Randolph and Jennie

Another installment in my series
CHURCHILL’S WORLD
Stories of the world during the time Winston Churchill lived in it: 1873 to 1965

Previously

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. He had a serious side, too, having memorized lengthy passages from Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. In short, Lord Randolf 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.”

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”

Jenny received this from New York:

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 or London; and he didn’t like it now.

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 parents changed their minds. 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 Marlboroughs had not attended. Seven months later Winston Churchill was born.