Lady Randolph Churchill
Brooklyn, New York State, U.S. | |
---|---|
Died | 29 June 1921 London, England | (aged 67)
Buried | St Martin's Church, Bladon |
Spouse(s) | |
Issue | Sir Winston Churchill Jack Churchill |
Father | Leonard Jerome |
Mother | Clarissa Hall |
Jeanette Spencer-Churchill
Early life
She was raised in Brooklyn,[c] Paris, and New York City. She had two surviving sisters, Clarita (1851–1935) and Leonie (1859–1943). Another sister, Camille (1855–1863) died when Jennie was nine.[7]
There is some disagreement regarding the time and place of her birth. A plaque at 426 Henry St. gives her year of birth as 1850, not 1854. However, on 9 January 1854, the Jeromes lived nearby at number 8 Amity Street (since renumbered as 197). It is believed that the Jeromes were temporarily staying at the Henry Street address, which was owned by Leonard's brother Addison, and that Jennie was born there during a snowstorm.[8]
She was a noted beauty; an admirer, Lord d'Abernon, said that there was "more of the panther than of the woman in her look."[9]
Personal life
In 1909, when American impresario Charles Frohman became sole manager of The Globe Theatre, the first production was His Borrowed Plumes, written by Jennie. Although Mrs Patrick Campbell produced and took the lead role in the play, it was a commercial failure. It was at this point that Campbell began an affair with Jennie’s then husband, George Cornwallis-West.[11]
Jennie served as the chair of the hospital committee for the
First marriage
Jennie Jerome was married for the first time on 15 April 1874, aged 20, at the
Although they became engaged within three days of this initial meeting, the marriage was delayed for months while their parents argued over settlements.[17] By this marriage, she was properly known as Lady Randolph Churchill and would have been addressed in conversation as Lady Randolph.
The Churchills had two sons:
Lady Randolph is believed to have had numerous lovers during her marriage, including the Prince of Wales, Milan I of Serbia, Prince Karl Kinsky, and Herbert von Bismarck.[20]
As was the custom of the day in her social class, Lady Randolph played a limited role in her sons' upbringing, relying largely upon nannies, especially
Lady Randolph was well-respected and influential in the highest British social and political circles. She was said to be intelligent, witty, and quick to laughter. It was said that Queen Alexandra especially enjoyed her company, although Lady Randolph had been involved in an affair with her husband the king, which was well known to Alexandra.[22] Through her family contacts and her extramarital romantic relationships, Lady Randolph greatly helped her husband's early career, as well as that of her son Winston.
Later marriages
Lord Randolph died in 1895, aged 45. His death freed Jennie to move on effortlessly despite her lack of money; she mixed in the highest London society circles. Attending a weekend party in July 1898 hosted by Daisy Warwick, Jennie was introduced to George Cornwallis-West, a captain in the Scots Guards who was just 16 days older than her own son Winston; he was instantly smitten, and they spent much time together. George and Jennie were married on 28 July 1900 at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge.[23]
Around this time, Jennie became well known for chartering the hospital ship Maine[24] to care for those wounded in the Second Boer War. [25] She headed the effort to charter the ship in partnership with two American-born socialites residing in London: Jennie Goodell Blow and Fanny Ronalds.[26][27][28] For this work, Churchill was awarded the decoration of the Royal Red Cross (RRC) in the South Africa Honours list published on 26 June 1902.[25] Churchill received the decoration in person from King Edward VII on 2 October 1902 during a visit to Balmoral Castle.[29]
In 1908, she wrote her memoirs, The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill.
George doted on Jennie, amorously nicknaming her "pussycat". However, they drifted apart. The Churchills were becoming a dedicated literary family, and George, who was a financial failure in
Jennie separated from George in 1912, and they were divorced in April 1914, whereupon Cornwallis-West married Mrs. Campbell. Jennie dropped the surname Cornwallis-West, and resumed, by deed poll, the name Lady Randolph Churchill.[30]
Her third marriage, on 1 June 1918, was to
Death
In May 1921, while Montagu Porch was away in Africa, Jennie slipped while coming down a friend's staircase wearing new high-heeled shoes, breaking her ankle.
She was buried in the Churchill family plot at St Martin's Church, Bladon, Oxfordshire, next to her first husband.
