Bleeding Edge

DESERT SONG 

Winston Churchill in the beginning of 1938, when his political career
was at one of its lowest ebbs, was not a member of the Government
for although his colleagues recognized his ability they were deeply suspicious of his ‘unreliability’ and his ‘exhibitionism’.

‘The trouble with Winston,’ people said, ‘is that you never know what he will do next.’

Yet despite his exclusion from power, he was still the most colourful and controversial figure in English political life.

 

 

Anyone who ever sat in the gallery of the House of Commons and simply watched the Chamber crowd to hear Churchill speak, would not want to leave before he ended, or before all of his retorts had been delivered — because he was so captivating as an Orator. They say that at certain distance he always looked extraordinarily old fashioned; in his black coat, his winged collar, his bow tie, and even in his rolling prose. All these things suggested a Gentleman from a more leisurely and cultivated back century. A Victorian soul. But what he had to say was not at all from or of the past. When he leaned forward to warn his colleagues of the dangers of Nazi Germany, and he was able to become the incarnation of a pugnacious and perennial John Bull, he was Brittania incarnate. A Lion of a Man. A new Leonidas guarding Thermopylae once again with his 300 faithful Spartan soldiers.

Hearing him, one felt the imagination of the House of Commons and the backbone of England, stir through the sheer power and the brilliance of his words. Yet unfortunately the magic ended with his eloquence, because when one went into the tea-room half an hour later; You could hear people chattering about what he had said with an alarming light-heartedness.

Winston Churchill spent most of his time at his country house, named “Chartwell” in Kent, where he could relax, remove his armor, his armor and his guard amidst family and visiting friends, who allowed for his round pink face to wear a permanent smile instead of the well known scowl he exhibited in public. Indeed nobody expected such a formidable man to have such a cherubic appearance. I have heard, that a woman had once told him that her baby looked like him, to which he replied firmly: “All babies look like me.”

I was also surprised by the fact that even in private conversation his phrases were as rounded and polished as when he is speaking in the House. He delighted in the use of such Victorian expressions as “I rejoice” or “I am greatly distressed” and “I venture to say” all of which were emphasized by the impediment in his speech, that prevented him
from pronouncing distinctly the letter V in any discernible auditory form, and was thus always accorded with the impression that he was saying “I enter to say.”

So this became a bit of his byword over time…

And what of the V he couldn’t pronounce?

He signed it, by using sign language and his fingers to display it.

And that became his trademark too…

 

 

Yet even when in private, or at his home in “Chartwell,” being amongst friends and visiting colleagues, or dignitaries, and the conversation centred on world affairs, the empire, or the affairs of the home counties — Winston Churchill always talked with the brilliance one expected of him, using his extraordinary flourish of speech and oratory, as if he talked in front of his peers in Parliament. This was his usual manner of speech, except when he was deathly tired from debates and his dark dogs bedeviled him, and especially when he was absorbed with his own thoughts – he made no attempt at conversation, thus allowing all others to monopolize the discussion and veer to the topics of their choosing.

But in all cases, small talk did not interest him, so it was a question of either silence, or a rhetorical monologue, and nothing in between. It is important to remember that on the dark days before the war, he always expressed his fear that England would not only refuse to show her hand until it was too late to avoid war, but too late to win. He distinctly is remembered as saying: “Mr Chamberlain can’t seem to understand that we live in a very wicked world.” He went on to say: “English people want to be left alone, and I daresay a great many other people want to be left alone too. But the world is like a tired old horse plodding down a long road. Every time it strays off and tries to graze peacefully in some nice green pasture, along comes a new master to flog it a bit further along.”

 

 

Winston Churchill spent many hours each day at his large, well lit, high ceilinged, and oak beamed study with tall windows scanning the surrounding views. This is where he worked through several iterations of manuscripts for his “Histories” and specifically for his unwritten book “The History of the English Speaking People in their Constant Pursuit of Liberty,” a subject about which he was always writing, and famously said to his visitors and colleagues that: “I doubt if I shall finish it before the war comes, and if I do, the part the English-speaking people will play, will be so decisive I will have to add several more volumes. And if it is not decisive — no more histories will be written for many years.”

With Winston one had always had an impression of restlessness, of pounding energy, and of a prodigious capacity for work, always with an expectation that something momentous will happen at any unexpected moment of time spent with him… In the course of one afternoon he would be writing and then feeding the goldfish in his pond, swimming in the swimming pool, and then working on the cottages, all of which he had built with his own hands. Or he would be painting in another cottage that he had turned into an Art studio and which was filled with pictures he had painted, and smelled of turpentine and oils but was mostly filled with water colours and untouched stretched canvases.

