Churchill's Grandmama

by Margaret E. Forster

  The Times described her work:

  In all its doings the pity of a kind heart and the method of a strong understanding are perceptible. Together they have created a model of what such a fund should be, than which whoever hereafter desires to relieve Irish scarcities will find none more humane and more honest.

  Of the many personal thanks given her, particularly moving were the 20 young girls drawn up on the station platform from St Mary’s Blind School, to which the Duchess of Marlborough ‘has been a kind and consistent benefactress’.

  Queen Victoria sent her friend a letter of personal thanks and commendation which carried considerable warmth and affection:

  Windsor Castle

  April 19th 1880

  Dear Duchess

  I, as everyone is, am filled with admiration at the indefatigable zeal and devotion with which you have so successfully laboured to relieve the distress in Ireland.

  She added:

  I am therefore anxious to mark my sense of your services at this moment when alas! they will so soon be lost to Ireland, and wish to confer on you the Third Class of the Victoria and Albert Order. I will wait till you come over to invest you with it.

  Believe me always,

  Yours affectionately

  Victoria R.I.3

  The Victoria and Albert was a rare tribute: worn by the Queen herself on state occasions, this is said to be the first instance of its being conferred on anyone outside the Royal Family.

  Later Frances gave this letter, so highly prized, to her grandson Charles, by then the 9th Duke, to place in the archives at Blenheim. Her words on that occasion were:

  I may seem a useless old woman now, but this letter will show you I was once of some importance and did good in my day.

  Perhaps she foresaw the injustice history would impose upon her achievement. Charles, in many ways a sensitive and perceptive man, later presented the precious letter to the Congress Library in Washington.

  Notes

  1. Frances’ letter to The Times, 18 December 1879.

  2. Frances’ final letter to The Times, 21 April 1880.

  3. Queen Victoria to Frances, 7th Duchess of Marlborough, with grateful thanks to the Library of Congress in Washington and by kind permission of the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE SAD AFTERMATH

  * * *

  On 1 May 1880 Frances and her husband returned to Blenheim. After the pressures, pains and stresses of recent years Frances, now 58, could look forward to the quiet pleasures of Palace life, with no more to trouble her than finding husbands for her two unmarried daughters, Georgiana and Sarah, now aged 20 and 15 respectively. There was to be happiness for her, now, in the emergence of Randolph as a major and popular political figure, although her daughter-in-law Jennie still caused anxiety, and errant son Blandford was not yet finished inflicting social humiliation on his parents. A major new responsibility, her grandson Winston, was also about to emerge, engaging once more her capacity to respond to the needs of the vulnerable. Her work with him was to bring unimaginable results.

  Her most pressing concern, however, was to share with her husband his real anxiety about the future of Blenheim itself. Their income was based almost entirely on land revenue, which was steadily declining in the face of the Agricultural Depression. Even before they left for Ireland, the estate had been in financial difficulty; a crisis was looming and John Winston had to find extra revenue if Blenheim were to survive. The problem had been exacerbated by the fact that his steward, who had been entrusted with the running of the estate in his absence, had performed poorly and so high-handedly he had offended the tenants and local community. The consensus at present is to criticise the Duke, or even condemn him, for the steps he took, when in fact he had no alternative. Apart from land, his only resources were the Palace and its contents. He was a wise and steady man, supported by similar qualities in his wife; neither was given to rash or ill-founded decisions.

  It was obvious, however, that the only choice was to sell some of Blenheim’s treasures. John Winston did not have the option, available to his son and grandson when they met with the same financial problem, of a strategic marriage into American money. The choice of what was to go had to be subtle. He and Frances shared a strong sense of Blenheim’s heritage and the great achievements of the 1st Duke, and he needed something of high value which could be disposed of without damaging this heritage. His choice was perfect.

