It is grotesque. You cannot get through. When you do you cannot hear. There is always a dog fight going on, on the wires. They have stuck in the main to the same little field instruments that an army on the move uses, instead of making a perfect system wh cd so easily be done. And how vitally important it might be in a battle! If we had been content at the Admiralty to paddle along at that feeble pace, we shd never have mastered the German submarines. Then of course there ought to be 10 times (at least) as many light railways on the front. This war is one of mechanics & brains & mere sacrifice of brave and devoted infantry is no substitute, & never will be. By God I wd make them skip if I had the power – even for a month.30
While Winston was in France and Belgium* he wrote several notes to his small son, and he and Clementine wrote to each other continually. He kept her up to date with his life as a fighting officer, and she informed him of family matters and the affairs of friends. Meanwhile, at his request she attended lunches and dinners with his old political contacts to keep doors open. ‘Don’t let them…think I have resigned the game,’ he instructed.
Property sales in London were sluggish, so as an economy Jennie planned to let her house in Brook Street and to join Goonie and Clementine at Cromwell Road, an arrangement that suited all three women. ‘Your mother is being very generous and contributing £40 a month to the upkeep of this establishment until she comes to live with us,’ Clementine wrote. Jennie was also funding some of Johnny’s school fees, as Goonie could not manage them all. At one point Jennie had an inflamed toe amputated and was in great pain. While she was recuperating her house was burgled and she lost most of the pretty and valuable items she had collected over the years, among them gifts from Lord Randolph, the Prince of Wales and other friends and lovers. They were never recovered. ‘It is cruel,’ Clementine wrote, but Jennie put a brave face on it, saying it relieved her of a lot of worry. During her convalescence she knitted a scarf for Hugh Warrender, a young admirer who had once hoped to marry her and was now in the trenches. The scarf was so huge that he was able to use it as a blanket. But this was a mere kindness by Jennie, for though she was fond of Warrender there was a new man on the horizon. As usual, he was much younger than her.
Nellie Hozier became engaged at the end of 1915 to Bertram Romilly. He had formerly been a lieutenant in the Scots Guards attached to the Egyptian Camel Corps, and they met when he was invalided home with a serious head injury. His long-term prognosis was poor, and he would never be entirely free from headaches and other pain. So, far from this being a joyous occasion Clementine, always very protective of Nellie, was anxious because she believed her sister was marrying Bertram out of pity. The two women discussed it heatedly, Clementine advising a postponement of the wedding, which upset Nellie. ‘She has hardened into a mule-like obstinacy & says with a drawn wretched face that she loves him, is divinely happy & [she] will marry him on the 4th [of December],’ Clementine wrote to Winston. ‘She…says that if I say one word against her marriage…she will leave the house & never come near me when she is married. Goonie thinks the marriage should not take place but we can do no more.’31 The newly-weds rented a small cottage near Taplow from the Astors for a peppercorn sum, and went to live there after honeymooning in the New Forest. Clementine saw them six weeks later in London and reported: ‘They look very happy and cannot be parted for one moment.’ By April 1916 Nellie was pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, and as the couple had just rented a little house near Eccleston Square, Clementine could keep an eye on her.
For a break from the boredom of living on almost nothing, Goonie went to Dublin to enjoy a few weeks of ‘royal splendour’ with Ivor and Alice Guest, where he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Clementine was left in charge and it was helpful for her to have Jennie on hand, for although there was a nanny and a nursery maid at Cromwell Road Clementine was kept busy running errands for Winston; and she had become involved in ‘war work’, managing canteens for munitions factory workers.