 

 

In 1951 Sir John Rothenstein, the Director of the famed London Tate, “The Tate Gallery” and one of the foremost art critics in England, paid him the compliment of saying: “Had the fairies stuck a paint brush into his hands, instead of a pen into one, and a sword into the other, had he learnt while still a boy to draw and to paint, and had he dedicated an entire laborious lifetime to art, Winston Churchill would have been able to express himself, instead of one small facet, he would have painted big pictures.” Churchill, however, regarded painting as a recreation, not as hard work. In 1949 he commented to Rothenstein, “If it weren’t for painting, I couldn’t live; I couldn’t bear the strain of things.”

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister. His speeches and radio broadcasts helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult days of 1940–41 when the British Commonwealth and Empire stood almost alone in its active opposition to Adolf Hitler.

Winston Churchill, led Britain as Prime Minister until the final victory over Nazi Germany had been secured.

After the Conservative Party suffered an unexpected defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the Labour Government. He publicly warned of the “Iron Curtain” of Soviet influence descending upon Europe and to counter that — he promoted the idea of a European common market and community, with strong individual nations maintaining their separate identities and unique economies. After winning the 1951 election, Churchill again became Prime Minister.
His second term was preoccupied by foreign affairs, including the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, the Korean War, and the American and UK-backed coup d’état in Iran.
Domestically his government laid great emphasis on house-building. Winston Churchill suffered a serious stroke in 1953 and retired as Prime Minister in 1955, although he remained a Member of Parliament until 1964. Upon his death aged ninety in 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of world statesmen in history.

Named the Greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll, and the most important man alive during his lifetime – Winston Churchill is widely regarded as easily being the most influential person in British and World history, and consistently ranking on top in opinion polls of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, and of all the great Leaders in history. His highly complex legacy and his historical and political school of thought, continue to educate, inform and also stimulate intense debate amongst politicians, leaders, and military strategists, as well as amongst writers, and historians.

And that is no small praise because indeed his leadership skills were unmatched, and thus to many, Winston Churchill was not only the greatest Statesman of the 20th century but also the greatest Statesman of History. And although he was best known for his leadership during World War II he was also a great Defender of Constitutionalism and Conservative Values. Let’s remember that in Political Thought Winston Churchill was a staunch supporter of the Constitution and its legacy, for the Rule of Law, for the Safety of the People, and for the continuation of the English Nation in perpetuity.

 

 

Constitutionalism is the most important part of the national state structure for Winston Churchill; and both the unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom as the well written and documented one of the United States – are the bulwarks against whom the successive waves of Social Rot, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism, continuously crash and dissipate…

Winston Churchill’s conservative thoughts, liberal democratic, and Tory plebeian ideas, as well as his strong adherence to the origins — do not dispose us well for the fact, that his family father Sir Randolph Churchill was the originator of Liberal Tory Democracy or as called in the day, Progressive Conservatism – AKA “Tory Democracy,” but he was also a staunch supporter of Fiscal Responsibility and strong state Law & Order management; all ideas that Winston Churchill inherited from Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) who was also a British charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and in many other important posts. After the Conservative Party suffered an unexpected defeat in the 1945. He campaigned in line with the Liberal Government to install responsible free government for the people. By 1885 he had formulated the policy of “Progressive Conservatism” which came to be known as “Tory Democracy.”

It is significant to note that there exists not a single photograph of the boys with Randolph Churchill, although we have hundreds of photos of them with their Mother. There s a reason for this. Jennie didn’t want the boys to be associated with the “rather exotic” tastes of Randolph and she kept them apart. And here is one of the last photographs of Sir Randolph Churchill — a lonely man — before his last journey around the world and his death from degrading syphilis:

 

 

Thus Winston came to be an orphan and a bastard before the age of 20 years old.

Yet Winston Churchill’s doubly noble, ducal and royal parentage, ought to have been included in the official biographical record but was certainly not — simply because controversial origins are unusual for Great Men. The Plebs will not understand,,, And any instructive history of the times of Winston Churchill and of Victorian England have to be a simple reading that excites the imagination but not the base impulses, of men. So this bit of his physical parentage was simply excluded from the “Official Record” because the “physical” father of Winston Churchill was a powerful man who could keep things out of the Press and out of the books. Yet in the family, all know who his real father was, and that certainly was not Sir Randolph Churchill. This also explains quite well, the complete lack of any relationship Winston Churchill exhibited for his family “father” Sir Randolph Churchill, whose name he inherited, and vice versa.

