The Churchills

by Mary S. Lovell

  In 1860 during the visit of the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales, the Jeromes – one of the few New York families with a ballroom large enough to accommodate three hundred people – hosted a ball in his honour. Even Mrs Astor could not circumvent this, and Clara had no difficulty in getting Knickerbocker matrons to accept her invitations. It was a triumph for her. Jennie was six at the time, and not allowed to meet the man who would become one of her greatest friends in later life.

  Although her social life improved in New York, Clara had never forgotten her dream of returning to Paris to live. She visited it for a large part of each year and her third daughter Leonie was born there,* but it was 1867 before Clara decided that although she loved her husband, she could handle his serial love affairs with more dignity if she lived permanently in Europe. Announcing that she needed to consult French doctors, she and her daughters moved to Paris. She took an apartment at 71 Boulevard Malesherbes in the exclusive eighth arrondissement, within easy walking distance of the Champs-Élysées, the Jardin des Tuileries, the shops in Boulevard Haussmann and the foremost museums and art galleries. Jerome visited them almost at once, and would continue to do so several times a year.

  The Paris of the 1860s was the city of the Impressionists; the only traffic in its wide, tree-lined boulevards was horse-drawn, so there was no noise or petrol fumes to detract from the lovely parks and architecture. Each spring when the warm sunshine turned the chestnut-flower buds into candles, visitors flocked to the city to walk beneath the scented blossom in the Champs-Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne. At night the two-mile-long Rue de Rivoli leading to the Place de la Concorde was illuminated by lamps hanging in every arch of the famous arcades, creating a ‘river of light’ known as le cordon de lumière, giving the impression that the city never slept. For Clara one of the greatest pleasures was shopping in the Rue de la Paix, where the leading fashion houses, the great names such as Worth and Doucet, had their shops, hidden behind modest exteriors. ‘Inside,’ one visitor wrote, ‘the array of lovely dresses, expensive furs and diaphanous lingerie fairly took one’s breath away.’8

  Clara was not the only socially aspiring American matron in Paris. There were two other American women in precisely the same predicament. Rich and equally snubbed by New York society, Ellen Yznaga and, later, Marietta Stevens had moved to Paris for similar reasons. Each had beautiful daughters who were educated to a high level; each was ambitious for her daughters’ prospects, and each had a score to settle with Mrs Astor. All would succeed spectacularly.*

  Clara’s girls adored Paris and all three spoke faultless French and fluent German. Clara held a successful salon, and as an ultra-rich American she and her girls were absorbed without difficulty into the life of the court of the Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, experiencing little social snobbery. Clara began to write her surname ‘Jérôme’, Clarita made her debut into adult society at a glittering ball at the Tuileries before the Emperor and Empress, and Jennie became ‘Mademoiselle Jeannette’.

  The major Wall Street crash of Black Friday 1868 forced Jerome to return hastily to New York, where he sold the Madison Square house and retreated from other investments. This crash hardly affected Clara and her daughters because before she left for Paris Jerome had made her a substantial financial settlement, giving her independence from his investments; the women probably did not even know there was any difficulty, for they lived as they had always lived – as though money did not exist. Nor had Jerome discouraged them: he was a man who lived life to the full, and when he had money he spent it just as fast as any Spencer Churchill heir would have done. He expected his wife and daughters to dress in gowns from the top Paris couturiers.

  The girls had been educated in the same manner as the daughters of Clara’s aristocratic friends. They had private tutors who specialised in languages and music; they rode in the Bois, learned to dance and ice-skate with precision, to play the piano under the tutorship of a master pianist (Stephen Heller, a friend of Chopin),† and regularly attended matinées at the opera. In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, when Paris was besieged by Prussian troops, Clara and her girls fled to England. Jerome met them and set them up in London’s Brown’s Hotel for the winter, but for the summer months he rented the seaside house Villa Rosetta in Cowes. Here, Jerome could race aboard a friend’s yacht, the Dauntless, which had crossed the Atlantic. Soon after Jerome departed for New York* aboard the Dauntless it was deemed safe for Clara and the girls to return to Paris. But the great city had not recovered from the uprising and everything was changed for the worse: the Emperor had been deposed, there was no court, and life seemed very dull. The following year Clara and the girls again travelled to the Isle of Wight for the summer, where the delights of Cowes Week with its racing and the cream of English society offered them a full social life. Furthermore, Clara’s friend the former Empress Eugénie was also spending the summer there. So, it seemed quite natural that the family would return to Villa Rosetta for the third year in a row.