When Winston returned to England in the summer of 1916 he took his seat on the Opposition back benches, where he joined an angry and articulate group pressing for a more efficient management of the war. He could speak from a position of strength, having suffered at the sharp end from the delays and poor leadership. Bad news rattled in daily, from Jutland or the Somme, each battle theatre bringing lengthy lists of fatalities and wounded. But Winston’s main aim was still to clear his name over Gallipoli so that he could take office again. He could not persuade Asquith to publish the official papers on the matter, but under pressure the Prime Minister agreed to appoint a commission to investigate the Dardanelles action. With this Winston had to be content for a while. Throughout the next six months he attended hearings, where he was called upon to justify and explain his every action, but eventually an interim report was published in March 1917, which (without ever revealing the complete story – it was still considered too sensitive for the public domain) cleared Winston’s reputation by concluding that he had not acted alone in taking the decision that had led to the disaster. Winston was reasonably content with the outcome, feeling that he had been publicly absolved and could therefore honourably take up his career in politics again. But this technical ruling was little consolation to the parents and wives of men who had died in an unwinnable action, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. The odium remained.*
In December 1916 Lloyd George finally wrested control of the government from Asquith, which gave Winston hope that he would be offered a Cabinet post as soon as the true facts about Gallipoli were made public. With this slight hint of cheer in the air, Winston, Clementine and the children, Goonie and her children, Jennie and the F.E. Smiths were all bidden by Sunny to Blenheim for Christmas. It was a warm interlude set against the bleakness of the current news – a reminder of what it was like not to be at war and of what the country was fighting for.
16
1917–21
The Armistice and After
With the Dardanelles report partially restoring Churchill’s reputation and after a twenty-month interim, Lloyd George felt able to offer him the post of Minister of Munitions, despite the inevitable criticism this decision would provoke. The appointment necessitated another by-election at Winston’s Dundee constituency, and when ministerial work detained him in London Clementine took to the platforms in his place and campaigned for him. During the decade she had lived with Winston, the shy Clementine had become a woman who could address a crowd and even beard a Prime Minister at No. 10. The election was held on 29 July 1917 and was a resounding victory, giving Churchill a majority of 5226. In order to make visits to the Front he took to flying again, but only as a passenger and only in order to carry out his duties. He tackled the new position with characteristic verve: ‘I found a staff of 12,000 officials organised in…fifty principal departments each claiming direct access to the Chief, and requiring a swift flow of decisions upon most intricate and interrelated problems,’ he wrote. ‘I set to work at once to divide and distribute this dangerous concentration of power.’1
Winston and Clementine had returned to Eccleston Square at the end of 1916 and would live there until the lease ended two years later. Meanwhile they had leased another country house, a small farm called Lullenden near East Grinstead. Winston, who worried about the Zeppelin raids on London, was happier when Clementine moved ‘the kittens’ out of the city.
The year 1917 was arguably the worst of the war for most people. The country had now been fighting without any good news for three years, and there was still no end in sight. The casualty lists seemed endless, and there was probably no family in the country who was not affected in some way. On 10 December Winston delivered a defiant speech at Bedford, exhorting his audience to be steadfast in the fight and not to be misled by pacifist suggestions of ‘treating with the enemy’.
Britain’s main food imports came from America and Canada, but in 1917 the Germans introduced all-out submarine warfare aimed at merchant ships. The resulting losse
s had a major impact on supplies, especially on bread, and at one point the country had only six weeks’ supplies of wheat. Food prices rose dramatically, and coal had to be rationed. This basic fuel for heating and cooking was in short supply because of lack of labour and the requirements of factories involved in munitions. Initially, a voluntary code of food rationing was introduced. People were encouraged to limit their intake, and the royal family led the way. However, this did not work because munitions factory workers especially, who needed large amounts of energy foods, were not getting enough to eat, while anyone with money could buy as much food as they wanted on the black market. In early 1918 a formal system of rationing was brought in. And in an attempt to increase home food production the Women’s Land Army was formed to take the place of farm workers who had gone to the trenches. Recruits were instructed: ‘Remember you are doing a man’s work and so you are dressed rather like a man. But remember that because you wear a smock and trousers you should take care to behave like an English girl who expects chivalry and respect from everyone she meets.’
