by Jane Ridley
After discussing arrangements, he ends:
Believe me, my dear Lady Joe,
Yours very sincerely,
Albert Edward
PS The “discretion” you owe me I shall never dare ask of you, and I fear you will never grant it if I did. Am I not mysterious?41
The PS is the closest Bertie came to showing his hand, but even this is arch and playful. Letter number three, written from Sandringham on 26 December 1873, firmly closes the correspondence.
You must be sick of my handwriting but after the kind letter received from you this morning I cannot help writing you a few lines to thank you for it.
I am so glad you like the vases—although they are mere trifles and not worth thanking me for.…
Now goodbye my dear Lady Joe—I look forward to our journey together and our sojourn in Russia.42
Lord Hartington, to whom the letters were later referred for his opinion, considered that they contained expressions which “are imprudent and which, though possibly meaning nothing, are capable of a construction injurious to the character of HRH.”43 The journey to Russia was of course with Joe, not Edith on her own. The sixpence on Bertie’s chain, and the talk of “discretions” and gifts and secrets: None of this is actually incriminating—just as Bertie’s letters to Harriett Mordaunt had been apparently innocent. But it’s hard to believe that Edith sent him a sixpence for his chain without some sentimental reason; and the talk about discretions, innocent though it may have been, can be construed as flirtatious, if not sexual. The very fact that he wrote the letters at all was damning. Queen Victoria summed up with pithy acuteness. “She quite believes there was no harm in the letters as she always believed what he says, but a chance expression may be twisted and even the fact of the existence of the letters—harmless as they may be—would create a bad effect.”44 But Randolph’s claim that the letters were dynamite that could rock the monarchy seems laughable.
In 1876, Lord Randolph Churchill was twenty-seven and MP for Woodstock. He wore a bristling waxed moustache and he had inherited the gooseberry eyes of the Churchill family, along with their bad temper. Thin, with an electric, restless sort of energy, he looked younger than he was, and people often remarked on his schoolboy charm. He suffered from mood swings, when he became depressed and paranoid, and he could be brutally rude.d
Randolph claimed that his motive in blackmailing Bertie was to protect the honor of the Marlboroughs by preventing Blandford from divorcing and thus disgracing the family name. As the younger, favorite son, he saw it as his duty, or so he said, to save the family from his dissolute brother. He was envious of Blandford and never ceased to complain that he was a “horrid bore,” “heartless,” “selfish,” and “very bad.”45 It was no coincidence that for Randolph, protecting the family honor involved preventing Blandford from getting his way. At once dutiful and rebellious about his background, Randolph was nonetheless closer to Blandford than he was to his distant father the duke or his overbearing mother, at the rustle of whose silk dress the household trembled.46
In September 1873, Randolph had become engaged to the nineteen-year-old American beauty Jennie Jerome after a whirlwind three-day romance. They had met at Cowes, at a reception given by the Prince of Wales. Randolph’s parents opposed the match, especially as Jennie’s father, the New York entrepreneur Leonard Jerome, had just lost his fortune in the 1873 financial crash. Randolph’s brother Blandford did his best to stop the marriage, too. He told Randolph that he was crazy to marry at twenty-five, and Randolph discovered that he “had been talking … most tremendously against me and telling all sorts of lies about me and entreating my father not to allow it.”47 Desperate to obtain his parents’ consent, as the Jeromes would not allow the marriage unless the Marlboroughs agreed to it, Randolph appealed to his friend Francis Knollys to use his influence with the Prince of Wales. Nudged by Knollys, Bertie wrote to Blandford entreating him to support the match. A copy of the correspondence was sent to Randolph, who described it as “quite the most quiet, sensible and altogether the most gentlemanlike letter I ever read.”48 Randolph showed the letter to his parents, and “it produced a good effect and showed them there are two sides to the question. They are in a much more reasonable humour.”49 Soon afterward, they relented and gave their consent.
