Churchill's Grandmama

by Margaret E. Forster

  There was also the unhappy episode in 1894 of the watch which Randolph had given Winston and over which he accused his son of carelessness. Winston, wounded, wrote at length to his father:

  I placed the watch last Sunday in my breast pocket – not having with uniform a waistcoat to put it in – and while walking along the Wish stream I stooped to pick up a stick and it fell out of my pocket into the only deep place for miles.

  The stream was only about five inches deep – but the watch fell into a pool nearly six feet deep. I at once took off all my clothes and I dived for it but the bottom was so uneven and the water so cold I could not stay in longer than ten minutes and had to give it up.

  The next day I had the pool dredged – but without result. On Tuesday therefore I obtained permission from the Governor to do anything I could provided I paid for having it all put straight again.

  I then borrowed twenty-three men from the Infantry Detachment – dug a new course for the stream – obtained the fire engine and pumped the pool dry and so recovered the watch. I tell you all this to show you that I appreciated fully the value of the watch and that I did not treat the accident in a casual way. The labour of the men cost me over three pounds.

  I would rather you had not known about it. I would have paid for its mending and said nothing. But since you know about it – I feel I ought to tell you how it happened in order to show you that I really valued the watch and did my best to make sure of it. I quite realise that I have failed to do so and I am very sorry that it should have happened. But it is not the case with all the things. Everything else you have ever given me is in as good repair as when you gave it first.

  Please don’t judge me entirely on the strength of the watch. I am very sorry about it.

  I am sorry to have written you such a long and stupid letter, but I do hope you will take it in some measure as an explanation.

  With best love,

  I remain ever your loving son

  Winston S. Churchill3

  At the age of 19 Winston was showing a talent for positive action on a substantial scale, an anxiety to please his father, and an astonishing lack of self-esteem in spite of his considerable resourcefulness and clear command of the English language. The watch was confiscated and given to Jack.

  The public face of Randolph’s mental unbalance came to a head when he spoke in the Commons on 17 February 1893 on the Irish Home Rule Bill. As he stood up to speak, members were appalled by his pale and prematurely aged face. His trembling hands and inaudibility were so severe that many left the House, some, with cruelty, talking loudly to each other as they went.

  The problems with his health, together with more serious financial difficulties than usual, forced Randolph and Jennie to give up their London house in Connaught Place. Frances generously invited them to share her own house in Grosvenor Square, thus providing yet another significant opportunity for Winston. Though still only 18, he was able to meet and mix there with influential political figures of the day whom his well-connected mother invited to dinner, just as years later at Blenheim he heard men of the calibre of Rosebery, Balfour, Asquith, all future Prime Ministers, discuss the issues of the day. Jennie encouraged him also to attend the House of Commons and listen to the debates. Once again Frances was instrumental in developing the future politician.

  Randolph was insisting on persevering with political speeches, but by the spring of 1894 had only to rise to speak and the Commons emptied. Frances was at close quarters to see all this. Rosebery actually begged her and Jennie to persuade Randolph to stay away from the House and Winston records hearing them trying to persuade Randolph to take a rest; they did not succeed.

  Around this time occurred the only known occasion when Frances’ kindness and concern for the vulnerable seem to have deserted her. Just before Christmas 1893 she dismissed Mrs Everest, much loved nanny to Winston and Jack and family servant for 20 years. She first sent her on holiday, without the customary board wages, then dismissed her. By letter! Winston was incensed: ‘cruel and mean’ he called it. He acknowledged that the Duchess had the right to dismiss a servant no longer needed, and Frances maintained there was no room for her at Grosvenor Square, but it was the manner of dismissal and lack of future support that angered him.

  It seems, however, that Frances had long found her a problem; perhaps her long service had made her familiar and dictatorial and hard to bear. Mrs Everest had offended her where she was most sensitive, by coming between her and her grandchildren. She had tried to prevent Winston and Jack coming to Blenheim as children, describing it as cold and damp and unhealthy for them. ‘Horrid old Everest’, Frances had called her on one occasion. With the emotional shock of her eldest son’s early death only weeks earlier, personal and practical problems now bore in on her: Randolph’s health and political future; his and Jennie’s marriage and their carelessness with money, which had forced them to leave their country and London homes; pressure on space at Grosvenor Square, which was the reason given for the dismissal. Winston insisted that Jennie should find provision for Mrs Everest, which she finally did at the home of an Essex bishop.

  Randolph’s condition had become so unpredictable, often uncontrolled, that his doctors believed that time abroad might ease his distress. On 27 June 1894 Randolph and Jennie left for a world tour, planned to last for perhaps a year; it was hoped the constantly changing scene could be an antidote to Randolph’s symptoms. Removing him from the public demonstration of his illness was desirable, a relief for Frances and his family and friends.

  Whatever criticism might be levelled at Jennie elsewhere, her conduct over the months that followed and her commitment to the man she once loved were admirable. Without hesitation, she left the society world and devoted herself to Randolph, sometimes in terrifying circumstances; on one occasion he brandished a revolver in her face, threatening to shoot her. For some parts of the journey he seemed to recover quite significantly, but generally he worsened. It was the indefatigable Frances who maintained contact with Winston, now at Sandhurst, passing on news to him of his parents. By the time they reached Singapore, Randolph’s condition had worsened to the extent that a lead-lined coffin was added to their luggage. By the time they reached Madras, Randolph’s condition had become impossible. The journey had to be cut short and by Christmas Randolph and Jennie were home.