Strategic offensives in the later phases of the war such as Passchendaele placed even greater strain and responsibility on Winston’s department. He pushed the development of the tank with more than a professional interest. He visited aeroplane and munitions factories, and resumed his visits to France in order to see for himself the needs of the Army there. Invariably he flew, and he had a number of narrow escapes when his various aircraft developed engine troubles over the Channel. He regarded these incidents as adventures, and was exhilarated rather than intimidated by them. For him, they were infinitely preferable to an office desk. In March 1918 on a visit to the Front he met the commanders Foch, Haig and Pétain as well as Georges Clemenceau,* and he was also able to visit Jack who was at Staff HQ near Ypres. He was still warning that ‘a most formidable struggle’ lay ahead of them. He wrote grimly to Clementine: ‘Nearly 800,000 of our British men have shed their blood or lost their lives here during 31/2 years of unceasing conflict! Many of our friends & my contemporaries all perished here.’ And he noted on the way back from a tour of the trenches: ‘We passed the lunatic asylum blown to pieces by the sane folk outside!’2
That spring Jennie’s friend Montague Porch came home on leave from Nigeria where he worked for the Foreign Service as an Intelligence officer. During a previous leave he had proposed to Jennie. She did not take him seriously, probably because of the age difference: three years younger than Winston, even younger than George Cornwallis-West. Furthermore, Winston was in the trenches at the time and she was distracted by worry about him, but she had agreed to correspond regularly with Porch, and had done so ever since.
By 1918 Jennie was tired by her war work and the unremitting grimness. She was a keen fund-raiser for the American Women’s War Relief Fund, and honorary head matron of a hospital for officers in London and of a convalescent home in Paignton, Devon.† She sometimes toured barracks and hospitals entertaining the men with her piano-playing, and helped Clementine and Goonie when called upon to entertain the children. Former patients recalled that she was quite unlike the other Lady Bountiful types who called on them, and that her visits were a real boost to injured and sick men. Often she would say winningly, ‘And when you get better you must vote for my son Winston’, leaving them in no doubt that they would recover.3 Many evenings she dined alone, not bothering to dress for dinner any more, and sometimes she would phone Leonie’s youngest son Seymour to come and play the piano with her, for company. There were occasions when he found her in tears, so despondent was she. So when Porch came to London on leave it seemed a good idea to invite him to go with her to Castle Leslie, at Glaslough in County Monaghan, Leonie’s home in Ireland, away from the resumed bombing raids on London and away from the war, where they could eat a meal of pre-war standard without feeling guilty.
Porch was a handsome young man, and fun to be with. When he proposed again Jennie accepted, on two conditions: that she would not be required to go and live in Africa, nor change her name from Lady Randolph Churchill. Neither of these provisions bothered Porch, and Jennie wrote to Winston and Jack to tell them her news. Porch also wrote to his prospective stepsons. He was forty-one and had never been married. He wrote of his total happiness at winning Jennie, but he was careful also to put their minds at rest about her financial situation. ‘Your mother’s financial affairs are understood. I love your mother, I can make her happy. Her difficulties & obligations from henceforth will be shared by me – so willingly.’4 The thought of their mother’s extravagances being taken over must have been one of the more attractive aspects of this surprising development. Winston is said to have commented: ‘I hope this doesn’t become a vogue; I am feeling rather old.’ He was going to France that week anyway, and when he met up with Jack, as he did on such visits, they discussed the matter. There was little they could do about it, and it was left to Jack, who had never heard of Porch or met him, to write kindly to Jennie of his surprise at the news, which he had received by a letter recently forwarded to him. He joked that every time he went off to war she got married, but he knew how lonely she had been since her divorce from George Cornwallis-West, and he realised that with both Winston and himself married with young families, it was inevitable that she would be alone a lot of the time. If Porch made her happy, then he was sure that he and Porch would soon be firm friends and it was a great consolation to him to know that she would no longer be on her own.5
No researcher of Jennie’s life can fail to be impressed at her ability to attract younger and younger men, even though she was no longer a slim young woman. Her body may have thickened with middle age and her jaw line was no longer fine, yet she could still command a room, and – clearly – she had retained her sexual magnetism. With Porch’s return and his open admiration she had bloomed like a bud in sunshine. The marriage was held quietly at Kensington register office on 1 June 1918.
