*At Osborne House, overlooking East Cowes, Queen Victoria retired into semi-seclusion after her husband’s death. Today it is open to the public.
*The couple had met briefly in London on 15 September as the Jerome women passed through the city en route to Paris.
*Ivor Guest, husband of Lady Cornelia, signed the marriage certificate as witness.
*In a letter to Mrs Jerome about a ball she attended in May 1874, Jennie stated that her sister-in-law Frances was dressed in a monstrous fashion. Frances was ugly enough anyway, Jennie confided, but she had chosen at this event to dress in a bright green dress with pink accessories, lots of gold jewellery and a black veil. In another letter she reported that she had caught the Duchess looking at her ‘jealously’, evidently disapproving because Jennie had been laughing too much.
*Hurlingham was then, and remained until the Second World War, the polo headquarters of the British Empire.
†The name ‘Row’ derives from the old Carolean name, ‘The King’s Road’; and the French translation ‘Route du Roi’ is believed to have become ‘Rotten Row’ when pronounced locally.
*Daughter of the 6th Duke of Marlborough by his second wife. She married the 3rd Marquess Camden by whom she had four children, and was widowed in 1872.
*The then nineteen-year-old Princess of Wales had had a similar experience in 1864. She had insisted on being taken by horse-drawn sledge to watch her husband play ice hockey. During the game her pains began and she was rushed to nearby Frogmore, where she gave premature birth to her first child, Albert (later Duke of Clarence). There was nothing to hand in which to dress the baby but some cotton wool.
*Elizabeth Ann Everest (1833–95) was born in Chatham, Kent, and her first job as a nanny had been with the Revd Thomas Phillips of Carlisle. When her first charges outgrew the nursery, she was employed by Jennie. She had been so much loved in the Phillips household that she had a standing invitation to visit whenever she wished and she sometimes spent her holidays with them.
*Frances, the third daughter of the 7th Duke, married in 1873 the politician Edward Marjoribanks (1849–1909), eldest son of the 1st Baron Tweedmouth. He succeeded to the title in 1894. He was Liberal MP for Berwickshire from 1880 until 1894 and held the offices of Chief Whip, Lord Privy Seal, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, First Lord of the Admiralty and Lord President of the Council.
*Marlborough House was purchased by the Crown in 1817, soon after the death of the 4th Duke of Marlborough. It was from there, in 1936, when it was the home of the widowed Queen Mary, that King Edward VIII announced his intention to abdicate in order to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson.
†In that rarefied stratum marriages were often arranged for dynastic or financial reasons rather than love. It was a sine qua non that a woman should be a virgin on her marriage, but once she had provided an heir, she might discreetly look for emotional gratification elsewhere. Divorce, obtainable only by husbands at that point, was unthinkable for many reasons. Until the Married Woman’s Property Act of 1882 a wife owned nothing – everything belonged to her husband from the date of the marriage. A wife in a divorce case was extremely unlikely to be given custody, or even access, to her children. And social ostracism was absolute for both parties, innocent and guilty. As a result divorce was rare, and was still only in double figures annually in the entire kingdom.
*England was linked to India by electric cable in 1864.
*The contents have never been revealed, but there is enough correspondence in the public domain between the Queen and her advisers to indicate that they would have been damaging to the Prince.
*Randolph complied, with gritted teeth, signing a letter worded by his father and the Lord Chancellor. But he added a postscript of his own, and the Prince did not feel it was a genuine apology.
*When she lay dying, the Duchess sent for the 9th Duke and gave him the Queen’s letter of commendation to remind him that although she was now ‘a useless old woman’ there was a time when she was ‘of some importance and did good in my day’.
*It is true, as several of Jennie’s biographers have noted, that as an adult Jack bore no facial similarity to his brother Winston. However, he did resemble Lord Randolph (which Winston never did), and Jack’s son John looked far more like Winston than did Winston’s own son.
*In 1946 Winston told the Prince of the Belgians: ‘I have a brother who is five years younger than me and whom I dearly love and have always cherished.’
*He suffered from extreme anxiety, shaking, sweating and nausea before any exam, lest he should not do well and disappoint his father.
†Winston nurtured dreams of revenge against his torturer for many years. As a robust young military cadet at Sandhurst, he felt he was at last fit enough to face Sneyd-Kynnersley in order to exact physical retribution. He rode to the hated school and with mixed feelings received the news that Sneyd-Kynnersley was dead and the school was now in new hands.
*Winston had been at Harrow for eighteen months before his father visited him at school, and there were two further visits before he left there for Sandhurst at the age of eighteen.
