The Churchills

by Mary S. Lovell

  The London Seasons of 1896 and 1897 were, it is generally accepted, the most brilliant ever known and eclipsed those of other European capitals by the sheer diversity and extravagance of the entertainments and events laid on. These were the days of the great town mansions – Devonshire House, Lansdowne House, Apsley House and Montagu House,* to name a few – and of legendary hostesses such as Lady Londonderry and Lady de Grey (Jennie’s one-time rival). But the centre was Marlborough House. The Queen, who was nearly eighty, celebrated the sixtieth year of her reign in June 1897, and the Diamond Jubilee celebrations were the chief reason for the lustre and quality of that London Season. With Victoria living mostly in seclusion at Osborne and Windsor, Society in London revolved around Marlborough House.

  Consuelo and Marlborough were invited everywhere, and as she got to know people she was less intimidated and even began to enjoy herself. Full of youthful energy, she took pleasure in the wonderful balls, peopled, she recalled, by ‘beautiful women and distinguished men’ who danced energetic polkas and graceful waltzes by Strauss and Waldteufel, to orchestras brought over from Vienna, as well as old-fashioned set dances such as quadrilles – far less lively, but requiring knowledge of the intricate steps and patterns if one were not to cause embarrassing chaos. ‘We dined out nearly every night and there were always parties, often several, in the evening…one had to exercise discretion in one’s acceptances in order to survive the three months,’ she wrote.12 All this was without counting the races, the riding in Hyde Park, afternoon parties at Ranelagh and Roehampton, and inter-regimental polo matches at Hurlingham. On Fridays the Marlboroughs generally returned to Blenheim where they entertained twenty or thirty guests until Monday, then all travelled back to town. For Consuelo the chief worry was the minefield that was etiquette – not mere manners, in which Alva’s training had been first-class, but knowing the order of precedence for prickly aristocrats who knew to a semicolon what their place was in society. Allow one titled matron in to dinner ahead of her rightful place, and a hostess would never be forgiven by anyone displaced by the error. Eventually Consuelo was lucky enough to obtain an order of precedence with the names of all those of rank printed in the correct order. It became her bible. Otherwise, for such a young woman not raised in this closed society she appears to have been amazingly sure-footed.

  After the fruit course it was the role of the hostess, or the senior woman present, to rise, and at this signal all the ladies would follow her, leaving the gentlemen to their port and cigars. At Consuelo’s first major dinner party she was about to rise when Sunny’s youngest aunt, Lady Sarah Wilson – who had patronised Consuelo from the day she arrived in England – rose to her feet. All the ladies followed her example. Consuelo stiffened, immediately aware that it was a deliberate attempt by Lady Sarah to assert her dominance. She heard her neighbour, Lord Chesterfield, say: ‘“Never have I seen anything so rude; don’t move!” I nevertheless went to the door and meeting her, inquired in dulcet tones, “Are you ill, Sarah?” “Ill?” she shrilled. “No, certainly not, why should I be ill?” “There surely was no other excuse for your hasty exit,” I said calmly. She had the grace to blush; the other women hid their smiles, and never again was I thus challenged.’13

  For such a novice Consuelo seems to have sailed with aplomb through the difficulties of hosting royal weekends with all the potential tripwires in matters of etiquette and precedence. Other than this, royal house parties were not very different from ordinary ‘Friday to Monday’ visits during the winter months when there was a strict routine which Consuelo followed – though always, it seems, she was on the outside looking in:

  The number of changes of costume was in itself a waste of precious time. To begin with, even breakfast, which was served at 9.30 in the dining room, demanded an elegant costume of velvet or silk. Having seen the men off to their sport, the ladies spent the morning round the fire reading the papers and gossiping. We next changed into tweeds to join the guns for luncheon, which was served in the High Lodge or in a tent. Afterwards we usually accompanied the guns and watched a drive or two before returning home. An elaborate tea gown was donned for tea, after which we played cards or listened to a Viennese band or to the organ until time to dress for dinner when again we adorned ourselves in satin, or brocade, with a great display of jewels…one was not supposed to wear the same gown twice. That meant sixteen dresses for four days.14

  Her next hurdle was a Churchill family Christmas at Blenheim, when generations of brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins all came together. Consuelo could not decide which occasions were more traumatic – the royal visits or the family gatherings.

