Sebba - American Jennie: the remarkable life of Lady Randolph Churchill

1. Jennies mother, Clara Jerome
2. Leonard Jerome, Jennies father
3. The Jerome mansion, Madison Square, New York City
4. Jennie, aged ten, dressed as a Vivandire
5. A studio portrait of the Jerome sisters
6. Jerome Park
7. Jennie in riding gear
8. Lord Randolph Churchill
9. The room where Winston Churchill was born, Blenheim Palace
10. Number 48 Charles Street
11. Lee Remick as Jennie
12. Clara Hall Jerome with her daughters and grandchildren, c . 1888
13. Jennie with her two young sons, c . 1889
14. Hugh Warrender, Jack Churchill, Jennie and Winston, Cowes
15. Count Charles Kinsky posing on his horse Zoedone
16. Lord Falmouth
17. Lord Rossmore
18. Major Caryl Ramsden of the Seaforth Highlanders
19. Jennie posing for Gaspard-Flix Tournachon, c . 1885
20. A Punch cartoon of Lord Randolph Churchill
21. Jennie and Lady Curzon canvassing the 1885 Woodstock election for Randolph
22. Randolph Churchill towards the end of his life
23. Moreton Frewen, c. 1880
24. Winston as a twenty-year-old cadet at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, 1895
25. Bourke Cockran, 1904
26. Jennie dressed as Empress Theodora of Byzantium for the Devonshire House Ball, 1897
27. Nurse Jennie aboard the hospital ship Maine
28. George Cornwallis-West
29. Salisbury Hall, near St Albans
30. Jennie campaigning among working-class men in Oldham on behalf of Winston, 1900
31. Jennie with Leonie and Porch, Castle Leslie, Glaslough, 1918
32. Jennie on the front cover of Tatler
33. Oil painting of Jennie by Ruth Payne Burgess
34. Jennie with grandson Peregrine
35. Jennies funeral in Bladon, outside Blenheim, 2 July 1921

The author and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: Plates 1, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 25 and 34, Tarka King; 2, neg. no. 79711d, Collection of The New-York Historical Society; 3, neg. no. 61054, Collection of The New-York Historical Society; 4, Booklyn Public LibraryBrooklyn Collection; 5, 19, 23, 24 and 35, Jonathan Frewen; 6, neg. no. 79712d, Collection of The New-York Historical Society; 9, photograph by Peter Smith reproduced by kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace Image Library; 10, Private Collection; 11, FremantleMedia; 13, 22 and 26, Hulton Archive/Getty Images; 19, Pethbridge; 20, Mary Evans Picture Library; 21, supplied by Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR 28/086/006 Winston S. Churchill, Curtis Brown Ltd; 27, supplied by Churchill Archives Centre, BRDW II/15 Winston S. Churchill, Curtis Brown Ltd; 28, National Portrait Gallery, London; 29, David R. Kilby; 30, supplied by Churchill Archives Centre, BRDW Winston S. Churchill, Curtis Brown Ltd; 31, Sir John Leslie and Castle Leslie Trust; 32, Illustrated London News Picture Library; 33, Collection of Elaine Hirschl Ellis.

I n 1980 I moved with my husband and new baby from London to New York and settled in Brooklyn Heights. Most afternoons I walked this baby according to English habits in his pushchair to gaze idly at the boats on the East River or watch the frenzied activity in the warehouses below. Sometimes we strayed further afield and strolled into Brooklyn itself, a mere block from Pineapple Street to Henry Street.

More than a hundred years earlier another mother on fine afternoons took her small children to the area later known as Brooklyn Heights. They, too, fed the pigeons and watched the paddleboats, tugs and sailing skiffs on the East River. Sometimes a kind gentleman let them peer through his telescope so they could see right over the low roofs of Manhattan Island. Occasionally, just as I was to do later, they crossed by ferry steamer to Wall Street where the father, Leonard Jerome, self-made millionaire and stock speculator, had his office.

Every biographer craves something that will explain their fascination or obsession with their subject. Had I known then that the subject of this book was born so near the street where I lived, would I have written about her sooner? I hope not. I believe there is a time, after certain experiences have been digested, that gives a writer the confidence to understand, to make connections.

Eventually this baby that I walked in Brooklyn Heights grew up to be a soldier and, when he was sent abroad, I confess that as I packed up the occasional book to send him I was conscious that another mother of a soldier had done a lot more and arranged for many more books or hampers of food to support and comfort her son in India.

Often, as I sat buried deep in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge reading the letters from the young subaltern to his newly widowed mother, my thoughts were profoundly engaged with her and her worries. As I type this introduction today I am interrupted by some breaking news: two young British soldiers have been killed in Iraq. I can barely control my own emotions as I think of her anxieties for her two sons as they fought in the Boer War and the bloody Battle of Spion Kop, and how she bravely agonised over her elder son Winstons capture in South Africa. Exactly a hundred years later I wandered over the grassy mounds of that very mountain, scene of so much destruction and brutal loss of life. How did she cope with the days and weeks of uncertainty when this precious, special son was putting himself in the path of so much danger? But, aware of the hazards of self-identification with the subject of my biography, I do not pursue that further. Taking charge of a hospital ship is not in my sights. What remains is a clear appreciation of her steadfast faith in Winstons destiny, a faith which, crucially, she passed on to him.

Jennie Jerome, an American beauty, infused the Marlborough dynasty with vigour, courage and colour. A woman who embraced life with a passion, she was an outsider, an original, who did not live by the dusty old rules of the English aristocracy. She had, according to her son Winston, not blood but the wine of life coursing through her veins. A diamond star flashed in her hair matching the sparkle everyone reported in her dark eyes. She was tempestuous and quick temperedthat sudden rage, without heat, that never offends, was how one nephew put it.1 Another described her as inflammable.