Sunday, May 20, 2007

Table of Contents

Kathy and Me at Church Social

Check out all the stuff that is going on in the news. Here's my Table of Contents.

On the right column.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

History Books

From My Childhood

These were my favorite books that I had read while in elementary school. Yes, Douglas Southall Freeman was one of my fav authors. A teacher even chewed me out for reading books that were "too difficult"! Actually, the more in depth a history book is, the better. The more details the historian has to work with to weave a good story. That is, if the historian knows the art of storytelling.



In third grade I got very sick. My parents went to the library and got me this book to read (among others). This book so engage me, that I was hooked on history thereafter.

This book was part of a series. She called them "horizontal history". John Smith served as the anchor, not the subject of the story. The book is a history of the world during his lifetime. For us, those world events are "history"; for him these stories were "current news". This was a different slant on things. I never understood why this kind of history book was only done by her.





Of her series, this was the best book. It worked because for this kind of history, it is best that your star player be in as many scenes of the overall story as possible. The trouble with anchors like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln was that they were more national leaders than international leaders.

In Caesar's time, Rome's power was such that he was in the thick of a great deal of the story of world events of his lifetime.





I can't remember when I got H.G. Wells' book but I'm sure it was soon after I had read Captain John Smith. It maybe even have been in the same batch of books my parents had brought home from the library but I don't see why they would have. They would not have got this book unless they already were sure that I was interested in history and I wasn't interested until I had read John Smith.


The thing about this book is that H.G. Wells knew how to tell a great story. This book presented the entire sweep of history as one huge yarn.





This was the biggie book of my youth. THIS is how history ought to be written. Note how the author marshalls the details to build suspense. Also, note how he uses the forknowledge that Lee will loose in the end to make a tragedy. Storytelling at it's best!

We ought to not forget the footnotes. This is a history book. The footnotes tell us how the author got his facts and from that how he put this book together. The original work consisted of 3 volumes. This one-volume abridgement contains the main text without the footnotes. The price for the full set is probably prohibitive for most. Get the full-meal deal from the library.





I was in 9th. grade when I got the boxed set of this for $5 new. I would have bought the boxed set of his History of WWII but that would have set me back $7.50. As it was, I got the better deal.

Yes, now I'm familiar with the problems of this book. For example, how can you have any history of the "English Speaking" peoples without mentioning Shakespeare? For all his problems as an historian (he was adequate) he was a storyteller. This was what lifted these books above the pack.

Be careful if you purchase this book. I shopped around on Amazon before I picked this icon to display. I regard most of the prices to be outrageous. This looks to me like the best deal there but I can't be sure if the price is for the set or for a single volume of it. You’re looking for a 4 volume set. Don’t go for abridgements. You’ll be missing out on too much good stuff if you do.

Adult Years
These were books that I ran into from my twenties on.






I know this is a high price. The set consists of 10 really thick volumes so I think it's a good deal. I’d got my set 30 years ago as a special for the Book of the Month Club.

Durant covered cultural history and went light on political and military history, reversing the priority of most other books. These books are well written with a distinctive style. One ought to read them again and again. If one were to be familiar with these books, one would really get to know history as well as have a firm foundation in philosophy, science, art, and the rest of the intellectual arts.




Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Volume 5


This is another Douglas Southall Freeman style book. The lesson from this book is that in the hands of a master storyteller, more detail gives him to tell a better story. This book covers the time from just before the Fall of the Stuart Dynasty in 1688 to the death of William of Orange.


Despite the strengths of this book, there is one very huge problem. His name is Winston Churchill. Macaulay really dumped on Winston's ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marborough in this book. Churchill, in his biography of the Duke completely refuted Macaulay's version of events. The larger problem with this is that if an historian screws up as badly as Macaulay screwed but the Churchill story, one wonders what else is wrong with the book.


This book was greatly admired before Winston's hit and admired since. It goes into so much detail on so many matters, that one just roots for this book to be redeemed.


You can also download the books from the Guttenberg Library for free. The links are to the left under the Amazon ad.



The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

by Edward Gibbon

Volume 1


Volume 2


Volume 3


Volume 4


Volume 5


Volume 6



This is a must-read book. You can't go through life without reading this book - not if you want to tell people that you're interested in history. It goes into detail like no other. The insights must be noticed. Written in George Washington's day it is still the most forward-thinking, most modern book written. For example, he notices that the major rivers such as the Danube froze annually in Roman times while they had not in modern times. Reading about Global Warming from Gibbon is just one surprise awaiting you.



Don't try to skate on an abridged edition. And don't miss the footnotes. Be tough! You're big. You're strong. You can take it. Read the whole thing!



The links are to the Guttenberg Library. Download and read for free. I cannot recomment the prices that I see on Amazon for this. And I cannot recommend buying an abridgement. If you do read the abridged edition, just borrow a copy from the library.

After all of this, don't forget that you can find many of these books at the library. Isaac Asimov wrote a series of books that are now out of print and exhorbitantly expensive. That's why I didn't list them. Check your library, though. Titles include histories of Egypt, The Near East, Greece, Rome (2 volumes), and so on. He emphasizes political and military history over cultural history. That makes his series a perfect companion to Durant's series.