  The Marlborough Gems were not part of the principal Blenheim tradition. Collected by the 4th Duke, they had been his particular fascination and his special interest. Their sale would remove nothing integral to Blenheim. Man of principle that he was, John Winston took Counsel’s opinion, to establish he had the right to sell, before he put the jewels up for sale in 1875, when they realised 35,000 guineas. Although the value of farmland was in decline, land for building was a different matter. In 1875 he was also able to sell 7,500 acres of land in Buckinghamshire to Ferdinand de Rothschild for £240,000, which became the site for Waddesdon Manor.

  Yet, when John Winston and Frances returned from Ireland, the original problem remained. Official government funding of the post of Viceroy actually covered only about half the cost; the rest was traditionally borne by the appointee. The financial pressures on those who served as Viceroy were widely acknowledged. Thus John Winston and Frances’ period of nearly three and a half years in Dublin had drained them of between £60-90,000. In addition, Palace records show that, from the mid-1860s, he was paying off the large loans his father had been forced to take out when he inherited a virtually bankrupt Blenheim.

  The Duke was forced to sell again, this time the Sunderland Library. His friend Earl Cairns, the Lord Chancellor, enabled him to push through Parliament the Blenheim Settled Estates Act, which freed the Blenheim chattels from entail, and the sale became possible. So, the government disregarding The Times suggestion to buy the Library for the nation at a cost of £40,000, a sale on the open market raised £56,581. Eighteen thousand precious books were auctioned during 1881 and 1882. Historian A.L. Rowse commented that the Prince of Wales could have bought it with a fraction of what he spent on his vulgar social life, or the Queen from what she saved for her family.

  The splendid collection of books, monument to the scholarly tastes of the 3rd Earl of Sunderland, passed under the hammer. It contained early editions of the classics; a large selection of Bibles and Testaments in various languages from early presses; a large collection of Renaissance authors, including a volume of the Valdarfur Boccaccio; a greater number of early books printed on vellum than any private library in Europe; large collections of English county histories, medieval chronicles and Americana. There was an extraordinary full section of English pamphlets and tracts ranging from the reigns of Elizabeth I to Queen Anne, a large number of books on canon and civil law, and a unique collection of French controversial tracts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  All that now remains in the Long Library at Blenheim are the original handwritten catalogue of the Library and the auction catalogue of Puttick and Simpson, who sold the Sunderland Library. It is sad to read through this and think of the precious books being scattered throughout the world; the Duke’s anxiety at having to do this was possibly one of the factors contributing to his early death. Modern criticism of the Duke for this desperate act amounts almost to vituperation. It is seen as opening the floodgates to his self-willed and self-indulgent heir, who used the breaking of the entail to justify massive sales of the Blenheim picture collection, one of the finest in the land. The criticism is ill-informed and pays no heed to the stark financial reality facing John Winston, nor to the fact that had the Duke lived a normal life span it would have been many years before the 8th Duke inherited. John Winston certainly did not foresee, and would not have tolerated, the lengths to which his son was to go.

  Magnificent though the Library was, one of the finest collections in private hands in Europe, it was not integral to Ble
nheim. It arrived as a consequence of an unpaid mortgage the 1st Duke made to the 3rd Earl Spencer, father of the 3rd Duke. A subsequent minor sale of enamels from the collection realised £8,226. Again, these were a specialist interest, peripheral to the main history of the Palace, having arrived almost by accident as a gift in the 4th Duke’s time. John Winston had again targeted a non-essential area of Blenheim.

  Frances’ return to Blenheim was overshadowed by the powerful anxieties and decisions weighing down her husband. The problem of marriage for her next daughter, Georgiana, was comfortably solved quite soon with a very suitable match to George Curzon, later Earl Howe. They were married in the January of 1883. At Blenheim the Palace continued to receive attention; this time parquet was being laid in their drawing-room.