And although Winston revered Randolph and his overblown achievements – he could not have failed to see that a Man who duly considered him bastard and referred to his young son as a dimwit, was not a loving father. Even by Victorian standards, this was understandable as seen from the point of view of Sir Randolph Churchill, who over time came to be thinking, that he was “saddled” with carrying Winston. Thus rearing another man’s progeny – for very little recompense — even though this man to whom he owed the favour, was the Sovereign. This “royal burden” of a precocious child, and Randolph’s aversion to anything emanating from Jennie’s womb, due to the natural jealousy that stems from the incredible series, and the number of affairs, this spectacularly beautiful, flirtatious, and sexually active “wife” carried on during their “white marriage” – was the point of friction that clouded his judgment and manifested his dislike towards young Winston. In turn this was also the reason Winston as a child, always felt alone, ignored, and severely unloved.

 

 

Yet because of the fact that his Mother Jennie was known for her beauty and her sexual prowess, since she bestowed her charms to many male suitors – caused a discreet benefit to Winston as there was always an “open door” for young Winston, through the benevolence of some high standing individual smitten with his Mother’s charms, and her proclivity for abundant sex, fun, & games.

And as Jennie was known to have carried only one long affair, the one with the future Sovereign — starting from the days of her Isle of Wight holidays, and carrying on during subsequent years, during the Summer court, and the winter balls, and on all other occasions. This long affair was carried with none other than the Prince of Wales, who later came to be known as “Edward the Caresser,” or King of England Edward VII, with whom Jennie carried a fully documented romance starting in the island of Wight during the Summer of 1861 and continuing all the way to his coronation as King of England and his marriage, and beyond. Naturally young Winston was seen as the bastard scion from the best “House of England” the Palace, but a ‘bastard’ nonetheless… or rather the secret son of Prince Edward, the future King and Emperor.

It was indeed that Royal “union” where Jennie Jerome coupled with the Prince of Wales, sired Winston Churchill in 1874, rather than Jennie Jerome’s hastily organized ‘white-wedding’ in the British Consulate in Paris to her ‘lawful’ husband Sir Randolph Churchill when it was discovered that she was pregnant with child from the Prince.

And thus it came as a rather convenient ‘invention’ to get Jennie to marry Randolph Churchill with whom she was already best of friends and with whom she was going to be loosely playing ‘house’ for two decades. This practice was a common enough occurrence in Victorian England as in this case protected both the Sovereign’s reputation, and the newborn boy’s reputation, but it also offered a smooth Victorian ‘Society Alibi’ for Randolph Churchill, who apparently preferred more manly company than the delights of the female flesh and the kind of intercourse and the biblical bonds that create babies…

But Jennie wouldn’t stop with bedding a future King and siring children from his loins. In a spectacular search for the best pedigree and quality DNA in order to sire her children – she “danced” bedded, and entertained, all kinds of nobility and royalty, from Barons, Earls, Counts, princes, and even the future King, and all those others who graced Jennie’s boudoir and caressed her loving bosom — and only then she settled on the future Sovereign as her ‘Amour propre et Paramour.’

 

 

Now that we know whose seed produced Winston — we come to recognize their similarities in the face and physiognomy, as well as in the natural Leadership abilities of Winston, and his look alike persona to that of Edward VII and his awesome ability to lead men to his point of view, and to doing his bidding.

By comparing photographs of the two men — we see the obvious. They are copies from the same mold.

It is then that we also come to see Lady Randolph who apparently even had a pet name for the monarch – “Tum Tum” in reference to his rotundity – while he in turn referred to her as “ma chere” as a calculating woman.

Maybe Jennie was indeed a calculating female seeking to better her chances.
But who isn’t?
And which woman wasn’t calculating back in the days of the gilded Victorian age, or even today?
Still, Jennie’s relationship with the prince was not only long lasting, but overtly sexual, as it is claimed, that Lady Randolph never allowed herself to fall in love.
These claims are made by Celia and John Lee, in their biography titled: ‘The Churchills – A Family Portrait.’
The writers were given access to the Churchill family documents and to several private letters saved by Henry Peregrine Churchill — Winston Churchill’s nephew.
Among these Churchill papers were the intimate notes from King Edward VII, written to Jennie Churchill, during the days when he was still the young Prince of Wales; and she was carrying on a steamy affair with him, in a relationship that was documented in the frequent correspondence between Winston’s mother and the Prince, who was truly the most eligible bachelor of his time.
In one of his letters, he politely asked: ‘If he could visit her for Japanese tea?’ an apparent reference to a loose fitting kimono she would wear only for him.
In another letter, he told her teasingly that she should stick to ‘old friends’ instead of chasing new loves and wondered ‘where your next love victim is?’
Most letters from Lady Jennie Churchill to Prince Edward, have been ‘lost’ but a rather curious one survives. And it is there that Jennie informs Prince Edward, about his ‘secret son’ Winston ‘the puppy’ and his progress…

