In 1908 she interested her mother in this cause, little knowing at the time that Alva would take up the banner and become a leading fighter for women’s suffrage in the United States (what, in fact, Alva has become best known for). Unsuspected by Consuelo, in the years that followed, Alva became one of the main financial supporters of the Pankhursts and the WSPU. She had them to stay at her house in France on several occasions when they were in danger of arrest in England, or to recuperate after spells in prison. On one occasion the thirty-two-year-old Christabel spent the entire summer with Alva, and when Consuelo paid a visit she could not help noticing that they got on together more amicably than did she herself with her mother. As a result of that visit, while constantly maintaining her support for women’s emancipation, Consuelo publicly distanced herself from the militancy of the Pankhursts and made a statement to that effect in the American press. However, that did not prevent her from appearing, at her mother’s request, at a high-powered suffrage rally organised by Alva at Marble House in Newport. Alva knew that Consuelo would not only command press acreage, but would provoke interest in those women who had been distanced from the cause by militancy.
Meanwhile in London, Consuelo had her literary admirers, who could be counted on to keep her amused at dinner parties: H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, John Galsworthy – whose Forsyte Saga was a bestseller of the day – and Sir James Barrie, who told a friend of Consuelo, ‘I would stand all day in the street to see Consuelo Marlborough get into her carriage.’25 The plain fact was that for Consuelo, life was far happier outside her marriage than in it.
Sunny fared less well. He truly felt the stigma of his situation, and he tried to cope with his misery by travelling. In 1907, after a meeting in Venice with Winston, he made a long summer tour of France accompanied, somewhat surprisingly, by Jennie and her sister-in-law Daisy. Then, when Gladys Deacon moved to London and took a flat in Savile Row,* gossip was rife about the relationship between her and the Duke. But it was not until 1912 that they would openly become lovers and travel together on holidays. Between these trips, whenever it was Sunny’s turn to have his sons the Duke lived at Blenheim and Gladys lived in her Savile Row flat or at an apartment owned by her mother at 25 Quai Voltaire on Paris’s Left Bank. Because she was always surrounded by friends there, this was a way of life more suited to Gladys, for though she was a snob she mixed well in a wider range of society than did Sunny, and she was invariably drawn to the artists and writers of the belle époque. It was noticeable that whenever he was with Gladys the Duke was happy and outgoing, and that when they were apart he was morose, often sliding into one of his habitual depressions. He yearned for the unattainable goal of marriage to Gladys. However, he was able to make legal arrangements to ensure that she would be cared for financially in the event that he died suddenly or accidentally.
Edward VII died in May 1910. Jennie, who had first met him as a young man in Cowes in 1873,* was very upset, and she knew it would change her life for ever. She wrote to the widowed Queen that the late King had shown her and her family the greatest kindness for thirty-five years and she had a host of pleasant memories to look back on. She said that he had not only been a great King but a lovable man.26 Her own marriage struggled on: she was often in misery over George’s extramarital flirtations, if not affairs. She constantly forgave him and welcomed him back, but after her play Borrowed Plumes closed and he departed with the great actress in full view of everyone, Jennie realised there was nothing left in the marriage for either of them. The beautiful Mrs Patrick Campbell was older than George, but only by twelve years to Jennie’s twenty, and she was a widow, her late husband having died gallantly in battle during the South African War.
