The Churchills

by Mary S. Lovell

  The Churchills’ fifth and last child was born on 15 September 1922, and they called her Mary. Despite Clementine’s earlier misgivings about Chartwell, Winston went ahead and, without telling her, put in an offer for the old manor with its eighty acres of neglected hillside complete with stream and stands of old beech woods.17 Possibly his rationale was to save his wife any worry at a difficult time, the last week of her pregnancy. More probably, that was how he justified to himself not telling her, because he wanted the house more than anything he had wanted for a long time and he knew that Clementine would try to talk him out of it. His first offer was not successful, but he finally purchased the house for £5000.*

  While Clementine was still lying in he took Randolph, Diana and Sarah on a surprise day out, driving them down to Chartwell to show them round the property. They were impressed by the dank and gloomy house, which had a touch of the gothic about it, and they were allowed to run wild in the overgrown gardens. Their father’s undivided attention for an entire day was undoubtedly a factor in their enchantment, and they begged him to buy it. Only when they reached Parliament Square on the return journey did he break the news to them that he had already done so. And then he had to tell Clementine. Not surprisingly, she felt he had been underhand with her. Years later she would confide to Mary that it was the only time in fifty years of marriage that he had acted ‘with less than candour towards her’.18 She never entirely forgave him for it; consequently Chartwell was always Winston’s house rather than Clementine’s home, although for the rest of their lives together she dutifully did her best to make it the home he always envisaged.

  It was not a deep rift. They always made a point of ‘never allowing the sun to go down on their wrath’, and even while they were still in disagreement over Chartwell their letters show the same tenderness for each other. So Clementine had evidently decided to forget, if not forgive. Her concern was all financial, and it cannot have been any pleasure to her when she was later proved right to have been worried; although Winston was always confident that he would earn enough by his pen and his political efforts to keep his family, and Chartwell, in the manner to which a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough should live. His vision of his place in the world was an essential part of Winston’s character and of his successes.

  Perhaps it worked in his favour that he was unwell at the time, complaining of abdominal pains, and he was also anxious about the fate of the government which was now in terminal decline. Clementine could hardly help being concerned about him and she was right to be so, for soon afterwards he was rushed to hospital by ambulance in great pain and on 23 October his appendix was removed. This was not then a straightforward operation – mortality rates were high. So Winston was still prostrate, in conditions as close to aseptic as possible, when on 26 October the government fell, as he had feared it would.

  He would not have been a good patient at the best of times, given the dietary regimen and the inactivity imposed on him, and now there was a general election to be fought. It was probably to keep him reasonably calm that in early November Clementine, with baby Mary, then just seven weeks old, travelled to Dundee to campaign for her husband. Winston joined her as soon as he was allowed to do so – certainly earlier than the requisite six weeks normally insisted upon after an appendectomy. He was carried to meetings in an invalid chair and delivered his speeches sitting down. The press gave good coverage to this human-interest story: mother and baby facing unsympathetic crowds on behalf of her sick husband, Churchill the gallant invalid struggling up from his sickbed. But the tide of opinion was wholly against the Liberal Party and Lloyd George.* The poverty and misery experienced in the great cities of the United Kingdom after 1918 did not reflect the anticipation of the men who had fought and won the war that they would return to ‘a land fit for heroes’. The majority the Liberals had enjoyed in the postwar election was swept away on 15 November 1922 and the Tories were the overall beneficiary, but they managed only narrowly to form a government, under Andrew Bonar Law. It was impossible for anyone to disregard the fact that while the Liberals had achieved second position, having polled 5.5 million votes, some four million votes had been cast for the underdog third party, Labour. Bonar Law did not last long at No. 10; he resigned after six months, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Stanley Baldwin took over the Tory leadership.

