First Lady

by Sonia Purnell

  At Winston’s side, and unburdened by domestic responsibilities or even financial worries, Clementine glowed with a fresh vitality. The glamorous T.E. Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – joined them and became a close friend. She played lots of tennis, met politicians, ambassadors and leading archaeologists, and they both lived and travelled in great luxury. There was even time for magical visits on camelback to the Pyramids of Giza with Lawrence. In such exalted company Clementine established herself as something of a cool customer. While others sweated and swooned in the heat, she remained unflustered, apparently unaffected.

  The conference delivered many of Winston’s aims to bolster British interests in the region, helping to bring about post-war political settlements in Transjordan and Iraq and a pledge to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine under a British mandate. But he had arrived to a wave of hostility and several credible death threats. Even from the safety of the armoured car provided to transport them around, the sight of angry crowds of Egyptian nationalists pelting stones at them was no doubt unnerving. Perhaps her experience in Ireland in 1912 had inured Clementine to the threat of mob violence; certainly Winston’s bodyguard Walter Thompson was astonished by her courage, noting that ‘nothing seemed ever to disturb or to dishearten her’.13 When their train was stoned and the first windows smashed, Clementine put down the book she had been reading but, according to Thompson, ‘seemed more annoyed than interested’.14 She tolerated the constant intrusion of bodyguards without complaint, but she was no pushover. She had ‘an icy way she could look at a man when things went to the snapping point of endurance’, he recorded.15 It was not just her composure that was remarkable. Clementine’s slender, neat and elegant appearance (in contrast to poor Winston whose pale skin was turning an ever deeper pink in the heat) was also widely noticed. It was not only Thompson who hailed her around this time as ‘the best-dressed woman of her day’.

  Clementine did not hurry home at the end of the conference but spent two leisurely weeks wandering back via Alexandria, Sicily and Naples. By the time she finally returned on 10 April she had been away for a good three months. Rested, fulfilled and happy, she was pleased to be reunited with the children. Randolph, now nearly ten, was grumpy and demanding, and Marigold was suffering from yet another cold, but Clementine was hugely moved that they had all made a ‘Welcome Home’ banner, which they hoisted as she drew up in the Rolls-Royce outside the house in Sussex Square. At such moments, her reserve melted away and she joyfully scooped them up in her arms. If only she could always be so spontaneous. But perhaps this was a new beginning. Winston’s career was back on track, she was by his side, and she had a secure home at last. There was even money in the bank.

  Her contentment was not to last. Four days later her brother Bill Hozier was found shot dead in a Paris hotel room. Just thirty-three, he was handsome and charming and had gone into business after retiring from the Navy at the end of the war. But, like his mother and his twin sister Nellie, he had a weakness for gambling; Winston, who had once or twice helped him to cover his losses, had recently made him promise to stop betting on cards. When he died, though, he seemed to have been in funds and had not long ago deposited 10,000 francs into a bank account. Even so, it was soon confirmed that he had killed himself.

  Life for little brother Bill had never run smoothly. As a child he had been uprooted from his upmarket prep school Summer Fields after barely a term without even being properly registered, because Lady Blanche could not pay the fees. Although the grandson of an earl, instead of following his peers to board at one of the great public schools, he was sent to Berkhamsted Grammar School for boys, a relegation (in his eyes) that he bitterly resented for the rest of his life. Unlike Clementine and Nellie, who had adapted so well to school life in Berkhamsted, Bill could not – or would not – relate to the local boys. The effect on both his studies and his morale was recorded in school reports as ‘disastrous’.

  In search of his rightful place, Bill had left school early and in 1903 joined the Navy. Here too he failed to shine. Indeed, Lieutenant William Ogilvy Hozier’s naval career might have been destroyed at the tender age of twenty-two if Winston had not used the power and influence of his office as Home Secretary to rescue him. His commanding officer, Captain Ryan, had excoriated Bill in a report on 8 August 1910 as ‘inexperienced and highly inefficient’. Instead of rising to the challenge, Bill convinced himself that he had been harshly treated and sought a transfer to another ship. Knowing that Clementine was fond of her brother, Winston had repeatedly intervened on the young officer’s behalf by trying to discredit Captain Ryan with the then First Lord of the Admiralty Reginald McKenna. It was an extraordinary episode, even in an era when it was not uncommon for Cabinet ministers to ask each other for favours for their families,16 and though well-intentioned, it gave Bill the unfortunate impression that any complaints he might have would necessarily command Churchillian endorsement.