  Within a month, however, Frances had the hardest of all blows to bear: the sudden death of her steadfast and caring husband on 5 July 1883. He had resumed his Parliamentary career and spoken in the Lords only a week earlier, typically on a matter of moral principle, opposing the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill. Frances was a woman of sensitivity and feeling, allied to which qualities was an inner strength she seemed able to draw on in the face of pain and distress. She needed this now. The depth of her grief on her husband’s sudden and untimely death can only be imagined. She had suffered family losses earlier; now, at the time of her husband’s death, her brother Harry, the 5th Marquess of Londonderry, and her youngest sister Adelaide both died at a young age. She had recently lost her step-brother Frederick, the 4th Marquess of Londonderry, and her sister Alexandrina, Countess of Portarlington, who had been only 51. She was the only one left of her generation, always a pitiful and unenviable position.

  The Duke’s body, after lying in state in the Great Hall at Blenheim, where 3,000 of the tenantry, staff and local population filed past his coffin, was laid to rest in the vault beneath the Blenheim Chapel. Two memorials bear witness to the love and regard for this ‘serious, honourable and industrious’ Christian gentleman: the esteem in which he was held locally is represented by the lovely stained-glass east window above the altar in the parish church at Woodstock, installed by the subscription of his friends and fellow-parishioners. Frances interrupted the simplicity ordained by Sarah, the 1st Duchess for the family place of worship in the Blenheim Chapel, and erected a gracious memorial statue by Sir Joseph Boehm. The statue is poignantly telling in its combination of strength and gentleness. She chose the moving inscription:

  eminent for his public and private virtues … true son of the Church of England, ever anxious to broaden and deepen her foundations in the hearts of the people … wisdom, courtesy and liberality,

  concluding with her own grief:

  a sorrow only to end with life itself to his mourning, loving and devoted wife … fond remembrance of forty years of devoted wedlock.

  The Duke died of angina pectoris at the age of 61. Without doubt, the years of anxiety over his sons, the struggle of maintaining financial stability at Blenheim and the unceasing round of duties and engagements as Viceroy had all played a part.

  Modern history takes at best a dismissive view of John Winston, but the unworthiness of this judgement is made clear by the high regard in which he was held in his own time. A Figaro cartoon emphasises succinctly how his contemporaries judged him: underneath a figure of the Duke a caption borrows from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, quoting the sea captain’s reply to Viola’s challenge, ‘Who governs here?’ ‘A noble Duke in nature as in name.’

  To set against her great loss Frances had some recompense: success for Randolph. For the first time, she could relax and enjoy her son’s achievements. He now began to fulfil the potential which she and John Winston had long dreamed of but, even more satisfying for her, others were aware of his success. In the early 1880s he enjoyed a meteoric rise in the House of Commons, revealing a new sense of purpose as soon as the new Parliamentary session opened. The Duke and Duchess’s deferred and often disappointed hopes began to be realised. He invited Lord Salisbury, one of the most influential men in the Conservative party and a future Prime Minister, to speak in his Woodstock constituency. Salisbury stayed at Blenheim, of course.

  The impact Randolph made in a matter of months was remarkable. His recent experience in Ireland had given him a sensitive awareness of the complex issues in that neglected country. His depth of knowledge was far superior to that of his fellow MPs who had had little contact with Ireland. Unbelievably, Gladstone had only visited Ireland once, Disraeli never. In other matters, however, Randolph was ill-prepared: he had a poor grasp of domestic political issues and knew little about foreign affairs. Fortunately, he had the luxury of being in Opposition, which suited his natural inclination to attack, and of being in a party demoralised by its recent landslide defeat; the Liberals sweeping into power in the 1880 election by turning a deficit of 151 votes into a majority of 146.

  The House of Commons was ripe for the impact Randolph made. The Conservatives had no one to stand up in debate to Prime Minister Gladstone and the talented team he led. The great orator Disraeli was now in the Lords and the Opposition was led by Sir Stafford Northcote, who lacked the devilry that Randolph was to bring. Experienced, well-informed and always well-prepared, Northcote was held in respect but that was not enough. He lacked the fire to rouse his recently defeated members and left a gap into which Randolph was to step.

