Chief Joseph in the Idaho reservation speaking to an ethenologist (on right) through interpreter (on left). circa 1889. 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
…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.
…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.
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.)
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.
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?
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, 1873Thus 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….”
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
You quite startle me…He hadn’t liked Randolf’s kind in Triest; he hadn’t liked it in Paris; and he didn’t like it now.
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….
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.
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.
Leonard Jerome made his first pile working for his uncle. He became a partner in his law firm in his hometown of Palmyra, New York.
It was a small town but it had one big attraction for Leonard: the Hall sisters. These sisters were Indian looking and rumors were that their grandmother had been raped by an Iroquois.
His brother and him both came calling. Leonard fell for Clara. Eventually both brothers married the sisters.
With Clara’s money, Leonard bought the Rochester Daily American. He was restless. He bought a telegraph company, too. In 1850 he quit the law firm, sold the newspaper, and moved the family to Brooklyn.
New York City satisfied Leonard Jerome’s desires. He immersed himself in the nightlife, the gambling, the racing, and the women. He befriended August Belmont, the American representative of the Rothschild banking empire. Clara stayed home and silently suffered.
Leonard could not see why his day life couldn’t be as exciting as his night life. He sold the telegraph company and plunged into the stock market. He sometimes combined business and politics. In the New Haven railroad scandal, he lobbied for and got a bill for railroad reform. This bill enabled him to get out of it a winner. “That damned fellow has figured out how to cash in on honesty!” a competitor cried.
In 1851 he was appointed U.S. Counsel to Trieste. Located between Italy and the Balkans, it was the Austrian Empire’s only seaport. In Europe, Clara got her first taste at a happier life. Europe’s elites did not impress the thoroughly American Leonard. “It is better to speak well in just one language than to chatter in five,” he said.
In 1853 he returned the family to the more adventuresome venue of New York City. There he met and fell in love with one of the most famous singing stars of the century, Jennie Lind. When his second daughter was born, on January 9, 1854 he insisted on naming her “Jeannette”. Months later Clara learned that her baby had been named after this other woman.
In 1859 he built his dream mansion on the southeast corner of 26th. Street near Madison Square. Clara had it designed in the best Napoleonic Paris style. It rose six stories high. The white and gold ballroom accommodated three hundred; the dining room seventy. Leonard’s attention was on the secondary buildings. His stable cost $80,000. Next to it his theatre seated six hundred.
At this time other wealthy families were building homes in the area. Delmonico’s Restaurant made its debut. So did the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It sported impressive innovations: a central heating system, “a perpendicular railway intersecting each story” (i.e. an elevator), and most startling of all – indoor toilets. Critics called them “not only unsanitary but immoral.”
The Civil War showed Leonard Jerome at his best. To seven year old Jennie Jerome, “I remember nothing about it, except that every little Southerner was ‘a wicked rebel’ to be pinched if possible.”
Leonard acquired a part interest in the New York Times. At the height of the Draft Riots in July 1863 he grabbed the latest in military hardware, a pair of gatling guns, and mounted them in the Times Building’s windows. The mob departed for easier pickings at the Herald Tribune.
Leonard made and lost enormous amounts of money. His womanizing and his gambling became increasingly notorious. As in business, he did not always win his battles. One day, while eating with his friend Belmont, he asked, “August do you remember Fanny’s celebrated ball?” Belmont replied, “Indeed I do. I paid for it”. Leonard slowly said, “Why, how very strange. So did I.”
“People like Belmont and Jerome do not enter Society, they create it as they go along,” a contemporary wrote.
They founded the American Jockey Club, an important event in the history of horseracing. They built the Jerome Racetrack, with seating for eight thousand, a luxurious clubhouse, with dining rooms, guest rooms, a ballroom, and facilities for other sports such as skating, trapshooting, polo, and sleighing. It was the biggest sports facility in the country up to that time.
