As the Times reported the next day, “By the time the fire brigades began to arrive the house was almost destroyed, and just as Mr. Churchill left one part of the mansion carrying two marble busts, the roof, which had been blazing furiously, fell in with a crash, Mr. Churchill being just in time to escape injury.”
Churchill’s eyes were still smarting from the smoke when the newspaper reports reached Clemmie, and she promptly telegraphed to find out if he had been hurt. In his reply he boasted that the fire had been a great adventure and gave a lively description of the moment when the roof collapsed behind him in “a molten shower.” He teased her that it was a pleasant surprise to get her telegram “& to find you had not forgotten me.”1
In fact, they had planned to meet before the middle of the month, and now—perhaps realizing that he must seize this chance—he suddenly suggested that she come to Blenheim on August 10 to visit him and spend a couple of days as Sunny’s guest. She hesitated at first, nervous about being thrust into what she imagined was a glamorous life at Blenheim. But Winston calmed her fears, telling her that only his mother and a few friends would be there, and that he would make sure she enjoyed her stay.
She agreed and arrived on time at Blenheim, but she felt that she was walking in a dream. Then it was Churchill who hesitated. He failed to meet her on time for a morning walk on the eleventh, and the longer he made her wait, the more she was tempted to race back home to her mother in London. Finally, later in the afternoon, while they were making a tour of the grounds, a sudden shower sent them running for cover to an ornamental Greek temple. He decided to get it over with and risk having a fourth woman turn down his proposal of marriage. But, to his joy, Clemmie said yes.
Lord Randolph had presented Jennie with three rings when they were married, and she had given Winston one to place on Clemmie’s finger. It was a large ruby with two diamonds. Clemmie loved it and was soon writing various relatives to tell them her life was now “heavenly.”2
Her grandmother was pleased. Knowing that Winston was close to Jennie, she declared confidently, “A good son is a good husband.”
Blanche Hozier later said of her daughter and Churchill, “I do not know which of the two is the more in love.”
A few days after he proposed, Clemmie wrote Winston, “I wonder how I have lived 23 years without you.”3
He could hardly believe his good fortune. The engagement—which was announced on August 15—was to be a short one. Winston didn’t want to take any chances that a long delay might cause problems. In any case he needed to be in London in October to do his work at the Board of Trade. There was just enough time to get married in mid-September and to spend the rest of the month on their honeymoon.
Churchill wrote notes to dozens of friends telling them the good news, including Pamela Lytton and Muriel Wilson. Pamela’s response has not survived, but Muriel wrote a cheerful reply full of warmth, and seemed more appreciative of him than ever. Perhaps she was relieved to know he would no longer be pining for her. After telling him how lucky Clemmie was to have him, she said that they must always remain friends. “I shall always count you as such,” she wrote. “Bless you dear Winston.”
The king offered his congratulations, Lord Rosebery wrote a kind note, and Joe Chamberlain—with his wife’s help—dictated a gracious letter from Highbury “in my enforced retirement.” Even the Hooligans emerged from the far reaches of his past to wish him well. Ian Malcolm sent his good wishes “in kindly remembrance” of an old friend, and Hugh Cecil volunteered to be best man. Winston gladly accepted the offer. (When he was a little late in replying to a later question about the wedding from Winston, Hugh responded with an apology and an explanation—“Frailty thy name is Linky.”)
The cleverest response to the engagement came from one of Jennie’s friends, who wrote her a note mentioning Churchill’s escape from the house fire, and then added, “I’m glad Winston is fulfilling the Scriptures—& realising that it is better to marry than to burn.”4
The wedding was set for Saturday, September 12, at St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. The couple had less than a month to prepare for the big event.
* * *
But what about Violet? She seems to have had little warning of the engagement until Winston sent her the news a day before the public announcement. She made a great effort to pretend to her friends and family that she was pleased for him, and that she didn’t envy the task of trying to manage Winston for a lifetime. But the news stunned her, and she felt the loss deeply. She didn’t know Clemmie well, yet she knew enough to conclude that Winston deserved someone better.
