There seems no doubt about the strength of this attachment, even though they had known each other for only three days. However, in a social circle such as the Marlborough set, the idea of love being the basis for marriage was regarded with the greatest cynicism. Almost always, marriage was an ‘arrangement’ for practical reasons, usually to do with money. A girl’s mother would find her a husband who could provide her with status and security for life; to love or be loved was usually irrelevant. An impoverished man could look to marriage to a rich girl to restore his and his family’s fortune. This, in fact, was the usual pathway into the British aristocracy for rich young American girls, the ‘Dollar Princesses’. Amazingly, here was Randolph, deeply in love and expressing his passion, and proposing marriage. He was due to leave the Isle of Wight that weekend, but of course he postponed his departure. Nothing was to be said to Mrs Jerome, and so his note to Jennie on Saturday from the local hotel was carefully worded: he had missed the boat that morning and would not now leave until Monday; he hoped to see her after church on Sunday.
After two more idyllic days together, Jennie broke the news to her mother, who refused to entertain it as serious; Randolph received Jennie’s reply on Monday morning, before he boarded the boat, which said she could hardly bear his leaving and she hoped to see him again soon. And so a most affectionate relationship began, which was, in time, to have the most significant consequences. Their love was ablaze with all the passion of youth and impetuousness and one would imagine that the situation was settled. There were, however, other players in this game and soon they were all involved. Mrs Jerome, playing for time, forbade her daughter to write to Randolph and he was left to carry on a one-sided correspondence. He returned to Blenheim completely and utterly in love. He told his mother everything and, like Jennie’s mother, she was shocked at the speed with which the situation had developed. Loving Randolph as she did and fearing for his happiness, she warned her son of how hostile his father’s reaction was likely to be: this was a sudden attachment and an American connection was not the most desirable, she told him. Randolph knew, young as he was, that he would have to play his cards carefully. This story is best told through the letters which were written at the time, and which are so revealing.
Randolph wrote a letter to Jennie the following week full of tenderness and devotion: he could not let another day pass without writing; he did not think she had realised how much he loved her. He had told his mother everything, but did not tell Jennie of Frances’ warning about the undesirability of an American connection. He wrote that the short time they had had together would decide his whole future. His language was extravagant and self-indulgent. His next letter protested, even though he had received no reply from her, that she had hardly been out of his thoughts, that the last week seemed like an eternity and he would give his soul for another day together. He called her his first and only love. Then, presumably calling forth all his resources, he wrote to his father in Scotland:
Blenheim. Wednesday, 20 August 1873
I must not any longer keep you in ignorance of a very important step I have taken – one which will undoubtedly influence very strongly all my future life.
I met, soon after my arrival in Cowes, a Miss Jeannette Jerome … and before leaving asked her if she loved me well enough to marry me; and she told me she did.
He insisted to his father that, although this was bound to come as a surprise, his feelings were completely genuine and devoid of exaggeration: ‘I love her more than life itself…’. He continued, ‘You have always been very good to me, and done as much and more for me always than I had any right to expect,’ and protested that now, with Jennie beside him to take an interest in his career, ‘if I were married to her, if I had a companion such as she would be, I feel sure, to take an interest in one’s prospects and career … I think that I might become, with the help of Providence, all and perhaps more than you had ever wished and hoped for me.’1
He penned a depressing picture of how dreary and uninteresting life without Jennie would become for him, and how unmotivated he would be, his energies and hopes blunted and deadened. The letter was characteristic of Randolph, written with the same genuine openness with which he would often speak. However, it suffered from the character defect which marked him always. His capacity to feel was marred by a lack of reason and self-control or the sense of realism which would bring restraint, and he rushed ahead into a situation which, at the very least, was unusual and impractical.
Furthermore, he was so consumed by the need to have his own way that he did not hesitate to manipulate his caring father in order to achieve his own ends. The mention of his prospects and career, which he claimed would interest his father, reflected his parents’ wish to have him settled and in a career, perhaps in politics, in the family seat at Woodstock. His letter is designed to force his father’s hand, and to play on the care and feeling his parents had for him. What he is really saying is that he sees no difficulty in standing as MP for Woodstock if he has Jennie by his side. Without her, his motivation would be low. This was emotional blackmail; he was attacking his parents on what he knew was their weakest point. Worse still, he had so little self-awareness that he did not even realise how inexcusable was the course of action he was openly proposing.
Notes
1. Randolph to Marlborough from Blenheim, 20.8.73, cited by Churchill and Mitchell, pp.23-5.
Chapter Thirteen
A PARENTAL DILEMMA
* * *
For the Marlboroughs, the news caused consternation. To meet and to propose marriage in a matter of days was not a Marlborough habit. Moreover, any hopes Frances and John might have entertained of Randolph solving his financial problems by finding himself a rich heiress now seemed extremely remote. Frances in particular felt her fears for Randolph increase as she contemplated this hasty proposal of marriage. Where would it lead? It ran counter to all the practical common sense that governed the steady and orthodox Duke and Duchess, practised in and familiar with the ways of the world.