Disclaimer: This gives you a picture of the book and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Science Fiction Books

Under Construction. I do this to motivate me. Post a comment and kick me.

My favorite authors are David Webber and Harry Turtledove. For authors of the past, be sure to read Robert A. Heinlein. Isaac Asimov was pretty good, too.


Disclaimer: This gives you a picture of the book and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Books I Want to Read 2007



Now there's a book cover slide show. Here's my list:


  • History of English Speaking Peoples Since 1900
  • War of Wars
  • Works of Kipling
  • Works of Mark Twain
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms



Disclaimer: This gives you a picture of the book and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph in the Idaho reservation speaking to an ethenologist (on right) through interpreter (on left). circa 1889.


He was the last of the barbarians.
Under construction. Still working on completing this post. I know this looks tacky. I do this kind of stuff to motivate me to get this done.
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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 2.)

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Chancellor - 2

The historian Robert Caro believes that Lord Acton had it wrong. Power does not tend to corrupt but to reveal. It did both to Lord Randolf

When he reached the top, his fits of temperamental behavior could no longer be hidden. In fact, power and responsibility made it worse. He was sick. This was the only explanation of his conduct during the months he was at the top. A friend asked him how long he expected to last as Leader. “Six months,” was the answer. “And then what?” He said, “Westminster Abbey.”

He was sullen. He quarreled with everybody. He stopped talking to Jennie. He ignored his children. He became known for his rudeness to his friends and his aloofness from everybody else.

Inside the cabinet opinion hardened against him. Winston Churchill later tried to present the story as the hard-line conservatives versus his father the reformer. In fairness to Lord Salisbury and the others, their administration eventually did turn a credible record of reform. They weren’t so much against reform; they were against his bad behavior.

Arthur Balfour wrote Salisbury,

My idea is that at present we ought to do nothing but let Randolf hammer away. . . . I am inclined that we should avoid, as far as possible, all “rows” until R. puts himself entirely and flagrantly in the wrong by some act of Party disloyalty which everybody can understand and nobody can deny.
Lord Randolf did just this and did it in the most self-destructive way imaginable. Just before Christmas he visited the Queen at Windsor Castle. By this time it was not surprising that Jennie did not come along. While at the Castle he wrote an ultimatum to Salisbury on the Queen’s own letterhead. He did not inform the Queen.

From Jennie’s Memoirs:

So little did I realize the grave step Randolf was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office which was to be lent to us for the occasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation, we went to a play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolf as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying: ‘Oh! I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.” I could get none of his meaning and shortly after the first act he left us, ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death warrant.
At The Times Randolf asked the Editor to support him in his lead editorial. He refused. Randolf said, “There is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news.” The Editor replied, “You cannot bribe The Times.”

Lord Randolf’s mother the Duchess was actually at Salisbury’s home when the letter arrived. An observer wrote, she “wept large tears of fury and mortification . . . and was conveyed to London speechless.”

Jennie remembered,

When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate.
He had been in office six months.

All this probably did not matter much anyhow. Lord Randolf had only a few years left to live and those of declining physical and mental health.

The Government sent an official to his house to take back the historic robes of the Chancellor. Jennie refused to give them back. “I am saving them for my son.”
The historian Robert Caro believes that Lord Acton had it wrong. Power does not tend to corrupt but to reveal. It did both to Lord Randolf

When he reached the top, his fits of temperamental behavior could no longer be hidden. In fact, power and responsibility made it worse. He was sick. This was the only explanation of his conduct during the months he was at the top. A friend asked him how long he expected to last as Leader. “Six months,” was the answer. “And then what?” He said, “Westminster Abbey.”

He was sullen. He quarreled with everybody. He stopped talking to Jennie. He ignored his children. He became known for his rudeness to his friends and his aloofness from everybody else.

Inside the cabinet opinion hardened against him. Winston Churchill later tried to present the story as the hard-line conservatives versus his father the reformer. In fairness to Lord Salisbury and the others, their administration eventually did turn a credible record of reform. They weren’t so much against reform; they were against his bad behavior.

Arthur Balfour wrote Salisbury,

My idea is that at present we ought to do nothing but let Randolf hammer away. . . . I am inclined that we should avoid, as far as possible, all “rows” until R. puts himself entirely and flagrantly in the wrong by some act of Party disloyalty which everybody can understand and nobody can deny.
Lord Randolf did just this and did it in the most self-destructive way imaginable. Just before Christmas he visited the Queen at Windsor Castle. By this time it was not surprising that Jennie did not come along. While at the Castle he wrote an ultimatum to Salisbury on the Queen’s own letterhead. He did not inform the Queen.

From Jennie’s Memoirs:

So little did I realize the grave step Randolf was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office which was to be lent to us for the occasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation, we went to a play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolf as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying: ‘Oh! I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.” I could get none of his meaning and shortly after the first act he left us, ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death warrant.
At The Times Randolf asked the Editor to support him in his lead editorial. He refused. Randolf said, “There is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news.” The Editor replied, “You cannot bribe The Times.”

Lord Randolf’s mother the Duchess was actually at Salisbury’s home when the letter arrived. An observer wrote, she “wept large tears of fury and mortification . . . and was conveyed to London speechless.”

Jennie remembered,

When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate.
He had been in office six months.

