That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

  His father took a step through the doorway and halted; there was truthfully not much room with the unwieldy trestle table. He walked the length of it, his hands shoved into the pockets of his narrow trousers, his enormous mustache moving up and down as he frowned. He bent to peer closely at a detachment of troops crawling through the mud toward the piers of the castle bridge—crack sappers, all of them. It was a frightfully delicate maneuver and Winston hoped Papa did not disturb any of them.

  “Do you like soldiers?”

  “Very much indeed.”

  “Your army appears to lack for nothing.”

  “Except what every military lacks, Papa.”

  His father quirked an eyebrow.

  “Sufficient transport,” Winston explained. “We’re frightfully embarrassed for troop carriers. Your friend Sir Henry started a Transport Fund when he visited.”

  “Drummond Wolff?” Papa frowned. “When was he last in the nursery?”

  “Three days ago,” Winston said promptly. “He is a great friend of Mamma’s. She is painting him at present. He gave Jack and me three half crowns. We gave them to Woom to save. She’s the Transport Fund bank, actually.”

  “Ah,” his father said. He jingled the change in his pocket. “The First Duke was a military man, you know.”

  “Yes, sir. Grandpapa told me once, before he died. He said our House’s Fortunes were Founded on the Battlefield.”

  “Did he?” Papa snorted. “If only they had been salvaged there, too. But we dropped our swords and took up pens, worse luck. Fiel pero desdichado, as the ducal motto goes.”

  Winston stared at him.

  “Spanish,” his father snapped. “It means ‘Faithful but unhappy.’ Or ‘miserable.’ Or ‘wretched.’ ”

  “That’s our family motto?”

  “Well—it’s the House of Marlborough’s.”

  “Why is it in Spanish?”

  “I have no idea, old chap. Most ducal mottoes are Latin.” His father sighted along a turret gun. “Not much good at Latin, are you, Winnie?”

  “I’m all right except for the Ablative Absolute. I detest the Ablative Absolute, Papa. I far prefer its alternative—Quum, with the Pluperfect Subjunctive.”

  “Not as elegant a form of expression, though, is it?”

  “I have frequently been assured as much.”

  His father nodded and, for the first time Winston could remember, looked directly into his eyes instead of past him.

  “Should you like to go into the Army?”

  Startled—he had never been asked about his own wishes before—he said, “Yes.”

  Papa drew some loose coppers from his pocket and dropped them carelessly on the trestle table. “For your Transport Fund.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  In the early hours of the morning of the eighth of June, after a full month of polarizing debate, William Ewart Gladstone called for a vote on Irish Home Rule.

  “Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book…in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation,” the Prime Minister declared.

  Jennie had arrived at Parliament after a dinner engagement, still wearing a rose silk evening dress, to watch the debate from the Speaker’s Gallery, which was packed full of both gentlemen and ladies. She remained until well after Big Ben had struck midnight. Louise, Duchess of Manchester, sat by her side, magnificent in eau-de-Nil brocade. The Duchess was agonized for her lover, Lord Hartington.

  “He might have been Prime Minister three times already,” she whispered fretfully to Jennie. “And again he is throwing his chance away!”

  “What has he done?”

  “He has utterly broken with Gladstone,” Lottie explained. “Over poor Freddie, of course.”

  Of course, Jennie echoed. Hart’s younger brother, Lord Freddie Cavendish, had been brutally murdered a few years before in Dublin, within hours of his arrival to take up the post of Chief Secretary—an appointment he owed to Gladstone. He was walking across Phoenix Park, where Jennie and Randolph and Winston had lived years before, toward the Viceregal Lodge. The Permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Burke, was the real target of the assassins—two men who belonged to a rebel Fenian group called the Irish National Invincibles—but Freddie was walking with Burke and so he had to die, too. He was stabbed through the ribs with a twelve-inch surgical knife.

  “Hart’s never got over it,” Lottie whispered, reaching for Jennie’s hand, which she grasped with painful force. “He refuses to set foot in Ireland again—not even for Lismore.”