The first reaction seems to have come from his eldest sister. Cornelia, who was in Scotland with her father and married by this time to Ivor Guest, later 1st Baron Wimborne, a member of a hugely rich family with whom Cornelia’s future was safe and secure, wrote affectionately but cautiously that she could not help feeling he had chosen hastily. His elder brother Blandford, foolish and self-indulgent at the best of times, surpassed himself with a poem of 15 stanzas which likened Randolph to one who tarried near a funeral pyre, the fatuous effort serving only to aggravate Randolph’s ill temper.
He returned to Cowes for two days. Mrs Jerome did nothing to hinder the development of the relationship, even though neither family had agreed to an engagement. The Prince of Wales was still at Cowes, and when Jennie was presented to him as the girl whom Lord Randolph hoped to marry, the Prince encouraged both of them to persevere with their parents.
Back at Blenheim, Randolph’s passion continued unabated, as did the letters. He expressed his hopes that everything ‘will come right’, as if some great and distant power were in charge of the situation, rather than himself. He now believed for certain that Jennie loved him, and he wished he was great and very rich in order to be more worthy of her. The romantic side of the situation prevailed over the practical details, as he enjoyed being in love: he was going to London to purchase a locket in which to keep the photograph and ‘little bit of hair’ she gave him, the reaction of a teenager rather than a man of 24. In the next sentence he told Jennie that on Monday he was going out to shoot partridges as it was the first of September, a curious and unfortunate train of thought. Randolph was pleased the Prince of Wales approved of her and had expressed pleasure at making her acquaintance, but was presumably unaware of the Prince’s taste, especially for American women.
The issue obviously lay between the Duke and his impulsive son; Frances was always sympathetic to Randolph in particular, but was clearly disappointed at his impulsive choice. The Duke, always caut
ious and thoughtful, took counsel before he replied to his son’s letter, seeking information about Jennie’s father, Leonard Jerome, which was mixed. He was told that Jennie’s father had been financially successful in New York and was highly regarded among his friends and acquaintances but that he almost certainly lived beyond his means. On 31 August he wrote back to Randolph that, although it was unlikely his son could see anything but his own point of view, anyone from the outside ‘cannot but be struck with the unwisdom of your proceedings, and the uncontrolled state of your feelings, which completely paralyses your judgement … You seem blind to all consequences in order that you may pursue your passion.’
The Duke understood his son extremely well by this stage and did not hesitate to point out the consequences of his impetuosity. He went on to give Randolph the benefit of the information that he had received about Jerome: the latter seemed to be ‘a sporting and I should think vulgar’ kind of man, and such a connection something which ‘no man in his senses could think respectable’.
So this shrewd man had assessed the situation for himself, and of course he was to be proved right. He told his son how sorry he was that his affections were so deeply engaged but he had no intention of supporting Randolph’s decision. He concluded by assuring him of his continued affection and care: ‘May God bless and keep you straight is my earnest prayer. Ever your affectionate father Marlborough.’1
This letter has often been quoted, not always in full, by those who support a recently expressed opinion of the 7th Duke as a ‘complete full-blown Victorian prig’. This ill-considered criticism, always too absolute, sits undeservedly on a man who had inherited nothing but family debt and had already gone some way towards repairing the devastation of the last two generations of his family. John Winston was a wise man, full of practical good sense. Everything he says in the letter is well judged. John Winston and Frances had had to deal with the consequences of Randolph’s behaviour at school and university and there was no reason to think that in this latest episode he had behaved in a way which was not characteristic. They must have feared the worst, and rightly so.
Nevertheless, the Jeromes were a family of considerable significance both in New York and Paris. Leonard, Jennie’s father, was a lawyer educated at Princeton and her mother was one of three orphaned heiresses. He had made a fortune on the Stock Exchange in New York, but his lifestyle and attitudes made it difficult for him to retain it, and his wife Clara took her three daughters to Paris to escape the embarrassment of his collection of mistresses. There they received a sound education and were socially accepted into the group around the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, where wealth rather than birth brought status. In 1870, when Paris was besieged by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war, the Jeromes had fled to London, where people were more aloof, as they were in post-war Paris, the Emperor having been deposed and his palace reduced to ruins. In 1873 they attended the Cowes regatta on the Isle of Wight and came to the attention of Randolph, younger son of a premier English Duke.
Unsurprisingly, opposition only served to inflame the impetuous Randolph’s passion. He wrote again to Jennie on 7 September, beginning by saying there was no chance of going to Cowes again, since he did not wish to cross his father when there was no necessity for it. Soon, however, he was lapsing into self-pity. He began to question Jennie’s love:
A love that is ready to go through any trials to surmount any difficulties, to wait if necessary almost a lifetime that looks only to one end and to one goal, that is resolved to look at no other and to be content with no other. Have you that, my darling?
and he added, ‘They are as enduring as life itself and, I believe fully, last and receive their reward beyond the grave.’2
Mrs Jerome had forbidden Jennie to write to Randolph and he had had no news of her at all; he was becoming more idealistic simply because she was so remote. His expressions were born of frustration and the results of his too hasty proposal: he could not move forward into practical considerations, even if he wished to. It is possible to understand the stress of such emotion, and even admire the fact that in the face of a lack of response, his passion never declined but intensified; he agonised that he could not do more to love and protect his beloved Jennie. One wonders whether his mother Frances ever read these letters, and if she was moved by them.