Here is the photograph of the young Prince of Wales Edward who later became the King of England and the Emperor of Great Britain:

 

 

Jennie wrote in another letter to her other son Jack Churchill (Winston’s brother, and Peregrine’s father) that Prince Edward was thinking of naming a new puppy after him…

 

 

Celia Lee said Lady Jennie Churchill was just another American socialite, born Jennie Jerome, except that unlike all others, she was always able to keep her emotional distance, and her romantic heart in check.
Apparently according to Celia Lee: ‘It was not a love affair between Jennie and the Prince but a matter of sexual convenience for both of them.’

‘The way the Prince wrote to her, asking her to serve him tea in her ‘geisha dress’ would have been a totally inappropriate way to address a woman, married, widowed or single. This, and the amount of time they spent together, marks her out as having a rather long and strongly sexual relationship with him.’

 

 

Hundreds of books have been devoted to the life of Winston Churchill but there are still many unexplained aspects of his family’s story, that the book by the husband-and-wife team of historians John and Celia Lee, who were granted unique access to the private papers of Winston’s nephew, the late Peregrine Churchill, set out to clarify. In particular, the have been successful in reintroducing Winston’s little-known younger brother, Jack Churchill, into the story, has proved to be the key to appreciating the truth about several mysterious aspects of the astonishing tale of the Churchills.

The myths that grew up around them were not, it seems, only peddled by fawning newsmen, competing politicians, envious detractors, or even credulous gossips.
Jack Churchill was born six years after his more famous brother, and thus has largely been forgotten. Yet he is vital to understanding this complicated family. His low profile is partly due to Winston himself. Much of the writing about his childhood draws upon his autobiography, My Early Life. This hugely readable and amusing story, published in 1930, was how he wanted the world to see him, but it needs to be read with a critical eye.
In one extraordinary passage Winston describes how, on a holiday in Switzerland, he and ”another boy” climbed out of their boat to swim in a lake. The boat then started to drift away, leaving both in danger of drowning. Through great exertion, Winston managed to secure the boat and rescue the ”other boy”. According to the book, Jack Churchill was that other boy. But why would Winston not make this clear?
The writers believe it seems to be one of several examples of Winston ”airbrushing” Jack out of the ‘story.’ Yet there is no question that the brothers loved each other dearly. The evidence is there in the letters they exchanged throughout their lives. This is despite the fact that Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill’s letters to Winston show that as he turned into a rather naughty and underachieving schoolboy, his exasperated parents frequently held Jack up as an ideal role model. The younger brother was consistently successful and well-behaved at school.

 

 

One of the accepted truths about the Churchill family is that Lord Randolph was a neglectful father because of his stressful political career and his Victorian attitudes towards child-rearing. It has even been claimed that he positively disliked his children, who were 20 and 14 when he died, aged 45 in 1895, supposedly from syphilis.
This uncaring father Lord Randolph maintained a scant correspondence with his sons and with others about them throughout his frenetic but short life.
In fact, if anyone should be criticised it is their mother Jennie (née Jerome), an exuberant American socialite who, as the new book reveals, effectively robbed her sons of some £16,800 of income that was rightfully theirs – the equivalent of about £850,000 today.
Lord Randolph had made his will in 1883, leaving his estate in a trust fund for the benefit of his wife while she lived, and for his two sons and their children after her death. But he also inserted a clause that said if Jennie were to marry again, “his sons or their children should have access to the trust fund in order to help their advancement in the world.”

 

 

Yet the writers have also discovered that Jennie “deceived” her sons about the true nature of Lord Randolph’s will, in order to take advantage and support her vainglorious lifestyle and in order to fund her extravagant and hectic social life, including the funding of her own “upkeep” through a series of ruinously expensive and usurious loans.

Yet for years Winston and Jack were led to believe, that their father had left no provision for them in his will, except that they would inherit a small trust fund after the death of their mother. And indeed the boys had to give up a lot of their dreams for their Mother’s inopportune economic folly, because Jack craved a career in the Army but was forced to become a partner in a City firm for financial reasons, and even had to delay his marriage to the beautiful Lady Gwendeline Bertie because he lacked the money to marry. As for Winston he had to always keep on writing as a mad man at all hours of the day and night just in order to meet ends and make his contribution to the family’s well being since he was the only true breadwinner in the family for many years…

It was only on February of 1914 that the truth was discovered… It was discovered when young Jack was wrestling with his mother’s chaotic finances, as she divorced her second husband, George Cornwallis-West. That is when Jack took the opportunity to read his father’s will in detail. In it, he was astonished to find that he and Winston and himself, could have claimed up to £600 a year each (around £30,000 today) from the trust fund since Jennie’s second marriage in 1900.

