Churchill’s work does not dwell on the duke’s chafing existence in the Tower — no family enjoys discoursing on its members’ incarceration in jails, as lively and instructive as those episodes are likely to be. The Life of Marlborough goes on to chronicle the great victories, the tribulations, the final ascension to power of that colorful man. While Churchill stresses the battles, other histories bear down on intrigue. The duke (at that time the earl) was eventually released from the Tower by William of Orange, but he never actually came into his own until Anne, the daughter of the Duchess of York, became Queen Anne, in 1702. With her succession to the throne began the golden period of Marlborough. His excellent wife, Sarah, was privy to the inmost secrets of the Queen, whom she ran pretty much as an American manager runs a prize fighter.
Sarah all but overmatched the Queen in the very first year of her rule, by allowing her, with Holland and Austria, to declare war on France. Suitably enough it was Marlborough who saved the day. The opening trumpet blasts of the coronation had scarcely faded away before he had been named commander-in-chief of the English armies and made a Knight of the Garter to boot. In a superb invasion of France, he won important battles at Venlo, Liége, and Kaiserswerth, and when he came home Queen Anne promoted him to duke and granted him a handsome gratuity of £5000 a year (around $25,000 dollars on the old exchange and worth about $14,000 now). Treatment of this sort would stimulate any man and it stimulated the new duke to get right back to France. In his absence, Louis XIV had conceived the odd notion of trying to capture Vienna. This turned out to be one of the poorest ideas that unfortunate monarch ever had, and he was notable, even among kings, for making mediocre decisions. On August 13, 1704, a prime date in the Churchill family history, Marlborough drew up his forces before the outlying village of Blenheim, a beautiful place on the bank of the Danube, or had been until the several armies arrived and began throwing refuse around. Ordering the charge, Marlborough advanced on Blenheim with a gorgeous panoply of caparisoned horses and brightly uniformed soldiers. He was hurled back unceremoniously, losing about a third of his men. However, in a second try he made a few feints and crashed right through the center of the French line. The enemy, routed everywhere, delivered up 11,000 prisoners. An interesting footnote to Marlborough’s French campaigns has to do with his sister Arabella, who had begun her court career back when he had become a pageboy. That shapely girl (her figure was notorious) had so warmly served James II and his family that she bore him four sons, one of whom later became a Marshal of France. As the Duke of Berwick, he was among the ablest leaders lined up against his Uncle Marlborough on the Continent.
Not long after Blenheim, Louis XIV, a slow man but capable of being convinced, saw that the jig was up; he went on home and tried to forget about Vienna. The great days of French military power were temporarily over. England ruled supreme.
The Battle of Blenheim became a popular British watchword, savored for a while by nearly everybody except a few chronic malcontents, like the poet Southey, who penned some fairly sour verses on the event:
“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
.“Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That ’twas a famous victory.”
No matter how hard generals get out and work to make things look good, somebody always comes along and tries to knock it all down. And besides, poets are by nature hardheaded and overly practical-minded. A grateful nation saw only the glorious, jingoistic aspect of the victory and heaped honors and wealth on the triumphant duke.
Easily outstanding among these expressions of good cheer was Blenheim Palace, which Queen Anne ran up for Marlborough on the crown property of Woodstock, with the heartiest kind of backing from the tireless Sarah. England had a Parliament now, and it voted £240,000, or about $1,200,000, in public money to be used on the buildings alone. There was no trouble in deciding on the name; “Blenheim” epitomized Marlborough’s services to the nation. No pains were spared to outfit a proper dwelling in which to house the duke and wherein the future Winston Churchill could be born. The Queen hired an architect, a strong-headed fellow named Sir John Vanbrugh, and almost immediately the racket began. Sarah wanted the palace one way, and Sir John preferred it another. Her complaint, oddly enough, was that the estate was shaping up as too magnificent. To a certain bridge on the grounds she took exception as being “pompous.” But for once in her life, Sarah had met her match. Sir John continued stolidly at work, drawing things just as pompous as he pleased, and as a clincher he even put his name to the bridge, which bears it to this day. The finished product, tout ensemble, was indeed magnificent, though the residence was a little on the gelid side, as houses go in America.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill’s birth, in 1874, was under auspices about as regal as may be imagined at any time anywhere in the world. It is difficult to convey to citizens of a republic, even a moneyed republic, the incredible splendor of life in the ducal castles of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Blenheim is a gigantic stone pile, not dissimilar in size and shape to Buckingham Palace. It has 320 rooms and is surrounded by rolling lawns, gardens and parks, ponds and streams and forests and grassy hillocks — 2700 acres of them altogether. Here and there amongst the grounds are hunting lodges, picturesque cottages, gatehouses and other outbuildings necessary to maintain an establishment of such grandeur. Turner’s famous painting of Blenheim shows the walls and turrets of the vast and lofty edifice in the far left background, overlooking the tree-ringed lake, handsomely spanned by the pompous Vanbrugh Bridge, and in the foreground a scattering of scarlet-coated gentry gathering with their horses and hounds to make things miserable for the local foxes, who were perhaps the only tenants of Blenheim with anything valid to complain about.
