An important moment in his later life he owed particularly to the influence of the Park. It occurred nearly ten years after Frances’ death. The young Clementine Hozier was daunted and hesitant about visiting Blenheim in August 1908, but Winston strongly urged her to come. His letters go into detail about the beauty of the Park and gardens. He describes the great lake surrounded by huge trees, sunlit rose gardens and plenty of places to talk … just the place, a lovely spot, in the Temple of Diana, overlooking the Park and the lake, on the way to the Rose Garden, where a young man might hesitantly propose to a girl!
Frances was no indulgent grandmother, however; she also attended to important, practical matters. When he was seven, Winston wrote to his parents, ‘I do lessons every morning with Grandmama.’ In later years at Blenheim, a governess was in attendance from ten in the morning until seven in the evening.
By the time he was nine Winston’s behaviour was so difficult that Jennie was confessing to Randolph she could not control him without Mrs Everest. At Blenheim, however, Frances did her best to instil sound values and discipline. In contrast to Randolph, whose idea of discipline seems to have been to criticise Winston aggressively, Frances was eminently practical. On one occasion, she wrote to Randolph that Winston needed discipline and made it clear that she kept Winston in order and dealt with him with a firm hand. Even when she was caring for him in London, her firmness continued: ‘I fear Winston thinks me very strict.’
Frances clearly understood her grandson, writing to his father more than once that he was a clever boy who just needed handling. By contrast, Randolph regularly disparaged him, seeing no ability at all. Winston himself recounted that the only assessment Randolph ever made of his ability happened when he was 14. He had drawn up his large collection of model soldiers on parade for formal inspection. After studying what he had done, Randolph asked him if he would like to go into the army. Winston agreed, thinking his father had detected military genius in him, and only later did he realise that his father had concluded he was not clever enough to go to the Bar. At the same time Frances was writing that Harrow would bring out the best in him: ‘He was too clever for that Brighton school.’
Frances’ natural warmth and affection predisposed her to the maternal role and the fact she was strict, probably because her own mother had been, enabled her to manage Winston when his own mother had to admit she could not. Jennie wrote later that Frances was a very remarkable and intelligent woman, with a warm heart, particularly for members of her family, but added that she ruled Blenheim and all those in it with a firm hand: ‘at the rustle of her silk dress the household trembled.’ Jennie’s intention here was not to be critical of her mother-in-law. And in later life, when Randolph’s illness was of great concern, the close relationship between the two women to whom Winston owed so much of his personality was not in doubt. His physical health and stamina he owed to Jennie, but his mental energy, determination and fortitude were inherited from his grandmother Frances.
In 1888 Winston arrived at Harrow, ready for a new beginning. According to most he was fortunate to make it, as his Brighton school was not renowned for academic success. His own well-documented account of the experience with his Latin paper describes how, after two hours, his name, the number of the question and a large blot were his sole contribution to the answer paper. Also, getting into Harrow was only the beginning of the problem, because he would not survive there with neither the academic grounding nor the self-discipline he should have acquired by this time. His housemaster’s first report outlined the situation clearly:
Winston, I am sorry to say, has if anything got worse as the term passed. Constantly late for school, losing his books … he is so regular in his irregularity that I really don’t know what to do; and sometimes think he cannot help it. But if he is unable to conquer this slovenliness he will never make a success of a public school … As far as ability goes he ought to be at the top of his form, whereas he is at the bottom.3
So much for the rumour that Winston was a dunce at school. His housemaster agrees with his grandmother! Frances wrote to him regularly, urging him to work. His protracted stay with her in London had increased his self-confidence and she wanted to build on the fact that his physical health was improving: ‘Take care of yourself and work well and keep out of scrapes and don’t flare up so easily!!!’ It is a tribute to Winston’s resilience and determination that things improved. His letters home were now full of drawings, usually of a military nature, because the first influence was the school Corps; the discipline and physical activity brought out a new attitude in him. The school songs were a great pleasure to him, too, and sung with gusto on special occasions. He found he had an excellent memory and actually won a prize for reciting 1,200 lines of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. At this point he wrote home for his best trousers, jacket and waistcoat, determined to appear at his best when he went up for his presentation. His confidence was evidently growing. It was Frances who had the pleasure of telling him the results of his army preliminary examination, which he passed in all subjects: ‘I am very pleased to hear the good news,’ she wrote. ‘I hope it will encourage you to continue to exert and distinguish yourself and make us all proud of you.’
There were still disappointments, however. In April 1889 the Harrow headmaster, J.E.C. Welldon, found a diplomatic way of reminding Randolph and Jennie they had not yet visited their son:
It has occurred to me that as you are naturally occupied through the week it would perhaps not be disagreeable to Lady Randolph and yourself to come here from Saturday to Monday some time when Winston is in my House and the weather is warm enough to make life enjoyable. Is there any time in May or June that you could come? You would have, if nothing else, at least the opportunity of seeing what Winston’s school life is like.4
The visiting was covered to some extent by his aunt, Lady Fanny Marjoribanks, who was visiting her own son. In 1889 he begged his mother to visit him after he had fallen off his bicycle and suffered concussion, but had to settle for the devoted Mrs Everest. Speech Day, the most important date in the Harrow calendar, came and went without either parent. Also in 1892, when Winston won the National Public Schools’ Fencing Championship at Aldershot, Randolph ‘could not make it’.
