Having been defeated, the French mob turned from patriotism to incendiarism, and Leonard Jerome decided to save his Parisian belongings. His wife accompanied him and witnessed the spoliation of the Tuileries and its destruction by fire. Among the goods being thrown from the windows or auctioned in the gardens she managed to buy Napoleon’s white porcelain dinner service marked with the N and a golden crown, later to be used by her grandson Winston Churchill. Returning to England the family moved to Cowes in the Isle of Wight, where they took a cottage, the Villa Rosetta. The now-exiled French Emperor and Empress paid a visit to the Isle and the Jeromes were asked to accompany the royal suite in a sea trip around the island, a not altogether successful excursion because nearly everyone was seasick.
In the autumn of 1871 the family returned to their house in Paris, but all the glory had departed with the Court, many friends were dead or exiled, and they were not happy; so Jerome took them back to Cowes and himself proceeded to New York with the tedious prospect of trying to make more money, though at the age of fifty-four his heart had gone out of the business. His luck had also forsaken him. One evening he happened to be entertaining a few friends at dinner when a wire was handed to him, from which he learned that he had suddenly lost six hundred thousand dollars in what was considered a gilt-edged investment. Although he perceived at once that his days as a financier were numbered, he laid the wire to one side, said nothing about it, and continued the conversation as if he had just heard that his family was quite well. Dinner over, he got up, apologized for having read the telegram, and informed the company that they were all interested in the message it contained. “The bottom has fallen out of stocks and I am a ruined man,” he said; “but your dinner is paid for and I did not want to disturb you while you were eating it.” His friends felt squeamish and he was soon left alone. Shortly afterwards he heard from his wife that a young man had asked Jenny to marry him.
The Jerome girls had been presented to the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Royal Yacht Squadron Ball during the Cowes Regatta week, and their performances on the piano at exclusive parties had made the playing by English girls seem amateurish. Jenny in particular had grown into a beauty and her energy was such that her mother compared it with her father’s. One night in August ‘73 there was a ball on the Ariadne at Cowes, and a young man named Lord Randolph Churchill saw Jenny, then nineteen years old, was instantaneously smitten by her litheness, her vitality and her beauty, obtained an introduction to her, and, though he disliked the exercise, asked her to be his partner for a dance.{7} She did not care for his dancing, but was as much attracted by his conversation as he had been by her appearance; and while she confided to her sister that he would probably be her husband, he informed a friend that he intended to make her his wife. Mrs. Jerome was asked to invite the young man to dinner. He went and enjoyed a pleasant evening. Next day Jenny and Randolph met “by accident,” possibly because he knew exactly where she would be at a certain time, and went for a walk together. The following night he again dined at the Jeromes’ cottage. After dinner, we are told, “they found themselves alone together in the garden,” clearly another carefully designed “accident.” It was a warm, still, starlit night, the sea shimmering with the lights of the yachts, and Randolph yielded to the romantic atmosphere. His proposal of marriage was accepted.
But he was the younger son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, and such rash engagements were not en règle in the social circle to which he belonged. He was twenty-four years of age, and having passed through Eton and Oxford his main interest and ability had been displayed in the hunting field. His father wanted him to enter Parliament as a member for their hometown of Woodstock, but at the time Randolph was far more interested in dogs and horses than in political voters. However, he recognized that the promise to stand for Parliament could be used as an effective bargaining point if his father proved obdurate over his marriage, and he quickly laid his cards on the table in a letter that he knew would not make the Duke leap for joy. He first of all broke the news that he had fallen desperately in love with Jenny Jerome, who was quite willing to marry him but her mother would not hear of it, an attitude of mind he was “at a loss to understand.” He asked his father to increase his allowance in order that he could marry, and remarked of Jenny’s father that he was “a gentleman who is obliged to live in New York to look after his business. I do not know what it is.” Having put him abreast of the situation, Randolph went on to soften the Duke with the assurance that, with Jenny by his side to participate and inspire, he would be able to make a name for himself, and, with the additional assistance of Providence, live up to the height of his father’s expectations. But an appeal to the older man’s tender emotions was not enough, and a hint of blackmail followed. If his fondest hopes were not to be realized, a prospect he dared not face, Randolph implied that life would be emptied of meaning, his energies “blunted and deadened”; or, in other words, Woodstock could whistle in vain for him as their parliamentary representative.
