The Liberated Jennie Churchill

By Ruth Fischer

She was a liberated woman long before the term became fashionable. Widowed at 40, she became a surrogate father to her son, Winston Churchill. While masterminding his political career, she managed to found and edit an international literary journal, obtain and equip a wartime hospital ship. write and produce plays, organize a Shakespeare memorial and acquire two more husbands both of them her son's age.

The extraordinary lady was Jennie Jerome Churchill, and the second volume of Ralph G. Martin's two-part biography, Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill (Prentice-Hall; $8.95) throbs with the vitality of its subject. Subtitled "The Dramatic Years: 1895-1921." it's a worthy sequel to the first volume, “The Romantic Years: 1854-1895," which topped the best seller lists two years ago.

BEAUTIFUL, WITTY, Brooklyn-born Jennie was an unlikely candidate for quiet widowhood. Indeed, Lord Churchill's death may have come as a welcome release. His political career had ended and the marriage had deteriorated (he probably was a homosexual). Freed from her unhappy bonds, Jennie plunged into a social, political and artistic whirl that might have taxed an energetic undergraduate. She was the first lady of Anglo-American society, a member of the royal circle (the Prince of Wales, låter King George, was one of her admirers), and an active participant in the European literary and art world.

One of the forces behind Jennie's perpetual motion was a fanatical determination that Winston should have an illustrous political career. Having failed to make a prime minister of her husband, she transferred her hopes to her son. "All my political ambitions shall be centered in you," she told Winston when he was 21.

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She introduced him to the political elite of London. She edited the first columns he wrote for publication. She pulled strings to obtain advantageous military appointments. And she lavished advice: "Be modest. All your feats of valor are sure to come out . . . let it be from others and not from yourself." Because he adored his mother (“After all, it is your applause that I covet more than any other.") Winston bloomed under her tutelage.

SO GREAT was their empathy that Winston was able to overlook Jennie's childlike foibles. Her love affairs glutted the London gossip mill. (She defined sins as 'exaggerated inclinations.") Although her suitors were rich and powerful (William Waldorf Astor, son of John Jacob, and Cecil Rhodes. after whom Rhodesia was named) she chose as her second husband "a callow young man who was plainly improvident." After their divorce Jennie had a sunset marriage to a young man whose first commitment was to his military career rather than to his elderly bride.

Through all of this Winston was forbearing. Curiously, he took Jennie to task only for her lifelong habit of living beyond her means. She was unable to take money seriously and gambled in the hope of sudden recoup. With characteristic charm, she rationalized: "We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand."

Toward the close of her life Jennie wrote her reminiscences but she discreetly omitted chapters that might embarrass her Victorian contemporaries. Martin has written a flesh-and-blood biography that conveys her flamboyance, ber appetite for life and her joy in her greatest accomplishment, her son Winston. It's a superb, down-to-earth story of an earthy woman.