Winston was fortunate in having a grandmother who understood him. The time she found for him at Blenheim, in his parents’ absence, did much to alleviate the hurt he felt at their neglect; she supplied the things that would give him pleasure. She showed the same care for him in his later years. The Eton-Harrow match at Lords was a highlight of the schools’ calendar, when boys were given an exeat to visit London to watch the match or celebrate with their parents. To Winston’s intense disappointment he was told rather brutally, via Mrs Everest, that he could not stay with his mother as she was occupied with a large house party they were planning for the races at Epsom; he would have to stay with his grandmother. In the face of such heedlessness, Frances rose to the occasion. Winston was taken out for the day by a family friend, Count Kinsky, who was just the kind of dashing young man to capture the imagination of a 16-year-old: an Austrian diplomat, a handsome, glamorous, sophisticated, urbane darling of society, as well as accomplished and daring horseman who had recently won the Grand National on his own horse. Kinsky took Winston to one of the wonders of the time, the Crystal Palace, where there was a special exhibition in honour of the German Emperor. The heads of the Emperor and Empress were outlined in a special fireworks display. There was a wild beast display and a special drill by the Fire Brigade. In short, everything calculated to entrance and excite an impressionable Winston.
One of the delights was to be driven by Kinsky in his phaeton, the fashionable carriage of the young man-about-town and Victorian equivalent of an Aston Martin; Kinsky’s fast horses passed everything else on the road. The evening ended with dinner at a splendid restaurant where, after the head waiter had said there were no tables, Kinsky spoke to him in German and a table magically became available. The final h
ighlight was when Kinsky decided that Winston was old enough to share some champagne!
It was because of Frances that the Palace exerted its own influence on Winston. From his early days there, at least part of Winston’s youthful enjoyment at Blenheim was in the Palace building itself. Since Frances had so many grandchildren there were always cousins and friends with whom to play, and one of his pleasures was a game he invented for them called ‘French and English’. It was a rough and tumble romp played in the corridors with only two rules: he was always General of the English army, and there was no promotion! As he grew older, however, Winston became aware that the Palace’s appeal lay in the sum of its parts: Palace, Park and Gardens in harmony. The happy familiarity with Blenheim he had gained as a boy was only a beginning. Frances had set in motion a growing awareness of the historic significance of the Palace, and he developed an admiration, almost a veneration, for the achievement of his great ancestor, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, who destroyed Louis XIV’s hopes for world domination at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. His history exercise books reveal that by the age of 14 Winston was steeped in the Duke’s achievement. He wrote a vivid account, with maps, of the Duke’s strategy at Blenheim, which demonstrated an accuracy and understanding that modern opinion says matches the best that today’s military historians could achieve.
Later in life Winston summed up the importance of the Duke’s victory, saying it ‘changed the political axis of the world’. By crushing French ambitions to dominate Europe, Marlborough’s victory paved the way for Britain to emerge as the confident and outward-looking nation which, over the next 200 years, created the greatest power the modern world has known, the British Empire. The Duke became Winston’s inspiration. He wrote of his illustrious ancestor as ‘being aware of a thousand years of history at Woodstock’. He was emphasising the fact that the Park at Blenheim spanned the years from Saxon kings, through Henry II, Queen Elizabeth I, Cromwell and the Stuarts to the present.
Winston felt himself part of that continuum of history. This was what lay behind his own sense of purpose in life and his belief he was born to achieve something great. It was the source of the courage and determination which underpinned his Second World War achievements. Of the moment he became Prime Minister, on 10 May 1940, he later wrote: ‘I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.’ If Frances had not enabled Winston to respond to the historic events embodied at Blenheim, to acquire the belief in his destiny that he did, would Winston have become ‘the protector of the freedom of Europe’ that he did? Would he have merited the words which are carved on the south front of Blenheim Palace to record the achievements of his ancestor and inspiration, the 1st Duke?
Frances gave Winston one other advantage of inestimable value in his later life. He had been so happy at Blenheim in his early years that he remained a frequent visitor throughout his life. Often this was as a family member, but equally often it was as a guest at the formal country-house parties. On these occasions he mixed on personal terms with the most notable and influential people in Britain and beyond. His name appears regularly in the Visitors’ Book alongside national and international leaders, among names from the aristocracy, politics, industry, the press, royalty, society and entertainment. One particularly graphic entry is for the weekend of 26-8 June 1936. One page shows a single signature: Edward R.I. On the facing page the signatures include Wallis W. Simpson, Ernest A. Simpson, Diana and Duff Cooper, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh, Emerald Cunard, as well as Winston and Clementine Churchill. The contacts he made at Blenheim were of enormous value throughout his political career.