In August 1910 Jennie drafted a dispirited letter to George’s mother Patsy Cornwallis-West in which she crossed out some telling phrases, such as ‘There is much I could say but will refrain’. Patsy was already aware that she and George (Patsy’s only son) had been experiencing difficulties because of his relationship with Mrs Patrick Campbell, Jennie wrote, and now she was prepared to let him have his freedom, to remarry if he wished and thought it would make him happy. She believed she had done her best in their marriage and failed. George blamed Jennie’s extravagance for their financial difficulties, but she rejected this, saying that if their accounts were to be examined she would almost certainly be proved the less extravagant, although she admitted she had faults – her shortcomings were ‘many’ she wrote. Yet she swore she had always been totally faithful and loyal to George and she loved him more than anyone else on earth.27 George handled the crisis by taking a long trip to Mexico. When in April 1911 he wrote asking if he could return to her, Winston – totally happy in his own marriage, so perhaps biased – advised her to welcome him if he returned of his own free will. George returned to the marital home – although, Winston reported to Clementine, ‘He did not like my letter.’ Clementine was unsure of the wisdom of advising George’s return, saying that unless he behaved himself and made Jennie happy there wasn’t much point in a reconciliation. Secure in Winston’s affections, Clementine had begun to appreciate Jennie for her own sake, seeing beyond the lifestyle of her mother-in-law that had at first been so distasteful to her.
Winston survived both of the general elections of 1910, but with diminished majorities. His tenure at the office of Home Secretary was, on the one hand, enjoyable; he had much to occupy his mind and his abilities in what he believed were the best interests of his country. On the other hand, he was responsible for deciding the fate of condemned murderers. This caused him great anguish, in case any decision made by him should take the life of someone later found to be innocent. Much later in life he would confide to his daughter Diana, when she was suffering from depression, that he too suffered from what he famously termed ‘the black dog’, and that his first experience of it was while he was at the Home Office. None of his many letters of the time reflect this; rather, he appears from the surviving paperwork to have been just as confident and fulfilled as before. But in a letter to Clementine in July 1911 he mentions his ‘black dog’, telling her that Ivor Guest’s wife Alice has just been successfully treated for depression by a German doctor: ‘I think this man might be useful to me – if my black dog returns. He seems quite away from me now – It is such a relief. All the colours come back into the picture. Brightest of all your dear face – my Darling.’28
Winston met crises such as the South Wales miners’ strike and the Sidney Street siege* head on, with aplomb and energy, despite a good deal of open criticism in the press. He was used to criticism, and could take it now that he had Clementine as his cushion against the world. He also had a small circle of trusted friends. The Tory politician, eminent lawyer and wit F.E. Smith was probably at that time closer even than Sunny, Ivor or Freddie Guest, for they shared many characteristics and political beliefs despite being in opposing parties. It would probably be fair to say that each sharpened his wits on the other. Together the two men founded a political dining club known as ‘the Other Club’* – to dissociate it from ‘the Club’, the ancient and venerable dining society founded in 1764 by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr Johnson, but whose members had blackballed both Smith’s and Winston’s applications to join. Winston belonged to the Other Club until his death, and its high-spirited, intelligent conviviality was always a joy to him.
In the summer of 1911, coronation year, Clementine gave birth to another child. There was only one name for this much longed-for son: Randolph (although his parents usually referred to him as ‘the Chumbolly’, a word Winston had picked up in India which means ‘a chubby happy child’). The new King’s eldest son was invested as Prince of Wales, and Winston attended the ceremony in his official capacity to read out the patent. ‘He is a vy nice boy,’ he told Clementine of the future Edward VIII, ‘quite simple, & terribly kept in order.’29
Winston was one of only a handful of men, including Lloyd George and F.E. Smith, in that hot and happy summer of celebration who ga
ve much thought to the possibility of an imminent European war. He had been alerted when he was with the German Army on manoeuvres two years earlier, and had wondered why such might could be needed by a friendly nation. Now a frisson of suspicion resurfaced when the Kaiser sent a warship into the French-controlled Moroccan Atlantic port of Agadir in a show of force. Winston was both excited and disturbed by the affair. He fired off a flurry of warning letters, as well as writing a government paper on the subject: ‘If Germany makes war on France…we should join France.’ He was not in favour of carte blanche support of the French, but if Morocco was to be carved up between Germany and France he wanted Britain to have some say in the matter. As a Cabinet Minister he was involved in all the discussions although it was outside his remit as Home Secretary.
