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CHAPTER 1
Birth
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on 30 November 1874. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, second surviving son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and Frances, a daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. Winston's mother, Jennie Jerome, was the second of the four daughters, three of whom were still living, of Mr and Mrs Leonard Jerome of New York City. It had been intended that the child should be born at the young couple's new London house, 48 Charles Street, Mayfair; but the birth was two months premature — hence Lady Randolph Churchill's Blenheim confinement. Lady Randolph's mother was in Paris at the time with her eldest daughter Clara; Lord Randolph hastened to send her the news:
Lord Randolph to Mrs Leonard Jerome
Monday 30 [November 1874] 12.30 p.m.
Blenheim Palace Woodstock
Dear Mrs Jerome,
I have just time to write a line, to send by the London Dr to tell you that all has up to now thank God gone off very well with my darling Jennie. She had a fall on Tuesday walking with the shooters, & a rather imprudent & rough drive in a pony carriage brought on the pains on Saturday night. We tried to stop them, but it was no use. They went on all Sunday. Of course the Oxford physician cld not come. We telegraphed for the London man Dr Hope but he did not arrive till this morning. 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. My mother & Clementine have been everything to Jennie, & she cld not be more comfortable. We have just got a most excellent nurse & wet nurse coming down this afternoon, & please God all will go vy well with both. I telegraphed to Mr Jerome; I thought he wld like to hear. I am sure you will be delighted at this good news and dear Clara also I will write again tonight. Love to Clara.
Yrs affty RANDOLPH S. C.
I hope the baby things will come with all speed. We have to borrow some from the Woodstock Solicitor's wife.
Lord Randolph's mother Duchess Fanny, as she was known to her family, also wrote:
Duchess of Marlborough to Mrs Leonard Jerome
30 November [1874]
Blenheim
My dear Mrs Jerome,
Randolph's Telegram [which has not survived] will already have informed you of dear Jennie's safe confinement & of the Birth of her Boy. I am most thankful to confirm the good news & to assure you of her satisfactory Progress. So far indeed she could not be doing better. She was in some degree of Pain Saturday night & all Sunday & towards evg of that day we began to see that all the remedies for warding off the Event were useless. Abt 6 of P.M. the Pains began in earnest.
We failed in getting an accoucheur from Oxford so she only had the Woodstock Doctor; we telegraphed to London but of course on Sunday ev there were no trains.
Dr Hope only arrived at 9 of this Morg to find dear Jennie comfortably settled in bed & the baby washed and dressed! She could not have been more skilfully treated though had he been here than she was by our little local doctor. She had a somewhat tedious but perfectly safe & satisfactory Time. She is very thankful to have it over & indeed nothing could be more prosperous.
We had neither cradle nor baby linen nor any thing ready but fortunately every thing went well & all difficulties were overcome. Lady Camden, Lady Blandford & I were with her by turns & I really think she could not have had more care. She has had an anxious Time and dear Randolph and I are much thankful it is over. I will be sure to see you receive a Bulletin every day.
We expect today a 1st Rate Nurse. Best love to Clara & Believe me,
Yrs sincerely F. MARLBOROUGH
Lady Camden (Clementine) was the daughter of the 6th Duke of Marlborough by his second wife, so that she was an aunt of Lord Randolph's, though only a year older. She had married in 1866 the future 3rd Marquess Camden and had borne him four children, but was widowed in 1872. She became one of the godparents of the newly arrived baby. Lady Blandford, Albertha, was the sixth daughter of the 1st Duke of Abercorn, at that time Viceroy of Ireland. She had been married for five years to the eldest son and heir of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, the Marquess of Blandford, who was soon to be involved in a serious public scandal; she had already had a son and two daughters.
The London doctor who was supposed to have attended the confinement of Lady Randolph was Mr William Hope, who at the age of thirty-seven had already become one of the leading obstetricians of the day. His inability to travel to Blenheim on a Sunday gave an unexpected opportunity to the local physician Dr Frederic Taylor. He had established himself in Woodstock not only as the principal doctor in the district but also as something of a local worthy, for he sat on the Bench and acted as Coroner for Woodstock until he left to practise in London in 1887. Lord Randolph expressed himself appreciative of his 'skilful management of and careful attention to her Ladyship during her confinement', and Dr Taylor received a fee of twenty-five guineas for his professional services. The greatest initial embarrassment at the unexpected and premature arrival was the lack of baby clothes. Of course all the preparations were being made in Charles Street, though a lot of the baby clothes had not yet been purchased — Mrs Jerome and Lady Randolph's elder sister Clara had promised to buy some of them in Paris. After a week Lord Randolph wrote to Mrs Jerome: 'The layette has given great satisfaction but the little shawls with capuchons have not arrived. Jennie says they are much wanted, also the pillow cases have not come'. Fortunately, Mrs Thomas Brown, the wife of the local solicitor, had been more provident than Lady Randolph. She was expecting her first child towards the end of January and it was the baby things prepared for this arrival that were borrowed by Lord Randolph to deal with the emergency caused by the premature birth of his son.