Validly or invalidly, a good many poets seemed to take umbrage at Blenheim, both the house and the battle. Alexander Pope, a man of such critical persuasion that he eventually wrote a snarling poem about criticism itself, was terribly upset by Blenheim Palace:
See, sir, here’s the grand approach;
This way is for his grace’s coach:
There lies the bridge, and here’s the clock;
Observe the lion and the cock,
The spacious court, the colonnade,
And mark how wide the hall is made!
The chimneys are so well designed They never smoke in any wind.
This gallery’s contrived for walking,
The windows to retire and talk in;
The council chamber for debate,
And all the rest are rooms of state.
“Thanks, sir,” cried I, “ ’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep, or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling,
That ’tis a house, but not a dwelling.”
In a later section, he vilified the much-discussed bridge, exactly as Sarah had done, but another poet, forgoing the bridge, laid viciously into Sarah:
Who with herself, or others, from her birth
Finds all her life one warfare upon earth.
Eventually, not only poets yapped at the couple’s heels. Marlborough found his civilian existence frequently more troublesome than the old days in the field. By all accounts, he was an extraordinarily mercenary man, as well as being a military genius. At one point it was contended that he had pilfered $300,000 from army contractors and that he had knocked down, as the saying goes, 2 ½ per cent on the pay of all foreign troops subsidized by England. He was censured by the House of Commons, and the Queen directed the Attorney General to proceed against him. But it all blew over. One is moved to admiration in reading the musty old lists of his “preferments,” or salaries: he had $35,000 as Plenipotentiary, $50,000 as General of the English Forces, $15,000 as Master of Ordnance, $10,000 as Colonel of the Guards, $50,000 from the States-General, $25,000 as Pension, $9125 for Traveling, and $5000 for h
is Table. This adds up to $199,125 annually and is a pretty neat haul, even for a victorious duke. Moreover, he received $45,000 in the percentages mentioned, but he was obliged to spend this on “secret service.” Or so he told the Attorney General.
It was to be expected that Sarah would participate in the general grab. She was in the public bin to the tune of $15,000 as Groom of the Stole and $7500 each as Ranger of Windsor Park, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse. There is no record of her actual cleanup activities in Windsor Park, but it seems likely that she kept a vigilant eye on the Privy Purse.
Down the years, Blenheim and its owners admirably withstood the slings and arrows of the bards, and of the other critics, and the ceremonies in the palace were very grand and stately in the time of Churchill’s childhood. His grandfather, the seventh duke, was a formal man, who clearly enjoyed playing the grand seigneur. Meals were stiff-necked and solemn, and, it is presumed, as vapid and indigestive as English cooking is in the present day. Puddings were then as now among the chief staples of the diet, and their all-around resemblance to wet cement has been remarked by many. Experts have wondered how a perfectly sound pheasant or woodcock can run the gamut of a British kitchen and come to the table tasting like a ski boot boiled in shampoo. It is a curious riddle; nobody seems able to solve it. Astoundingly enough, the English appear immensely well satisfied with their food and can hardly get along on any other. Churchill himself has choked over some of the tenderest viands of the American cuisine, which is matchless (as every American knows). During a tour he made in this country he found the big, meaty Blue Point oysters “quite an undertaking” and regarded Southern fried chicken as “interesting.” For only one dish, Maine lobster, was he able to muster any enthusiasm.