Distinguished guests such as Ulysses Grant attended opening day on September 25, 1866. Leonard’s horse Kentucky won and in the winner’s circle twelve-year-old Jennie was hoisted on top of him. With the crowd’s applause flowing around her, it was one of the most memorable moments of her life.
Leonard’s play became larger. How about a race across the Atlantic, with a cool $90,000, winner takes all? It was done. He held the victory party at the Royal Yacht Squadron at Europe’s most famous resort, Cowes, on the English Channel.
By 1867 Clara had had enough. She took the children and left for Paris.
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Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)
4th. and 5th. Generations
The succession passed through their daughter Anne to their grandson Charles Spencer. They had quiet, diffident personalities. It was said that the magnificence of the Churchill legend hung heavily upon them. They maintained but did not add to the family legacy.
6th., 7th., and 8th. Generations
The next three dukes were profligate spenders. Under them debt began to tarnish the family legacy.
The third and fourth Dukes beautified the Palace. The gardens were a special achievement. They were great art collectors. Under them the estate reached its pinnacle of splendor and of debt.
9th. Generation
When George took over in 1817, the king granted permission to add “Churchill” back to the family name. Later, as Winston Churchill’s official biography puts it, “In more recent times the Churchills have tended to drop the Spencer from their surname.”
The 6th Duke brought the financial situation to a crisis. His irresponsible behavior led to charges of adultery, kidnapping, other lawsuits, and four marriages. Scandal and ruin threatened the Churchill legacy. By this time the Duke had to live in just a few rooms of his palace and close up the rest.
10th.Generation
John Winston, the 7th. Duke, set out to restore the Churchill situation. He was a serious man, and a deeply religious one. Sales of some of the palace treasures stabilized the Marlborough finances. He became active in Parliament. In a religious era, he made the religious state of the realm his priority issue. He became Lord President of the Council and a cabinet member in Lord Derby’s Third Administration. In 1868 Disraeli asked him to lead the Conservatives in the House of Lords.
The Churchill family was again a solid, established member of Europe’s nobility. They were normal. They were respectable. And John Winston intended to keep it that way. The family’s future depended upon solid conservatism both financially and socially, upon not making waves.
This is the situation in August, 1873 when Randolf bursts into the palace to announce that he has just met a most wonderful girl and he intends to marry her!
The Duke is away in Scotland but the Duchess naturally asks questions. Who is she? And more importantly, does she come from a good family? Randolf supplies such answers as he can.
Extract from a letter to his Father:
Blenheim [Palace]: Wednesday, August 20, 1873The Duke and Duchess are increasingly concerned. Then Randolf supplies Jennie’s picture. Shock!
Mr. Jerome is a gentleman who is obliged to live in New York to look after his business. I do not know what it is. He is reputed to be very well off, and his daughters, I believe, have very good fortunes, but I do not know anything for certain. He generally comes over for three of four months every year. Mrs. Jerome has lived in Paris for several years and has educated her daughters there. They go out in Society there and are very well known.
I have told you all I know about them at present. . . . .
Ever your most affectionate son,
RANDOLF
When the first Duchess of Marlborough read the first history of the Churchill family just before her death in 1744, she wrote,
This History takes a great deal of Pains to make the Duke of Marlborough’s Extraction very ancient. That may be true for aught I know; But it is no matter whether it be true or not in my opinion. For I value nobody for another’s merit.That last sentence carried her point. But the sentence immediately preceding it unintentionally revealed another. In just three generations the Churchills had come from nowhere to the top of society.
Guns fired, bullets whizzed through the air, and Jennie fell. What kind of woman would go running around the countryside with a shooting party while in the last stage of pregnancy? The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had to wonder.
That was not all. Even Lord Randolf wrote, “A rather imprudent and rough drive in a pony carriage brought on the pains on Saturday night.”
Imprudent, indeed! That wild, dark skinned American!
