Then came the delightful evenings, heralded by the sound of the dressing gong. “Off came the tea-gowns and on came the low-necked, tightly-laced evening dresses. The gentlemen wore full dress with decorations though never uniform, and the Prince of Wales led each lady in turn into dinner.”22 After dinner, there was an hour or so of whist before the princess took the ladies off to bed. “Occasionally, Princess Alix would invite one into her dressing room, which was crowded with objects and souvenirs of all kinds. On a perch in the center of the room was an old and somewhat ferocious parrot. At other times, rather alarmingly, Princess Alix might surprise you by coming into your room, ostensibly ‘to see if you have everything you want’ but in reality to offer a few words of advice, or her sympathy if she thought you needed any.”23
Plenty of friends and acquaintances were prepared to believe that Jennie and Bertie were having an affair, but Jennie was too clever to leave any explicit clues about the relationship. Notes from Bertie to Jennie are models of discretion, while Jennie’s own letters remain under lock and key at the royal archives in Windsor, and are likely to be as discreet as Bertie’s. After all, Jennie had learned the value of discretion after witnessing the fate of Lady Aylesford and others like her. Bertie’s carriage was often to be seen outside the Churchills’ house at Connaught Place, while Jennie received him alone. Notes such as “Would it be very indiscreet if I proposed myself for luncheon?”24 or “I have to sit on a Royal Commission from 12–4 tomorrow but if I can get away by 3 I will call with pleasure on the chance of seeing you?”25 certainly fit Bertie’s modus operandi for lovemaking.
Did Jennie become another of Bertie’s sexual conquests? Given her sexual promiscuity—she was rumored to have had over two hundred lovers—her unhappy marriage, and starstruck attitude to royalty, it would scarcely have been surprising. Bertie’s friendship, whatever form it took, must have been a great consolation as Randolph’s behavior became increasingly erratic. Despite this, Jennie’s positive attitude shone through. On December 22, 1886, Jennie entertained Bertie at lunch at Connaught Place, while Randolph lunched at the Carlton Club with the minister for war. Jennie and Bertie discussed plans for the New Year, and the boys, Winston and Jack, were home for the Christmas holidays, which they intended to spend in London. Jennie had everything to look forward to.
That evening, Jennie and Randolph went to see School for Scandal and Jennie noticed that Randolph was unusually preoccupied. Randolph left their box after the intermission, saying he was going to his club, but this was not out of character, and Jennie returned home, unconcerned. The following morning, as usual, a copy of The Times was sent up with her tray of early-morning tea. The front-page news consisted of Randolph’s resignation from the government.
White and shaking, Jennie went down to breakfast, to discover Randolph calmly smiling. “Quite a surprise for you!” he commented.26
“He went into no explanation and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any or even to remonstrate.”27 Mr. Moore, permanent under-secretary at the Treasury, who had hero-worshipped Randolph, rushed into the room and told Jennie: “He has thrown himself from the top of the ladder and will never reach it again.”28
Randolph’s shock announcement rocked the cabinet. Most MPs were at home in their country houses, preparing for Christmas. Nobody had suspected that a dispute of this magnitude had been brewing. The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, who had received a copy of Randolph’s letter the previous evening, wearily asked his wife to find him The Times. “Randolph resigned in the middle of the night and if I know my man, it will be in The Times this morning.”29 Queen Victoria was furious at having to learn about the resignation of her chancellor from The Times. A misprint in an Irish newspaper announcing that “Lord Randolph has burnt his boots”30 elicited a little strained laughter in the Churchill household, but Jennie, who had spent so much time and energy supporting her husband’s meteoric rise to power, was completely crushed. As Bertie tried to comfort her, Jennie could only write that “When I looked back at the preceding months which seemed so triumphant and full of promise, the debacle appeared all the greater. I had made sure that Randolph would enjoy the fruits of office for years to come, and apart from the honour and glory, I regretted these same ‘fruits.’”31
Many explanations have been offered for Randolph’s resignation from the cabinet, but the most obvious one is that he believed that his resignation would bring down Lord Salisbury’s minority government, and that he would be invited back to form a new one on his own terms, with himself as prime minister. Randolph had often said that politics was the most exciting form of gambling, but this gesture was a throw of the dice gone wrong. Lord Salisbury reshuffled the cabinet and placed George Goschen, a financier, in the role of chancellor of the exchequer. Devastated by these developments, Stafford Henry Northcote, Lord Iddsleigh, who had hoped to become chancellor himself, collapsed and died suddenly at 10 Downing Street.