For years Winston had been advocating economies for the Royal Navy, but this had been based on the fact that Germany was largely seen as a friendly nation. Now the dangers in being outgunned by an unfriendly Germany were only too apparent. ‘Are you sure,’ he wrote to Asquith on 13 September 1911, ‘that the ships we have at Cromarty are strong enough to defeat the whole German High Sea fleet? If not they shd be reinforced without delay. Are 2 divisions of the Home Fleet enough? This appears to be a vital matter.’30 The incident at Agadir was serious enough to prompt Lloyd George to suggest it might be a pity if war did not now occur, and he told the shocked King as much when he visited him at Balmoral. Winston kept similar opinions to himself – after all, there were many family connections with Germany’s royal house. But the paper he wrote on how and where a European war against Germany might be fought was so prescient that when it was recirculated three years later, in September 1914, Balfour wrote to Eddie Marsh that it was ‘a triumph of prophecy’.31 From the summer of 1911 on, Winston never lost sight of a possible war, and he gave considerable thought to such a likelihood.
The Moroccan incident passed over with nothing more than some ruffled diplomatic feathers, and soon afterwards Winston landed the post he had long coveted when Prime Minister Asquith appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty. He had a happy marriage, two healthy children, his beautiful Clementine and his new post: Winston’s star was riding high. And not the least of his acquisitions was the yacht Enchantress, attached to the post. It was smaller than the royal yacht Victoria and Albert but built on the same lines, and Winston took full advantage of this privilege. During the next three years he spent a total of eleven months aboard the Enchantress. Much of the time he was visiting dockyards, naval sites and ships. But when the yacht was not required on Admiralty business the First Lord was allowed to entertain private guests at his own expense, so his family and friends such as the Asquiths and Lloyd George were invited to sail on her, and he made several long cruises in the Mediterranean and around Britain. But mainly Winston used the yacht as it was intended, as an essential means of permitting the First Lord of the Admiralty to be on intimate terms with the ships of the British Navy.
Another privilege that went with the post of Admiral of the Fleet was the right to live in Admiralty House, and Winston longed to live in a spacious house again. But for Clementine the proposition was more a worry than a treat. She was the one responsible for managing their domestic finances, and Winston always lived by his famous maxim, ‘I am easily satisfied by the very best.’ She knew they could not afford to live at Admiralty House, and for some time she was able to oppose Winston’s wish to move there. Eventually he won the day, but with a compromise insisted upon by Clementine: the fourth floor would remain sealed off for the sake of economy. That meant they could run the house with only nine servants instead of twelve. And they must pull in their horns in other ways, too. Furnishings were supposed to be chosen from a Civil Service catalogue, which Clementine looked at and described as ‘grim…I really think they ought to have a woman at the head of the office of Works – someone like your Mama’. (Her opinion of Jennie’s interior design abilities seems to have undergone a U-turn.) Winston, aboard the Enchantress while the removal was happening, wrote: ‘It will be nice coming back to the Admiralty…I am sure you will take to it when you get there. I am afraid it all means vy hard work for you – Poor lamb. But remember I am going to turn over my new leaf! That I promise – the only mystery is “What is written on the other side?” – It may be only “ditto, ditto”!’32
Winston was fascinated by new technology, and there was little from submarines to torpedoes and new forms of heavy artillery that did not come under his close scrutiny, so it was hardly surprising that the new science of flight excited his interest. Aviation was less than a decade old,* and aircraft in 1912–13 were still flimsy and highly unstable. Three years earlier Louis Blériot had made the first successful crossing of a body of water by flying across the English Channel, although aeroplanes were still renowned more for their crashes than their successes. But Winston recognised the military advantages of aerial reconnaissance and even of arming aircraft with guns. He began establishing an ‘Air Department of the Admiralty’, which initially met considerable opposition from the Treasury. But Winston insisted on it, pointing out that they could not afford to fall behind other countries in developing this potential new weapon. Out of this came the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), formed ‘for the aerial protection of our naval harbours, oil tanks and vulnerable points’, he wrote, ‘and also for a general strengthening of our exiguous and inadequate aviation’.33 Under his leadership in 1913 the first torpedo was dropped from a British plane, night flying was practised for the first time, and HMS Hermes was converted to carry floatplanes, which could take off and land on water.