Her standards were high. She was an avid reader of serious literature, a fluent writer, and a highly informed observer of the political scene, with an intimate knowledge of Winston’s world. She recognized that Clemmie was beautiful and charming but thought her appeal was superficial. She wondered, bitterly, “whether he will ultimately mind her being as stupid as an owl.”5
Time would soften her view of the woman who had captured Winston’s heart, but for now she was jealous and in a state of shock. With a hint of self-satisfaction, Clemmie revealed in old age, “When Violet heard that Winston was going to marry me, she fainted.”6
In fact, in that eventful summer of 1908, each woman had reason to be jealous of the other. On Monday, August 24—with the wedding less than three weeks away—Winston left Clemmie in London and boarded a train at King’s Cross for the fourteen-hour journey to the little Scottish village of Cruden Bay, where the Asquiths were spending the summer holidays at their rented fortress. It had an ominous name—Slains Castle—and was built at the edge of a dangerous stretch of high cliffs on the North Sea. It was owned by the Earl of Erroll, and had belonged to the family for more than three hundred years.
Visiting the castle in August 1773, Samuel Johnson stood at the large windows overlooking the coast and marveled at the tumult of the waves and the vast stretch of sea that ran uninterrupted to Norway. “I would not for my amusement wish for a storm,” said Johnson, “but as storms, whether wished or not, will sometimes happen, I may say, without violation of humanity, that I should willingly look out upon them from Slains Castle.”
On August 25, 1908, there was a brief, innocuous announcement in the London papers: “The President of the Board of Trade . . . left last night for Aberdeenshire, where he will be the guest of the Prime Minister at Slains Castle.” It was a round-trip of eleven hundred miles, and Churchill wouldn’t return to London until the end of the week. He didn’t have any pressing business of state to discuss. The prime minister himself had just come and gone from London a few days earlier.7
Clemmie was furious. She threatened to break off the engagement. Her brother Bill had to talk her out of it, telling her that it would be disastrous for all concerned to “humiliate” a public figure of Winston’s stature. There was also the problem that wedding gifts were already arriving daily from dozens of distinguished friends in high places. By the day of the wedding, the gifts would number in the hundreds and fill a large room.
Unaware of Winston’s trip to see Violet at Slains, Churchill’s previous biographers have suggested that Clemmie was just suffering from an ordinary case of nerves, or that she was worried about the burdens of becoming a politician’s wife. “Maybe she even wondered if Winston truly loved her,” her own daughter has speculated. The most that Clemmie ever revealed in later years was that she had been upset because Winston didn’t pay her “sufficient attention.”8
He had made it clear that he loved her, but he also had a debt to pay to Violet. Nothing could stop him from making this last-minute dash to see her in Scotland, where he could explain his decision face-to-face. Instead of allowing a heartfelt letter to make his case, he knew that Violet would want to hear it from his own lips. One of the things she loved most about him was the sound of his words, and it would have deepened her disappointment if he had not come to Scotland to break the silence.
But none of that would have been easy
to explain to Clemmie, who had already broken two previous engagements and was under great stress as she prepared for her wedding day. While Winston was away, journalists followed her around London, reporting on her trips to dressmakers and various shopkeepers. Photographs of her were everywhere in the newspapers.