Yet their socialite Mother Jennie, had systematically expropriated her children’s inheritance for 14 years, and since she was the Matriarch — she was “allowed” to continue doing so thereafter till her untimely death…

You see — these sons loved their mother too much to question her frugality or complete lack thereof…

 

 

Yet in a restrained but forceful letter of rebuke to his mother, Jack let her know how pained he was at her dishonesty: ”We had always thought that Papa was very wrong in not making any provision for us during your life,” he wrote. ”It makes a considerable difference finding that Papa’s will was not made – as we were always led to suppose – carelessly and without any consideration for us. It is quite clear that he never thought that while you were single you would be unable to pay us an allowance, and the clause in the will covered the situation – which did actually arise – of your remarriage.”

But as anyone can plainly see — Jennie’s spendthrift habits were essential in her quest for social supremacy. Much of this quest, the authors argue, involved making herself available to Edward, Prince of Wales, as his ”favourite” during the early years of her life in England and France and all the way up to the end of the 1890s. And that was an expensive “suit” to wear and to present to the future Sovereign each and everyday…

It costs a pretty penny t be able to claim to be the Concubine of the Monarch…

And again same as always, and especially after Lord Randolph’s death until late in 1898, the Prince regularly visited Jennie at her house, in 35a Great Cumberland Place, where she lived mostly alone. Winston was with his regiment in India; Jack was either at Harrow or living with a family in France to learn the language. ”Tum Tum” as Jennie called the 20-stone prince, would send her “billets-doux” announcing that he would call at five ”for tea”. He made particular reference to a “geisha” dress, he wished her to wear for him. This “Geisha dress” was a very expensive and well tailored Japanese silk kimono of Imperial design, that could be slipped off easily, when engaging in amorous behavior unlike the traditional Japanese designs of the original kimono that take about an hour of effort to put on or take off…

When Jennie finally found herself ousted as the Prince’s ”maîtresse en titre” by the beautiful Alice Keppel, she sought solace by promptly seducing George Cornwallis-West, widely believed at the time to be the prince’s illegitimate son. When Alice gave birth to a child by Edward — Jennie in a huff, went out and married George Cornwallis, a handsome man who was born in the same year as her elder son Winston. Just try to imagine the guffaws in the Victorian English Society at this so called “American” indiscretion of Lady Churchill…

Yet it was to prove a happy match and the new couple became quite a Social diamond of London’s lifestyle — that is until George Cornwallis, fell in love with another women. The paramour was none other than the Covent Garden actress Mrs Patrick Campbell. And she was a thrill in ‘culottes” and french garter belts with stockinged legs. A veritable sexpot. George Cornwallis had to retreat into her dressing rooms, and thus had to sadly and unequivocally abandon his visits to Lady Churchill’s boudoir…

Of course Jennie was an artist at love, and after that “marriage pentathlon” she continued and plowed on amongst Men of Substance and Social Standing. Indeed from then on, Lady Churchill,  devoted much of her time, and money, towards seeking and gaining the attentions of other powerful men of the times, but she also started paying some attention towards advancing the career of Winston into politics, while guiding Jack away from the Army and university, and into the drudgery of a City office, as a stock jobber like her father — who was intended to ”make millions” for the rest of the small and fairly bankrupt family.

To this day, Jennie’s scandalous lifestyle has fed many other Churchill myths, in particular concerning her behaviour both before and during her marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill, but only recently, a newspaper article headlined “Was Winston Illegitimate?” referred to the widespread belief that Winston was born just seven months after her marriage to Randolph, and that he was really the son of the Prince of Wales. However given that such premature babies were unlikely to survive in 1874, Jennie must have been a couple of months pregnant at the time of her wedding… ergo that theory is correct. And that is why Winston arrived in this world overweight and overly healthy with beautiful rose colored cheeks…

It is the truth because according to the fake news ‘cover story’ Jennie would have been unable to carry her babies to full term — because her second son Jack, according to this subterfuge to hide the real father, was also made to appear as if he was also brought into the world early. Yet very much like Winston, Jack’s health as a new-born was rather fine and he was at full weight and overly healthy. And indeed Jack grew up to be a very strong and healthy boy, and thus became a strong man. A friend, of Jennie Churchill, John Strange Jocelyn, 5th Earl of Roden, was called upon to stand as godfather, and for this act of kindness, he is routinely cited as Jack’s father, again to avoid difficult questions because none of the kids looked at all like Randolph and because again the Prince who went on to become the Sovereign — had to be shielded from any paternal responsibilities…