At the wedding in Paris in April 1874, Francis Knollys was best man. Bertie gave Randolph a silver cigarette box from Moscow; Randolph told Jennie that HRH was “very cordial and nice, asked much after you and said that … he was very glad that everything was so pleasantly settled at last.”50
Not without reason, Bertie considered that Randolph owed him a debt of gratitude. Thirty-five years later, he remarked of Winston Churchill: “If it had not been for me and the Queen, that young man would never have been in existence.” How so? “The Duke and Duchess [of Marlborough] both objected to Randolph’s marriage, and it was entirely owing to us that they gave way.”51
Jennie’s first child was born at Blenheim in November 1874 after only seven months of marriage. The family insisted that the baby Winston was premature, though it is often suggested that Jennie was already pregnant when she married.52 No suspicions were raised, however, about the baby’s paternity.
Shortly after the birth, the Churchills returned to their London house on Charles Street. Jennie’s sister Clara, who stayed for six months, wrote: “I don’t know why it is but people always seem to ask us when HRH goes to them. I suppose it is because Jennie is so pretty, and you have no idea how charming Randolph can be.”53 HRH’s engagement diary for 1875 reveals that he dined with the Randolph Churchills on 21 March; they dined with him in Paris on 4 April; he drank tea with Jennie at her house on Charles Street on 15 August.54 The young Lady Randolph had entered Bertie’s life, and would remain his friend on and off for thirty-five years.
Jennie Churchill wrote an autobiography. Published in 1908, this volume of society memoirs is predictably discreet. Bertie’s name barely features, but if, as her great-niece Anita Leslie suggests, he was “toying with the idea” of an affair with her in 1875, her memoirs give a good idea as to what attracted him.55 An American in London, Jennie found herself cold-shouldered as a cross between a “Red Indian” and a Gaiety Girl. She had spent her teenage years in Paris, growing up in the scented hothouse of the imperial court, where her mother was a friend of the Empress Eugénie. As Lady Randolph Churchill, Jennie found herself plunged into the chilly, Old World stateliness of Blenheim Palace. At luncheon, massive silver covers were placed in front of both the duke and the duchess, each of whom carved a vast joint to feed the entire household. Every night at eleven, the family trooped out to an anteroom and, lighting candles, each in turn kissed the duke and duchess good night.56
Jennie scorned the strict etiquette that dictated that Englishwomen, even when married, must always travel chaperoned by a maid. Her “pantherine” style, Native American bone structure, and Paris fashions made her conspicuous among the dowdy Englishwomen in their muslin and sealskin. One of the first of the American women whose invasion of London society caused a minor social revolution, Jennie had a New World energy and brio that Bertie found irresistible.57
Randolph’s extraordinary anger against Bertie is more understandable if it was fueled by sexual jealousy. If Bertie really was flirting with his wife, then social suicide was perhaps not too high a price to pay.58
Bertie was still fond of Randolph, but Randolph’s ungrateful insolence and his bullying of Alix enraged him. When Lord Charles Beresford returned bearing Randolph’s non-apology, the Serapis was at Malta. Bertie decided on a sudden change of plan, delaying his return by an impromptu visit to Spain.
Queen Victoria worried that Bertie would make himself unpopular with the animal-loving English by witnessing a bullfight in Spain.59 The prince refused all bullfight invitations, but his actual destination was far more compromising. He spent three days sightseeing at Seville. Here, as the foreign secretary, Lord Derby, related, he had arranged to meet “a certain Ma
dame Murieta [sic], well known in London society.”60
Jesusa Murrieta was the Spanish wife of José de Murrieta, a South American merchant living in London.61 Bertie had scandalized the Foreign Office by traveling to France with Madame Murrieta before he left for India.62 The Murrietas belonged to the London smart set and entertained lavishly at their houses in Kensington Place and Wadhurst in Sussex. They were friends of Jennie Churchill’s, and if Bertie intended by his visit to Madame Murrieta to put Jennie’s nose out of joint, he certainly succeeded. “I have no doubt [HRH] will abuse me,” she told Randolph when she heard about the visit, “as most likely she will talk about me.”63
“Pray be careful your Royal Highness is not taken prisoner like Coeur de Lion on your return from your Crusade,” wired Disraeli to Bertie in Seville.
“Much amused by your telegram,” telegraphed Bertie in reply, but he perhaps did not appreciate the joke.64 Disraeli’s mocking irony always set him on edge, especially as he suspected the prime minister was laughing behind his hand about the Randolph Churchill affair.