  Lismore was one of the Cavendish family’s eight enormous estates, this one in Waterford: a twelfth-century castle built by Prince John on the ruins of a seventh-century abbey. Jennie had visited it during her years in Dublin, at Hart’s invitation. She had liked Freddie and his wife, Lucy—who was more earnest than fashionable, and a bit of a bluestocking, if Jennie was honest. Lucy was Catherine Gladstone’s niece, and although she did not go out into the streets in search of prostitutes, as the Prime Minister did, or give them her cast-off gowns, like her aunt, she was dedicated to the cause of women’s education. Jennie suspected that Lucy had loved her husband and been devastated by Freddie’s death. But the night before his murderers were hanged, she had sent a gold cross she wore round her neck to one of them, as a sign of her forgiveness. She still supported Home Rule, as her uncle Gladstone did.

  Jennie could not fathom Lucy’s sort of compassion. Indeed, she felt scathing contempt for it. If any one of her family was hurt or killed, she’d shoot the villain responsible herself.

  She watched now as Hart rose and was recognized by the Speaker.

  “I must oppose the bill put forward by my own party,” he said bitterly. “I would remind the House that I will never make common cause with those who stand by and watch the Fenians grow in violence; moreover, I regard the Irish as having no practical sense, unbalanced temperaments, and a complete inability to manage the economy. They are dedicated to perpetual war with England, to be fought in the shadows with broken bottles and knives. To imagine that they might ever be capable of governing themselves is a folly of criminal proportions. It calls into question all rational basis for this Government.”

  He walked over to the bench occupied by the Radical Joseph Chamberlain and sat down beside him.

  “Good Lord,” Jennie breathed. “He’s made a clean break with Gladstone.”

  “He feels betrayed,” Lottie sighed. “All the years he’s worked with the PM have gone up like paper.”

  “But he can’t divide the Liberal party and form a Government,” Jennie protested. “Even with Chamberlain beside him. Their numbers are too few. What do they mean to do?”

  “Why—support your husband, of course.”

  Jennie sank back in her seat, so that her face was in shadow. If one man intended to bring down the Grand Old Man, it was clearly Randolph. The Irish faction accused him of starting a civil war. Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.

  As she watched, Randy rose from the front Opposition bench. He was impossibly thin, but beautifully tailored in his dark gray frock coat, which flowed like a second skin over his narrow back and shoulders, so that his gauntness seemed like a deliberate choice, a conscious honing of a body given over entirely to the force of its formidable mind. Randolph did not glance at the Speaker or seem aware of the thronged galleries behind his back—his spaniel eyes were fixed instead, with a terrifying purpose, on Gladstone himself.

  “I would point out that the Honorable Member from Midlothian”—this meant the Prime Minister—“has spent all of three weeks in Ireland,” he began. “While I myself have spent nearly three years there. I think I may claim to know a good deal about the country.”

  “Fox-hunting
country, perhaps!” one of the Irish benchers sang out.

  Randolph ignored him. “I would say to the Honorable Member from Midlothian—as Sir Robert Peel once said—that to maintain the Union, we ought not only to use the scaffold, but if necessary, deluge the plains of Ireland with blood.”

  Good God, Jennie thought. He’s going for the PM’s jugular. She drew a quick breath and glanced at Catherine Gladstone, who for once was eating nothing in her accustomed chair at the center of the gallery. The PM’s wife sat with her head bowed and her gloved fingers tightly clasped. Jennie’s pulse quickened. Randolph had no intention of making peace with the Grand Old Man. Blood and war served his purpose—which was nothing less than to take Gladstone’s place.

  “The allegiance of Ulster is given to this Parliament on the condition that it protects the inhabitants of Ulster,” Randolph declared.

  Hart shouted, “Hear, hear!”

  Louise Manchester gripped Jennie’s arm.

  “No, no!” others cried.