Porch’s mother was as opposed to her son’s marriage as the Cornwallis-West family had been at Jennie’s marriage to George. Once again none of the groom’s family were present, but Winston, his first cousin Jack Leslie, his Aunt Clara, Clementine and Goonie all witnessed the entry in the register. Even Lady Sarah Wilson, mistress of the withering remark, was there. Montague Porch and his bride then spent a week in London before travelling to Castle Leslie for their honeymoon. The marriage was much talked about in London drawing rooms – the ‘May and November’ factor attracted inevitable arch comments. And the joke went around that Jennie had been seen in the park, peering into prams – when asked what she was doing she replied that she was looking for her next husband. Jennie’s reaction was merely a shrug; she was a trend-setter, not a follower of fashion. ‘I have a past and he has a future,’ she responded lightly, ‘so we should be all right.’ Early in the war, when all the young males among her servants went off to fight, she had the butler’s and footmen’s uniforms remodelled for young women, and thereafter had managed her house with a wholly female staff. Though Society breathed in deeply at first, it was soon regarded as a patriotic gesture rather than a bohemian one. Her third marriage was happy, although Sunny Marlborough reported to Gladys that it was said in town of Jennie that she looked ‘exhausted’ after three days with her new husband. Theresa Londonderry had apparently met the newly-weds at the opera and asked Porch openly why they had bothered to get married. ‘How furious these old cats must be,’ Sunny wrote, ‘to find that the eldest of their gang can get hold of a ring.’6 Shane Leslie later reported that Jennie had confided to a member of the family that Porch was the best lover she had ever known. ‘But,’ he added, somewhat ungallantly, ‘she must have been grateful for any mercies at 63.’7
There is no question but that the relationship had rejuvenated Jennie; she was as scintillating and charming as she had been before the war. Her friends noted that she looked years younger – and, as always, she had celebrated by buying a new wardrobe. His leave up, Porch had to return to Nigeria for the duration of the war, but Je
nnie had someone in her life again and that was enough to make her happy. She still had her war work, and before he left England Porch sold some land in Glastonbury and gave her the money to buy a house in Berkeley Square as a renovation and investment project. She would hardly have been human not to have felt a touch of schadenfreude when she heard that the marriage of George Cornwallis-West and Mrs Pat was in trouble and they were to part.*
While Winston was engaged in one of his regular ministerial trips to France in August 1918, Clementine, who was expecting their fourth child that November, did the rounds of friends with large country houses. ‘Paying visits in War time in August,’ she wrote to Winston, ‘must be like what visits were like in Miss Austen’s time. No bustle, no motors, very few fellow guests, walks in the shrubbery, village tittle-tattle.’ From a gabled Tudor manor house, Mells Place, near Frome in Somerset,† she wrote: ‘This is a delicious place to rest and dream & I feel my new little baby likes it – Full of comfort, beautiful things, sweet smelling flowers, peaches ripening on old walls, gentle flittings & hummings & pretty grandchildren. But under all this the sadness & melancholy of it all – Both the sons dead, one lying in the little Churchyard next to the house, carried away at sixteen by Scarlet Fever, and the other sleeping in France…as does the Husband of the best loved daughter of the House, Katherine Asquith.’8
Winston was out in France again in September. He scented victory by now and in contrast to the chilly suspicion of the previous year he was thrilled to be greeted with jubilation and friendliness by officers and soldiers at the Front. On his return journey, in the Ritz in Paris on the tenth anniversary of his marriage to Clementine, he ran into Muriel Wilson. His old girlfriend was there to meet her husband who was on leave, and though Winston considered that the husband looked a ‘very average specimen’ he concluded that Muriel seemed happy with him.
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