During his boyhood times at Blenheim, the luncheon table was crowded with as many as a dozen entrees, each on a solid silver platter. It was the shortsighted custom of the duke to carve for everybody, an assignment of crippling size, since the family was a large one and there were numerous tutors, governesses and other attendants. Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s American mother, set down her memoirs many years after her accouchement at Blenheim and added richly to the extant lore of the establishment. The duke ran a taut ship, as they say in the Navy. He was disinclined to see anybody loaf. Throughout the day he had set aside various Hours, as being propitious intervals for self-improvement. Perhaps the most uncommon of these was the Newspaper Hour, in which the household were obliged to bone up on things like hangings, market quotations, the two brothers reunited after a separation of 68 years, and the state of the government. In one way or another, everybody was hard at it from dawn to dusk, and if grumbling may be taken as a sign, there were those among them who would just as soon have been connected with an earl, or a baronet, or even a commoner, as long as he could relax. “So assiduously did I practice my piano, read, or paint,” wrote Lady Randolph, “that I began to imagine myself back in the schoolhouse.”
Blenheim had been stocked with treasures, one of the costliest arrays in existence. Some of the world’s familiar masterpieces — paintings and tapestries — adorned its walls, and there were vast collections of gems, Oriental, Sevres and Saxe china, jewel cases, statuary, rare old books and carpets and furniture, and miscellaneous objects of art. Much of this had been presented to Marlborough by the heads and notables of nations grateful for his having fixed up France. It is always pleasant to see a powerful neighbor bite the dust, and France was now in a position of humble exhaustion, her stinger drawn, her best men slain. The King of Prussia, for one, was so buoyed up by this state of affairs that he sent Marlborough a first-class Raphael, and other rulers came through as handsomely. No doubt both Marlborough and the King of Prussia cheerfully understood that, had the Battle of Blenheim gone the other way, the Raphael would have been mailed to France, with exactly the same protestations of felicity. While the treasures were gifts in the main, the first duke had a sharp eye for beauty and he himself made a priceless collection of gems, intaglios, and cameos, easily the finest in England.
It should be recorded that by the time of Winston Churchill the Blenheim treasure was cruelly dissipated. Like ordinary mortals, dukes can get hard up, and between the first duke and the seventh duke, Churchill’s grandfather, there had been some champion spenders. It was not uncommon, after an unsuccessful Goodwood or Ascot, for a member of the family to snatch down a Rubens, clap on his hat, and head for the front gate, perhaps followed by a second cousin whose pockets were bulging with snuffboxes. London’s National Gallery got the King of Prussia’s old gift, the “Ansidei Madonna” by Raphael, for $350,000, as well as a Vandyke portrait of Charles I for $250,000. The Baron Alphonse de Rothschild bought two others for a similar sum. Altogether, 450 pictures had been sold, including Rubens’ entertainingly naked “Lot and His Daughters” and “Progress of Silenus,” which had hung, for some reason inexplicable to Lady Randolph, in the dining room. In fairness to the dukes, it might be remarked that they each spent a fortune looking after the Woodstock villagers, in true feudal fashion. The day’s routine at the palace included trips to the poor and needy by the children, who carried baskets of assorted goodies, covered over with imported linen and damask. As the poor and needy were cared for, they became poorer and needier, and others dropped their jobs and joined in, so that eventually the dukes were supporting almost the entire countryside, which entailed a heavy strain on the budget.