*A collection of 730 engraved gemstones and cameos that were miniature works of art, rather than individual jewels as the name suggests. Some were of great antiquity, amassed by the 4th Duke. The most famous cameo (the 7th Duke’s favourite) was The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, which was reproduced by Josiah Wedgwood for his Wedgwood cameo ware.
*Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet (1843–1911), was a reforming Liberal politician who supported causes such as women’s suffrage, workers’ unions, the improvement of working conditions, the reduction of hours in factories and shops and education for all children.
*Randolph and his friend Tom Trafford each kept a mistress in a shared flat in Paris, to save costs.
*In July 1885 the House of Lords ruled that the 7th Earl of Aylesford was not the father of Guy Bertrand, and that the child had no right to the title.
*In a recent book, the present Duke’s daughter stated that Guy was last sighted by a member of the family just after the Second World War. Nothing was heard of him subsequently.
† When he died, Blandford (by then the 8th Duke of Marlborough) left the then huge sum of £20,000 to Lady Colin Campbell as evidence of his ‘friendship and esteem’.
*Which enabled a widower to marry the sister of his late wife. Such an incongruously named bill was snapped up and used by writers and novelists for years; it was passed a few years later.
*It was purchased by the National Gallery in 1885 for £17,500.
*The public gallows were located beside what is now 49 Connaught Square. The first recorded execution took place in 1196 and the last in November 1783 when the highwayman John Austin was hanged.
*He had suffered from chest infections and asthmatic attacks since the age of five.
†In fact, Winston was always notoriously poor at French.
*Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, had assumed the leadership of the Conservative Party after Disraeli’s retirement.
*A minority government can only work with the cooperation of another party or parties, possibly in the form of a coalition.
*Georgina, Lady Curzon, nicknamed by Randolph ‘the stud groom’ because she spent so much time in the stableyard.
*1840–1922, diplomat, writer, traveller and poet. Blunt’s gossipy diaries (some still unpublished) offer a fascinating insight into the upper classes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
†It should be remembered that women did not have the vote at this time.
*Gladys, Countess de Grey, was often called the most beautiful woman of her generation. Oscar Wilde dedicated his play A Woman of No Importance to her.
*William Henry Smith, grandson of the founder of the W.H. Smith newsvending shops. He was a leading politician and served as a minister in several Tory governments.
*Historic stately home built by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, in 1611. In 1558 while she was living in the
old palace at Hatfield, Elizabeth I learned of her accession to the throne.
† The Carlton Club was founded in London in 1832 by leading Conservatives as a venue where party policy and events could be coordinated. The premises in Pall Mall were destroyed in the Second World War and the clubhouse, still the heart of the Conservative Party, is now in St James’s Street. For men like Randolph it was a second home.
*Chiefly recalled now for the Vanity Fair cartoons of him by ‘Spy’ and ‘Ape’.
*He went first to Constantine in Algeria, but it snowed there so he moved to Biskra, a small city in the north-east of the country at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert, renowned for winter warmth and hot sulphur springs.
*No date of birth is given for Lilian in the peerage guides but she declared her age as thirty-six in the 1891 UK census returns. She gave birth to a son in 1897, in her third marriage, so this could be correct.
*In those early days of steam-powered ships, owners were reluctant to commit entirely to steam because of frequent engine trouble. The Aurania completed the voyage between Liverpool and New York under sail on a number of occasions.
*The sixth and youngest sister, Lady Sarah, was still unmarried at this point but would marry Lt-Col. Gordon Chesney Wilson in November 1891.
*There has been some doubt about Everest’s age, but in the 1891 census she gave her age as fifty-nine.
*For Lord Randolph’s condition and other theories as to his death, see Appendix 2.
†Locomotor ataxia or Tabes dorsalis one of the common symptoms of syphilis, is a disorder of the spinal cord which causes dysfunction of the nerve pathways and a characteristic shuffling gait.
*In 1895 Duchess Lily married (her third marriage) Lord William Beresford VC (1847–1900). The marriage was a happy one and in 1897 – to everyone’s great surprise, including Duchess Lily’s – she gave birth to a son.
*Nanny Everest was nicknamed ‘Woomany’ or ‘Woom’ by Winston and Jack.
†The headstone on the grave at the City of London cemetery, Manor Park, reads: ‘Erected in memory of Elizabeth Anne Everest who died 3rd July 1895 aged 62 by Winston Spencer Churchill and Jack Spencer Churchill’.
‡Still in existence and still an exclusive apartment building.
*Lady Angela Selina St Clair-Erskine was probably the inspiration for the character of Lady Mabel Grex in Anthony Trollope’s novel The Duke’s Children.
*In fact, the Vanderbilts had an American pedigree at least as old as the Astors. The first Vanderbilt arrived in the New Netherlands from Utrecht c. 1650.