Lord Randolph and his mother continued to send daily bulletins to Mrs Jerome in Paris. In three consecutive letters Lord Randolph somewhat querulously complained that he had had no reply to his telegram to his father-in-law. 'I telegraphed to Mr Jerome yesterday,' he wrote on December 1, 'and did expect he would have answered but he has not yet.' And on December 2: 'I wonder Mr Jerome has not answered my telegram'; and when there had been no reply by December 4, Lord Randolph complained: 'I think Mr Jerome might have answered my telegram I sent him. It is so unsatisfactory when people don't appreciate one's news'.
Lord and Lady Randolph asked Mr Jerome to be godfather to their child, but there is no record whether he was or not. However, the fact that Winston was given the extra name of Leonard certainly lends credibility to the supposition.
* * *
Thirty years later the child whose premature arrival had caused such a commotion at Blenheim and in Woodstock gave this description of his birthplace and its history when writing his father's Life:
The cumulative labours of Vanbrugh and 'Capability' Brown have succeeded at Blenheim in setting an Italian palace in an English park without apparent incongruity. The combination of these different ideas, each singly attractive, produces a remarkable effect. The palace is severe in its symmetry and completeness. Nothing has been added to the original plan; nothing has been taken away. The approaches are formal; the wings are balanced; four equal towers maintain its corners; and the fantastic ornaments of one side are elaborately matched on the other. Natural simplicity and even confusion are, on the contrary, the characteristic of the park and gardens. Instead of that arrangement of gravel paths, of geometrical flower beds, and of yews disciplined with grotesque exactness which the character of the house would seem to suggest, there spreads a rich and varied landscape. Green lawns and shining water, banks of laurel and fern, groves of oak and cedar, fountains and islands, are conjoined in artful disarray to offer on every side a promise of rest and shade. And yet there is no violent contrast, no abrupt dividing-line between the wildness and freshness of the garden and the pomp of the architecture.
The whole region is as rich in history as in charm; for the antiquity of Woodstock is not measured by a thousand years, and Blenheim is heir to all the memories of Woodstock. Here Kings — Saxon, Norman, and Plantagenet — have held their Courts. Ethelred the Unready, Alfred the Great, Queen Eleanor, the Black Prince loom in vague majesty out of the past. Woodstock was notable before the Norman conquest. It was already a borough when the Domesday Book was being compiled. The park was walled to keep the foreign wild beasts of Henry I. Fair Rosamond's Well still bubbles by the lake. From the gatehouse of the old manor the imprisoned Princess Elizabeth watched the years of Mary's persecution. In the tumults of the Civil Wars Woodstock House was held for King Charles by an intrepid officer through a long and bitter siege and ravaged by the victorious Roundheads at its close. And beyond the most distant of these events, in the dim backward of time, the Roman generals administering the districts east and west of Akeman Street had built their winter villas in this pleasant, temperate retreat; so that Woodstock and its neighbourhood were venerable and famous long before John Churchill, in the early years of the eighteenth century, superimposed upon it the glory of his victories over the French.
Whether ancestry or environment play the greater part in influencing the character and destiny of human beings has long been disputed and is still an open question. The degree of influence must vary from case to case. It is diverting to speculate why such care is devoted to the breeding of dogs and horses while the human race prefers to reproduce itself in a largely indiscriminate and haphazard fashion. More than fifty years later, when Winston was writing his magnificent history of John, Duke of Marlborough, he set down a careful account of the origins of the Churchill family:
Besides attending to his son's education Winston [John's father] in his studious leisure bethought himself often of his pedigree and his arms. His researches into genealogy have produced as good an account of the origin of the Churchills as is likely to be required. He traced his 'Lyon Rampant, Argent upon a Sable coat,' to Otho de Leon, Castelan of Gisor, 'whome we call our common ancestor'. The said Otho had two sons, Richard and Wandrill, Lord of Courcelle, 'whose youngest son came into England with William the Conqueror'. After recounting conscientiously several generations, Winston rested with confidence upon 'John ... Lord of Currichill, or as 'tis in divers records Chirechile, since called Churchill in Somersetshire,' whose son, Sir Bartholomew de Churchill, 'a man of great note in the tyme of King Steven, ... defended the castle of Bristow against the Empress Maud and was slaine afterward in that warr.' In the time of King Edward I, after the Barons' War, the lordship of Churchill was seized by the Crown and given to some favourite, whose posterity continued in possession till 'nere about Henry VIII, his tyme.' After passing through the hands of a family of the name of Jennings ... it was sold eventually in 1652 to a Sir John Churchill, sometime Master of the Rolls, 'and had come to my son in right of his wife, had it not been so unfortunately alianated by her said father.'