  It was an unusually brilliant Cowes Week in 1873. Apart from the Prince and Princess of Wales, who never missed Cowes because the Prince was an avid yachtsman, Queen Victoria’s second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and his new bride the Grand Duchess Marie, daughter of the Tsar of Russia, also attended. The bride’s brother, the Tsarevich (later the ill-fated Tsar Alexander III), who had visited England for the wedding, was invited to stay with the Queen for several weeks at Osborne House in East Cowes with his wife Maria Feodorovna. And as Maria Feodorovna was the sister of Alexandra, the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra), it was very much a family gathering.

  By Jerome family standards Villa Rosetta was tiny. After their mansion in New York and a palatial apartment in Paris, the hall and stairs of the villa were almost impossibly narrow to accommodate the crinoline dresses required for formal occasions in the early 1870s. But the reception rooms were of a reasonable size, and the women were prepared to play at living in a sweet little seaside cottage. For large parties Mrs Jerome cleverly added a marquee to the side of the house to extend its floor space, accessed through the french doors of the dining room.

  That year, 1873, was also a special one for the Jeromes’ second daughter Jennie (now known as Jeannette), because it was her first year ‘out’ in Society. Of course, she had not been able to experience the joys of a Paris season at the imperial court, as Clarita had done a few years earlier, but it was still exciting. The two girls were formally presented to the Prince and Princess of Wales at a ball at the Royal Yacht Squadron, after which Jennie was officially regarded as an adult and allowed to attend, in the company of Clarita, all the entertainments that Cowes Week had to offer; but both girls were always under the careful chaperonage of their mother. Jennie was raven-haired and dark-eyed, while Clarita – who favoured her father – was fair with blue eyes. The two exceptionally beautiful young women offered a remarkable contrast in colouring, and, as a consequence of their mother’s strict insistence that they practise the piano daily, they played duets to concert-hall standard. Not for them the glazed expressions of fellow guests when a young lady, asked if she would like to play something, would inevitably reply coyly: ‘Well, I do happen to have brought my music with me.’ When the Jerome sisters sat down to play the other guests tended to sit up and listen, and even demand an encore.

  The girls were so busy enjoying themselves that they forgot to write to their father, who unbeknown to them, though not ruined, was daily battling against financial troubles in New York while still regularly sending cheques to Clara. On 7 August he wrote a plaintive note to remind them that two weeks had elapsed since he had had a letter from them:

  I have no doubt that you will see many nice people and will have Cowes all to yourselves as far as Americans are concerned…Do you make it lively and have you secured the Villa Rosetta for another year? etc. I rather like the idea of Cowes next summer and a yacht. Don’t forget, while sitting under your own vine and eating up your own fig tree, that I am awf
ully disappointed if I don’t get my weekly letters.9

  The ball that everyone wanted to attend at Cowes that year was held on Tuesday 12 August. Usually the Cowes Week balls were, and still are, organised by and at the various yacht clubs. But this ball, held in honour of the Tsarevich and his wife, took place on board the naval vessel HMS Ariadne at the personal request of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Ariadne was acting as guard ship to the Regatta and to the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Guests were ferried out to the ship from the Royal Squadron jetty in fleets of launches, and around the Ariadne’s deck the national flags of England and Russia were draped. Unusually, it was a late-afternoon function,* from 3.30 to 7.30 p.m., but it was warm and dry – outdoor balls were always a worry for organisers – so the canvas canopy was not required.