Notes
1. Cited by Celia Sandys in From Winston with Love and Kisses, p.104.
2. Cited in From Winston with Love and Kisses, p.104.
3. Cited in From Winston with Love and Kisses, p.118.
4. Cited in From Winston with Love and Kisses, p.124.
Chapter Twenty-Three
… AND OTHERS
* * *
Other children from the family benefited from the dutiful and responsible yet sensitive and compassionate care of Frances, who eventually had 24 grandchildren. So many of them were happy to stay with her at Blenheim that one of Jennie’s family referred to it as ‘that great dumping ground for children’, reflecting the warmth of the welcome that Frances provided.
Her care for Winston’s brother Jack, younger by nearly six years, was probably on a more practical level than had been necessary for Winston. Placid and easy-natured, Jack had a less demanding temperament than his brother. At the same time Frances was writing to Randolph about Winston requiring a firm hand, she remarked that ‘Jack requires no keeping in order’ and ‘he is a good little boy’. Even their letters contrast. At 13 Winston’s writing could deteriorate into an urgent scrawl as he beseeched his mother ‘Please, as you love me and as I have begged you’. At the same time seven-year-old Jack was writing tidily and in perfect French ‘Maman, j’espere que vous allez bien.’
One of the children whom Frances took under her wing as soon as she became Duchess was her orphaned sister-in-law Clementina, who was only nine years old. Their father, the 6th Duke, had married three times and Clementina was the younger of the two children by his second marriage at the age of 53. Her mother had died when Clementina was only two, and six years later her brother Almeric, older by one year, also died. Within 18 months of her mother’s death the Duke married for the third time and there was another child, making rather a complex household. This third marriage was not a successful one, especially for the new Duchess. Within a few months of the birth she left, taking legal action to secure the custody of the four-month-old baby.
These years were not happy ones for Clementina. After her mother’s death, she lived an unsettled and lonely life in a bleak, unwelcoming Palace with an elderly father and the tensions of the failing third marriage and a new baby around her. The Duke’s death, in the year after her brother’s, left her orphaned and alone. Instinctively, Frances reached out to this ‘lost’ child and welcomed her warmly into her care. Clementina was brought into a new world, as John Winston and Frances, now the 7th Duke and Duchess, moved into the Palace; she became part of a lively family of six cousins around her own age, with two babies still to come.
Frances, only 35, was more a mother to her than a sister-in-law. She gave Clementina nine happy years at Blenheim, treating her as one of her own daughters until she married. An important responsibility for an aristocratic Victorian mother was the managing of suitable marriages for her daughters and Frances’ sons-in-law included a duke, an earl, a viscount and two barons. She extended this aspect of motherly care to Clementina who, at 18, made what proved to be a happy and highly suitable marriage to the Marquess of Camden. She repaid Frances’ love and care with devotion and loyalty. As the Visitors’ Book reveals, Clementina and her husband were regular visitors at Blenheim, and she was there when Jennie went into premature labour with Winston, staying by the bedside and comforting her throughout the birth. During Frances’ years as Vicereine in Ireland, Clementina was one of the family members who frequently made the crossing to Ireland to lend her support.
The 6th Duke himself caused problems for Frances at her first introduction to the Marlborough family. Despite the fact that John Winston himself was admirable, sensible, industrious and capable, Frances had to overcome considerable parental opposition to her marriage in 1843. Not all the reasons are clear although an episode in the Duke’s life which had caused a public scandal a few years before Frances’ engagement must have been hard for her parents to overlook.
In 1838 The Satirist, a magazine which looked for scandal in high places, published an article which drew attention to a dubious incident in the 6th Duke’s life some 20 years earlier, when he was Marquess of Blandford. In March 1817, apparently, the 23-year-old Lord Blandford had gone through a marriage ceremony with 16-year-old Susannah Law at her parents’ house. The ceremony w
as supposedly performed in the Church of England rite by Lord Charles, a brother of Lord Blandford, who, it was (falsely) claimed, was a clergyman. The couple then lived openly in Lord Blandford’s house in London as Captain and Mrs Lawson. Blandford settled £400 a year on Susannah, which she later claimed she had always regarded as a marriage settlement. When the deception was revealed, Blandford placated the girl’s parents by promising to take her to Scotland where, according to Scottish law, a marriage was legal if publicly recognised as such. After Susannah had given birth to their baby, they all went to Scotland and lived together publicly. Soon after Susannah had returned to London with their baby, Blandford informed her rather brutally, via a friend, that their relationship was at an end. A few weeks later he married his first cousin, Jane Stewart, who subsequently became his Duchess. Four years later, however, he returned to Susannah and begged her to resume the relationship. The ‘marriage settlement’ of £400 a year was later reduced to £200, but Susannah was forced to surrender many letters from Blandford which he had signed ‘Your affectionate husband, Blandford’.
Shortly before Frances met John Winston The Satirist had made the whole story public, declaring that since the marriage had been recognised in Scotland it was consequently valid, and so the marriage to Jane Stewart was bigamous. The appalling consequences of this for the Marlborough family would be that the children of Blandford’s marriage to his Duchess, John Winston, his brothers and sister, were illegitimate. Therefore John Winston was not a true heir and would not inherit the title.
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