Next there came a formal letter from Mrs Jerome to Randolph, written from Rosetta Cottage on 9 September, perhaps with a wider audience in mind. She assured him that whatever the outcome, he had won her heart by his frank and honourable manner and that she would always look on him with the kindest remembrance. She concluded by advising him to remember that his first duty was to his father, who only had his happiness at heart.
Randolph, meanwhile, still incandescent from his brother Blandford’s clumsy attempts to get involved, showed the latter’s letter to the Prince of Wales, who made an attempt to calm the situation and passed it on to Francis Knollys, his private secretary and close friend to Randolph. Knollys wrote from Abergeldie, the Prince’s estate near Balmoral, sympathising but advising him not to reply to Blandford in the heat of the moment for fear of creating a more serious breach between them. In a later letter he reminded Randolph that Sir E. Thornton, the British envoy in Washington consulted by the Duke about Leonard Jerome, had not yet reported back.
Heartened by all this support and rekindled by a brief meeting with Jennie in London on 15 September, as the Jeromes made their way back to Paris at the end of the summer, Randolph thought he had reason to be optimistic. On the evening of the same day, on his return to Blenheim, he addressed an agricultural dinner in Woodstock and the next day wrote to Jennie, entreating her to lift her spirits and to have hope: he insisted she should use all her influence and powers of persuasion to support his arguments against delay so they could be married in December.
The Marlboroughs continued to worry about their second son, but found themselves increasingly impotent in the face of Randolph’s passion and determination. It is very tempting to talk of young love in all its various forms and to applaud spontaneously when it triumphs over all obstacles, particularly those put forward by parents. But it is advisable to look at situations, even the most romantic ones, with a clear unprejudiced eye before making judgements. The Duke, principled and committed to his family, working hard to recover the lost ground which faced him when he inherited, cared and indeed worried so much about Randolph that he went to the lengths of having Jennie’s father investigated in case of disaster.
Given Randolph’s impetuosity and impulsive behaviour, is it any wonder his parents feared the consequences of this latest escapade? There was nothing to reassure them he was not heading for trouble again. Three days was insufficient time for him to consider making a proposal of marriage, particularly if he had not yet settled his own future; it seems almost as if he were driven by something outside himself. Even more worrying, the situation was fast developing into one where he was more intent on having his own way than on finding a solution to the dilemma he had created.
If Randolph followed his parents’ wishes and managed to gain the Woodstock seat, and he seemed to have had no fear that he might not, then as an aristocrat he would not qualify for an MP’s salary: he and his family would be dependent on John Winston for life. This would be another burden for his father; also, at some point in a discussion with Jennie, Leonard Jerome had warned her, ‘You are no heiress!’ There was even some hesitation on the part of Mrs Jerome, who appeared to believe at some point that Jennie could have done better.
Jennie’s letter to Randolph on 16 September ventured similar concerns. She told him, ‘Sometimes I almost wish I had listened a little more to Mama’s advice … from the beginning she asked me not to think of it – and begged me to forget you.’ And again, later in the same letter, she expressed a similar sentiment:
Believe me, I consider you as free – as if nothing had passed between us – and as I told you last night if your father or mother object in th
e least to our marriage – why cross them? Is it not much wiser to end it all before it is too late?’3
This was partly due to her not being allowed by her mother to write to Randolph, though Mrs Jerome’s motives were never given. It becomes evident towards the end of the letter, however, that two things had upset Jennie: Randolph had ‘heard something against her father’, and, secondly, she had read in the Court Journal a report over which she had wept and raged:
APPROACHING MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE
Miss Jerome, one of the prettiest young ladies that ever hailed from New York and landed at Cowes, is about to marry Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the Duke of Marlborough. The young lady, who has resided for some time in Paris, will receive a splendid dower on her marriage. Mr Jerome is one of the most inveterate of American yachtsmen.
The journal was obliged to print an apology the following week. Recent commentators are inclined to lay the responsibility for the indiscretion at the door of the Jeromes, largely because of the exaggeration of the dowry. Certainly the Marlboroughs would not be inclined to speak to the press; the Duke would obviously be furious at the unwelcome publicity. Whatever the truth of the matter, Jennie’s letter received a sharp riposte from Randolph on 18 September; matters were coming to a head and feelings were running high. His biting sarcasm was well to the fore:
This is the first letter I have had from you and it certainly is an encouraging one. I can assure you that if I am to receive many like it, I can only say that at any rate I was a good deal happier when the letter-writing was only on my side, and when I could leave your answers to my foolish imagination. I am more pained and hurt than you can imagine and if that was your object in writing you may congratulate yourself on having fully attained it … If you cast me off tho’ from your beauty and attractions you will have always admirers at your feet, but you will have trifled with and spurned the truest and most honest love and devotion that man is capable of feeling.
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