There’s more. Saturday was the St. Andrew’s Ball at the Duke’s Palace. She was not expected, to say the least. When she came down the stairs from her room holding a dance card, what could the Marlboroughs do? William Manchester in his biography of Winston Churchill writes, “She was actually on the floor, pirouetting, when the pains started.”
The servants took her out. They stumbled through the vast palace, down corridors, past drawing-rooms, then through the library “the longest room in England”. The quarter mile of red carpet was too much. She fainted.
They carried her to a room just off the Great Hall.
The pains continued that night and all Sunday. The lack of trains on a Sunday prevented the family doctor in London from coming. A local, country doctor came instead.
Lord Randolf wrote to Jennie’s mother (in the same letter),
“The country Dr is however a clever man, & the baby was safely born at 1:30 this morning after about 8 hrs labour. She suffered a good deal poor darling, but was vy plucky & had no chloroform. The boy is wonderfully pretty so everybody says dark eyes and hair & vy healthy considering its prematureness.”
Premature? The parents had been married that April. It was now November 30. So it must have been born prematurely! Though the baby didn’t look it. It was a fully developed baby!
Winston Churchill always enjoyed the controversy. “Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.” The Marlboroughs were not amused. That wild woman! The Churchill family had not had such adventures since . . . . .
---------------------------------------------
Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)
Sometime towards the end of third grade, I got sick. I was going to be confined to my bed for days. Dad moved the TV into my bedroom.
Did you ever notice that some things in life never vary? For instance, if you turn on the television set and it’s a really good program, then it’s just ending. -- Or if it’s bad, then it’s just starting. I think it’s the law.
Now, if you’re sick, and you have 24 hours to watch, all of the programs will be bad. -- Or the good ones will come on when you’re sleeping and end just as you wake up. It’s the law.
To keep me happy, Dad and Mom went to the library and brought me a bunch of children’s books. One of them was a picture book about Daniel Boone.
I read it. I couldn’t stop. This was just as good as the TV show (Disney’s Davy Crockett)! I watched the clock. I couldn’t help it. Inevitably, the big hand came to the half hour. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe the book would vanish in a cloud of dust or something. If the TV is showing something really good, it always ends when the big hand reaches the half hour. It’s the law.
Anyway, the big hand reached the half hour but I decided to cheat. I kept reading. Something would surely happen to make me stop, but until then the story would continue. Nothing happened, a momentous nothing.
I made two discoveries: (1) there are no time limits on reading and (2) history books are interesting. Reading a history book was as interesting as watching any TV show. And it didn’t end just as you started it, especially if you went to the adult section and got a really thick, big book! As a bonus, I didn’t get into trouble for reading!
In that first batch of books was “The World of Captain John Smith” by Genevieve Foster. I asked, “What is this?” My mom answered, “He’s a little like Davy Crockett, isn’t he?”
It’s all these years later and I can’t forget that book. Foster was a famous children’s author in the forties and fifties. She wrote what she called “horizontal history.” She took a person’s life and then wrote stories from around the world during the time that person lived. The person served as an anchor on which she based a general history of the world during that lifetime.
Within a short period of time, I had read every one of her books that I could get my hands on. She’s largely forgotten now. Such a shame!
For all these years I’ve wondered why anybody else didn’t pick up on this approach to writing history. And why was this just for children?
1964 marked a divide for me. My interest in history led to the history that was currently happening on television and in the newspaper. I followed the election news avidly. The years since have been “current events” to me. I remember watching them on TV or reading about them as they happened. Before 1964 was “history."
This volume is about that period just before that year of the divide. The man to anchor the story on is obvious.
In the 1890’s he was already famous in the fields of war, sports, and journalism. In the 1900’s he became one of the leading liberal reformers in the world. When World War I began, he was head of the British navy. When it ended, he was head of the British Army. In the Roaring Twenties he was head of the British treasury. In World War II he was one of “The Big Three” Allied leaders. In the Cold War he was Prime Minister and the world’s leading anti-Communist. He rounded out his career with the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He’s Winston Churchill.