  “Certainly,” Randolph persisted, his head up and his eyes flashing. He was transported by his own prominence, by the voice he could unleash to sway the entire kingdom’s opinion. Jennie was struck, once more, by how Parliament transformed him—he stood easily at the front of the Conservative benches, his hands on his hips, more relaxed than when he was alone in front of his own fire. “If this Parliament transfers the lives and liberties of the inhabitants of Ulster to a body over which this Parliament will have no control—absolutely none—and if that should lead to civil war, we cannot charge those who take part in it with treason. They are loyal subjects to a man, dedicated to Queen and Empire. That is my view, and I shall never be ashamed of expressing it.”

  A roar went up from the Conservative ranks.

  Civil war. Jennie had lived through one she had not fully understood at the time. Lincoln, too, had soaked the plains in blood to preserve his Union—but he had done so in the name of freedom. Wasn’t Randolph on the side of oppression, in the Irish case? Jennie shook her head slightly to clear her mind. He had not asked for her help with this speech. She had no business questioning his line, when good men like Hart and Balfour supported it. But she felt uneasy all the same.

  “Motion to divide,” the Speaker said.

  Louise Manchester had closed her eyes; her hand still clutched Jennie’s arm. Jennie patted it consolingly. Lottie was anxious that Hart had backed the wrong horse, of course. So was Jennie. Excitement and adrenaline coursed through her body as though she had just run pell-mell downhill. Randolph had wagered all his political capital to beat Gladstone. It remained to be seen if he won or lost.

  “What’s happening?” Lottie muttered.

  “They’re going out.”

  The Duchess’s eyes flashed open and she leaned forward. MPs filed like ants through the twin doors of Commons into the division lobbies below. Jennie watched as Randolph, Hart, and Chamberlain disappeared together into the No Lobby; Gladstone and the Irish leader, Parnell, into the Aye. As each man passed through, his vote was counted.

  “We must have tea,” Lottie said briskly. She had found strength now that the die was cast.

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly one o’clock in the morning. They will require a quarter hour for the division, at least.”

  Jennie joined the Duchess in the anteroom, which was so crowded with onlookers that there were no free chairs. With a sudden pang she thought of Charles Kinsky. What had he said that day they’d had tea here? That he reported constantly on Randolph to his ministry in Vienna? What would he have said about tonight? That it was just another fit of epilepsy and rabble-rousing?

  “They’re coming back in,” Lottie said, snatching Jennie’s cup from her hands.

  The two women took their seats hurriedly in the Speaker’s Gallery, craning toward the wire grille.

  “Ayes, 313,” the Speaker called. “Nos, 343.”

  Ninety-three members of Gladstone’s party had voted with Randolph—and against Home Rule. Jennie felt a sick excitement rise through her rib cage. It was only a matter of hours, now, before Gladstone’s Government fell. Randolph had won.

  * * *

  —

  When the PM called a general election for the month of July, Jennie left the boys in Everest’s care and campaigned on Randolph’s behalf. He was standing for South Paddington. She drove herself through the streets in a sporting gig, her harness decorated with pink-and-chocolate ribbons, Randolph’s racing colors. She wore a deep pink muslin carriage dress run up deliberately for campaigning, trimmed with chocolate bows, and a portrait straw hat tied with chocolate ribbon. The crowds, mostly men who could vote and hordes of gawkers avid to glimpse Lady Randy, roared with approval when she pulled up the gig before the campaign platform and handed the reins to Alasdair Gordon. Jennie ran up the hustings’ steps, waving her gloved hand to the crowd. Lady Randy! they cried. Give us a kiss and we’ll give you our votes! Jennie laughed and tossed primroses—the symbol of Tory Democracy—into their outstretched hands, and signed picture postcards of herself for eager young clerks and solicitors and children and their mothers. And Jennie shouted—rousingly and at length—about the need for all good Britons to support the Conservative Party and her husband.

