From Winston with Love and Kisses: The Young Churchill

FOREWORD

FOREWORD If you know a lonely child who has poetry in its heart but a tongue distorting the words it tries to utter, whose muscles refuse to obey and fingers drop what it would grasp, whose infantile achievements wither from lack of encouragement; let it listen to the story of young Winston's boyhood and learn to believe there is always hope, and never, never give up. When Winston was nearly eight years old, he was taken by his mother and left at boarding school, as was the custom in those days. He thus found himself suddenly translated into a bewildering and hostile society very different from home, at the modest little house No.2 St James's Place, with his baby brother and attentive nurse. He had relished the walks in the Green Park with his mother and the stories she would read to him at bedtime. He must have watched her draw and paint in the afternoons; but often he was bundled back to the nursery while important people from Parliament came to discuss affairs with his father. This cosy little nursery was exchanged for a hard and sometimes cruel schooling system where first he had to learn how to survive against the ailments fickle Nature had unreasonably given him at birth; and then the tyranny of schoolmasters who would have him learn, with threat of the birch, subjects in which he had no interest or understanding. He wrote his first letters home, trying to hide his tears and bewilderment. Thus began a private and intimate correspondence between mother and son, which continued for forty years. Winston was descended on both sides from notable families. Some ingredients of antecedents and environment must have influence on personality. His father, Lord Randolph, could speak fluent German, French and Latin. A cultured life would have been his choice but when duty, as a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough , forced him into politics, he made the best of it and once there his ability propelled him to the top in record time. Winston took great interest in his father's political progress very early in his schooldays. His letters in this book show a maturity well in advance of his age. He was longing to grow up and follow in his father's footsteps; he first devoted all his energy to overcome his physical disabilities. A speech impediment and other physical faults should have given a normal child little hope for a political career. But stamina inherited perhaps from his mother and grandmother, the seventh Duchess of Marlborough, overcame the natural process of nature. His father, whom he greatly admired, died shortly before he came of age. Winston, after ten years of boarding schools which he hated, had left with his education incomplete. It would seem he should never have been sent to a public school but it is idle to conjecture what might have been. It was unfortunate he never learnt from or understood his father while alive. Winston's mother, Jennie Jerome, was my grandmother and the most wonderful grandmother anyone could imagine. I met her first in the 1914 War. She was always known as BM (Belle Mere); her father's family had emigrated from England and her mother's family was supposed to have Iroquois Indian ancestry not so far in the past. Certainly Jennie's striking beauty had some of the dark features of the North American Indian race. One of her aunts was known as Battle Axe by the nephews. Her father had wanted a boy so she was allowed to wear trousers and ride astride, becoming a magnificent horsewoman ; he also started the New York Opera, and Jennie's talents made her a remarkable concert pianist. Mr Jerome had the misfortune to be on the wrong side in the American Civil War, so it was convenient to move to Europe for two years. Mrs Jerome was so attracted by European culture that she returned with her three Peregrine Churchill with Lady Randolph 9 daughters and settled in Paris. Jennie found a new life and decided to be French. She changed her name to Jeannette and put accents on all the vowels in Jerome. Jennie had the ability of making you feel on equal terms whoever you were. When I was four years old I had no nurse and my mother had to take me with her and once, at a party with BM, I had slipped away, found a piano and was playing...