  For the first time in over twenty years Winston found himself out of office. Even when he lost his ministerial post after the Dardanelles he had remained an MP. He was low and unwell. Later he would describe his position thus: ‘In the twinkling of an eye I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix.’19 Clementine was tired after the birth of her baby, plus the effort and stress of the unsuccessful election campaign. They decided to go abroad for the winter, to recover their strength. They let the London house and rented a villa near Cannes. Called Rêve d’Or, it would feature in many of Winston’s paintings during the six months they stayed there. He returned to England occasionally to escort the children to and from school and to oversee the renovations he had set in motion at Chartwell. Ninety years later, the difference between then and now in the lifestyle of the upper classes is epitomised by a minor detail: Clementine’s insistence that the sewing room be large and airy, because ‘2 or 3 maids will sit & sew in there every day’.

  When they returned to England Winston had time to work on Chartwell and to complete the first two volumes of The World Crisis. This subjective history of the 1914–18 war, including his passionate account of the Dardanelles campaign, was written in order to rehabilitate his status as a political thinker as much as to confirm his decisions as a war leader. His method of composition never changed. He dictated to a typist (or, later on, a team of typists), usually late at night, endlessly walking back and forth in his study, smoking a cigar and sipping at a brandy and soda. Inevitably, given Churchill’s importance in history, this multivolume book has been pored over and dissected ever since. Scholars, as well as writers and politicians of far less ability than Churchill, have declared it to be not a wholly reliable account, although its place in literature was and is almost universally acclaimed. Published in the autumn of 1923, it did much to restore his reputation as a statesman.

  Baldwin’s tenure as Prime Minister did not last long. He called a general election for 6 December on a free-trade ticket but the electorate decided there were more important matters. The Conservatives retained the largest number of seats – 258 – but now the Labour Party had become the major party of Opposition, with 191 seats to the Liberals’ 159. Baldwin formed a new government without an overall majority, then resigned a month later. On 22 January 1924 Ramsay MacDonald formed the first Labour government with the promised support of Asquith and the Liberals.

  Winston was furious. This was not the Liberal Party he had crossed the floor to join – this was a party that supported Socialism, only one step removed from Bolshevism in his opinion. With his wonderful talent for a soundbite, he compared the Liberal support for Labour as ‘not dissimilar from missionaries assisting cannibals’. However, although he was a free-trader he could not, he felt, rejoin the Conservatives because he was not in tune generally with the present aims of the party.

  So a month later when the incumbent suddenly died and there was a by-election for the constituency of Westminster Abbey, he stood as an Independent Anti-Socialist (sometimes called Constitutionalist) and was defeated by only forty-three votes. It was an exciting campaign, in which leading Tories such as his friend Lord Birkenhead as well as Balfour supported his fight against the official – and ultimately successful – Conservative candidate. Freddie Guest organised his campaign and several other Liberal politicians worked tirelessly on his behalf. A-list celebrities such as Sunny Marlborough were coaxed into appearing to ensure maximum newspaper coverage, and Winston toured the small constituency on polling day driving a coach-and-four containing his young family. His defeat, rather than depressing him, seemed to r
einvigorate him and in the next general election, held that autumn, he was elected as Member for Epping in North London with a large majority. Baldwin had ensured he was not opposed by a Conservative candidate.

  In 1924, apart from campaigning Winston had concentrated on the huge amount of work yet to be done at Chartwell. He had employed as architect Philip Tilden, but at times he had almost the same relationship with him as Sarah Marlborough had had with Vanbrugh. On first sight, Tilden found Chartwell a dreary place: ‘very close to the road’ and so overhung by trees that the red bricks were ‘slimed’ with green. ‘Only…the kernel of the old manor, floored and raftered in old oak, had withstood the ravages of wet; the rest was weary of its own ugliness so that the walls ran with moisture and creeping fungus tracked down the cracks and crevices.’ Winston had a clear vision of what he wanted at Chartwell and simply expected Tilden to provide it. This involved transforming the interior of the ancient manor farm, with its high-ceilinged beamed rooms, into his personal domain – a huge study with a bedroom leading from it. This effectively turned the house around, so that instead of facing the shrubbery the front now commanded the best views of his land and the Weald beyond, with a run of French windows on the ground floor taking advantage of the magnificent views. He commissioned a new four-storey wing and a fair-sized terrace. And he envisaged lakes, dams and water gardens – perhaps even a natural swimming pool using the water from the Chart well, which rises on a hill above the house and from which it takes its name. Eventually, he got what he wanted; but just as the fictional Soames Forsyte’s house vastly exceeded its original quotation, so did Chartwell. The original estimate of £7000 in 1922 culminated in bills for over £18,000, by which time architect and owner were barely on speaking terms.20