All this probably did not matter much anyhow. Lord Randolf had only a few years left to live and those of declining physical and mental health.

The Government sent an official to his house to take back the historic robes of the Chancellor. Jennie refused to give them back. “I am saving them for my son.”

---------------------------------------------
Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Chancellor - 1

Lord Randolf was on the stump tearing into the Liberals. Gladstone was “the greatest living master of the art of political advertisement,” he said. And what was his idea of a quiet holiday, Lord Randolf asked

… a large transatlantic steamer is specially engaged, the Poet Laureate
[Tennyson] adorns the suite and receives a peerage as his reward, and the
incidents of the voyage are luncheon with the Emperor of Russia and the Queen of
Denmark. Gladstone liked to chop wood for exercise. In Lord Randolf’s hands this
became, “Entire forests must perish so that Gladstone may sweat.

Lord Randolf’s speech continued. He imagined a deputation of workingmen who come to speak to Gladstone at his “humble Castle named Hawarden”. But they cannot be received anywhere in the mansion for that would have been “out of harmony with the advertisement ‘boom’.” So they are conducted out back onto his

ornamental grounds. . . strewn with the wreckage and the ruins of the Prime Minister’s sport. All round them, we may suppose, lay the rotting trunks of once umbrageous trees; all round them, tossed by the winds, were boughs and bark and withered shoots. They came suddenly on the Prime Minister and Master Herbert [his son], in scanty attire and profuse perspiration, engaged in the destruction of a gigantic oak, just giving its last dying groan. They are permitted to gaze and to worship and adore, and, having conducted themselves with exemplary propriety, are each of them presented with a few chips as a memorial of that memorable scene.
Thus Gladstone hands out the fruits of his government programs:

Chips to the faithful allies in Afghanistan, chips to the trusting native races of South Africa, chips to the Egyptian fellah, chips to the British farmer, chips to the manufacturer and the artisan, chips to the agricultural laborer, chips to the House of Commons itself. To all who leaned upon Mr. Gladstone, who trusted him, and who hoped for something from him – chips, nothing but chips – hard, dry, unnourishing, indigestible chips.

This was a Lord Randolf speech when he was at the top of his game. But inside he had a terrible secret: he did not have long to live. The syphilis was eating away at his brain. It was affecting his personality.

When Gladstone lost the Home Rule fight in June 1886 the majority of Parliament went into opposition. He could either resign or dissolve. He decided to take the cause to the people.

That summer’s election was a disaster for the Liberals. Charles Stewart Parnell’s control of the Irish vote triggered a backlash. Joseph Chamberlain and other Liberal leaders led their followers into an alliance with the Conservatives. When they started calling their alliance “The Unionist Party” this indicated a permanent relationship that was dire for the Liberal cause. The Unionists won one of the biggest landslides of the century.

British politics had been transformed. Three big parties had gone to two. The wedge issue was Empire versus Home Rule. The Unionists regarded turmoil in Ireland as the price of empire. With Lord Randolf’s Tory Democracy Movement and promises of reform to salve Liberal consciences, they had the upper hand.

Lord Salisbury, the new Prime Minister faced the pleasant problems of the victor. What to do with Joe Chamberlain “the Radical” and what to do with Lord Randolf? Joe Chamberlain, though more to the left than Randolf, was the easier of the two problems for Salisbury.

Joe Chamberlain had started politics as Mayor of Birmingham from 1873 to 1876. There he had championed “municipal socialism”. Entering Parliament he had made himself leader of the “Radical” wing of the Liberal Party.

His problem now was that he had nowhere else to go. His opposition to Home Rule precluded rejoining Gladstone. An alliance with Parnell was even more unthinkable. He held out “a progressive program” as the price of his continuing support. His trouble was that he held a weak hand.

Lord Randolf’s case was different. He had transformed the Conservative Party and had upended the routine pattern of British politics. How to keep him from making trouble? Salisbury decided to give him the keys to the kingdom. He appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Chancellor was the number two man in a British administration. The Prime Minister lived at 10 Downing Street, the Chancellor at 11 Downing Street. The Chancellor was in charge of the treasury. He proposed and then managed the budget for the government.

Salisbury was not through. He also made him Leader of the House of Commons.

His other Fourth Party allies were also given key appointments. Only the Prime Minister himself was now more powerful than Lord Randolf. And he was an old man. All Lord Randolf had to do was wait until Salisbury retired. Then he would have it all.

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Monday, May 7, 2007

Home Rule - 2

By-elections during these years drained away Liberal MP’s. By the early 1885 vote of censure for the Gordon catastrophe at Khartoum, the Liberals survived by just fourteen votes. Then Parnell decided to throw his 37 votes to Churchill. They pulled the plug on Gladstone in June.

The Queen invited the head of the Conservative Party, Lord Salisbury, to kiss hands and form the new government. Salisbury invited Lord Randolf into the cabinet to head the India Office. Randolf refused unless the Leader of the House of Commons was moved out of it. The Queen had already had one run in with Randolf. “With due consideration to Lord R., do not think he should be allowed to dictate entirely his own terms, especially as he has never held office before.”

But by this time Salisbury needed him too much. The House of Commons Leader was removed to the House of Lords and Randolf entered the government.Then he annexed Burma.