In fact the Prince is not only the DNA father of both boys, because of the likeness of their visage and built but also because of the personality traits that are easily traced from Father to Son. Yet the Victorian fake news and propaganda and misinformation campaign continued working overtime to this day — and since failing to establish gay Randolph as the legitimate Father — they tried others too. Indeed, amongst several other men than the Prince, who were rumoured to be the father of Jack, they included the 7th Viscount Falmouth, and also the Count Charles Kinsky, with whom Jennie was carrying on simultaneous affairs, at the time that she was with the Prince — but all of that is only to muddy the waters and hide the Crown’s responsibility for the Sovereign who sired kids left and right without much regard for their subsequent development except a distant benevolent gaze…

And having the King as biological DNA father, is all for the best because Lord Randolph Churchill was not necessarily a good fit for manly example of parentage. As a matter of fact Lord Randolph Churchill was a close friend of Oscar Wilde, and they both moved in that London circle of pretty boys, entertainers, and homosexuals, all of their adult life. One can imagine how that would have been a disastrous paternal example for the boys to follow. And that pretty much explains Lord Randy’s sexual orientation, and that of his friends, as they were often called: ‘The Holland Park Fellows.’ At the time this was a rather gay enclave of London and at night time the park was alive with gay men and their consorts literally ‘shaking the bushes’ in the entire park. The old Whig party headquarters of the Holland House was by then empty and derelict and a great backdrop for the orgies that were taking place nightly. Lord Randolph was famous for that and of course his lifestyle and his sharp tongue and meteoric career made him enough enemies in his political life, and even among the family of one of his wife’s sisters, Leonie Leslie. These things might explain the lowly reputation because of the sustained campaign against his character. At least he stayed out of jail unlike his cohort Oscar Wilde.. For Randolph, the protection of the Prince due to their special ‘Arrangement’ saw to that.

The similarities in the face of Winston Churchill and Prince Edward when they were of similar age puts to rest anything else we can talk about here, and you can judge this for yourself by looking at the two photographs herewith.

Here is the Father of Winston Churchill — young Edward Prince of Wales:

 

 

And here is his Son — Winston Churchill:

 

 

The similarity is striking.

Indeed Lord Randolph Churchill’s life shows that he had no doubts about his sons’ paternity, because he was the key part of the ‘arrangement’ with the Prince, and he knew rather well that he would be taken care of as long as he lived. And indeed as long as he kept his mouth shut on this particularly important ‘account.’ That is why Randolph despite his wild and crazy lifestyle and offensive perverted behaviours that caused much embarrassment to all the people surrounding him — he was never charged nor was taken to court for lewd conduct that was rather well documented because at that time homosexuality was a criminal offense. Instead he enjoyed the associated benefits of the ‘Royal favour’ and he kept rising in Politics, as long as he kept his word to keep quiet about the Prince’s children, and to take care of the kids and Jennie, as if they were his own family ‘true’ family. And in many ways they were his assumed as “real” kids, because this is what the young lads always chose to believe in order to keep their moorings into society and life, solid. Nobody want to go untethered in Life and indeed even Randolph, went through some effort on his part — in order to secure a steady financial future for them. He did this, because he had this advanced case of degenerative syphilis and he knew that he was not long of this world. But even before he seems to have somewhat cared for the boys. He showed some care as when he was increasingly disappointed with Winston’s progress who seemed incapable or unwilling of applying himself to the work necessary for his advancement at school — and Randolph knowing his love of all things military and battle related — steered him into the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst.

Indeed this is where Winston began to prosper.

Randolph also arranged interviews for Jack with Field Marshal Lord Roberts, and put him into the Army Class at Harrow. Although Jack’s chance of a long-term Military career was later denied him, the younger Churchill was able to join the yeomanry cavalry, and the the Oxfordshire Hussars. Jack Churchill, also served in the South African Light Horse during the Boer War, and on the Western Front, as well as at bloody Gallipoli and the Chanak campaign during the First World War.
And here is Jack Churchill younger brother of Winston, who emerges from this fascinating book, as an engaging and honourable man, who helped his brother, mother and indeed the whole of the family while also dealing well with the mixed blessings of having a very great man, as an elder brother, and having to live in his shadow for all his natural life…

But Jack Churchill, was not an egotist like so many others, and indeed was nothing like Winston might have been. Thus he was able to offer constant support to Winston, and was a safe companion at his side — never seeking the limelight. Yet Jack on his own, was also able to ‘shield’ the family from some of the worst effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and he protected them financially from the ensuing Great Depression. Not only that but Winston with his family and their Mother also lived under Jack’s roof in his spacious London house for many years to come.