The Marlborough family was shocked. The Duke wrote of “the uncontrolled state of your feelings which completely paralyse your judgment.” He made inquiries into Jenny’s antecedents and came to the conclusion that her father was a vulgar fellow whose proprietorship of a number of houses in New York made him unpresentable. In short, the connection would not be a respectable one. The Duchess was equally hostile, and Randolph’s elder brother, the Marquis of Blandford, wrote some satirical verses about the unfortunate fate of those who marry too hastily and regret it as quickly. Mrs. Jerome too was shocked. Lord Randolph was after all only a younger son, and if Jenny waited long enough she might catch a duke. On hearing that the Marlboroughs were also against the match, Mrs. Jerome was incensed, and when her husband was informed of their antagonism he refused his consent. Having made his own fortune, he thought little of inherited titles.
Mrs. Jerome left the Villa Rosetta for Paris, issuing an interdict against correspondence between the lovers. Randolph’s nerves were not equal to separation as well as neglect, and he made life so difficult for his parents that their resistance weakened. The Duke permitted a year’s formal engagement and wrote a diplomatic letter to Mrs. Jerome. The situation being eased, letters began to pass between the lovers, both of whom had practically bullied their parents into acquiescence. Randolph’s nature was far too impatient to face a year’s probation. “It is all humbug,” he declared, and though he hinted that he would have waited indefinitely to gain her, he thought the present arrangement utterly unnecessary as they both knew their own minds. However, he would play the cards in his hand for all they were worth and he told Jenny that he would either refuse to stand for Parliament unless his parents agreed to their marriage immediately after the election, or, “still more Machiavellian,” he would become a candidate and then on the eve of the election back out, leaving the field free for his opponent unless his family capitulated unconditionally. “All tricks are fair in love and war,” he said.
Continued pressure against parental antipathy brought his father to heel, and soon Jenny heard that matters were progressing favorably: they would be allowed to meet as often as they wished, and the Duke would consent to their union the moment he felt convinced of their love. Randolph then indulged in the meteorological imagery that portended the future politician: “The clouds have all cleared away, and the sky is bluer than I have ever seen it since I first met you at Cowes.” He told her that he read Gibbon when feeling cross, Horace when depressed, and advised her “to read some great works or histories,” which helped to pass the time and kept one’s mind free from concern about the future. Novels and travels he thought too exciting. He claimed that being of a quiet nature he was not attracted to the worry and notoriety of public life, “which, after all, is full of vanity and vexation of spirit”—a view usually expressed by fallen politicians, not rising ones.
Jenny meanwhile was tasting the joys of post-war Paris. She attended the trial of Marshal Bazaine at Versailles, it being t
he fashion in France to regard anyone who has failed in his job as a traitor to his country. She watched Bazaine sitting sphinx-like in court while his advocate, adopting a curious line of defense, pointed at the criminal with a theatrical gesture and cried: “Mais regardez-le donc! Ce n’est pas un traître, c’est un imbécile!” The one-time hero was condemned to death, the sentence being commuted to 20 years of imprisonment; but he was allowed to escape some months later, presumably because his advocate’s apostrophe seemed to cover the facts.
The first tiff between the lovers occurred when Jenny, in reporting Bazaine’s trial, used the word “prorogue” in the wrong sense. On receiving Randolph’s reproof, she consulted her friend the Count de Fénelon, who assured her that she had used the word correctly. She passed this on to Randolph, who replied with vigor: “Hang le petit Fénelon...little idiot!” who possibly knew his own “beastly language” but certainly did not understand English. “To prorogue means to suspend something for a definite time to be resumed again in exactly the same state, condition and circumstances.” It was therefore absurd to talk of proroguing Bazaine’s powers, when clearly he had been totally deprived of them.