With Parliament and the country so bitterly divided, there had to be an election. Parnell instructed the Irish in Britain to vote Conservative. Gladstone and the Liberals fought back and won.

In this election the Irish vote in Ireland swung decisively away from the Liberal candidates and towards Parnell. He even won a borough in Protestant Ulster. This presented a permanent shift in voting habits on the Irish Island.

The election deepened the deep fissures in British society. In Britain, Parnell’s support turned out to be the kiss of death. In Parliament it had become indispensable. The issue was tearing at the country and especially at the Liberal Party. This was Gladstone’s dilemma.

By January 1886 Gladstone decided to tackle it once and for all. He concluded more reforms would not be enough. The size of the vote as well as the history of Britain’s relations with the Irish demonstrated that. He decided to go all the way with Parnell on Home Rule for Ireland.

Liberal opinion was badly split. Joseph Chamberlain and other powerful leaders saw Home Rule as the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

The Grand Old Man moved the first reading of the Home Rule Bill on April 8, 1886. He was 77 years old. His speech lasted for 2 ½ hours. In both terms of quality and content it was one the great performances of history.

Lord Randolf practically declared civil war. “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right!”

The debate was the high point of the Europe’s Imperial Age. To Gladstone it was about human rights. To his opponents it was about the goodness of the British Empire. Chamberlain and the other Liberal leaders as well as the Liberal rank and file deserted in droves.

In the final vote, Gladstone lost 311 to 341. Of his 311 votes, 84 came from Parnell’s Irish. Gladstone had got the Irish Party but his own party had broken in two. Could the Conservatives do any better?
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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Home Rule - 1

The first colony in the British Empire was Ireland. For centuries it had been both a possession and a thorn in Britain’s side. A piece of it still is today.

“Too close for independence, too far for Union”, an opponent said during the 1800 Union Bill Fight. He lost. The bill added Ireland to the United Kingdom and added some 80 + Members to Parliament to a total of 670. By the 1880’s its wisdom was still in doubt.

The Irish had never fit into the Empire or into the Kingdom. The English were Protestant; the Irish were Catholic. The English were masters; the Irish were servants. The English owned the land in Ireland; the Irish rented it and worked it.

Emigration became the dominant feature of Irish society. The Potato Famine of the 1840’s made Irish emigration not only desirable but a matter of survival. By 1870 there were more Irish in America and overseas than in Ireland. The last two decades of the century saw a steady decline in population in Ireland because of this. The annual Christmas gift from the family overseas became a basic necessity of the Irish economy.

What to do about Ireland? Disraeli expressed the Conservatives’ perplexity:

I want to see a public man come forward and say what the Irish question is. One says it is a physical question; another, it is a spiritual. Now it is the absence of aristocracy, then the absence of railroads. It is the Pope one day, potatoes the next.
In the Nineteenth Century the Irish had produced a number of talented champions of their cause: Grattan, O’Connell, and Butt. Each of these moved closer towards a truly Irish Party in the country and in Parliament.

Charles Stewart Parnell took over the leadership of the Irish Party just in time for the 1880 elections. His predecessors had formed a Party. He knew how to use it.

The first leg of his vision was obstruction. He adopted a calculated campaign in Parliament to obstruct its business. This policy required absolute obedience from the Party’s members. Parnell expected each MP to vote the way he told them to vote and say exactly what he told them to say.

The second leg was the use of the boycott.

The third leg was an alliance with the militant Irish organizations such as the Land League. When the more terrorist-oriented organization the Fenian Brotherhood held back, the Land League started absorbing its members. These kept the land in continual unrest.

The fourth leg was support from Irish organizations abroad especially in the United States. These furnished money and materials for the cause.

His overall plan was to bring coordinated pressure upon Britain from all quarters for Home Rule for Ireland. His secondary objective was to contain the terrorism that the militants were providing.

Winston Churchill in “My Early Life” gives this story:

…from this house there came a man called Mr. Burke. He gave me a drum. I cannot remember what he looked like, but I remember the drum. Two years afterwards when we were back in England, they told me he had been murdered by the Fenians in this same Phoenix Park we used to walk every day.
He was eight years old when Mr. Burke was killed.

Murders and violence had begun while Marlborough was governor and continued through the time of Gladstone’s Liberals. Parnell denounced the murders.

…no act has ever been perpetrated in our country, during the exciting struggle for social and political rights of the past fifty years, that has so stained the name of hospitable Ireland as this cowardly and unprovoked assassination of a friendly stranger.
Parnell tried to use civil disobedience while controlling violence. In his hands it was a weapon that hurt his own cause as well as the one he opposed. The world would have to wait until the next century for Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to show it how to use civil disobedience as an effective weapon. He failed to appreciate the importance of enforcing non-violence.

His other tools were far more effective. In Parliament, his party could tip the scales against one party or another. Irish had emigrated to Britain itself in large numbers and could vote in its elections. This meant that Parnell could not only influence most of the Irish borough’s voters but large numbers of voters in Britain, too. Irish in America and elsewhere could not contribute votes to Parnell’s organizations, but they could contribute money.