  That Clara had made a sufficient impression on Society for her daughters to be invited was, in itself, something of a coup, for invitations to royal occasions were limited, and even very rich Americans were regarded with a certain amount of suspicion – after all, what was known about them? Of course, there had been the ball for the young Prince at the Jeromes’ home in Madison Square in 1860, and Clara assumed the manner of an exiled French aristocrat who had every right to be included in the most refined society. Perhaps the former Empress Eugénie had introduced her? The coveted gilt-edged invitation read: ‘To meet Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales and Their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Duke Cesarevitch and the Grand Duchess Cesarevitch’ (later Tsar Alexander III and the Empress Maria Feodorovna).† No one knew it, but the scene was set for a momentous meeting.

  Dressed in a cloud of white tulle adorned with fresh flowers, Jennie was determined to dance every dance. According to her, she was dancing a quadrille – a ‘set’ dance – when she caught the eye of Lord Randolph Spencer Churchill. As he watched her dancing, Randolph evidently experienced a coup de foudre not unlike that experienced by his illustrious ancestor two hundred years earlier, when John Churchill had spotted Sarah dancing a saraband at court, and he acted with similar alacrity. No doors were closed to the son of a duke; Randolph immediately engineered an introduction to the delectable American debutante. He secured the next dance too, but – because he was a poor dancer (the spins of the Viennese waltz apparently gave him vertigo) – after an initial circuit of the deck the couple ‘sat out’ and chatted, though always in full view of the chaperones, while the famous Royal Marines Band provided the background music. The instant attraction was mutual.

  Jennie was nineteen – older than many English debutantes experiencing their first Season – and her looks were unusual. Her face was framed by her dark, almost black hair and she had black arched brows over large, lambent brown eyes; her full red lips required no colouring and her high cheekbones made her instantly appear more exotic than the fair complexion and blue eyes of many English girls. Clara was secretly proud of her Native American inheritance from which Jennie’s looks derived, but knew that it would not go down well in either American or British society. When she told her daughters of their heritage because ‘it might help you to understand yourselves’, she also cautioned them never to speak of it to others, as it was ‘not chic’.*10

  Both Clarita and Jennie were always beautifully dressed, usually in creations by Monsieur Worth, Clara’s favourite fashion house in Paris; and Jennie was slender, with the much admired hourglass figure and ‘wasp’ waist that could usually be obtained only by strict lacing. In Jennie’s case, though, not much lacing was required. On her small capable hands with their long fingers she wore the de rigueur tight white kid gloves that had to be eased on like a second skin, stretching each finger of the gloves in succession, until when in place they fitted so perfectly that the outline of the fingernails was evident. Once worn and stretched these costly and exquisite items were ruthlessly discarded, as they never looked so good on any subsequent wearing.* Jennie habitually used a French parfum and always moved in an aura of mild fragrance. But looks and dress aside, what chiefly made her stand out was her vivacity. She had an energy that gave her an unusual radiance, a characteristic that she possessed until her death and which was much commented upon. Furthermore, she was not only naturally intelligent but had received a wider education than that afforded to the average upper-class English girl.

  Randolph was five years older than Jennie; tall, boyishly slim and slightly pop-eyed (although this feature was not so pronounced then as it would later become), he wore the drooping moustache which was the fashion of the day (later he would wear it waxed and twirled) and he dressed beautifully. His manner was casually confident – that of an aristocrat at home among his own kind, but quietly reserved with those outside this tight milieu. He was clearly mesmerised by the vibrant and beautiful American girl, but what immediately attracted Jennie to him was his conversation. She was spellbound as soon as he began to speak, and just as quickly he realised that Jennie was not just a fashion-plate but was well educated, intelligent and not afraid to voice a well considered opinion. Randolph, regarded as one of the most eligible bachelors of the day, was never short of dance partners, but there is no evidence to suggest that before meeting Jennie he had ever been seriously involved with any woman. Enough was said within minutes of their first meeting to intrigue each of them, and at some point, to judge from later correspondence, they must have discussed Randolph’s hopes for his future, to which Jennie had responded with enthusiasm.