While living or visiting at Blenheim in his childhood, Churchill often helped distribute the immemorial alms. Occasionally he joined the village boys in games at one of the neighborhood playing fields. A villager, now grown very old, remembers that he borrowed pads in which to play cricket and “bowled one for six.” He is also remembered as having been absolutely fearless. When a member of his opposing team once asked who he was, somebody replied, “Oh, his name is Winston Churchill and he’s something to do with the people up at Blenheim Palace.” The remaining snuffboxes at Blenheim must have made a strong impression on Churchill, for he began dipping at a pretty early age and has continued briskly to do so ever since. In the House of Commons, snuff is thoughtfully provided by His Majesty’s Government. The head attendant, who sits in a high basket chair at the entrance to the Chamber, keeps a boxful for any Members who have forgotten their own supply and might demand an emergency snuff at some hot point in the debate. Churchill always holds out his hand for the box as he enters, preferring to cleave to the old adage of “a stitch in time.” During the last war, the attendant’s ritual snuffbox was destroyed, and Churchill replaced it with a beautiful silver one from the Marlborough collection. He still goes back to Blenheim from time to time. People who know him think he is in some way renewed and thrust on by walking among the monuments to the family’s past and present glory — the escutcheons, the grim-faced portraits of the dukes, the giant tapestry of the Battle of Blenheim. Not long ago he returned to make a major speech to crowds gathered on the palace grounds. More than 60,000 turned out for an all-afternoon’s outing. In the party accompanying Churchill was Gerald O’Brien, the Conservative Party’s public relations officer, who strode back into the palace with him when the speech was concluded. The statesman moved through the great halls as majestically as if he had been the first duke himself. O’Brien could not help but wonder if the two leaders of the high and mighty clan were in some subtle communication. It was a thought to make the blood stir. “O’Brien,” said Churchill, swinging around fiercely, “has this old ruin got bathroom facilities for all those people?”
Chapter 3
WHEN Winston Churchill was two years old, the Prime Minister, Disraeli, persuaded the duke to become Viceroy of Ireland, and the family at Blenheim picked up and moved to Dublin. Churchill has always maintained that his first memories are of Ireland, of life in a house called “The Little Lodge,” which lay near to and complemented the Viceregal Lodge, the main residence of the King’s Lieutenant. His father, Lord Randolph, went along in the capacity of unpaid
secretary to the duke. The Lady Randolph, in her sprightly memoirs (for decades out of print), has described the family’s entrance into town, in itself a memorable event:
“The Duke in uniform rode with a glittering Staff around him. The rest of the family, in carriages with postilions and outriders, drove through the crowded streets to the black and grimy old Castle, which for centuries had witnessed these processions come and go.” Precisely what the Irish thought of this ornate invasion is not recorded in the memoirs, but Lady Randolph makes it plain that she considered the whole ambassadorship useless: “The Lord Lieutenant, however intelligent and ambitious he may be, who is not in the Cabinet, is but a figure-head, a purveyor of amusements for the Irish officials and the Dublin tradespeople, on whom he is obliged to lavish his hospitality and his money, with no return and no thanks. The wives of the Viceroys labour in good works, each in turn vying with the other in charitable ardour. However popular the Lord Lieutenant and his wife may have been, however successful their attempts to cajole, conciliate, and entertain — though out of their private means they may have spent money like water — in a week all is forgotten.”
As others have noted, the Irish have ever been wanting in gratitude for the many fine things England has tried to do for them. They have taken, and still take, the baffling view that they would prefer to do things for themselves. The duke’s skill at cajolery, conciliation, and entertainment must have been transmitted in some degree to his precocious grandson, who was often to shine at soothing the Irish in later years. When he was twenty-six, and had just concluded his famous experiences in the Boer War, Churchill made a lecture tour of America. English-Irish relations were at one of their frequent record-low ebbs, and in Chicago Irish workmen filled the balcony of his lecture hall to heckle. Each time the speaker got well started on a lively anecdote, the workmen would commence a systematic braying that halted the show. “... and in this desperate situation,” shouted the grandson of the duke, “the Dublin Fusiliers arrived, trumpeters sounded the charge, and the enemy were swept from the field!” The heckling broke off, and the galleries burst into wild cheering. Thereafter, whenever the workmen became restless, perhaps at an incautious suggestion that Englishmen were also on the field, Churchill would ring in the Fusiliers again. He called for them at some amazing places in his South African narrative, at points when they were reputed to have been several hundreds of miles distant, and altogether he made them appear one of the most overtaxed regiments in military history. But the workmen went home satisfied, convinced (as they had suspected all along) that the Irish had won the war.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 3