  In January 1897 she conceived her first child and it was a great relief to know that at last she had ‘done her duty’ towards forging the next link in the chain. But it meant that when the couple moved to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire for the foxhunting season Consuelo was unable to ride, so while Sunny hunted most days, she spent the interminable months reading German philosophy. Her sitting-room window overlooked a pond where a former butler had drowned himself. ‘As one gloomy day succeeded another,’ she wrote, ‘I began to feel a deep sympathy for him.’

  Marlborough leased Spencer House, overlooking Green Park in London, for Consuelo’s confinement, and on 18 September their first son John Albert Edward (named after his godfather, the Prince of Wales) William (after Consuelo’s father, also a godfather) John (after the 1st Duke) was born. As the heir he was always called ‘Blandford’, of course, but Consuelo called him ‘Bert’. At Blenheim the staff were jubilant, firing off salutes from the roof as though for a royal birth and donning their most formal dress at a celebration ball given for the servants and villagers. The Dowager could heave a sigh of relief that the ducal line was safe. Winston was now out of the equation, and Jennie, writing to tell him that Consuelo had given birth to a son, reminded him to write to congratulate Sunny. ‘He is very fond of you,’ she added.15 At the time Winston was working on his first book, a novel that has been described as a ‘Ruritanian romance’, into which he poured many of his romantic ideals and ambitions and invested his hero, the eponymous Savrola, with a good number of his own characteristics, ambitions and beliefs.*

  While Consuelo was recovering from Blandford’s birth, Marlborough met a young woman called Gladys Deacon who was visiting London from Paris, where she lived with her mother and three sisters. Gladys (she pronounced her name to rhyme with ‘ladies’)16 was only sixteen and not yet ‘out’ in society, but she was extremely beautiful, bright and entertaining. American by birth, she was wholly European in upbringing, and Marlborough was captivated by her. When he introduced Gladys to his wife, thinking they had much in common and that Gladys might cheer up Consuelo, he could have had no suspicion of the impact Gladys would have on their future lives.

  Gladys had been raised amidst trauma, dissension and scandal. Her mother Florence was said to be so beautiful that when she entered a room it had the same effect as if a crystal chandelier had crashed to the ground.17 Florence had married for money a rich and handsome millionaire, Edward Parker Deacon, whom, however, she did not love, and the marriage was always stormy. It eventually ended when Deacon shot his wife’s lover in Paris. The man died, but Deacon was only convicted of unlawfully wounding his victim ‘but without intent to cause death’ he was sent to prison for a year. Gladys was eleven years old. The family split up at this point but when Deacon was released he took custody of the children – except Gladys, who was kidnapped by her mother from her boarding school. These scandalous events, in addition to divorce proceedings in which Deacon accused his wife of ‘criminal adultery’,* were played out in newspaper headlines of which Gladys was not left in ignorance. Eventually, she was returned to her father, who took her to New York to be reunited with her sisters. Her education continued in Newport and Boston, and though their home in Newport was almost opposite Alva’s Marble House the Deacons did not move in the same circles as the Vanderbilts, so Consuelo and Gladys had never met th
ere.

  Gladys had been fourteen when the Marlborough engagement made headlines; probably it never occurred to her that Consuelo might be an unwilling bride, since Gladys saw the marriage to the young Duke as a fairy-tale, exactly the sort of happy ending she dreamed of for herself. She wrote to her mother on the subject: ‘If I was only a little older I might catch him yet. But hélas! I am too young though mature in the arts of woman’s witchcraft and what is the use of one without the other…’18 It seems a curious letter for a girl to write to her mother; but then, Florence had done the same thing as a teenager. When she was fifteen and about to leave the convent, Gladys was allowed to go to France on vacation with her mother. She preferred this to visiting New York, where she felt she was always gossiped about as ‘the daughter of those Deacons’.19 She was still living in Paris with her mother three years later when her father, who had become insane, died of a ‘general paralysis of the brain’ (syphilis).