  It would not have mattered which issue gave Randolph his opportunity but, again, he was lucky. Charles Bradlaugh had refused to swear the Oath of Allegiance, demanding the right to affirm loyalty instead. When the matter was tested in the House of Commons, Gladstone and his Cabinet were absent, needing to seek re-election to Parliament, as those obtaining office were obliged to do. Lord Northcote supported the line the government was taking on this quite minor issue but there was opposition led by, among others, Sir Henry Wolff, MP for Portsmouth, and John Gorst, MP for Chatham, both Conservatives. Randolph joined them, and the wit and style with which they peppered the government and their own leader with objections and arguments made the latter look ridiculous. Members stood and cheered. The drama of Randolph’s style was established when he threw a pamphlet Bradlaugh had written on the floor and jumped on it, causing uproar.

  Randolph, Wolff and Gorst took over the Opposition front bench below the gangway and were soon joined by Arthur Balfour, forming a pressure group with powerful debating skills; Northcote was no match for them. The story goes that when a member said there were two great political parties, Parnell shouted ‘Three!’, only for Randolph to stand up and call ‘Four!’ Thus was born the Fourth Party, which was to be a vital part of Randolph’s political life and success.

  The four men made a formidable team, their qualities complementing each other. Wolff, with whom Randolph formed a lasting friendship, was steady, supplying the diplomacy that did not come easily to Randolph. Gorst was experienced, with a seriousness and calculation which tempered the impetuosity that bedevilled Randolph all his life. Balfour had the advantage of being Lord Salisbury’s nephew and the independence of private wealth. Although seeming indolent, he was actually very able, and his ambition and ruthlessness were useful spurs to Randolph. It was useful for Randolph to have the support of such a team, rather than plough an individual furrow.

  The confidence and style with which they imposed themselves on the House was splendidly brought to life by ‘Spy’s (Leslie Ward’s) cartoon of the quartet in Vanity Fair. They are shown seated on the Opposition front bench, where Gorst and Balfour sprawl with total confidence; the tall, thin Balfour, who joked that he had to sit on the bench to find room for his long legs, balances himself on the base of his spine and neck and gazes disdainfully at the ceiling. Wolff sits upright, a figure of confidence and determination; Randolph stands beside them in a pose he made his own, partly copied years later by his son Winston: hands on hips, slightly stooped, one foot forward, he stares at his listeners, demanding their attention and challenging them to contradict him. Within two months Disr
aeli expressed support, referring to ‘the light cavalry’ and refuting their lack of intelligence.1

  Disraeli saw Randolph and his group as a healthy force, and handled their disruptiveness very well, ensuring Randolph did not go too far and precipitate himself into the wilderness by abandoning his official party leader. He was well aware of their effectiveness and popularity and, before his death in 1881, commented that when the Conservative party came into power they would have to give Randolph anything he asked for.

  The Parliamentary method practised by Randolph and his friends was supremely successful. Having seen how Parnell and his allies had drawn attention to their cause in the previous Parliament by the system of obstruction, they adopted the same technique. In Opposition they did not need to present policies, only oppose them, and Randolph used the delaying tactics of repeated questioning, interruption and over-lengthy speech-making to impede Gladstone’s programme of policies, cheered on by his party in the face of a frustrated government.

  Randolph was a master at reading the mood of the House. When it was light-hearted he made it laugh; when it was angry he made the flames spread. The group exuded gaiety and youth, even in their non-Parliamentary lives, and when the merry quartet and a few companions found themselves one evening on Westminster Bridge, someone wagered that it was impossible to run across the bridge and back again while Big Ben was striking midnight. Randolph promptly accepted the challenge, set off across the bridge on the first stroke accompanied by cheers, and returned breathless but exultant, his coat-tails fluttering behind him, just as the twelfth stroke was booming out across the river.