All this was very fine, but when, descending these chains, we come to John, 'ancestor of the present Churchills of Munston, and Roger, who by the daughter of Peverell, relict of Nicholas Meggs, had issue Mathew, father of Jaspar, my grandfather,' we enter a rather shady phase. Edward Harly rudely asserts 'that John Churchill's great grandfather was a blacksmith who worked in the family of the Meggs,' and certainly, as his great-great-great-grandfather married a Mrs Meggs, this seems very suspicious and even disquieting. In any case, there are strong grounds for believing that John's grandfather solidly improved the fortunes of this branch of the Churchill family. He was a practising lawyer, a deputy registrar of Chancery as well as member of the Middle Temple, and lawyers were a prosperous class at this date. Not only did he make a marriage himself into an aristocratic family, the Winstones, but he seems to have arranged a step for his eldest son. For all the genealogical table produced by Winston, the Drakes were a more renowned and substantial family than the Churchills, of whom there were numerous branches of various conditions, some quite lowly, in Dorset alone; whereas John Drake's family descended eight in line from father to son, and all called John, through the Bernard Drakes, who were already in good repute at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and passed on the properties at Musbury which had been in their hands from the fifteenth century. Bernard Drake had been a man of so robust quality that he had physically assaulted his relation, the renowned Sir Francis Drake, for daring to display upon his coat of arms a wyvern which he deemed poached from him. Hearing this, Queen Elizabeth conferred upon Sir Francis a wyvern dangling head downward from the yards of a ship, and asked Sir Bernard what he thought of that! He replied with some temerity, 'Madam, though you could give him a finer yet you could not give him an ancienter coat than mine.' So the marriage arranged for Winston with Lady Drake's daughter Elizabeth was socially satisfactory, and was ... a veritable salvation during the Civil Wars.
Another streak of blood, strange and wanton, mingled in the child John's nature. His grandmother, Lady Drake, was herself the daughter of John, Lord Boteler, who had married the sister of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of James I and Charles I. Some students have amused themselves in tracing all the men — some of the greatest and wickedest in our history — who have descended from George Villiers, father of Buckingham. They are said to have repeatedly produced, across the centuries, the favourites, male and female, of kings and queens; and Chatham, and Pitt, as well as Marlborough, bear the distinction of this taint or genius.
When at length, at the end of her life, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, read — tardily, for it had been kept from her — Lediard's history of the Duke, she made the following extremely up-to-date comment upon this part of the subject: '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'.
Be this as it may, students of heredity have dilated upon this family tree. Galton [in his Hereditary Genius], cites it as one of the chief examples on which his thesis stands. Winston himself has been accounted one of the most notable and potent of sires. Had he lived the full span, he would have witnessed within the space of twelve months his son gaining the battle of Ramillies and his daughter's son [the Duke of Berwick and Alba] of Almanza; and would have found himself acknowledged as the progenitor of the two greatest captains of the age at the head of the opposing armies of Britain and of France and Spain. Moreover, his third surviving son, Charles, became a soldier of well-tried distinction, and his naval son virtually managed the Admiralty during the years of war. The military strain flowed strong and clear from the captain of the Civil Wars, student of heraldry and history, and champion of the Divine Right. It was his blood, not his pen, that carried his message.
An older strain and one equally potent in Winston's blood was that of the Spencers. The Spencers are first heard of in the latter part of the fifteenth century. They were then Warwickshire shepherds whose flocks were to prove the foundation of the family fortune. By 1504 John Spencer had risen sufficiently in the world to obtain a grant of arms. He owned large estates at Wormleighton in Warwickshire, and later at Althorp in Northamptonshire. He was knighted by Henry VIII and Winston was descended from him in direct male descent through fifteen generations. This Sir John Spencer, who died in 1522, had a grandson, another Sir John Spencer, who built a substantial Elizabethan dwelling. The present (7th) Earl Spencer, who by his careful organization and study of the papers in the Muniment Room at Althorp has done so much to make known the earlier history of the family, some years ago put on record for the benefit of the author his account of an ancestor of his who died in 1586, two years before the Spanish Armada:
He increased his wealth by sheepfarming, but, although his flocks multiplied, tradition asserts that neither he nor his successors were ever able to possess as many as 20,000 sheep. Though often their flocks reached a total of 19,999, yet some fate, such as disease or accident, always befell them before their number amounted to 20,000. His riches seem to have been very great, for as well as leaving his paternal property to his eldest son and successor he settled an estate on each of his four younger sons.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Winston S. Churchill Volume I Youth 1874–1900"
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