  In the autumn of 1897 Mrs Deacon took sixteen-year-old Gladys to London, and there they were introduced to the Duke who had figured largely in Gladys’s girlish daydreams. He could hardly have known of her fantasies, of course, and it is surprising that he was not put off by the scandal that still clung to Florence. However, the attractive women and their innate good manners were hard to overlook, and the fact that Gladys had been almost a neighbour of Consuelo’s in Newport and so might have a lot in common with her may have been a deciding factor. Anyway, Sunny was taken enough with Gladys to invite her to stay at Blenheim. Consuelo, still convalescing from the birth of Blandford and glad of a confidante, even one four years younger than herself, was charmed: ‘Gladys…was a beautiful girl endowed with a brilliant intellect. Possessed of exceptional powers of conversation, she could enlarge on any subject in an interesting and amusing manner. I was soon subjugated by the charm of her companionship and we began a friendship.’20 Soon, however, Gladys had to return to Europe for the final stage of her education, which included the study of German, Latin, Italian and mathematics. Her classical beauty attracted the most famous artists of the day – Paul-César Helleu, Giovanni Boldini, Jacques-Émile Blanche – all of whom portrayed her and became her friend. There is no doubt that she was highly intelligent. At this point she began to collect books and read all the poetry she could lay her hands on. She and Consuelo corresponded, but it would be another four years before Gladys again entered the lives of the Marlboroughs, when she was invited to Blenheim for a six-month visit.

  Ivor Spencer Churchill, Consuelo’s second and always her favourite son, was born in October 1898. And having provided the ‘heir and spare’ (the phrase she is credited with having coined), Consuelo lay back after her travail and basked in the knowledge that she would now be allowed ‘a certain measure of the pleasures of life’. Goosie was thrilled, greeting her daughter-in-law cheerily with the words: ‘You are a little brick! American women seem to have boys more easily than we do!’21

  In the following months Consuelo was able to join her husband foxhunting in the shires, acquitting herself well under super critical eyes. One expedition was particularly memorable. ‘There was a gate through which a crowd was pressing; there was also a fence under arching branches with a drop on the other side. Marlborough chose the fence. With my heart in my mouth I followed…and I ducked in time to avoid the branches. When I looked back and heard Angela Forbes* say, “I am not going over that horrid place,” I felt my day had begun auspiciously.’22

  She also organised two successful royal parties at Blenheim that year, including one for the German Emperor together with his uncle and aunt the Prince and Princess of Wales, putting in all the effort that such visits entailed. Marlborough ought to have been immensely proud of his Duchess, but they quarrelled constantly in private.

  Marlborough’s long-held political aspirations were at last fulfilled when, at the outbreak of the Boer War in October 1899, he was named Postmaster General to the Armed Forces. The war was also to be a springboard for other members of the Churchill family – Jennie, Consuelo, Lady Sarah Wilson, but mostly, of course, for Winston.

  9

  1896–9

  Looking for Trouble

  In September 1896 Winston sailed for India, but with reluctance. He had been closely watching events unfolding in South Africa for the past six months and rightly foresaw that there would soon be major problems there with the Boers. And he was actively looking for trouble – some fracas in which an ambitious young subaltern might get noticed and marked out for rapid promotion. Without any financial resources behind him, such a record – perhaps with a medal or two, he reasoned – would help him enormously in the future when he intended to stand for Parliament. So before his regiment embarked for India he attempted, frantically but unsuccessfully, to get a transfer to South Africa.*

