Jennie Churchill
Jeanette "Jennie" Churchill (also: Lady Randolph Churchill ), née Jennie Jerome (born January 9, 1854 in New York City , New York , † June 29, 1921 in London , England ) was an American - British philanthropist and author . She was best known as the mother of the future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill .
Live and act
Jennie Churchill was born in 1854 as the second eldest daughter of New York businessman Leonard Jerome and his wife Clara Hall. Her first name, Jennie, was based on the opera singer Jenny Lind, who was admired by her father . In the late 1860s Jennie came to France , where she was to be introduced into court society in 1870, in which her mother and sisters had frequented for a long time.
However, the fall of the French monarchy in the course of the Franco-Prussian War ruined these plans. In 1874 she met the young British aristocrat Lord Randolph Churchill in Paris , who was staying in the city in order to bridge the time until the next general election in Great Britain, with which he intended to start his parliamentary career, after having recently successfully graduated from Oxford University . The two fell in love and were married a few days after their first meeting in an adventurous express wedding ceremony in the British embassy - against the resistance of Lord Randolph's parents, the Dukes and the Duchess of Marlborough . Through this marriage Jennie earned the courtesy title of "Lady Randolph Churchill". The couple had two sons: Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965) and John Strange Spencer-Churchill (1880-1947). The relationship with her children is considered to be "loving but aloof" (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), which is mainly attributed to the fact that she was "busy with her own business".
In the 1880s, Jennie's husband rose to become the British Chancellor of the Exchequer , making her the wife of the second most senior politician in the state. According to contemporary conventions, she only played a very limited role in the upbringing of her sons, which was mainly given to governesses and later to private schools. In the 1890s, Jennie Churchill used her extensive relationships, which reached as far as the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and the royal family, to promote the political rise of her son Winston. Through her advocacy, she enabled him to take part in all kinds of adventurous military escapades in the most remote parts of the Empire (including India and Sudan) by inducing the powerful in London society to grant Winston a generous leave of absence from his regular troops and the attachment to enable the expeditionary force close to combat.
Jennie Churchill was widely known for her “dazzling beauty” and “intense lifestyle” during her lifetime. She is considered the inventor of the Manhattan cocktail and was involved in countless love affairs. The men with whom she had amorous relationships include King Edward VII of Great Britain, King Milan of Serbia and the Hungarian diplomat Karl Graf Kinsky . There was also a persistent rumor that her second son did not come from Lord Randolph, but rather emerged from an extramarital relationship. The (platonic) admirers of Churchill's beauty included Otto von Bismarck , with whom she took a cure in Bad Kissingen, and the diplomat Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon , who expressed her mysterious fascination in his memoir "An Ambassador of Peace" Tried to make understandable by comparing her to a panther: “There was more of a panther than a woman in her gaze, but with a cultivated intelligence that does not belong to the jungle.” This image has been used frequently since then.
Five years after the death of her first husband, in 1900 she married George Cornwallis-West , an officer in the Scots Guards , who was 20 years her junior - with the result that Winston Churchill had a stepfather until the two separated in 1912 (divorced in 1914) was two weeks older than himself. During her marriage to Cornwallis-West, Jennie Churchill was called “Mrs. George Cornwallis-West ”, under which she also published her memoir, which she later, after her divorce, discarded in favor of the Churchill name. The two eventually separated when Cornwallis-West fell in love with the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell , whom he met in connection with the staging of a play written by Jennie Churchill in which Campbell starred.
In 1918 Jennie married an employee of the British civil administration in Nigeria, Montague Phippen Porch (1877–1964). After a serious fall down stairs, the amputation of her left leg became necessary in 1921. She died as a result of the operation and was buried next to her first husband in the Churchill family grave in St. Martin's Cemetery in Bladon, Oxfordshire. Her son's judgment of the mother's life was: "On the whole it was a life of sunshine".
Others
- Jennie Churchill has been portrayed in films by Lee Remick in a television series named after her ("Jennie") and by Anne Bancroft in Richard Attenborough's film The Young Lion ("Young Winston") .
- Jennie Churchill owned a tattoo that featured a snake wrapping around her left wrist.
- According to a family legend, Jennie's great-grandmother on her mother's side was an Indian from the Iroquois tribe , a claim that her son Winston affirmed many times (presumably out of the joy of self-portrayal and to maintain his image as the “unorthodox bird of paradise” in British politics), but which has not yet been accepted could be genealogically proven beyond any doubt.
literature
Own writings
- Mrs. George Cornwallis-West: The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill , 1908.
- This: 1616-1916 Shakespeare Memorial. Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball , London 1911.
Biographies
- Anita Leslie: Lady Randolph Churchill. The Story of Jennie Jerome , 1968
- Ralph G. Martin : Jennie. The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill - The Romantic Years, 1854-1895 , 1969.
- Ralph G. Martin : Jennie. The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill - Volume II, The Dramatic Years, 1895-1921 , 1971.
- Charles Higham: Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World. - Virgin Books, 2006.
- Anne Sebba: American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill , 2007.
Web links
- Jennie Churchill. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Churchill, Jennie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jerome, Jeanette (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American-British philanthropist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 9, 1854 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City , New York , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 29, 1921 |
| Place of death | London , England , UK |