  At the news of his death Clementine rushed over to her distraught mother in Dieppe, where Lady Blanche had resettled after the war, and took charge. Suicide was not a crime in France at the time, but was a sin in Catholic doctrine, and at first it seemed that the family might not be allowed to bury Bill in consecrated ground. Winston pulled strings for his brother-in-law one last time, however, and the British Vice-Consul was dispatched to put pressure on the local clergyman to accommodate Lady Blanche’s desperate wish for a ‘decent’ funeral. Yet nothing would quite expunge the terrible feeling of shame, or the abiding grief. Clementine was frantic to avoid any impression that her only brother was ‘a mere scapegrace disowned by his family’. She was also aware of muttering – even among certain Churchills – about ‘bad blood’. So, in order to lend the occasion an appropriate grandeur, she delayed the time of the service until late in the afternoon to make it easier for her husband to attend. ‘Oh Winston my Dear do come tomorrow,’ she pleaded, ‘& dignify by your presence Bill’s poor Suicide Funeral.’

  Winston did not fail his wife or her family. He dropped everything and dashed across the Channel, arriving just in time for the service. In his will, Bill left him his elegant gold-topped malacca cane; Winston would use it for the rest of his life.

  Two months after Bill’s suicide, death visited the Churchills again, when Jennie died, equally unexpectedly. She was sixty-seven, vibrant, still sexy and particularly proud of her shapely ankles and feet. Her marriage to George Cornwallis-West – who had been pursuing a flamboyant affair with the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell – had, as widely expected, ended in 1913. She had cited his refusal to grant her her conjugal rights as grounds for divorce. Thereafter she had ended up lonely and alone, resorting to taking her maid with her on trips to the theatre. She still had admirers, but had been forced to reconcile herself to no longer being the most beautiful woman in the room.

  In truth, she was a little jealous of the much-fêted Clementine and Goonie for displacing her as the centrepiece in the lives of her sons. Jennie’s feelings were particularly apparent when, on her shopping trips to Paris, she would buy expensive designer hats from Worth for herself but bring back cheap little versions from Bon Marché for her daughters-in-law. Clementine could not help noticing the potential heartache inherent in relying on one’s adult children for company. To her great annoyance, Jennie would command Winston to visit her frequently and deal with her interminable financial crises. Grandchildren were similarly summoned at whim.17

  In June 1918, though, Jennie’s life had changed when she entered her third marriage, to the kind and debonair Montagu Porch. Another youngster – twenty years her junior – he was genuinely devoted to her. Although she continued to style herself Lady Randolph rather than Mrs Monty Porch, she had never known such happiness. Her spirits revived, she revelled in dressing up (she had in recent times been spending a staggering £5000 a year on clothes) and socialising with a zest not seen since her prime. It was in May 1921, during a convivial stay with her friends, the Horners, at their country house at Mells,
that – while descending the stairs in a pair of vertiginous heels – she tripped and fell. The local doctor diagnosed a broken ankle and Jennie returned home to her London house at 8 Westbourne Street, Bayswater, to recover. All seemed well. But then gangrene set in and the foot had to be amputated.

  Jennie bore her misfortune and pain with extraordinary fortitude and humour. Clementine, whose Sussex Square house was only minutes away, could not fail to be impressed by her mother-in-law’s courage. The two women, who had never been close, finally became more intimate. Clementine found herself less judgmental of Jennie’s extravagances and, as she grew older, with a largely absent or distracted husband herself, more understanding of her libido. They had more in common than either had originally thought. If after the death of Lord Randolph Winston had become Jennie’s life work, there was now a clear understanding that he had in recent years become Clementine’s alone.