After a few halfhearted attempts to get back into the cabinet, and in increasingly poor health, Randolph switched his attention to horse racing. He proved far more successful at this activity than he had been at politics, and his mare, L’Abbesse de Jouarre, won the Epsom Derby.
L’Abbesse, named after a book Jennie had been reading by Henry Renan, was a beautiful black mare with a heart bigger than her body. Randolph loved all his horses, but especially L’Abbesse. Randolph’s friend, the Hon. George Lambton, recalled that whenever Randolph went around the stables, his pockets were always stuffed with apples and sugar. On one occasion he was talking to Lambton when they heard a tremendous kicking and squealing and neighing in a box farther down the yard.32 When they opened the door of the box, L’Abbesse rushed at Randolph like a dog, trying to stick her nose into his pockets to get at the sugar and apples. Randolph was so overcome with emotion at the sight of his old mare that tears rolled down his cheeks.33 With this anecdote, a rare glimpse of Randolph’s human side emerges, inspired by a horse. Like many Englishmen, Randolph could express his emotions to an animal, but not to another human being.
Randolph’s health went into steep decline after he quit the cabinet, and he died in 1894. Jennie went on to marry Captain George Cornwallis-West, younger than Jennie by twenty years, much to the dismay of her sons. When this marriage failed, Jennie married Montagu Phippen Porch, a member of the British Civil Service in Nigeria. Born too early for a political career of her own, Jennie never fulfilled her promise as a beauty with brains and spirit. Margot Asquith paid her a typically backhanded compliment when she commented that “had Lady Randolph Churchill been like her face, she would have governed the world.”34
Chapter Thirteen
MY DARLING DAISY
As rare as any oiseau bleu, a great heiress and a great beauty.
—DAISY, COUNTESS OF WARWICK
Frances Maynard was born in Berkeley Square on December 10, 1861, during a black and gloomy winter that saw London hung with mourning for the recently deceased Prince Albert.1 “Daisy,” as she was known from her earliest years on account of her white skin and bright eyes, had illustrious forebears, including Nell Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II, and the Duke of St. Albans. Daisy’s father was the wild and headstrong Charles Maynard, son of Henry Maynard, 3rd Viscount Maynard. Charles Maynard, tall, red-haired, with blazing blue eyes, was a famous athlete, and many of his exploits when colonel of the Blues had become legendary. Charles was such an accomplished rider that he could jump his favorite horse over the mess table without disturbing a single wineglass, and he had once interrupted a bullfight in Spain and ridden the animal around the ring by the horns, much to the consternation and anger of the onlookers.2 Charles had met Daisy’s mother, Blanche, while visiting his family’s estate in Northamptonshire, and, although the marriage between a humble vicar’s daughter and an extroverted aristocrat twenty years her senior seems unconventional, the match brought Blanche great wealth and Easton Lodge, the sprawling gothic mansion near Dunmow, Essex.