  The couple would not have been allowed to spend the entire ball together. Nor would they have expected to do so. After the time taken for a set of country dances, and perhaps a discreet waltz – half an hour at most – Mrs Jerome would have politely broken up the tête-a-tête and whisked Jennie away to dance or talk with someone else. To be the object of too marked an interest by an unattached gentleman was considered unbecoming to a girl; it compromised her and marked her as ‘fast’. The couple would have been able to manage another short chat later, over an ice, perhaps, or a glass of champagne, but otherwise they would have had to be content with looking out for each other on the crowded deck.

  Before the ball ended, at Jennie’s strong urging, Clara was persuaded to invite Randolph and his companion Colonel Edgecombe* to join them after the ball for a late dinner at Villa Rosetta.† Small the seaside villa may have been, but Mrs Jerome kept house in style, and she had brought over her own chef from Paris so that her dinner parties were not only smart but exceptionally well catered. Jennie recalled how that evening she and Clarita played duets for their guests and how they had all ‘chatted merrily’. We know that Randolph was already badly smitten, for during dinner, only a few hours after he first clapped eyes on her and while watching the sisters play a duet, he told Colonel Edgecombe of his intention to make ‘the dark one’ his wife. And Jennie evidently knew very well what was happening, for when she was undressing that night she confided in her sister that she thought Randolph would propose to her. Clarita hooted derisorily: Jennie had never yet shown any particular interest in a man, Clarita did not consider Randolph ‘dashing’ enough, and they had only just met.

  The next day (a Wednesday) the pair contrived to meet while Jennie was taking her morning walk with her sister and Randolph exercised his little pug dog, ‘Puggles’, which had travelled with him to Cowes. Reporting this supposedly accidental meeting, Jennie prevailed upon her mother to invite her new friend to dinner again the following evening, and, because of the long English summer evenings when it is daylight until 10 p.m., they were later allowed to walk together in the garden. It was only their third meeting, and the first time they were alone together without a chaperone. Randolph took full advantage of this unexpected bonus and proposed to Jennie, whom he was still addressing as ‘Miss Jeannette’. It was a whirlwind that had each of them in thrall and she accepted him without a moment’s hesitation.

  Randolph was due to leave on the following day (Friday), but he deliberately missed the ferry so that he was effectively marooned on the island and had no alternative bu
t to stay over until Monday morning. This enabled him to see Jennie and her family in church on Sunday morning. Again he was invited to dine at Villa Rosetta, although Clara told her daughter somewhat grimly: ‘That young man has been here rather a lot.’ When he finally sailed from the island aboard the 7 a.m. ferry on Monday morning, Randolph spent the entire eighty-minute voyage writing to ‘Dearest Jeannette’ and promising to break their news to his parents. Jennie, meanwhile, told her mother and wrote to her father. Perhaps the dewy-eyed couple anticipated no obstacles, but they soon realised what they were up against when they encountered strong opposition from both sets of parents.

  Mrs Jerome, first to hear the news, told her daughter briskly that their betrothal was all nonsense, over-hasty and not properly thought out. Without doubt, marriage to the son of a duke conferred social cachet, but he was only a younger son, after all: the heir had a healthy son; and Mrs Jerome valued her lovely and talented daughters highly. She immediately wrote to her husband asking him to return to England by the next available ship. Probably by the same mail, Mr Jerome received a letter from Jennie explaining that she had become engaged, but omitting the name of her fiancé. He replied at once, saying that he hoped that it would work out for her:

  I always thought that if you ever did fall in love it would be a very dangerous affair. You were never born to love lightly. It must be way down or nothing…Not so Clara [Clarita]; happily not so. Such natures [as yours] if they happen to secure the right one are very happy but if disappointed they suffer untold misery. You give no idea of who it is…Do you apprehend any serious opposition from me supposing it comes to that? Hardly. Yet you know my views. I have great confidence in you and still greater in your mother and anyone you would accept and your mother approves I could not object to. Provided always he is not a Frenchman or any of those continental cusses.11