The most important part of Parnell’s campaign was the moral part. The essence of British imperialism (and of Europe’s) was that its empire was a benevolent force for progress and good in the world. To Parnell, it was not. Supporting Parnell meant rejecting the heart of Britain’s accomplishments over centuries, in fact, since Columbus’ time. By 1885 he had made the issue of Irish Home Rule the dominant issue in British Politics.

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Saturday, May 5, 2007

The 4th. Party - 2

He struck at once. During the Members swearing in, one Liberal member refused to swear because as an atheist he did not believe in the Bible. Lord Randolf drilled the Liberals in one of their most sensitive areas, morality. What to base morality upon if not some solid foundation, he asked. If not God, what?

Gladstone, caught off guard, replied tolerance.

What to tolerate and what not to tolerate? -- Slavery? – Oppression?

Gladstone talked about the separation of church and state.

Isn’t it interesting that Liberals are altogether too happy to claim the support of religion when it suits their purposes and to cast it aside when it does not?

Thus the general outline of the debates. Day after day this ongoing battle knocked the Liberal Administration off stride. The Conservatives in Parliament and in the country cheered on their new star while their nominal leaders glumly watched from their bench. Gladstone eventually got his man in, but the Liberal claim to the moral high ground had taken a bad beating.

Unable to budge his leaders into a more aggressive attack upon the Liberals, Lord Randolf formed his own team. There were just four of them, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, master of parliamentary procedure, John Gorst, the party machine man, Mr. Arthur Balfour, nephew of the Marques of Salisbury, and Lord Randolf. Jennie Churchill became a behind-the-scenes fifth member.

The press labeled them “The Fourth Party”. (The Liberals, Conservatives, and the Irish parties were the first three.) Their headquarters was at the Churchill’s house. Jennie, again:
“Many were the plots and plans which were hatched in my presence by the Fourth Party. How we used to chaff about the ‘goats’ as we called the ultra-Tories.”

Another time,

“Randolf looked like a great schoolboy, full of fun and mischief, his busy brain devising means by which he could upset his political opponents, and then bubbling over with fiendish glee at the traps he was setting for the unaware politicians of his own side… .”

They began a generalized attack on the Liberal Administration’s budgets. They pressed them with point, weight, joy, and humor. Gladstone stormed back at them. The daily proceedings became a delight for the Conservatives and a trial for the Liberals.

In addition to adding spice to Parliamentary opposition to Liberalism, Lord Randolf and Jennie realized that Conservatives would have to reform themselves and they would have to have a positive program for progress in policy.

After a bitter struggle with Lord Salisbury and the Conservative powers, they took control of the National Union of Conservative Associations. They made the leadership electable by and thus answerable to the grassroots instead of selected by the top leaders.

They barnstormed the country preaching “Tory Democracy”. On a practical level they founded The Primrose League. This was a national network of social clubs open to and serving the needs of ordinary people.

To Salisbury and the party elders this was all terribly vulgar. Sure they wanted the workingman’s vote, just not their voice in party affairs, and certainly not their presence in their social circles!

As Randolf and his beautiful wife Jennie stormed the countryside, the Conservative Party knew an excitement that it had not known before.

They weren’t the chief reasons for the Liberals’ fall. The main reason was Gladstone himself.

The story of his Second Administration is a good example of what happens when someone gets into power without having a clear idea of what to do with it. The opposition party seizes the initiative; his own party quarrels with itself; and the leader reacts to events instead of creating them.

Gladstone was “The Grand Old Man” of politics. He had already accomplished much during the decades he had headed departments under others’ administrations. He had accomplished more during his own first premiership from 1868 to 1874. By 1880 he had already achieved much of his goals.

During these years when the British Empire was at its height, no British Prime Minister could escape the pressures of the outside world. If the whole world was a stage, Britain was the center of that stage and everybody pressed upon the center.

His main problem in dealing with the affairs of the British Empire was that he didn’t like the Empire to begin with. He disliked the entire concept of imperialism. In South Africa, he recognized a free state for the Boers after their victory at Majuba. He lost The Sudan when General Charles Gordon was surrounded and killed at Khartoum. The newspapers brought a stead drizzle of defeat and retreat.

His worst problem was Ireland. Unrest and agitation dominated the news. He tried both reform and crackdown. Nothing worked. Ireland’s leader was Charles Parnell. He had Ireland’s solid backing and Ireland’s votes in Parliament. His goal was home rule. He would settle for nothing less.

With his policies failing and his government faltering, Gladstone considered giving it to him. Then 10 Downing Street received the worst possible news: Parnell had cut a deal with Churchill.
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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Friday, May 4, 2007

The 4th. Party - 1

The year is 1880; the election is over; and you Conservatives have lost again. Since 1846 your party has won only one general election, the last one six years ago in 1874.

We watch as you traipse into Parliament. Across the aisle the Liberal Members sit in row upon row, their enormous numbers overflowing to your own side of the chamber. Below to your right, on the Front Opposition Bench sits the sorry wreckage of your leadership. Utterly demoralized, and bereft of ideas, all they can think of is to oppose change. Across the aisle from them, on the Treasury Bench, among the Liberal leaders sits their champion, one of the greatest British statesmen of the century: William E. Gladstone.

Can you even imagine, friend Tory, that in a few short years you will stake your future on the masses you dread and that they may in turn base their future upon the institutions you guard? The instrument of this change sits with you now. Don’t try to guess but if you insist here’s a hint: he is the most unlikely of your colleagues.