Three years
after Daisy’s birth, tragedy struck. Charles Maynard died suddenly at the house in Berkeley Square and left Blanche a widow, alone in the world with Daisy and her little sister, Blanchie. After Charles had been buried in the family vault at Little Easton church, old Viscount Maynard invited Blanche to visit Easton Lodge, and bring the children with her. All that Daisy could remember was her grandfather “as an old man, being dragged round uncarpeted rooms at Easton in a bath chair, and feeling the thrill of his wonderful eyes as he gazed on me.”3 The old viscount died, just two months later. But Daisy had made an impression. Blanche was once again summoned to Easton Lodge, this time to hear the family solicitor read out Viscount Maynard’s last will and testament in the breakfast room. It was commonly supposed that, following young Charles’s sudden death, the bulk of Viscount Maynard’s estate would be inherited by the Capel boys, two cousins who had been brought up at Easton Lodge. To Blanche’s astonishment, the old viscount had other ideas. After meeting young Daisy, Viscount Maynard had altered his will, making the little girl his heir, and leaving the estate to her.4
This made some members of the family so angry that they threw pats of butter at the viscount’s portrait, despite the fact that he had provided “amply for all of them.”5 Thus, the Maynards went from genteel poverty to a life of luxury, moving immediately to Easton Lodge. Years later, Daisy recalled “the long drive from the station on a wet night, the plop-plop of the horses’ hoofs, and the swaying motion of the heavy closed brougham which made me physically sick.”6 Family feeling over the inheritance was so strong that Blanche feared for Daisy’s safety, and the children were accompanied at all times by a bodyguard whenever they ventured farther than the gardens.7
Easton Lodge, with its rolling ten thousand acres of estate, gentle parkland, and elegant gardens, formed the ideal backdrop to an idyllic childhood. Originally the Manor of Estaines, Easton Lodge had once been the property of the Crown. According to Daisy, the manor was “full of historic memories. There are even fragments of Roman remains in the foundations of the old house … there are reminiscences of monastic occupation.…”8 And Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, had spent her honeymoon at the old manor house.9 A century later, Queen Elizabeth I granted the manor to Henry Maynard as a reward for his duties to Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s private secretary. Henry Maynard demolished a hunting lodge on the land known as Easton Lodge and commissioned a vast Elizabethan mansion, similar in appearance to Blickling Hall in Norfolk. From the seventeenth century, Easton Hall became noted for its formal gardens, while the house was regarded as a masterpiece of Tudor architecture until the terrible night in 1847 when the hall was almost entirely destroyed by fire. Easton Lodge was rebuilt at a cost of £12,000 to a design by Thomas Hopper, who specialized in the Victorian gothic style. A watercolor of the Victorian incarnation of Easton Lodge reveals a gothic monstrosity in glowing redbrick of little aesthetic value, with heavy casement windows, and an ungainly turret topped with battlements.10
But to a child, such aesthetic considerations were meaningless. As far as Daisy was concerned, Easton Lodge was a wonderful place to grow up and run wild. For Daisy was a tomboy who loved “climbing, running, jumping, and challenging all the rules.”11 She could climb trees “like any sailor lad”12 and loved animals, birds, and even watching an ants’ nest for hours on end. “Birds, kittens, rabbits, dogs, even toads and frogs were our pets.”13 But Daisy’s greatest love was horses. “I had my first pony when I was five, I can scarcely remember when I could not ride.”14 When Daisy’s mother married the Earl of Rosslyn, a famous racehorse trainer, horses proved a great bond between Daisy and her new stepfather. The Earl of Rosslyn built new stables at Easton Lodge, and “my stepfather had such confidence in our fearlessness that he used to let us children ride his young thoroughbreds that were unfit to race and showed temper. It was excellent practice for us, as the horses were often unbroken, and few of them had natural good manners.”15 Daisy even took out a beautiful horse named Crust, who had bucked off Lord Ribblesdale, the Liberal peer, in front of Easton Lodge. Ribblesdale warned Lord Rosslyn that Crust was unfit for any girl to ride, and would savage anyone he could throw, but Daisy leaped determinedly on the horse’s back. “I knew that I must stick on at any price!”16
Blanche Maynard proceeded to have five more children with the Earl of Rosslyn, two sons and three daughters, and soon there were seven children growing up at Easton Lodge. Their life was a secluded one, without parties or social entertainment outside the family, but they had the consolation of living “in a beautiful country place” with “ponies to ride and animals to caress.”17
The girls were educated at home by a devoted tutor and a governess who took a genuine interest in their education, and from an early age, Daisy learned the importance of noblesse oblige. Daisy would accompany her mother on visits to the sick and elderly, with blankets and provisions. She developed a social conscience, and understood that to be a landowner was to be responsible for all who lived upon one’s estate, however lowly. This gave Daisy “a passionate sympathy with the under-dog; a troubled awareness that life for all the world was not as it was in the garden of Easton.”18
By the age of fourteen, Daisy was a beauty in waiting. Even being forced to dress in her mother’s castoffs merely served to offset Daisy’s dazzling ash blond hair and deep blue eyes. The earl was duly instructed to take Daisy to have her looks recorded by Frank Miles at his studio off the Strand, and it was here that Daisy met Lillie Langtry for the first time, and the earl invited Lillie to visit to the Rosslyns’ London mansion. Lillie’s arrival the following evening was watched by Daisy and her little sister, Blanchie, peeping through the banisters as Lillie and Ned arrived in the magnificent entrance hall.