  But he was now back in the Commons, where he belonged, and Baldwin wanted his expertise, even as an Independent. Winston was fully aware that in terms of parliamentary experience few in the House could beat him, but he had no sense of being courted. He told Clementine that if the Tories offered him a post it would have to be ‘a great one’ in order to tempt him back into the Tory fold. He had no intention of regressing, as he saw it, and intended to refuse any minor office. But when he was summoned to see Baldwin on 5 November he was dumbfounded to be offered his father’s old post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Not even in his dreams had he expected this. When Baldwin had asked him, ‘Will you be Chancellor of the Exchequer?’ Winston would later say he had felt like retorting: ‘Will a duck swim?’ Instead he answered formally that he would be proud to do so, and that as a matter of fact he still had his father’s robes of office. These had been preserved for him by Jennie for almost thirty years. She was always convinced that Winston would need them one day.

  On being asked to comment on his return to the Conservative front benches, he observed: ‘Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.’

  18

  1921–31

  The Twenties

  On 28 July 1921 Gladys had gone to Blenheim for the first time as the wife of the 9th Duke. Despite having been a visitor there for almost twenty years, she did not slip easily into the role of chatelaine and nor was she popular with the tenants or with local society. Consuelo had won their hearts many years earlier, and Gladys was generally regarded as the reason why there had been no Duchess at Blenheim since 1908. Whereas Consuelo had tried hard to merge into what had been an alien environment for her and to do what was expected of a duchess, Gladys felt no such responsibility and simply lived her life as before, throwing parties and other entertainments. But her desire to shock and tease, which had been amusing and appealing in a beautiful young girl, could cause offence when it came from a middle-aged duchess. And though at first blissfully happy at having accomplished his much longed-for marriage, Sunny sometimes found himself squirming at his wife’s behaviour. At their first house party she announced: ‘If we have a daughter we shall call her Syphilis. Lady Syphilis Churchill is such a pretty sounding name.’ One of the guests, Sonia Cubitt,* glanced quickly at Sunny and saw him wince.

  In those days there were never fewer than forty indoor servants, probably the same number employed in the gardens, and another dozen men in the stables. All the footmen had to be over six feet tall in order to wear the uniform of maroon coat with silver brocade, and they still powdered their hair. Gladys told the sculptor Jacob Epstein that she had married a house rather than a man; and in as much as Sunny had sacrificed his life to Blenheim, that was true. He had used Vanderbilt money to shore the house up, refurbishing and renewing, replacing items plundered by previous Dukes, making the gardens beautiful and supporting a lifestyle that he considered suitable to his status. Throughout his adult life he ate off gold plates at Blenheim, even when dining informally. One of Jack Churchill’s sons, a frequent visitor during his childhood, felt that this was an overrated privilege: ‘I was always worried for fear some of the gold would chip off and get mixed with the vegetables.’1

  Soon after Gladys’s arrival, when invitations went out to the local gentry, more apologies than might have been expected were sent in reply. On the day of one such entertainment the Duke was riding past the house of a gentleman who had excused himself because he was going to be away. Unfortunately, Sunny could see that he was very much at home, relaxing in his garden. He never forgave the culprit for this slight.