Equally infuriating, someone had leaked the Aylesford affair to the press. Vanity Fair carried a titillating paragraph: “With reference to the return from the East there is much talk of the three letters which are said to have been dispatched.” This seems harmless innuendo by comparison with the savage satire of Regency cartoonists or the vile comments in Reynolds’s Newspaper about the death of the baby Prince John, but Bertie exacted his revenge. The following year, he refused to meet the connoisseur Lord Ronald Gower, brother of the Duke of Sutherland, on the grounds that he contributed to Vanity Fair. When Gibson Bowles, the editor, asked for an explanation, HRH refused to give one; and he had Bowles kicked out of his club, having first checked with his solicitor Arnold White, who gave his opinion that Bowles had “abused the hospitality extended to him, and made public matters which came to his knowledge through a courteous admission into a private society.”65 Bertie’s social sovereignty gave him extraordinary powers to cut, snub, and ostracize.
Meanwhile, the prince made careful diary plans, choreographing a triumphant return home. He wrote Alix “a very dear letter,” telling her that on his return to English waters, he wished to see her “first and alone.”66 The Serapis arrived off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, at eleven a.m. on 11 May 1876, where Bertie boarded the Enchantress and was reunited with Alix and his children.67 In London, Bertie and Alix visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace, where a large crowd had gathered. Victoria, jealous of her own popularity, noticed that when Bertie and Alix drove away, and she appeared alone at the palace window, the crowd “turned round and cheered”—the enthusiasm for herself was greater than for Bertie, she thought.68
Arriving at Marlborough House at eight, Bertie and Alix paused briefly to change, and then drove to Covent Garden. They made their carefully planned entry during Un Ballo in Maschera, Verdi’s opera about regicide, but the irony was perhaps lost on them. The Queen thought going straight to the opera a “great mistake,” but Bertie insisted that, though he would have far preferred to dine quietly at Buckingham Palace with his mother, this would be “impolitic” at the present moment, when “the friendly feeling which exists towards him should [not] in any way be damped.”69
By the time of Verdi’s second act, the opera house was packed. Women glittering with diamonds waited and whispered with anticipation until at last the prince and princess arrived. The whole assembly rose, and it seemed the cheers would never cease. Bertie bowed and bowed repeatedly, and then, in accordance with his instructions, the soloist Mme. Albani sang “God Bless the Prince of Wales,” with such vigor that renewed cheering broke out.70
The following evening at seven thirty, Lord Hardwicke called on Bertie at Marlborough House. He had just come from seeing Lord Aylesford, and he brought the news that Sporting Joe had decided not to divorce Edith, but to arrange a private legal separation.71 The scandal had been averted.
There is at Packington Hall a large silver cigar box in the shape of a log cabin, designed for handing round cigars after dinner.72 The Packington log cabin was a present from Bertie to Sporting Joe.
Bertie had much to be thankful for. Joe had returned from India in a confused and reckless state of mind, determined to fight a duel with Blandford. On discovering that under the rules of dueling “if I call him out … he is not allowed to shoot at me … but I have a cool shot at him,” and considering this unfair, Joe agreed instead to hire a lawyer.73 He was advised by friends such as Hardwicke to agree to a legal separation, as in a divorce case all his past misdeeds would come out in court.74 But Joe’s real reason for deciding against divorce was perhaps to protect the Prince of Wales. When someone mentioned that Bertie had written letters to Edith, he threatened to horsewhip the tale-teller for propagating “a scandalous falsehood,” even though he already knew all about the correspondence.75 Blindly loyal to his prince, Joe was willing to give up all he had—his wife, his fortune, even his home—to serve him.