  Secure in her own place, Clementine realised too that Jennie’s example had taught her much in terms of resilience and resourcefulness. It is likely that Clementine’s war work, arranging medical supplies for the Dardanelles expedition or canteens for the munitions factories, was at least in part inspired by the hospital ship Jennie had chartered during the Boer War. Jennie was also brave in isolation – Monty was away in Africa and had stayed on after receiving assurances from Winston that she was out of danger.

  Then, early on the morning of 29 June 1921, Jennie suffered a sudden and violent haemorrhage. Winston ran crying through the streets in his dressing gown to be with her, but by the time he reached her bedside it was too late. ‘I do not feel a sense of tragedy,’ he wrote to Jennie’s friend Lord Curzon the same day, ‘but only of loss.’ He was later to tell Clementine that losing his mother had been like an ‘amputation’ and had made his life ‘seem lonely & its duration fleeting’.18 He kept a bronze cast of Jennie’s hand near his desk for the rest of his life.

  It had been such a grisly spring. Clementine was determined to enjoy her summer. At the beginning of August all four children were packed off to seaside lodgings in Broadstairs with a young French nursery governess, Mlle Rose. The plan was that after a couple of weeks Diana, Randolph and Sarah would leave Marigold behind with Mlle Rose and join their parents for a holiday with the Duke and Duchess of Westminster on their estate in Sutherland, a beautiful bolthole in the Scottish Highlands. In the meantime, Clementine visited the Westminsters alone at their Cheshire stately home, Eaton Hall, an enormous high-Victorian palace (since demolished). Without either Winston – who was working – or the children, she would be blissfully free to relax, socialise and take part in one of her beloved tennis tournaments without distraction.

  The children dutifully wrote to their mother about shrimp-fishing, rowing boats and sunburn. But from the beginning both Randolph and Sarah also alluded to Marigold – or Baba as the other children sometimes called her – being unwell. She seemed to be rallying, however, and in any case she had coughs and sore throats so often no one suspected anything unusual. Then, with terrifying speed, the infection began to spread around her body, her temperature soared uncontrollably and she started finding it difficult to breathe. Eventually a local doctor was called but his remedies were limited. Even now the inexperienced and probably over-stretched Mlle Rose hesitated for two more days before taking any further action. Only when the terrified landlady of the lodgings absolutely insisted, did she finally call Clementine with the dreaded news that Marigold had developed septicaemia. The little girl had by now been ill for a fortnight.

  Clementine left Eaton Hall at once and dashed down to Broadstairs as quickly as she could, while the three elder children were sent up to Scotland as originally planned with a maid. By the time she arrived, Marigold was in a critical condition. Winston shot down from London soon afterwards and a specialist doctor was summoned. It was all too late. On the evening of 22 August, a few days after Clementine’s arrival, Marigold asked her mother to ‘sing me Bubbles’. Summoning every ounce of control, Clementine began the song that Marigold loved so much:

  I’m forever blowing bubbles

  Pretty bubbles in the air

  They fly so high, nearly reach the sky

  Then like my dreams they fade & die.

  The little girl put out her hand and whispered: ‘Not tonight . . . finish it tomorrow.’ Both parents were with her when Marigold died the next day, three months short of her third birthday. Winston shed many a tear and was unable to speak. Clementine, according to Winston’s secretary, ‘screamed like an animal undergoing torture’.

  They buried Marigold in Kensal Green cemetery on 26 August, and erected a simple, unassuming headstone engraved with the words ‘Here lies Marigold, dear child of Winston and Clementine Churchill’. After they had dismissed Mlle Rose, it was as if a book had been slammed shut. Clementine and Winston boarded a night train for Scotland to rejoin the other children, but to the end of her life, Clementine would barely speak of Marigold again. Mary, born after her sister’s death, grew up puzzled by the identity of the little girl whose framed picture stood on her mother’s dressing table.

  Religious in her youth, it is possible that Clementine now turned to her faith to carry her through. The Churchill household was far from pious – Winston had once told his mother: ‘I do not accept the Christian or any other form of religious belief’19 – but she took to slipping off to church alone.