  His mental state was now very serious indeed, moving Jennie to write to her sister, ‘Even his mother wishes now that he had died the other day.’ Frances had persevered to the end, but now even she had to give up. On 24 January 1895 Randolph died peacefully in his sleep at his mother’s house. Winston records later that at the moment of his father’s death he ran across the snow in Grosvenor Square in the early hours of the morning. He was always aware of his father, sometimes as a physical presence. Seventy years later he was to die on the same day of the year. Jennie is said to have refused to return the Chancellor’s robes, as was customary, saying she was keeping them for Winston. He did wear them with pride when he became Chancellor 34 years later.

  It was Randolph’s death that finally defeated Frances. Her calm and self-control disappeared and she now wrote from the heart. Once dismissed as a formidable and rather cold Victorian matriarch, she was in fact a woman of intelligence, energy and emotion. Her grief at her son’s death was expressed openly. Salisbury had respected and liked Randolph, and now he wrote a sincere and moving letter of condolence to Frances. Overcome by her feelings, she could not refrain from pouring out her heart in a letter of reply. She expressed her love for her dead son most movingly: ‘I would have given my life for him,’ she insists. Her grief reaches a climax in her last sentence: ‘Now it is too late, he seems to be understood and appreciated.’ Even more powerful are the six handwritten pages, bordered in mourning black, of the ‘Recollections’ she wrote, at Gladstone’s urging, to assuage her grief. No one reading them could fail to be moved by her deep sadness and nostalgia for the days now gone. In one passage she summed up all she had loved in R
andolph and her pride in his achievement, talent and zest for life:

  When I look back in sadness to his youth and remember his ready wit, his warm affection and his bright spirits and his energy in carrying out any undertaking, I feel how great was the want of foresight and intellect on my part in his training and management, for one of his most endearing qualities was his extraordinary affection for his father and me and his constant interest and pride in his family and especially his sisters Cornelia, Rosamund and Fanny in his earliest days and later in his younger sisters also. Alas, had I been a clever woman I must have had more ability to curb and control his impulses and I should have taught him patience and moderation. And yet at times he had extraordinary good judgement and it was only on rare and fatal occasions he took what the French call ‘Le Mors aux Dents’ and then there was no stopping him. He was by nature a leader of men and had a wonderful power of organisation. This was evident in his leadership of the so-called Fourth Party which began to some extent as a joke and yet was among the causes which first shook the power of Mr Gladstone. Later on it was displayed in the machinery of the Primrose League which Sir Algernon Borthwick and Sir Henry Wolfe managed. At an earlier period I had felt the power of his organisation when in Ireland he drew up the system of relief in the famine-stricken districts and made the Fund which I had managed for that relief a great success.4

  She also reveals what had hitherto not been suspected: that the move to Ireland to extricate the family from the consequences of the Aylesford affair had been the result of her appeal to her mother’s old friend, Disraeli. The last word, appropriately enough, belonged to Lord Rosebery, Randolph’s closest friend from childhood. In 1906 he published a biography of Randolph, the closing paragraph echoing his own personal grief:

  This [book] may, of course, be a wholly mistaken estimate of Randolph’s character. Misgivings may well beset the pen that traces it, for it is written by one who feels for him all the affection of a long friendship, but who was always his political opponent. I see, as all the public saw, many faults; but I remember what the public could not know, the generous, lovable nature of the man. I cannot forget the pathos of the story; I mourn, as all must mourn, to whatever party they belong, that he has not had time to retrieve himself, not time to display his highest nature; I grieve, as all must grieve, that that daring and gifted spirit should have been extinguished at an age when its work should only have just begun.5

  Randolph’s funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, Londoners crowding the silent streets in his honour, and he was then brought home on a cold winter’s day, the snow lying deep over Oxfordshire, to be buried in Bladon churchyard, close to the small village school named after his mother. In due course he was to be joined in that quiet English churchyard by his son Winston and other members of his family.

  Some months later Winston visited his grave and wrote to Jennie:

  I went this morning to look at Papa’s grave. The service in the church was going on and the voices of the children singing all added to the beauty and restfulness of the spot. The hot sun of the last few days has dried up the grass a little – but the rose bushes are in full bloom and make the churchyard very bright. I was so struck by the sense of quietness and peace as well as by the old world air of the place – that my sadness was not unmixed with solace. It is the spot of all others he would have chosen. I think it would make you happier to see it.6

  Notes

  1. From Winston with Love and Kisses by Celia Sandys, p.207.

  2. Winston and Jack by Celia and John Lee, pp.150-3.

  3. Cited in From Winston with Love and Kisses, p.173.

  4. Recollections of My Dear Son, by Frances, Duchess of Marlborough.

  5. Lord Rosebery, Lord Randolph Churchill, Humphreys 1906.

  6. WSC letters 23.6.08, Churchill Archives, cited in Winston S. Churchill by Randolph S. Churchill, companion volume 1, part 1, 1874-1896, p.578.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  LOOKING AHEAD

  * * *

  Frances found herself facing the end of her life without the support of her cherished son Randolph. She had had to face stoically the deaths of all five of her sons, having shed many tears in her ambitions for the family. However, she did have the comfort of her six daughters, all of whom outlived her and became a strong support.