Joe shut up Packington Hall and rented a house in Bognor, where he lived with a woman named Mrs. Dilke and consorted with “negro minstrels” and ladies who danced around the room in smoking caps. Bertie kept in touch. He visited Joe when he was ill, and he invited him to Sandringham.76 We catch a glimpse of Joe at New Year 1882, playing “Snapdragon” before dinner: “the P[rince]ss of Wales’ lace tea gown caught fire. L[or]d Aylesford caught her in his arms, and pressed her very tight, and put out the flames and saved a bad accident.”77
Later he immigrated to Texas—hence the log cabin cigar box. Installing himself and his retinue in the only hotel of a shanty town named Big Spring, he bought twenty-two thousand acres. The cowboys set about separating him from his cash, but it’s good to learn that he won their respect and “they would spill their blood for him as quickly as he would open another bottle for them.”78 Joe died of drink at age thirty-six. Bertie’s note in his diary signifies that he still considered Joe one of his court: “Receive sad news of death of L[or]d Aylesford in Texas USA.”79 The curmudgeonly Lord Derby commented: “He had run through his whole fortune by gambling, racing and extravagance generally; and was one of the very worst examples of the English peerage. Naturally he belonged to the Marlborough House Set.”80 This was a harsh verdict. Joe had inherited debts, and he spent a good deal of his fortune serving the Prince of Wales.81
Edith, by contrast, was ostracized. Leaving her children at Packington forever (“It is like being dead and yet alive,” she told her mother-in-law), she fled to Paris, where she and Blandford lived together under the names Mr. and Mrs. Spencer.82 In 1881 she produced a son, named Guy Bertrand.e Blandford’s wife divorced him two years later, but though he claimed that Guy Bertrand was the child he loved most, he didn’t marry Edith. After a scandalous affair with Lady Colin Campbell, he married a rich American widow. Edith died in Paris in 1897, two days before the great Devonshire House Ball. Her death condemned the relatives who had shunned her for more than twenty years to observe mourning, which meant that they were unable to attend the ball and their elaborate outfits were never worn. Her sister-in-law Mrs. Hywfa Williams watched the festivities from an upstairs skylight. “How I longed to be down in the room!” she wrote, “but very sad was Edith’s death for all her sisters.”83
As for Randolph Churchill, he got his way and stopped the Aylesford divorce, but he had broken all the rules of courtly behavior and for this he had to be punished. Nothing if not stubborn, Randolph refused to grovel. Bertie appealed to Prime Minister Disraeli, Lord Chancellor Lord Cairns, and Hartington to arbitrate. Arrangements were made for the entire Churchill family to go into exile. The Duke of Marlborough reluctantly accepted Disraeli’s offer to become Viceroy of Ireland. The royal connection had already cost him dear—in 1875, shortly after entertaining the Prince of Wales at Blenheim, he had disposed of the Marlborough gem collection for thirty-five thousand guineas. The duke grimly sold off more land, and arranged to take Randolph with him as unpaid private secretary.
&
nbsp; Randolph first skipped off to America. As Jennie breezily put it, having had “serious differences of opinion with various influential people,” Randolph felt in need of “a little solace and distraction.”84 A form of apology drafted by the Lord Chancellor was sent for him to sign, and he succeeded in doing this in what the Lord Chancellor thought was “the most ungracious and undignified way that was possible.”85
However ungracious, the apology had been extracted, and Bertie had seemingly won his point. The Queen entertained the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough at Windsor in December 1876, and Bertie grudgingly agreed that he would bow to Randolph. However, he let it be known that he would not speak to him and would boycott any house that entertained the Randolph Churchills. This was not mere spite. No one mentioned the fact, but Randolph still had Bertie’s letters to Edith in his possession. Being a social exile was the making of Randolph as a politician, as he no longer wasted his time partying at Marlborough House.
In July 1885, a mysterious locked box was delivered to Lord Cairns. On opening it, he found a sealed envelope addressed to the Prince of Wales. Cairns forwarded the box to Marlborough House. Inside the sealed box were the three letters that Bertie had written to Edith.86
* * *
* A retort is a long-necked glass container. HRH once visited Joe in the hospital with a broken leg. He brought two “boy” champagne bottles. “Joe, have a drink,” said Bertie. “Oh, after you, Sir,” replied Joe, whereupon HRH opened a bottle and drank the lot (no mean feat). After more chat the episode was repeated, and the prince quaffed the second bottle, too. (Author interview, Lord Aylesford, November 2006.)
† Edith gave birth to a daughter the following year, and Alix stood as godmother. At the baptism at the Chapel Royal on 24 July 1875, Alix held the baby over the font, and it was christened Alexandra.