At the end of the week, when Winston was on his way home, the Daily Mail reported: “One of the busiest women in London yesterday was Miss Clementine Hozier, whose marriage with Mr. Winston Churchill . . . takes place a fortnight tomorrow. In company with Lady Blanche Hozier, her mother, she was shopping and in the hands of her dressmaker from before noon until nearly six o’clock. Both arrived home fatigued with the day’s round.”9
* * *
In her memoir of Churchill, Violet briefly mentioned his visit to Slains Castle that summer, but she was vague about when and why he came. She recalled that they discussed the subject of marriage, but only “in the abstract.” Because they rarely spoke in abstracts, this would have been a first for them. No doubt what they said to each other was, as usual, highly specific and very spirited. Violet’s best friend, Venetia Stanley, certainly expected fireworks. On August 26 she wrote to ask if Winston had arrived at Slains. “Have you yet thought it was your duty to tell him exactly what you think of her?” she asked, referring to Violet’s low opinion of Clemmie.10
There were ample opportunities for discussion. The days were long at that time of year, and there were miles and miles of footpaths and lanes stretching out from the castle on the coast to the rolling hills west of it. There couldn’t have been a more romantic setting. The green meadows were lush, the sky enormous and full of racing clouds, and the top of each hill revealed a sweeping view of the sea and the lonely coast. At the castle—which was a rambling collection of old and new wings framed by high stone walls and the occasional turret—they were never far from a door that led directly to the cliffs. They could sit in the sun on the soft grass high above the shore and watch as the occasional fishing boat sailed by.
They spent hours walking, discussing their lives as they explored the countryside. One day they visited the Cruden Bay links while the prime minister played golf. In the evenings they dined with the rest of the family and other guests, and then sat by one of the big fireplaces and played cards. To cheer up Violet, Winston invented amusing word games to play. One that made her laugh involved attaching funny, alliterative adjectives to the various stations on his rail trip from London to Aberdeen, the challenge being to find the most outlandish phrase for such places as Doncaster, York, or Edinburgh. To such activities, Violet recalled, he brought “the excitement of a child.”
On the serious subject of his marriage he seems to have persuaded her that he had done the right thing, at least for himself. He also tried to make it clear that there was nothing to stop them being friends, no matter what else happened in their lives. He was eager to humor her.
As it happened, she loved exploring the coastline, and he readily agreed when she invited him to go on a rock-climbing expedition that would take them from one precipitous cliff to another. It was a perilous course interrupted by deep gorges where the sea crashed against the rocks.
He began by following her but soon took the lead. She liked his fondness for taking risks and later wrote of how much he enjoyed their adventurous outings at Slains. She remembered him “reveling in the scramble up crags and cliffs, the precarious transition from ledge to ledge, with slippery seaweed underfoot and roaring seas below.” There was no beach, just a few large rock formations strung along the coast—jagged islets thick with seagulls. In a few cases it was possible to jump from one to the next, but it was difficult to find a secure foothold in the crevices, and in every leap there was the danger of plunging into the foamy waves.11
There was a manic quality to all this hiking and rock climbing, as though neither Winston nor Violet wanted to pause long enough to reflect carefully on the future before them. Any outsider watching the two clinging to the rocks as the North Sea churned below might have assumed they were a couple of young thrill-seekers with nothing to lose, or who were too madly in love to mind the danger. Few would have believed they were watching the prime minister’s twenty-one-year-old daughter and the thirty-three-year old president of the Board of Trade. Even more surprising was the fact that the Cabinet minister was marrying someone else in two weeks.
Their adventures on the red-granite cliffs and the rugged shore didn’t end well. Violet slipped on a wet rock and hit her face, opening a nasty cut. “I scratched my face rather badly rock-climbing with Winston,” she wrote Venetia Stanley. She was lucky the injury wasn’t worse. A fall from one of the islets would have thrown her into a current so strong she might easily have drowned. Or—on the way back up—one false step on the cliffs, and she could have fallen fifty or sixty feet to her death.12
The cut to her face made Violet self-conscious about her looks, and she was overwrought with emotion when the time came for Winston to leave at the end of the week. He had no choice but to go, and dutifully said his good-byes, leaving Violet behind at the castle. She refused to attend the wedding, even though Venetia—who was Clemmie’s cousin—was one of the bridesmaids. It would have been a simple matter to travel to London for a few days, stay at Downing Street, and attend the wedding with Winston’s many other friends and admirers. But Violet didn’t feel up to it, and the ceremony took place on September 12 without her.