By the following year, Daisy’s nascent loveliness was beginning to captivate admirers, much to the surprise and delight of this self-confessed gawky tomboy, who found “in men’s eyes an unfailing tribute to a beauty I myself had not been able to discern.”19 Such was Daisy’s appeal that her parents knew she could make a match of the highest order. And so it was that at the age of seventeen, before Daisy had been officially launched into society, she found herself at the theater one evening alongside former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, now sitting in the House of Lords as Lord Beaconsfield.
Seated at the Lyceum Theatre, in a box that had been lent for the occasion by Baroness Burdett Coutts, Daisy and Disraeli made an odd couple. Here was Daisy, a tall girl in a white muslin frock with a blue sash,20 alongside her distinguished companion of seventy-three, a regular guest at Easton Lodge. Very few young women could boast of being taken on a “date” by a former prime minister. Daisy stared around her at the glittering audience, the men in evening dress and the ladies bejewelled and dazzling in beautiful gowns. For once, the pearls of wisdom from the lips of the legendary politician and author fell on deaf ears. Daisy had come here to worship Ellen Terry, appearing that night in Romeo and Juliet. The performance made such an impression on Daisy that she begged her stepfather for a volume of Shakespeare, and eventually received an “expurgated” volume of his plays, learning Hamlet by heart.
While marriages across the generations were not unusual by Victorian standards, even Daisy’s mother might have balked at the age difference between her beautiful young daughter and the ancient Lord Beaconsfield. But, while Disraeli had been widowed four years previously, marriage was not on the agenda. Daisy’s visit to the theater had been an audition. Queen Victoria herself had instructed Disraeli to spend the evening in Daisy’s company and see for himself what sort of a wife she might make for Prince Leopold. The youngest son of Queen Victoria had become a frequent visitor to Easton Lodge and had expressed an interest in Daisy. It was true that they had nothing in common. Daisy was a horse-mad tomboy, full of high spirits, while Prince Leopold was a lifelong invalid, a hemophiliac “too delicate in health to ride or to take part in any sport.”21
Disraeli’s report was clearly a glowing one, for soon there came a request f
or a photograph of Daisy. There was just one drawback. Whenever Prince Leopold came to visit Daisy, he was always accompanied by his equerry, Lord Brooke. Eight years older than Daisy, Francis Greville, heir to the Earl of Warwick, or “Brookie” to his friends, was Daisy’s match in temperament. After leaving Christ Church, Oxford, without taking his degree, Brookie had obtained a post as aide-de-camp to Robert Bulwer Lytton, viceroy of India, and traveled in the East before returning to England. Intent on a political career, Brookie had been selected as Tory candidate for the safe seat of Somerset East, and would become a member of Parliament at the next election. Brookie’s people were genuine aristocrats, of ancient lineage, but not particularly wealthy. As far as Daisy’s family was concerned, Brookie could not compete with a prince of the royal blood. But Daisy’s parents, it appeared, were no match for true love. “In Lord Brooke’s eyes I had recognised something that told me, in mute appeal, that his happiness and destiny were inseparably linked with mine.”22
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