In December ‘73 Randolph received the consent of his parents as well as Jenny’s to see her in Paris, and he wrote to say he was looking forward to the pleasure of demolishing le petit Fénelon, but added that they must drop the controversy when together as it might become too warm: “We will therefore ‘prorogue’ it.” But just as he was about to leave Dover for France he had to cancel his visit. Parliament was dissolved and a General Election took place. Having extracted his father’s promise that his marriage could take place in less than a year, he stood as Conservative candidate for Woodstock, flinging himself wholeheartedly into the fray and writing an account of the contest almost every day to Jenny. “You have no idea how this election gets hold of me,” he told her. “One can positively think of nothing else.” All the same he hated the excitement and thought himself a fool for caring so much about the result. He was in fact too excitable by nature, and the added excitement of battle distracted his faculties. One Sunday he saw his opponent in church and though he pretended to Jenny that he felt sorry for the man, he could not help crowing over the fact that the other party was “a dreadfully disreputable lot” and that they only had “a wretched, low, miserable pot-house to stay in,” while he had the three chief hotels in the town. He was elected by a large majority, possibly swollen by hospitality at the three chief hotels, and wrote a jubilant letter to Jenny saying that the result was received with “such a burst of cheers that must have made the old Dukes in the vault jump.” He and his brother enjoyed a triumphal procession through the town and up to Blenheim, the crowd bawling with enthusiasm all the way, and “that you were not there to witness it will always be a source of great regret to me.” All was over now, he concluded, except the discharge of the bill, which he left to his father.
The Duke not only paid the bill but carried out his share of their “gentleman’s agreement” at once by going to Paris, where Mrs. Jerome thought him a “perfect dear” and he thought Jenny both gifted and beautiful. But Mr. Jerome had still to be considered. In New York at the moment, he took an early boat for England to see his prospective son-in-law as well as the young man’s family. The real problem was money. Leonard Jerome thought a husband ought to keep a wife, and he also thought that a bride’s dowry should be settled on the bride. Randolph petulantly declared that he would earn a living somehow, somewhere. On finding that the two young people were determined to marry on nothing if necessary, Mr. Jerome threw in his hand and agreed to settle £50,000 on them, Randolph to receive the income on this sum but to allow his wife £1,000 a year for her personal use. The Duke promised his son £1,100 a year and agreed to settle all his debts over £2,000. So intense were the pair and so resolute to have their own way, or so intense and resolute was Randolph that he infected Jenny, that all their relations surrendered and the marriage took place at the British Embassy in Paris on April 15, 1874. The Prince and Princess of Wales sent presents; Jenny had a trousseau of twenty-three dresses; and her father gave her a pearl necklace. A fortnight’s honeymoon was followed by an enthusiastic reception at Blenheim, their carriage being drawn by the cheering tenantry from Woodstock station to the palace. As they entered the park Randolph assured his wife that she was now enjoying the finest view in England. She did not question the statement, but after her absorption in the Marlborough domestic circle she did not think it the finest family in England.
To begin with, Randolph’s mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, after giving her a kindly reception seemed to think better of it and became cool. It may have been that the possessive temperament of the Duchess made her jealous of one who had captivated her son. It may have been that her own daughters were less attractive than Jenny. More likely it was the clash of two egotistic personalities. The Duchess ruled Blenheim with an iron hand: “At the rustle of her silk dress the household trembled.” And as Jenny was of an independent nature, there were frigid moments, violent hostility being hidden by glacial urbanity. As time went on she loathed staying at Blenheim, not only because it was dull, and it was dull, but because the Duchess resented her presence, finding fault with what she said and what she wore. Jenny could not learn to be rude in a fashionable manner, and while seething inwardly had to endure the Duchess’s snubs and criticisms, always expressed in polite terms. The affectation of courtesy under such circumstances made life unendurable and occasionally Jenny’s self-restraint broke down; but she soon perceived that every time she lost her temper or indulged in a fit of sulks her opponent scored a point, and she learned in time how to keep her feelings in check. But there were many moments when she could have screamed with boredom. “How strange life in a big country-house seemed to me, who until then had been accustomed only to towns!” she declared. “Even breakfast was a ceremonious meal, and no one dreamed of beginning until all had assembled. The ladies would be dressed in long velvet or silk trains.” After breakfast the reading of newspapers took up an hour or two, a necessary exercise if one wished to display an intelligent interest in the questions of the day, since the conversation at dinner invariably turned on politics. Having absorbed the chronicle of world events, Jenny would read or paint or play the piano, and it is possible that her musical accomplishments, which she was at no pains to conceal, did not endear her to the mother of daughters whose fingers were less nimble.