  For nearly two weeks, they all stayed at Lochmore, a rambling fifteen-bedroom Victorian pile owned by Bendor and Violet Westminster, with views over the water to mountains beyond. It was a rare occasion when all the family were on holiday together. The weather was kind, and the Westminsters organised picnics in the hills, riding and boating. There was comfort in each other’s company. Alas, it came to an end all too quickly when Winston left to join the Duke and Duchess of Sunderland’s house party at their Dunrobin estate, where the guest of honour was the Prince of Wales. Clementine wearily made her way back south to London without him to prepare the children for the new school term. Somehow she kept going with all the rituals and errands of her life, her daughter Mary later writing that she did not ‘indulge her grief’ but ‘battened it down’.

  That Winston should part from his family at this point in favour of the social anaesthetic of a large crowd might be regarded either as heartless, the behaviour of a man afraid of contemplating his loss, or both. His letters to Clementine during this time are surprisingly distant, writing of his ‘many tender thoughts’ of ‘yr sweet kittens’ as if they were not also his. He even seemed surprised that he could not shed his grief in quick order. Little more than a fortnight after Marigold’s death, he wrote about tennis, painting, politics and grouse-shooting, adding only towards the end of the letter: ‘Alas I keep on feeling the hurt of the Duckadilly.’ Obviously, removing himself from his family had not had the desired palliative effect. Meanwhile, on 18 September, Clementine had taken Diana, Randolph and Sarah to the grave, where they had watched a white butterfly settle on the flowers. ‘The children were very silent all the way home,’ she told him.

  Inside, she would never get over her grief, or quite dispel a gnawing sense of guilt. Outwardly, however, she gathered her strength, snapped herself out of her misery and a few days later decided to jolly the children up by hiring a smart car and setting off on a splendid picnic. Not long after, as if fate could be any more spiteful, Ernest Cassel died suddenly from a heart attack at his London home. Clementine could not believe she had any feeling left, but she may have wept more tears at the loss of one of their only true and loyal friends than for her daughter. After all, for Cassel she could allow herself to cry.

  By the end of 1921, Clementine was an emotional and physical wreck. Her deep depression – marked by severe listlessness alternating with near-hysterical outbursts – appears to have been far more serious than Winston’s brooding periods of Black Dog. The doctors were flummoxed as to what to do and merely prescribed another vacation. Only the thought of a break on the French Riviera a
fter Christmas kept her going over the last few weeks of the year.

  On Boxing Day, Winston chose to go on ahead without her in the company of Prime Minister Lloyd George, and happily indulged himself in his normal round of politics, painting, writing and hunting. Clementine was to join them as soon as the school term started. Once again, though, luck turned cruelly against her. Within hours of Winston’s departure for the lavish hospitality of Lady Essex, Diana, Randolph and several servants were one by one struck by another outbreak of a deadly strain of influenza. By the evening of what Clementine came to call ‘Black Monday’, Sussex Square resembled a hospital ward with two nurses tending five ailing patients (a cousin, Maryott Whyte, who had come to help, had gone down with pneumonia). A few days later, Clementine herself collapsed from nervous exhaustion and the doctor ordered her to bed for a week. Too tired even to read, let alone receive visitors, she found that there was nothing to stop her reliving Marigold’s death a hundred times.

  She was glad that Winston was not there to catch the illness but she desperately needed to know he was thinking of her. She sent him a note of such anger and distress about his silent absence that she later panicked and sent a telegram asking him to destroy it unopened. She followed this up with another long letter explaining her ‘deep misery & depression’, and how she wished that she were ‘basking’ with him in the Riviera sun. She had endured, she said, ‘one of the most dreary & haunted weeks’ of her life.20

  Winston’s response was not wholly sympathetic. ‘My darling, I cd not bear not opening yr letter . . . I am so sorry you had such a churlish message.’ He had, he explained, sent her a lengthy handwritten letter, but it had been delayed in the post. It did not contain an offer to return to be at her side, however, but yet more bad news. ‘I must confess to you that I have lost some money here, though nothing like as much as last year. It excites me so much to play – foolish moth.’21