  In 1896, the year after Randolph’s death, Frances faced a further family challenge with the arrival of a new Duchess, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the 19-year-old wife of her grandson Charles, now the 9th Duke. In her autobiography, The Glitter and the Gold, Consuelo describes her first meeting with Frances and presents a surprisingly poor view of her. So unsympathetic is her account of Frances that an assessment of its validity is long overdue. Frances, she wrote, received her in Grosvenor Square and welcomed her with a kiss like ‘a deposed sovereign greeting her successor’. Frances had ‘cold grey eyes’ and hoped to see Blenheim restored ‘to its former glories’ and ‘the prestige of the family upheld’. She told Consuelo her first duty was to produce an heir in order to prevent Winston, ‘that little upstart’, from becoming Duke. Frances apparently asked her then if she was in the ‘family way’. This account has led subsequent writers to draw over-simplistic conclusions about the relatively complex Frances. Consuelo’s account of her challenging reception misses the warmth, care and family generosity that was characteristic of Frances. The Dowager Duchess was indeed a strong, forthright character and when necessary could be blunt and direct; as Duchess and Vicereine she had known occasions when formality and something of the ‘Grande Dame’ would have been appropriate. But the circumstances of her first meeting with Consuelo make her reaction more understandable. Some 22 years earlier another attractive 19-year-old American girl had been presented to her as the proposed wife of her much loved son Randolph. The months of struggle to dissuade Randolph from an unwise marriage were followed by the anxiety and stress brought her by Jennie over the next 20 years: of flirtation, infidelity, extravagance, self-indulgence, inadequate parenting and disharmony with Randolph. As Consuelo noted, Frances was still in mourning for her son, and so the reminder of Jennie must have been painful, even bitter. It is unsurprising that her response to the new American girl was a cool one.

  Furthermore Frances came from a generation for whom the arrival of what came to be called the ‘Dollar Princesses’ was viewed with mistrust. Queen Victoria did not receive them at Court until protocol was relaxed to enable her to do so. Frances’ stiff attitude was understandable. She was also making sure the priorities of an heir and the restoration of Blenheim to its former glory were impressed upon the young girl, something the reserved Charles might not have done.

  Her comment on her beloved grandson Winston is more difficult to understand: it simply does not fit with other known facts. Frances had loved, protected and championed Winston all his life. Just 18 months earlier she had again taken him into her care at Christmas time while Randolph and Jennie were on their world tour. She wrote to them then, remarking on Winston’s being ‘affectionate and pleasant … difficult to refuse him anything’. She had enough confidence in him to accept his word he would not gamble, when she gave him permission to go to the races at Sandown because ‘it’s a great thing to keep him in good society.’ Out of all the family, Frances had expressed unflagging confidence in Winston’s ability, refusing to accept Randolph’s low opinion of his son. Not long before Consuelo’s visit her confidence had proved well founded: having scraped into Sandhurst near the bottom of the list, Winston passed out in the first 20 from 150 candidates. And why ‘upstart’? He was the grandson of a Duke and the son of dearly loved Randolph!

  An explanation may lie in the fact that Consuelo was well into her seventies when she wrote her autobiography; recalling events of over 50 years earlier, her memory would not have been perfect. Although she loved her sons dearly and enjoyed Blenheim later in life, her period there in Frances’ time had been unhappy and had possibly coloured her recollection. But her unflattering picture of France
s has since become central to Frances’ reputation. Two details in particular correspond with the overall picture of Frances that has been established here. Her wish to ‘see Blenheim restored to its former glories’ is a vivid reminder of the pain caused her by the 8th Duke’s insensitive disposal of Blenheim’s magnificent collection, particularly of the pictures, and perhaps of the Aylesford affair, which had forced her husband to break the entail unwillingly, thus allowing the sale of the Churchill inheritance. Her desire to ‘see the prestige of the family upheld’ recalls the humiliation she suffered when her eldest son repeatedly dragged the family into public disgrace.

  In summary, then, Frances’ reservations were justified. The marriage between Consuelo and Charles did not work out; it lasted only ten years and a divorce followed which Frances would have found abhorrent. Other aspects of Consuelo would have pleased her greatly: her love for her children and, particularly, her social conscience. Her compassion and help for the vulnerable echoed Frances’ own endeavours. At Blenheim she continued the tradition, begun by Frances, of sending leftover food to the villages each day. She won public love and affection, whether it was by reading to an old lady in the 4th Duchess’s almshouses or ensuring medical aid to the sick. She was a regular visitor to the school, particularly the one built by Frances at Bladon, and actively encouraged the children by hearing them read and sing. She brought the girls to the Palace to be taught cookery, and Blenheim gardeners were sent to the school to teach their skills to the boys.