* * * *

He had said that public life had no charms for him and that he hated bother and publicity. His future wife had written, “I should like you to be as ambitious as you are clever and I am sure you would accomplish great things.”

That was then. Those sentiments could have been forgotten; instead they were filed away in the back of their minds. This was now. They were safely married. Winston Churchill was born and in the care of his nurse. Now was the time to party! Lord Randolf Churchill had the social connections; Lady Jeannie had the beauty and personality. Together the best parties and social cliques were open to them. They made the most of them.

Beneath the gaiety and shadowing the promise laid a dark secret, the darkest secret of the entire Churchill family story. Randolf was sick – terminally so. He had syphilis.

Everything about the story is a mystery. However he got it, history knows that he had it; Jennie eventually had to have found out; and just as eventually, he died. He knew that he was doomed.

Jennie’s partying became increasingly frantic. She mostly went alone.

Then he started a fight with the Prince of Wales. When he told the Princess, his wife, that he would publish some letters the Prince had written to another women unless he gave in, the Prince blew up. A duel was proposed! “What a dreadful, disgraceful business,” Queen Victoria declared.

The Duke of Marlborough was beside himself. Was this to be the result of all his efforts to rebuild the Churchill name? First sexual disease, now this? In America the Hatfields feuded the McCoys but in England was it to be the Churchills versus no less that the Royal Family itself?

The Randolf Churchills were especially ostracized from High Society.

Leonard Jerome stepped up. “Forget it,” he wrote. “Let’s go off to Newport to sail and drive and see what I have got left of a racing stable.” They did.

They visited Niagara Falls first then New York. Leonard was at his best showing off his town. What a contrast between the stuffy Marlboroughs and the warm, laughing Leonard Jerome!

This trip caused them to make a decision. They could have stayed. They did not. Randolf was a Member of Parliament. Whatever America’s attractions, they were now both English. They went home.

It was 1877. The Conservatives were still in power and Disraeli was Prime Minister. He could not have this feud threaten the social stability of the realm. So he made the Duke of Marlborough an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The Duke was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Randolf was made the Duke’s unpaid secretary. That “unpaid” was particularly important. It got him out of England and mollified the Royal family.

The Churchill’s Ireland years was their exile in the wilderness. Randolf and Jennie had no parties, no friends, only each other. To Randolf: “…if we are to have all these worries – do for Heaven’s sake let’s go through them together. As long as I have you I don’t care what happens…”

The Ireland years showed them something else. Ireland was a land of poverty and struggle against oppression. The English owned all of the land; the Irish worked it and paid their earnings in rent.

Winston’s judgment on the scandal: “Without it, he might have wasted a dozen years in the frivolous and expensive pursuits of the silly world of fashion; without it he would probably never have developed popular sympathies or the courage to champion democratic causes.”

In 1880, the Liberals won. The Conservatives, and Marlborough, were thrown out of office. And in 1880 Randolf and Jennie returned to London, filled with purpose.

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Randolf and Jennie - 2

The Jerome parents were the first to give way. Clara, who was on the scene, was first, later Leonard. He would have taken the next boat to England to deal with the Churchills himself but the Duke’s informants all too accurate. The Crash of 1873 had wiped him out. He had to devote his full attention to Wall Street to recoup his losses.

Whether it was this, or his own rakish attitude to the world, his next letter contained the essential words: “You know my views. Great confidence in you, and still greater in your mother; and anyone you accept and your mother approves, I could not object to, provided he is not a Frenchman or any other of those Continental Cusses.”

Marlborough, seeing how passionate Randolf was, decided to use strategy. He will consent to the marriage if they wait for one year and:
Extract from a letter from Randolf to Jeannette

You see, both he and my mother have set their hearts upon my being a Member [of Parliament] for Woodstock. It is a family borough, and for years and years a member of the family has sat for it. The present Member is a stranger, though a Conservative, and is so unpopular that he is almost sure to be beaten if he were to stand; and the fact of a Radical sitting for Woodstock is perfectly insupportable to my family. It is for this they have kept me idle ever since I left Oxford, waiting for dissolution. Well…dissolution is almost sure to come almost before the end of the year.
While making Randolf fight an election for Parliament would keep him occupied for some time, the Duke opened up on another front. What about Jerome’s dowry?

Of course, the Duke was just looking out for Randolf’s interest. You wouldn’t want a slick Wall Street operator to take advantage of you, now would you? Don’t worry. Your father is on the job!
Regrettably, though, the redoubtable Leonard Jerome was on the rebound and by September he wrote that he could capitalize a ₤50,000 trust fund and promise ₤2,000 a year to Jennie. Worse, Randolf was still insistent. Still worse, the general election was finally held in February and Randolf won handily. The crafty Duke was down but not out. He hired lawyers. There would have to be a pre-nup. And ₤2,000 a year while acceptable would have to go to Randolf, not Jennie.

He knew his man. Back from New York came a two-word cable: “Consent Withdrawn.” The Jeromes were not some gold-digging, social-climbing family out to buy their way into nobility!