  It was the most exhilarating and exhausting campaign she’d ever experienced. The hems of her skirts were filthy by the end of each day, and the speeches she’d long since had by heart ran round and round in her brain as she lay in bed at night. Newspapers printed accounts of her appearances and sent photographers to capture her piquant face, framed by the portrait bonnet. Her sporting gig was mobbed ten deep.

  “You’re jolly good at this, Jennie,” Arthur Balfour praised her when they met one evening for a cello concert. “Would you consider coming north to speak for me?” Arthur was running for Manchester East on an anti–Home Rule platform.

  “I’d have to give up my chocolate ribbons,” she told him. “And you haven’t any racing colors, Arthur.”

  Randolph himself spoke in South Paddington only twice. Then he left hurriedly for a fishing trip to Norway with his old friend Tommie Trafford. The weather has been rainy and raw, but on the other hand we have no flies, he wrote Jennie. I’ve had no election news since Tuesday, when things seemed to be going very well….I expect the Tories will now come in….It seems to me we want the five thousand pounds a year very badly.

  Randolph was counting on a Cabinet post.

  On the eve of the campaign’s final day, which was July 27, six-year-old Jack was sailing Jennie’s slippers across the carpet of her boudoir while Gentry dressed her hair for dinner. Winston was sprawled at Jennie’s feet with newspaper clippings and a pot of paste.

  “What is all that mess, Win?” she asked.

  “My scrapbook.” Her son glanced up at her, his round face flushed with July heat. “I must have a record of Papa’s triumph, once he is PM.”

  “Let’s hope he’s returned first.” She rose from her dressing table and crouched down, sifting through the treasures Winston had collected. Cartoons from Punch. A rather good illustration from Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, of Randolph speaking in Commons. Various articles from the Daily News and the Evening Standard and the Times. Something stirred in her heart. “You’re a staunch admirer of Papa’s, aren’t you?”

  “Of course! Papa’s a Great Man. I’ve learnt some of his speeches by heart.”

  She smoothed his unruly red hair. “How is your chest?”

  “Topping. Woom says it wants only a visit to Ventnor to make me entirely well again. Darling Mummie, may I campaign with you tomorrow?”

  “Certainly not. The hustings are no place for a boy.” Neither were they the place for a lady, of course, with the amount of drink that flowed during campaigns. Only yesterday a gang of Liberal supporters—engine stokers and rail workers, by the look of their clothes and hands
—had jeered her speech, catcalling insults and obscenities. Lady Randolph? Dandy Randy’s Fancy Piece, more like! Aye, she’s free with her favors! Ten votes’ll get you a tumble! Her man would as soon put his hand in yer pockets, boys, as she’d put hers on your cock! Cheeks burning and eyes flashing with anger, Jennie had forced her voice to rise over the drunken heckling. But when a group of Conservative hearties turned and pummeled the interlopers, launching a bloody brawl that threatened to tear down the hustings themselves, she gave up and allowed Alasdair to race her to her campaign gig. The men’s foul words had echoed in her head for the rest of the day.

  Jennie could stare down the ugliness. She knew that Win could not. He was still too young. His brush with death was too recent.

  “Please, Mummie.” He caught at her wrist. “I promise I won’t take ill.”

  He was always begging for some indulgence, pleading for her time and attention. It was the same when he wrote home from school—demanding she attend his plays and Class Days, or send for him on holidays. Jennie wondered if she had spoiled her boys by giving way to them too often; she was conscious of how rarely Randolph did. He had forgotten Win’s pneumonia as readily as he forgot the boy’s existence. And yet Win desperately wanted to campaign for his father. The Great Man.

  She held the boy’s head against her breast for an instant. “Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re here, my darling—instead of sailing far out on the Andaman Sea?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Where’s that? I don’t know the Andaman.”

  “Look it up.”

  “I shall. Aunt Leonie gave me a topping atlas.” He reached for his paste.

  “There will be other campaigns, Winston.” She released him. “Recruit your strength for the next battle.”

  * * *