelo Yznaga, was a real triumph for her. William K (as he was known) stood ultimately to inherit a $50 million share (worth multi billions today) in the fortune built by his grandfather ‘the Commodore’, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in steamships and the New York Central Railroad, and expanded by the Commodore’s son, William Henry Vanderbilt (known as William H).
The young William Ks lived in New York, but neither Alva’s Southern pedigree nor the riches of her Vanderbilt in-laws were acceptable to Mrs Astor – still the acknowledged leader of New York’s society. They had too many connections in trade. Consequently, the William Ks were never invited to the really important social occasions populated by Knickerbocker families of ‘the old four hundred’.
The pugnacious Alva adopted an apparent lack of concern at being sidelined, but in reality she simme
red over it before deciding on a long-term strategy, knowing there was no alternative to a waiting game while the old Commodore was still around reminding New Yorkers of his rough-and-ready background.* Meanwhile, Alva produced two sons and a daughter. The daughter, a child of striking appearance from the moment of her birth on 2 March 1877, was named after Alva’s friend Consuelo Yznaga. And when Consuelo Yznaga married Viscount Mandeville, Alva conceived a plan for her daughter who, she decided, would never be excluded from any society. No ifs or buts – little Consuelo would marry a European title, just like her namesake. Having herself married for money, this probably seemed no more than a reasonable ambition to Alva.
After the old Commodore died, his multimillionaire heirs began to build homes in New York that were the size of European palaces. In fact, William K’s and Alva’s new construction at 660 Fifth Avenue, faced in limestone, boasting a pitched roof with copper decorations, elaborate dormers, flying buttresses and a steep tourelle topped with the fleur de lis, was easily as grand as any European palace. Its design was based on the sixteenth-century Château de Blois near Chenonceaux, and indeed was always called in the family ‘the chateau’. The ballroom was a replica of the one at Versailles, and there was an eight-foot malachite vase that came from the Winter Palace at St Petersburg.
The Churchills Page 14