He was one of the greatest writers of the century. His interest in painting led to close connections to the art world. Science, movies, sports, war -- his story touched all these areas.
Want a travel story? His escape from a South African prison and trip across the wilds of the continent established his reputation.
Want a crime story? As Home Secretary he oversaw Scotland Yard. Documentaries still show newsreel footage of him directing gun battles in London.
Want a love story? There’s his marriage, the topic of such movies as “The Gathering Storm” starring Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave. There’s also the abdication crisis when the king gave up his throne for the woman he loved. One man risked his career and his reputation for him: Churchill.
In addition to his individual qualities, there’s another reason why this volume will devote considerable space to Churchill’s immediate world and British affairs.
During this period of history Britain is the established, though fading superpower. The United States is emerging. After World War I, it again turns inward. Russia fades in and out, too. In 1904 it is licked by the Japanese. After World War I, it is consumed by the Revolution. Only in World War II does both powers come into their own. Britain is down but under Churchill it is not out. During this period, the British Empire was the major influence on world history and Winston Churchill was the major influence on Britain’s.
This story begins with the Victorian Age at its height. Europe dominates the world. In the United States, Wild Bill Hickock, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp roam.
It ends with the Space Age and Vietnam.
Franklin Roosevelt once told him, “It’s fun just being in the same century as you.” With a new century, we can no longer say that. It’s just fun. That’s the attitude behind this book.
---------------------------------------------
Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories.
Years ago, I began writing a book. This is the first part of the book's introduction.
----------------------
Sometime towards the end of third grade, I got sick. I was going to be confined to my bed for days. Dad moved the TV into my bedroom.
Did you ever notice that some things in life never vary? For instance, if you turn on the television set and it’s a really good program, then it’s just ending. -- Or if it’s bad, then it’s just starting. I think it’s the law.
Now, if you’re sick, and you have 24 hours to watch, all of the programs will be bad. -- Or the good ones will come on when you’re sleeping and end just as you wake up. It’s the law.
To keep me happy, Dad and Mom went to the library and brought me a bunch of children’s books. One of them was a picture book about Daniel Boone.
I read it. I couldn’t stop. This was just as good as the TV show (Disney’s Davy Crockett)! I watched the clock. I couldn’t help it. Inevitably, the big hand came to the half hour. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe the book would vanish in a cloud of dust or something. If the TV is showing something really good, it always ends when the big hand reaches the half hour. It’s the law.
Anyway, the big hand reached the half hour but I decided to cheat. I kept reading. Something would surely happen to make me stop, but until then the story would continue. Nothing happened, a momentous nothing.
I made two discoveries: (1) there are no time limits on reading and (2) history books are interesting. Reading a history book was as interesting as watching any TV show. And it didn’t end just as you started it, especially if you went to the adult section and got a really thick, big book! As a bonus, I didn’t get into trouble for reading!
In that first batch of books was “The World of Captain John Smith” by Genevieve Foster. I asked, “What is this?” My mom answered, “He’s a little like Davy Crockett, isn’t he?”
It’s all these years later and I can’t forget that book. Foster was a famous children’s author in the forties and fifties. She wrote what she called “horizontal history.” She took a person’s life and then wrote stories from around the world during the time that person lived. The person served as an anchor on which she based a general history of the world during that lifetime.
Within a short period of time, I had read every one of her books that I could get my hands on. She’s largely forgotten now. Such a shame!
For all these years I’ve wondered why anybody else didn’t pick up on this approach to writing history. And why was this just for children?
1964 marked a divide for me. My interest in history led to the history that was currently happening on television and in the newspaper. I followed the election news avidly. The years since have been “current events” to me. I remember watching them on TV or reading about them as they happened. Before 1964 was “history."
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