Dearest mama and darling Winston
WINSTON Churchill had an unhappy childhood, belittled by a father who died after a long illness (probably syphilis) in 1895 when Winston was 20, and neglected by his glamorous well-educated American mother Jennie Jerome, whom he loved dearly, but whom he found distant as the evening star.
David Lough first came upon the letters between Churchill and his mother when writing a masterly study on his money entitled No More Champagne that cleared up mysteries surrounding Churchill’s disorderly finances.
A tug of war about the family inheritance between mother and son, both of whom craved the best things in life, featured in that book. “What a bore money is,” she once wrote to Winston, “or the lack of it.”
Now, by producing a book containing their correspondence stretching over 40 years until Jennie’s death in 1921, Lough paints a more rounded picture of a loving mother-son relationship and what he describes as the curious mind of Winston Churchill.
A slow developer, Churchill was shoved into the army by his father because his academic performance at school was poor. His father’s death brought Winston close to his mother, who told him: “All my political ambitions shall be centred on you.”
Initially, he was a disappointment. “I am quite disheartened by you,” his mother wrote two years later when he was enjoying polo and other pleasures of service life in India, “you seem to have no purpose in life and won’t realise at the age of 22 that for a man, life means hard work if you mean to succeed.”
A spark of relentless endeavour was lit. Inspired by his mother to read about history, Churchill was energised into writing for newspapers about military engagements in which he was involved and where he displayed valour. “Fame,” he now wrote to his mother, “is the finest thing on earth.” “I have nothing but ambitions to cling to,” he confessed in another letter, admitting to a lack of religious or political principles.
By 1901, he had made himself a national figure as a war reporter, been elected to parliament and saved £10,000 from his writing. “I could never have earned it,” he wrote, “had you not transmitted to me the wit and energy that was necessary.”
Churchill was very much his mother’s son, inheriting her literary gifts and sharing her selfishness, extravagance and joie de vivre. Replying to some of her strictures, he wrote: “I have no secrets from you — what is in my nature must have its origins in yours”.
Of Churchill himself, his great friend Brendan Bracken remarked
‘A slow developer, Churchill was shoved into the army by dad’
that the rip-roaring American blood of the Jeromes had largely cast out the Churchill melancholy.
“I understand you,” Jennie wrote in 1901, “as no other woman ever will.” But his dependence on her, confiding and seeking her approval had now begun to wane. After her ill-fated second marriage about that time to a man of Winston’s age, her home was no longer his. Churchill, himself, married in 1908. “Best of love, my dearest mama,” he wrote from his honeymoon, “you were a great comfort to me at a critical time in my emotional development.”
Jennie, who had been the mistress of the king, remained active in society and also wrote articles and plays, edited a magazine and promoted theatre. But there was an emotional void in her life. “You and Winston love me and are very good to me,” she wrote to her other son Jack in 1914, “but you lead busy lives and have your own families to be absorbed in. What am I? Only an old 5th wheel.”