Cocktail misattribution
The invention of the
Portrayals
- Jennie Churchill was portrayed by Anne Bancroft in the film Young Winston (1972) and by Lee Remick in the British television series Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974).
See also
- The Anglo-Saxon Review, a quarterly miscellany edited by Lady Randolph Churchill
Notes
- ^ This British person has the barrelled surname Spencer-Churchill, but is known by the surname Churchill.
- ^ Her legal name was Jennie, per the 1874 marriage license bearing witness to her union with Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, accessed on ancestry.com on 21 January 2017.
- ^ Brooklyn was an independent city prior to the consolidation of the cities of New York (then Manhattan and the Bronx) and Brooklyn with the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island in 1898.
References
- ^ "Jennie Jerome Churchill | American Heiress, Winston Churchill's Mother | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
- ^ G. H. L. Le May, "Churchill, Jeanette [Lady Randolph Churchill] (1854–1921)", rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., May 2006, accessed 18 September 2010
- ISBN 978-0-393-06230-4.
- ^ Churchill, Randolph S. (1966), Winston S. Churchill: Volume One: Youth, 1874–1900, pp. 15–16
- ^ Ralph G. Martin Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill—The Romantic Years, 1854–1895, 9th printing, 1969
- ^ "Churchill Had Iroquois Ancestors". Winstonchurchill.org. 29 June 1921. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
- ^ Anne Saba, American Jennie, Norton, 2008, page 13
- ^ "Winston Churchill's Mother Jennie Jerome Was Born in Cobble Hill, But in Which House?". Cobble Hill Association. 15 June 2011. Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-393-06230-4.
- ^ Lovell, Mary S., The Churchills, Little Brown, London, 2011, p. 28.
- ^ Lovell, Mary S., The Churchills, Little Brown, London, 2011, p.259.
- ^ "Work of American Women's War Relief Fund in London". New York Herald. 31 December 1916. Retrieved 26 April 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Two Hospitals for U.S. Troops Wounded". Salisbury Evening Post. 20 June 1917. Retrieved 27 April 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Helping in Britain: The American Women's War Relief Fund". American Women in World War I. 9 January 2017. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
- ^ Anita Leslie. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, 1969
- ^ van der Werff, Adriaen; Starling, Thomas; Churchill, John; Churchill, Randolph; Churchill, Winston; Pond, James B.; Purdy, J. E.; Churchill, Jennie Jerome; Churchill, John Spencer (10 July 2004). "An Age of Youth - Churchill and the Great Republic | Exhibitions - Library of Congress". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
- ^ ISBN 0-440-54681-8
- ISBN 978-0143117995.
- ^ Anne Sebba, American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill", Norton, 2008
- ISBN 0-440-54681-8.
- ^ Churchill, Winston, My Early Life, 1930, Touchstone, 1996 edition, p.28.
- ^ "Edward VII". Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
- OCLC 883485021.
- ^ "UNITED STATES HOSPITAL SHIP". Trove. 25 January 1900. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ a b "No. 27448". The London Gazette (Supplement). 26 June 1902. p. 4193.
- ^ Thurmond, Aubri E. (December 2014). "Under Two Flags: Rapprochement and the American Hospital Ship Maine: A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate School of the Texas Woman's University Department of History and Government College of Arts and Sciences" (PDF). Texas Women's University. Retrieved 11 April 2023.
- ^ "Americans Honored". Newspapers.com. Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. 7 August 1901. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
- ^ "Mrs. Blow is Enroute Home". Valentine Democrat. 23 May 1901. Retrieved 10 April 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Court Circular". The Times. No. 36889. London. 3 October 1902. p. 7.
- ^ "No. 28820". The London Gazette. 10 April 1914. p. 3130.
- ISBN 978-1-4087-0247-5.
- ISBN 0-330-48805-8.
- ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
- ^ "Jennie and the Manhattan". The New York Times. 23 December 2007. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
Further reading
- Churchill, Lady Randolph Spencer. The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill, 1908 (Autobiography)
- Kraus, René (1943). Young Lady Randolph. Longman's Green & Co.
- Leslie, Anita. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, 1969
- Martin, Ralph G. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill – The Romantic Years, 1854–1895 (Prentice-Hall, Ninth printing, 1969)
- ISBN 0-13-509760-6
- ISBN 978-1-4022-0972-7
- ISBN 0-393-05772-0