Jack also did an enormous amount of research work to assist in the writing of Winston’s biography of Lord Randolph Churchill – and Winston Churchill often commented on how his brother Jack, who died in 1947, served honorably and fought bravely, and always liked to wear the military uniforms.
The writers of the book rightly conclude that Winston Churchill is the ”Greatest Briton” by inherent right and acclaim, but they add that he was also sustained through life by a loving, good-natured, successful, and resilient brother, who unlike his mother, enhanced the economic standing of the family, and helped take care of them all through thick and thin…

Indeed Jennie Churchill’s bed was described as the King’s Cross station, with passenger trains coming and going at all times of night and day. As a matter of fact, she had more than 200 and maybe upwards of 2000 lovers, some of them younger than her son. As a new documentary reveals, it’s no wonder high society wits called Winston Churchill’s wayward mother Lady Randy… instead of Lady Randolph that was her proper moniker. She is said to have had more than 200 lovers, and maybe a couple of thousand sexual trysts, with men who were often times younger than her own son, and who all found her to be an amazing courtesan and a most charming lover with unmatched skills at that particularly English sport of fornicating for fun and games.

 

 

Indeed with her strikingly beautiful visage, with amber eyes, dark-brown hair, full breasts, silky skin, and an irrepressible lust for life, Jennie Jerome was irresistible to all men. Men of power and Glory always sought her company, and thus it came to pass that earls, lords, counts, even the randy old Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, lusted after her.

And she willingly complied.

When her main “paramour” the Prince of Wales, was crowned as King of England Edward the VII in 1902, she sat in a special pew in Westminster Abbey, which the courtly and society ladies in attendance immediately started calling it, ‘the loose box’ on account of its rather promiscuous occupants, since Winston’s mother Jennie Jerome Churchill shared this royal “pew” with half a dozen other royal mistresses, including Alice Keppel, and Lillie Langtry, women also famous for sex.

By now we must have concluded that Jennie Jerome Churchill — Winston Churchill’s American mother, was a wild woman, and as a person, one very different from her son, who after a very obvious and global “sowing of his wild oats” and precisely three failed love affairs, he became at long last utterly devoted to one woman, to whom he proposed with gusto and aplomb. Legend has it that because the young and rather cerebral and sometimes heavily over-thinking innovator Winston — thought of flowers as the open genitalia of the flowering plants…

He instead offered to Clementine a box of sugar plums as a Romantic offering in order to seduce her to his charms. Funny thing is that she accepted…

It is indeed a miracle that man managed to attract such a strong woman to himself, and thus make a family and reproduce. Sugar Plums? Who would have thought that? To offer sugar plums as a romantic flower substitute is a definite Winston Churchill move…

Yet it worked, and the two hit it off like a house on fire…

Love entered their heart, and they chose to unite their lives and make their fortune together out of the simple bounty of hard work and a loving family.

What a Great Idea…

 

 

Apparently Clementine passed all the tests of Winston Churchill, and also that of his ever present sugar plums.

 

 

Because this was his stratagem in order to conquer the female of the species: Give them sugar plums, see their response, and judge their action to them. Indeed Winston had tried giving sugar plums to his three earlier attempts at mating, and matrimony for reproductive purposes — but for some unknown reason, he was rejected out of hand all three times.

Lucky for him because he found his “Penelope” in the beautiful and strong Clementine that he married in a quiet and yet full of friends and family public ceremony:

 

 

But we digress because we still have a few more things to say about his social test that allowed him t get to Clementine’s heart. As you can see Winston uses the sugar plum express often with dubious advantage — and yet he didn’t seem to learn from the tragic experience of female rejection. He was indefatigable and persisted with his strategy to the bitter end. The bitter end was the usual belly ache form having consumed by himself a full box of sweet sugar plums on the very same park bench where the usual objects of his affections, invariably abandoned him, and his box of sweetness.

 

Yet Winston apparently not only used this psychological trick to divine the true motivations of the women seeking to become his companions, but he also genuinely liked to eat the “test equipment” the sweet sugar plums himself. So this stratagem worked well in his favor, because the aforementioned sugar plums, were invariably returned, or tossed back at him, or simply overlooked as a medium of romantic exchange. Obviously none of the ladies that spurred this unusually romantic advance on park benches, with a giant box of sugar plums strategically placed between them by Winston Churchill as a fortification that he can potentially hide behind — should things get steamy, saucy, or in any way out of control, must have liked sugar plums very much.