Randolf and Jennie were beside themselves. They dispatched letters to each other, which poured out their hurts and hopes. One of them will change the course of history. To Jennie: “But after all public life has no charms for me, as I am naturally very quiet, and hate bother and publicity, which, after all, is full of vanity and vexation of spirit. Still, it will all have greater attractions for me if I think it will please you and that you take an interest in it and will encourage me to keep up to the mark.”

They hatched and discarded complicated schemes to force their parent’s hands. Randolf contemplated marrying against his parents’ wishes even though that meant cutting himself off from their financial support, incurring social stigma, and even leaving England altogether. These grievous events were not necessary for they had at hand a much more simpler action, one that was much more pleasurable and decisive, and one moreover that would make almost any Victorian parent support a marriage.

Whatever was done, the wrangling over the finances ended. The parents consented. They were married on the morning of April 15, 1874 at the British embassy in Paris. The ceremony was swift and simple. People in the know could guess something was wrong. Sons of Dukes and daughters of millionaires usually got a church wedding of some splash.

Anyway, Leonard Jerome had made it from New York to give the bride away and after the ceremony the family went out to a wedding breakfast. The bride and groom then left on a coach pulled by a set of gray horses. Jennie called, “Why, Mama, don’t cry, life is going to be perfect . . . always . . .”

The Marl boroughs had not attended. Seven months later Winston Churchill was born.

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Randolf and Jennie - 1

He was a skinny man, a bit short, 23 years old on that August night of 1873, with a walrus mustache, and bulging eyes. He was a dandy and these kind of men easily bored Jennie Jerome.

Lord Randolf Churchill was taken and really taken with this dark looking American. So, his immediate problem was how could keep her with him at this party with all of these virile naval officers around. Fellows were already approaching to ask her to dance and she already had a full dance card.

In desperation, he asked her himself. They walked along the deck of the ship. The Royal Marine Band played in the background. The lanterns bobbed in the twilight breeze. They stepped into the quadrille. In a few minutes the truth was clear. Randolf was a terrible dancer. Time for Plan B.

“Dancing makes me dizzy,” he admitted. He took her along the deck to a seat. He got her some champagne to sip and they talked. Randolf could talk. He spoke with great intensity. There was more to this man and Jennie was intrigued.

Clara broke in. There is such a thing as spending too much time at such a ball as this with just one man. Oh, mother, couldn’t we invite him to dinner tomorrow? Who is he? And more importantly, does he come from a good family?

Randolf Spencer Churchill was born on February 13, 1849. Under the rules of nobility, his older brother would inherit the dukedom of Marlborough; Randolf got to be an honorary “Lord” as a consolation prize.

As a boy and as a young man he was primarily interested in play and in the social pleasures due to the aristocracy. At 23 his biggest accomplishment to date had been putting together the Blenheim Harriers, a pack of hounds for fox hunting.

But there was also this. He had read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and then became a fan of the book. This is a very lengthy book; it is impossible to publish it in one volume or even two. He memorized lengthy passages and carefully studied the rest. It was probably the only book he ever read on his own.

Mostly though, he was a playboy. His social status gave him entry to the Marlborough Set. This was a different Marlborough than the Duchy. Marlborough House was a mansion in London that was the center of the Prince of Wales’ activities. These were primarily fun, games, and sex.

In short, Lord Randolf S. Churchill in 1873 was a dandy with something extra lying just under the surface. This something was what intrigued Jennie.

The dinner next night was a mixed bag. The lights of the boats in the harbor contrasted with the bright stars and the gentle breeze. After dinner, Jennie and her sister played duets on the piano. Her sister’s postmortem: he tries too much to be clever and she didn’t like the mustache. His postmortem: “I admire them both tremendously. And, if I can, I mean to make the dark one my wife.”

The next day Jennie walked alone on one of the many trails around the resort at Cowes. There was Randolf! This was the first time that they were completely alone. He told her he was leaving for Blenheim Palace the next day but tonight could he see her for dinner?

What else was said and what else was done, history does not record. Hugs, kisses, that special moment when feelings are expressed and one learns that they are shared, Jenny kept to herself and out of her memoirs. She ran home to her mother and asked her to ask Randolf over again. “Are we not inviting that young gentleman rather often?” she responded. But she did.

After dinner the two of them went out into the garden. He asked her to marry him. She said yes.
She told Clara. Jennie: “She thought we were both quite mad and naturally would not hear of anything so precipitous.”

Randolf departed for the Palace. We got to go to the Churchill sources to get what we can of the Duchess’ reaction to the news. They all bring down a curtain upon the scene describing her “imperious qualities”, and etc. From Winston’s own account: “She was a woman of exceptional capacity, energy and decision.” My translation: the air must have turned blue and ice formed over the statuary as she raged at Randolf!