  Such pinpricks concerning his wife would eventually impinge on this proud man. But except when Gladys became pregnant in January 1922 and miscarried a few weeks later, life went on very much as before, though Sunny became increasingly short-tempered and argumentative. Within two years of their marriage, soon after another miscarriage when she was perhaps in low spirits, Gladys wrote in her diary that his rudeness to her was ‘not very marked in public yet – but that will come. I am glad because I am sick of life here…we will separate perhaps before long and I will then go away for good and ever.’2 It was almost as if she invited the conflict. Meanwhile they still rode together and performed the duties expected of them; they entertained most weekends when in Oxfordshire and travelled regularly in the Mediterranean countries, often gleaning ideas from the great houses in Italy for the gardens at home. The water gardens at Blenheim, the result of this joint research, were installed by Achille Duchêne who had designed and built Sunderland House for Consuelo. Sunny adored this project, spending hours each day overseeing every detail of the work. It took five years to complete. A flight of steps was marked by two large sphinxes, each with the face of Gladys.* Her first biographer, a contemporary, stated: ‘This is the best likeness of her that will ever be seen.’3

  Sunny had never appeared overtly religious. He had attended church as many Englishmen of his generation did because it was the right thing to do and pour encourager les autres. In 1923 he broke with the Anglican Church when as a divorcee he was publicly banned from attending the Oxford Diocesan Conference in his capacity as Lord Lieutenant of the County, an event he had no wish to attend anyway. Out of pique he began going to Catholic services as a non-communicant but a few years later, after taking a course of instruction from a Catholic priest,† he decided that, if possible, he would like to convert to Catholicism. His divorce was of course a hindrance to this ambition.

  Coincidentally, Sunny’s desire to convert was matched by Consuelo’s to heal the breach within the Balsan family. Four years after Jacques and Consuelo’s marriage there were members of Jacques’s conservative family who still felt unable to receive the couple because they had been married outside the Church. There have been many instances throughout history of famous marriage annulments. Perhaps this is what persuaded Consuelo to take the first tentative step of consulting a Catholic lawyer about the possibility of having her first marriage annulled in order to allow her to marry Jacques in the Catholic Church. This was a totally selfless wish, she said in her autobiography, for she was perfectly secure in her Protestant marriage to Jacques and would have happily continued that way until she died. But she knew Jacques was
saddened by the rift that their ‘mixed marriage’ had created within his family. The greatest risk, if her marriage to Sunny were to be annulled, was the matter of the legitimacy of their sons Blandford and Ivor. How ever, investigation revealed that if the marriage was annulled by the Church, the legality of the children’s birth would not be affected. It was a purely ecclesiastical matter and did not affect civil law.

  A number of possible grounds existed for obtaining an annulment, such as a previous marriage, consanguinity or impotence, but the one that fitted the bill for Consuelo was that she had been under age when she was ‘coerced’ into the marriage by ‘force and fear’. Sunny was as keen as she was to seek an annulment. Gladys had been raised as a Catholic anyway, and now Sunny made up his mind that he, too, would convert and marry in the Catholic Church. Consuelo claimed that the first move for an annulment had come from the Duke, but he immediately had his solicitors make a statement to the contrary. It hardly matters; but it is fair to say that the mutual loathing between Sunny and Consuelo made annulment acceptable to both parties.

  Since her marriage to Jacques, Consuelo had known the first true happiness of her life. They both loved their Paris house and had spent months wandering the streets and quays finding beautiful antique furniture, old boiseries (pieces in decorated and carved wood), bibelots and Impressionist paintings to fill it. Money was no object, thanks to the trust fund of $2,500,000 left by her father as well as a massive personal bequest made before his death. Soon, exquisite Louis Quinze furniture stood on Aubusson carpets beneath paintings by Fragonard, Manet and Renoir. Gobelin tapestries hung in the halls lit by crystal chandeliers. Consuelo filled her home with fragrant flowers, and employed the best chefs. It was a jewel of a house, and as soon as the Balsans began entertaining they were quickly taken up by those who made up the Parisian ancien régime.