* * *
She was able to read about it, however, in nearly every major paper. The Times treated it as something akin to a state event, noting the large crowds that lined the streets, the impressive guest list, the church packed “to its utmost capacity,” and the dozens of policemen—mounted and on foot—who were needed to keep order when cheering broke out as the bride and bridegroom emerged from the ceremony. “Undoubtedly,” said the Times, the wedding “captured the public imagination.” The Scotsman article began, “Not for many years has a marriage excited such widespread interest as that which took place on Saturday afternoon at St. Margaret’s Church.” In a front-page headline the Daily Mirror called it “The Wedding of the Year.”13
Pamela, Lady Lytton, attended the ceremony, looking “damnably pretty,” as Ettie Desborough observed. Ettie approved of Clemmie and enjoyed watching Winston bask in the limelight. “He was delighted with everything,” she wrote afterward, “counted every head in the crowd, & showed me all his presents one by one.” The weather was perfect, the bride’s white satin gown “showed off the rather majestic lines of her figure,” and David Lloyd George talked politics with Winston in the vestry. Blanche Hozier sat near the front with three of her former lovers sharing the pew. George Cornwallis-West cried, the victor of Manchester—William Joynson-Hicks—paid his respects, and when Wilfrid Scawen Blunt came in late, people stared at his long white hair and flowing beard and whispered, “Who is that tall, beautiful man?” For Ettie, there was no question that “the beauty of the day” was “Linky as best man, in a waistcoat of duck’s egg green.”14
The newlyweds spent the night at Blenheim, where they had the enormous house more or less to themselves. (The usual servants were there, but Sunny had gone to Paris.) After a second night, they rushed off to Italy to enjoy the rest of their honeymoon. Everything was going smoothly, and the trouble over Violet seemed behind them. But exactly one week after the wedding something happened at Slains Castle that showed Violet wasn’t holding up well.
Late on Saturday afternoon, September 19, the prime minister’s daughter left the castle with a book in her hand and wandered along the same path above the cliffs where she and Winston had been rock climbing. Asquith and Margot were hosting a dinner at the castle and didn’t notice her absence.
When darkness fell, Venetia Stanley, who had just come from London after doing her duty as Clemmie’s bridesmaid, burst into the dining room and announced that no one could find Violet. Everyone rushed out to look for her, with servants carrying lanterns and the dinner guests following them. They scanned
the rugged slopes and ledges for any sign of movement, and tried to avoid the black gorges. Lord Crewe, Elgin’s replacement at the Colonial Office, was one of the guests who joined in the search. The night was starless, with a heavy mist hanging in the air. It was difficult to see anything, and the shouts of “Vi-o-let!” had to compete with the constant roar of the sea.
After an hour of looking, the prime minister began to grow desperate and called for help from the nearby village. Dozens of people soon joined the search, including several fishermen, who knew the coast well and had powerful searchlights on their boats.
As midnight neared and there was still no sign of her, Asquith collapsed in Margot’s arms, fearing that his daughter had fallen and been swept away by the heavy waves that beat along the coast. Margot heard the voices of the searchers coming from all directions and saw men and women risking their own safety to crawl over the rocks in the mist and search every crevice. Desperate, Margot went down on her knees and began to pray in the darkness.
A few minutes later she heard the fishermen cheering, and then she fainted. Her stepdaughter had been found and was apparently unhurt. Violet claimed that she had slipped and landed on a ledge where she hit her head. But when she was found, she was lying in the soft, spongy grass along the coastal path and showed no signs of injury.
The episode produced sensational headlines—MISS ASQUITH’S PERIL, PREMIER’S DAUGHTER MISSING, HOUSE PARTY’S THRILLING SEARCH—and reporters besieged the castle with requests for interviews and photographs. It was more attention than Violet had ever received in her life, and Margot began to suspect that the “accident” was staged for the sake of the attention. A closer look showed no evidence of a blow to her head, and Violet couldn’t explain why she had remained unaware for so long of the efforts to find her. The more Margot considered the evidence, the angrier she became over “this unfortunate foolish & most dangerous escapade,” as she called it in her diary.15
Young Titan Page 22