From the Duke to his son

August 31, 1873
Dear Randolf,
It is not likely that at present, you can look at anything but from your own point of view but persons from the outside cannot but be struck with the unwisdom of your proceedings, and the uncontrolled state of your feelings, which completely paralyzes your judgment. Never was there such an illustration of the adage, “love is blind” for you seem blind to all consequences, in order that you may pursue your passion; blind to the relative consequences as regards your family and blind to trouble you are heaping on Mamma and me by the anxieties this act of yours has produced….
Now as regards your letter I can’t say that what you have told me is reassuring. I shall know more before long but from what you tell me and what I have heard, this Mr. J. seems to be a sporting, and I should think a vulgar kind of man. I hear he drives about six and eight horses in New York (one may take this as a kind of indication of what the man is).
Everything that you say about the mother and daughter is perfectly compatible with all that I am apprehensive of about the father and his belongings. And however great the attractions of the former, they can be no set off against a connection, should it so appear, which no man in his senses could think respectable….
May God bless and keep you straight is my earnest prayer. Ever your affectionate father,
Marlborough
Thus the battle was joined. The Duke and Duchess lit out for the epicenter of the storm, Cowes and wrote Randolf, “You must imagine to yourself what must be our feelings at the prospect of this marriage of yours. You cannot regard yourself alone in the matter and disassociate yourself from the rest of your family…. Under any circumstances, an American connection is not one that we would like… you must allow it is a slight coming down in pride for us to contemplate the connection….”

While Randolf faced these letters from the Churchill side, from New York Leonard Jerome dispatched a few of his own. He was proud that he was a self-made man. He made and lost his own fortunes. Those European aristocrats inherited theirs. In his opinion they had too much inbreeding and over breeding.

Extract from a letter from Leonard Jerome to his daughter

You quite startle me…
I shall feel very anxious about you till I hear more. If it has come to that – that he only “waits to consult his family” you are pretty far gone. You must like him well enough to accept for yourself, which for you is a great deal. I fear if anything goes wrong you will make a dreadful shipwreck of your affections. I always thought if you ever did fall in love it would be a very dangerous affair. You were never born to love lightly. It must be way down or nothing…. Such natures if they happen to secure the right one are very happy but if disappointed they suffer untold misery….
He hadn’t liked Randolf’s kind in Triest; he hadn’t liked it in Paris; and he didn’t like it now.

Randolf and Jennie were in the battle of their lives.

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

The Jerome Family - 2

The Second Empire was at its height. Napoleon III had renovated Paris. “Never had the Empire seemed more assured, the court more brilliant, the fetes more gorgeous,” Jennie later wrote. Relieved of the burden of Leonard’s philandering, Clara bloomed in her own, softer way. She presented her daughters at court. The Jeromes became intimate friends of the Empress Eugenie and the rest of the Imperial family. Jennie saw Eugenie’s beauty and admired her power to move men, influence events, and change history.

Then came 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War. The Commune took over Paris. The German army surrounded the city. The French declared the Third Republic. Clara, Jennie, and her sisters made a “Gone With the Wind” style escape through the mobs to make the last train out.

Napoleon was a captive of the Germans. Eugenie was a fugitive from both them and the Republic. Everybody remembered what had happened to Marie Antoinette. From the Channel Coast they helped her flee to England.

Leonard came at once and got them into Brown’s Hotel just off Piccadilly. From Jennie’s memoirs: “A winter spent in the gloom and fogs of London did not tend to dispel the melancholy which we felt.”

After the surrender, they returned to Paris. In the immediate aftermath of the Commune’s violence and the Germans’ siege, Paris was a drab, unhappy place.

Jennie:

Ruins everywhere: the sight of the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville made me cry. St.-Cloud, the scene of many pleasant expeditions, was a thing of the past, the lovely chateau razed to the ground. And if material Paris was damaged, the social fabric was even more so. In vain we tried to pick up the threads. Some of our friends were killed, others ruined or in mourning, and all broken-hearted and miserable, hiding in their houses and refusing to be comforted.
How life had changed for Jennie Jerome! Had she stayed in New York, she would have had a sheltered, rich girl’s life though enlivened no doubt by her debonair father. Now the family was broken. By 1871 she had known the court of Napoleon III and had been introduced to the highest levels of social and political life. During that desperate flight from Paris on that last day, she had experienced danger and had seen death. She had experienced the plight of the refugee. And she had seen the aftermath of defeat.

The Jerome women still had entry to some of the high points of the social season, though their sponsors were increasingly bleak. At the Cowes Regatta, (the same Cowes that her father had crashed a few years earlier), she remembered,
I can see now the Emperor leaning against the mast looking old, ill and sad. His thoughts could not have been other than sorrowful and, even in my young eyes, he seemed to have nothing to live for.
Aristocrats from all over Europe always came to Cowes. The Jeromes made an annual appearance.

The Stock Market Crash of 1873 left Leonard Jerome broke. Jennie was 19 years old. They still attended another season at Cowes.

A Regatta ball at Cowes was an interesting event. This year, for example, a must-see one was the August 12 ball for the heirs to the Russian throne on board the HMS Ariadne. The Jerome women had to jump in their evening dresses from the barge to the ladders hanging on the side of the ship. They then had to climb up. This task accomplished, they could admire the bobbing lanterns, the giant flags of Great Britain and Imperial Russia, or the music of the Royal Marine Band.

They stood there bare-shouldered, dark complexioned, and hesitant. Young men danced with them. Time swept by as it always does on such nights. Jennie was standing alone dreamily admiring a set of Chinese lanterns bobbing in the twilight breeze when her friend Frank Bertie came up and said, “Miss Jerome, may I present an old friend of mine who has just arrived in Cowes, Lord Randolf Churchill.”

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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)