With characteristic enthusiasm he arranged to take flying lessons, telling his first instructor, ‘We are in the Stephenson age of flying. Now our machines are frail. One day they will be robust, and of value to our country.’34 When Winston gave his attention to something, it was with his complete commitment. On days set aside for flying instruction he would make as many as ten flights. It was normal then for a learner-flyer to go solo within twenty hours of instruction, and Winston was a good pilot, always fascinated by the few available instruments. But his instructors (he had several) were afraid to let him go solo in case he killed himself (they were concerned, not least, for their own careers).35 When he had done thirty-five hours he began clamouring to be allowed to fly solo. But many deaths occurred in those early days of flying, and his family were horrified; Sunny Marlborough wrote, ‘I do not suppose that I shall get the chance of writing you many more letters if you continue your journeys in the Air. Really I consider you owe it to your wife, family and friends to desist from a practice or pastime – whichever you call it – which is fraught with so much danger to life. It is really wrong of you.’36
These fears were compounded when his latest instructor, the highly qualified Captain Lushington, side-slipped while making an approach into Eastchurch airfield in Kent and could not recover in time. The aircraft crashed and Lushington was killed. Soon afterwards, in May 1914, Winston was among those waiting at Portsmouth to receive the flying ace Gustav Hamel, who was flying from Paris at Churchill’s invitation to give an air display to Royal Flying Corps pilots. Hamel never arrived, and no trace of him was ever found. Fatal aviation crashes were sensational news, and special editions of the newspapers were rushed out to record his disappearance while flying the Channel. Almost immediately Winston flew to a Yeomanry camp about eleven miles away. ‘We got a great reception,’ he wrote that evening to Clementine from Enchantress, berthed at Portsmouth, ‘the men all running out in a mob, as if they had never seen an aeroplane before.’
F.E. Smith wrote to him: ‘Dear Winston, Why do you do such a foolish thing as fly repeatedly? Surely it is unfair to your family, your career & your friends. Yours ever, F.E.’37 But in the end it was Clementine’s distress that persuaded him to give up flying. She was pregnant again, after a miscarriage the previous year had left her ill and low for some months. Her frequent requests that he stop flying had little effect until, finally, she descr
ibed to him in a letter a terrible nightmare she had had, which brought Winston up short because he had not until then realised the extent of her concern:
My darling one
I will not fly any more until at any rate you have recovered from your kitten: by then or perhaps later the risks may have been greatly reduced. This is a wrench, because I was on the verge of taking my pilot’s certificate. It only needed a couple of calm mornings; I am confident of my ability to achieve it vy respectably. I shd greatly have liked to reach this point wh wd have made a suitable moment for breaking off. But I must admit that the numerous fatalities of this year wd justify you in complaining if I continued to share the risks – as I am proud to do – of these good fellows. So I give it up decidedly for many months & perhaps forever. This is a gift – so stupidly am I made – which costs me more than anything wh cd be bought with money. So I am vy glad to lay it at your feet, because I know it will rejoice & relieve your heart. Anyhow I can feel I know a good deal about this fascinating new art…I have been up nearly 140 times, with many pilots, & all kinds of machines, so I know the difficulties, the dangers & the joys of the air – well enough to appreciate them…This poor Lieutenant whose loss has disturbed your anxieties again, took me up only last week in this vy machine! You will give me some kisses and forgive me for past distresses – I am sure. Though I had no need & perhaps no right to do it – it was an important part of my life during the last 7 months, & I am sure my nerve, my spirits & my virtue were all improved by it. But at your expense my poor pussy cat! I am so sorry.38
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