At lunch the table was adorned with rows of entrée dishes, while joints beneath massive silver covers were placed before the Duke and Duchess, each of whom carved for the whole company, which included governesses, tutors and children. The meal over, the children gathered up the fragments that remained, filled several baskets with them, and distributed the food at the cottages of the sick and poor on the estate. The grownups meanwhile drove to visit some neighbor or walked in the garden or did something else of a decorously boring nature whereby the aristocracy of that age sought to pass away the time. Tea was a solemn and elaborate ritual, whereat commonplace civilities were exchanged for at least an hour, after which the ladies were expected to rest in their rooms until dinner, which was a full-dress affair of excessive solemnity, when the affairs of the nation were gravely discussed and platitudes flowed more freely than the wine. The company then retired to the Van Dyke room, where the talk was continued or books were read or a game of whist might be played for love. Yawns were stifled, but glances were surreptitiously cast at the clock, the hands of which would occasionally be advanced fifteen minutes by some youthful or sleepy member of the household. Bedtime was not officially recognized until 11 o’clock, at which hour both family and guests suddenly seemed to become aware that they were tired, and trooping into a small anteroom they lighted their candles, kissed the Duke and Duchess, and went upstairs to bed. Such formalities got on Jenny’s nerves and she audibly expressed her feelings, but a glare from the Duchess always had a dampening effect on her spirits and she inwardly groaned with vexa
tion.
We do not know how the Duchess reacted to the premature birth of Jenny’s first child, Winston, but as she never got to like the boy her first comments were no doubt critical. Jenny’s behavior was certainly unconventional. It is true that she did not expect a seven-months’ child, but most women in her condition thought it proper to take things easily after six months of pregnancy. She, however, was out with a shooting party at Blenheim on November 30, 1874, when she became conscious of labor pains. Unable to reach her own bedroom in the palace, her son Winston was born in the first furnished room on the ground floor just off the great hall. But already Jenny had outraged the conventions of society. In those days a woman was not supposed to be seen at social gatherings until she had been married for at least a month. Two weeks after her marriage with Randolph she went to a ball given in honor of Czar Alexander II at Stafford House. She was presented to the Czar, who, on hearing that her marriage was scarcely a fortnight old, stared coldly at her, saying “Et ici déjà!”{8}
Jenny was the leading pioneer in the transatlantic exchange of titles for dollars which became an important trade in the eighties and nineties of the last century. What was called The American Invasion started with her, and she found that the strangest misconceptions of America and its people were rife among the British aristocracy, who pictured an American woman as a cross between a Red Indian and a musical comedy chorus girl. “I should never have thought you were an American,” they would say to any New York girl who had conducted herself with propriety. No distinction was made between any class of American: all were regarded with suspicion; all were supposed to be either dangerous or disagreeable. The newly rich Californian miner’s wife, the cultured Bostonian, the aristocratic Virginian, the smart New Yorker: they were all alike, with their nasty nasal twang; they were all supposed to know one another even though some lived in Philadelphia, others in San Francisco; and the lot were labeled vulgar, ostentatious, and not to be encouraged. The only excuse for them in English eyes was the possession of unlimited dollars, which partly justified their existence.
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