*Marble House and The Breakers survive in their full glory and are open to the public at Newport, Rhode Island.
* 285 feet long at the waterline, the Alva was the largest private yacht in America. She was launched by Alva’s sister Jenny (who had married the brother of Consuelo Yznaga), and regularly sailed with a crew of over fifty.
*Minnie Stevens married Arthur Henry Paget (later Sir Arthur), grandson of the Marquess of Anglesey, in July 1878. Among the wedding guests were the Prince of Wales, Consuelo Viscountess Mandeville and Lady Randolph Churchill.
*Bred and launched by an American nursery in Washington in 1883, the long-stemmed ‘American Beauty’ was named after the ‘Dollar Princesses’. It became popular both sides of the Atlantic and its high cost, at $2 per stem, was part of its appeal.
* On their marriage, stock in the New York Central Railroad, which was valued in 1895 at $2.5 million (about $7 million today), was settled on the Duke. This gave him a guaranteed income of $100,000 a year for life, even if the marriage subsequently ended in death or divorce. Consuelo was also provided with a lifetime income of her own of $100,000 a year.
*Winthrop Rutherfurd (1862–1944) remained a bachelor until 1902, when he married Alice Morton. Alice died in 1917, leaving Winthrop with six small children. The couple had converted to Catholicism shortly before Alice’s death, and in 1920 Winthrop married fellow Catholic Lucy Mercer, the secretary and later the mistress of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lucy was with the President when he died.
*Idlehour was destroyed by fire in April 1899.
†Delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946.
*From the operetta The Dollar Princess, staged in London in 1909. Among the cast was the then relatively unknown Gladys Cooper.
*The woman recruited, a middle-aged, dour Swiss, worked loyally for Consuelo for twenty years and died in her service.
*Youngest of Lord Randolph’s sisters.
*In old age, Winston would say that what gave him most pride in his life was his ability to have earned his living by his pen.
*At this point there were no fewer than five women entitled to style themselves ‘Duchess of Marlborough’: Berthe, Marchioness of Blandford, former wife of the 8th Duke; Jane, widow of the 6th Duke; Frances (Fanny), widow of the 7th Duke; Lily, second wife and widow of the 8th Duke; and Consuelo, the present Duchess.
*Belonging, respectively, to the Dukes of Devonshire, the Marquesses of Lansdowne, the Dukes of Wellington and the Dukes of Buccleuch).
* Savrola was published in 1899, when he had already published two other books. Had it not been written by Churchill it would undoubtedly have been lost to history among the other romantic novels of the day. Now it stands as a useful insight into the thoughts of the young Churchill. It was his only work of fiction.
*Adultery was a criminal offence in the USA (and still remains so in a few states), carrying terms of imprisonment and fines for those found guilty.
*Angela Forbes née Lady Angela Selina St Clair-Erskine, the girl whom Sunny had been in love with when he married Consuelo, was a noted foxhunter in the shires. When James Forbes proposed to her she answered: ‘Yes! If I can have your chestnut horse.’
*He also tried unsuccessfully to get himself posted to the Sudan and Matabeleland.
*Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate: ‘To every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods…’
†Macaulay’s History of England was a massive endeavour, well researched and colourfully written. It is not sufficiently accurate for the academic, but general readers found a good trade-off in sheer readability, sweep of subject and forceful opinion.
*Clara Jerome, knowing that Jennie was provided for by her marriage settlement, had left the small amount she still owned at the time of her death to Jennie’s two sisters, Leonie and Clarita, both of whom had financial problems.
*In fact, Jack never attended university.
*He wrote on 16 February 1898: ‘I feel vy grateful indeed to you for going to Egypt. It is an action which – should I ever have a biographer – will certainly be admired by them. I hope you will be successful. I feel almost certain you will. Your wit & tact & beauty should overcome all obstacles.’
*Moreton Frewen, the handsome but hapless husband of Jennie’s sister Clara (Clarita). He was known in the family as ‘Mortal Ruin’ for his unsuccessful business schemes.
*Frances ‘Daisy’ Greville, Countess of Warwick (1861–1938), was a mistress of the Prince of Wales and also of his confidant Lord Charles Beresford, who probably fathered her fourth son Maynard, born in 1898. At this point the Prince dropped her and she soon became known as ‘the Babbling Brook’ owing to her husband’s former title (Lord Brook) and her constant indiscreet gossiping about her love affairs. The music-hall song ‘Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer Do’ was written about her. Many years later, in financial distress, she demanded of King George V the massive sum of £100,000 not to sell intimate letters from Edward VII (King George’s father) to an American newspaper. Instead her mountainous debts were settled by Tory MP Arthur du Cros, who subsequently received a barony.
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