  In letters to his mother he gloomily forecast that his time in India would be wasted and he would simply vegetate there unless he could ‘get hold of the people’ who might further his career. He had already decided that he had made a serious mistake in joining the Army and should have gone directly into politics, though he knew his father would never have sanctioned this at the time. ‘Had I come to India as an MP – however young and foolish,’ he wrote to Jennie, ‘I could have had access to all who know and can convey. As a soldier my intelligent interests are supposed to stop short at Polo, racing & Orderly Officer.’1 Later he would write, ‘You can’t realise how furiously intolerable this life is to me when so much is going on a month from here.’ One letter must have puzzled Jennie, who had thrown in her lot wholeheartedly with the Tory Party. Winston revealed that his political views were Liberal in all but name, and that he sometimes caused mayhem in the mess when he expressed them. ‘Were it not for Home Rule – to which I will never consent – I would enter Parliament as a Liberal,’ he wrote. ‘As it is, the Tory Democracy will have to be the standard under which I shall range myself.’2

  Historians might reasonably reflect that Winston’s period in India was far from wasted, since it provided him with time to think about what he really wanted from life and started him on his literary career. However, it seems he had already decided upon his ultimate ambition, for it was at this point that he began telling people that one day he expected to be Prime Minister.3 Mostly his listeners laughed, thinking he was joking, and yet most would agree later that there was something special about this unusual young officer.

  Meanwhile, he occupied himself with a butterfly collection, a growing library, racing, polo (a sport he loved – he rarely played fewer than eight chukkas each evening) and some roses he had planted, among them varieties called ‘Gloire de Dijon’ and ‘La France’. ‘Every morning I can cut about 3 great basins full,’ he wrote to his mother one January day. He also mentioned that he had met the daughter of the Resident of Hyderabad, Pamela Plowden. ‘I must say she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen – “bar none” – as the Duchess Lily says. We are going to try and do the City of Hyderabad together – on an elephant,’ he wrote.4

  Pamela was Winston’s first love; he held her image in his heart for years, and had he been able to afford to marry then, it seems certain he would have done so. A letter to her at that time shows him laying down a marker: ‘I have lived all my life seeing the most beautiful women London produces…Never have I seen one for whom I would for an hour forgo the business of life. Then I met you…Were I a dreamer of dreams, I would say…“Marry me – and I will conquer the world and lay it at your feet”…[But] for marriage two conditions are necessary – money and the consent of both parties. One certainly, both probably, are absent. And this is all such an old story.’5 He had first to make his name and his fortune, but for the next three years he wrote frequently to her and they met whenever possible.

  Having been a diffident student at school he now developed a keen desire to learn. He spent most mornings reading voraciously, his juvenile taste for the works of Dickens, Thackeray and Wordsworth having given way to Plato, Gibbon, Darwin and Aristotle as
well as Hart’s Army Lists, Jane’s Fighting Ships and transcripts and reports of political speeches. He had been fond of Thomas Babington Macaulay at Harrow, where he could recite pages of the Lays of Ancient Rome.* Now he tackled Macaulay’s multivolume History of England.† He admired the rolling phraseology, and there can be no doubt that Macaulay’s work coloured Winston’s perception of history. He could recite from The History verbatim, but in later life, when critics occasionally queried factual details in his own books, he would admit ruefully that without a tutor to warn him of the drawbacks he had simply accepted Macaulay’s racy accounts as wholly fact.

  As part of this self-education process he asked Jennie to send him printed parliamentary records. To her dismay she found there were a hundred volumes at fourteen shillings each: she sent him twenty-seven. Once embarked upon this course of study Winston began to regret not having obtained the gloss of Oxbridge, but he admitted to Jennie that he was reluctant, now, to spend time learning the necessary Latin and Greek, so that was not an option for him.6 And when Jack expressed a wish to go to Oxford, Winston wrote that he was greatly in favour and would be prepared to take out a personal loan of £500 for the purpose, proposing that Jack could repay him at some later date. ‘I envy Jack the liberal education of a University,’ he wrote. ‘What a strange inversion of fortune – that I should be a soldier and Jack at college.’7