And I am sure that over the years he plied her with boxes upon boxes of sugar plums as tokens of his devotion every time that he sidestepped and had to make amends to regain her trust and love — that indeed was never in doubt. And that is why “Mr Pug” always came home with a box of sugar plums every time he needed to gain the attention of “Mrs Pussy Cat” in a hurry…

Here bellow renewing their vows of matrimony several decades into their marriage:

 

 

Some high flying University of the New World, should one day appoint some University Don, to assemble a group of researchers in order to engage in a proper Anthropological study, of this habit amongst the female of the species, because we need to find out why do women prefer inedible flowers, when they can have plentiful access to the very nutritious and delicious sugar plums?

This is indeed beyond my comprehension…

Nevertheless, during his short career as a Don Juan — Winston ate a lot of sugar plums. He of course always ate them, out of well decorated boxes, the he always dressed-up himself with a deep green felt paper. But he didn’t mind. After all that was his ultimate ‘elimination derby’ plan of conquering the female of the species, and the ritual of  mating and reproduction.

Apparently it worked quite well in a different way and perhaps it served him as a tool of discernment, because he actually became the object of distant affection of the many women that he scorned. He became the sugar plum man and was given a wide berth…
Winston was also quite particular about his mating habits and even when friends made casual introductions of beautiful women, society debutantes, and wealthy heiresses — he mostly stayed quiet telling them that he wasn’t impressed, and didn’t find them beautiful.

 

 

As for himself and his choices — he relied on the old sugar plum stratagem, as an unlikely sweet temptation for sexual attraction towards the other members of the species… As you can see he was a really smart young man and wanted the lady that he would marry to like him for who he truly was and not for some effigy of Society. That is why he employed the sugar plum scheme. Old Winnie — he knew all the tricks of diplomacy in the book and he wasn’t above using them on his life na upon himself either.

As a matter of fact Winston invented the “Sugar plum” index to describe the sweetness and the plumes of the various debutantes he socialized with — and when n male company he referred to them as sugar plums of various numbers of sweetness based on his rather scientific observations during his intercourse with the females of the species. If that s not politically incorrect behavior and yet utterly funny —  don’t know what is…

Yet sometimes he put on a serious air — and he is known on occasion to have said that he wanted to find a distinguished female companion, as a new “Penelope” for his self styled “Ulysses” and thus he had to get rid of the professional match makers, the society debutantes, the courtesans, the arranged introductions to the voluptuous party girls, because he absolutely had made up his mind to steer clear of gold givers, and gold diggers, and of all those women who only sought a famous war hero, and a giant of a man — as a decoration for their nest, while pursuing other hobbies, sexual escapades, and frivolities amongst the London and the Imperial worldwide society…

So he stuck to his sugar plum test and thus he found his Penelope who stood by him — through thick and thin for over a whole lifetime of achievements and defeats. Always resolute and always by his side…

Iron willed Clemmie.

Bravo to both.

Well Done.

 

 

He despised all those that he feared might develop to be like his Mother and he went searching for genuine Love. Thank God he was simple about what he sought, because genuine love for Winston simply meant finding someone who liked sugar plums as much as he did…

Obviously his system worked well, and he finally found Clementine, and he subjected her to his peculiar romantic park bench fortification ritual and the storming of the castle through the oversized box of plums resting between them — and Clementine behaved herself perfectly well without reaching over the box. She was smart enough to see past his defenses, the strong aversion to his Mother’s peccadillos and thus she succeeded to undermine these strong defenses under the strange and peculiarly charged psychological circumstances — because of having already liked the ‘poor clueless chap’ and fearing that any sign of loss of decorum will offend him and cause him to flee.

 

 

 

Somehow after suitable exchanges were made, the whole box of sugar plums was consumed (truth be told — consumed by Winston) and after his belly ache subsided, the story evolved to the point that Winston asked her mother for her hand in marriage and soon enough he led her to the altar of matrimony. This is the most romantic story anyone ever heard if you are the lover of sugar plums, but it worked for Churchill, and thus his lovely companion Clemie, became his darling wife Clementine. The woman that was going to be with him for the rest of his long life, through thin and thick. Through heights and lows, through the days of black dogs’ circling, and through the days of white chargers galloping. Galloping in search of glory with Winston always atop a white charger, as if he were the young 20 year old Officer of the cavalry all over again fighting the Islamic militants in Afghanistan and in India’s Northwest frontier, where the Pashtun valleys, narrows, and crags make for a most inhospitable terrain.

 

 

 

 

Churchill was no dummy, and he chose somebody intentionally to be the polar opposite of his mother. A different woman in all manners of feminine behaviour, and ways of thought. And he succeeded in not only finding his ideal, but in also gaining a lifelong companion, and a partner, whom he loved unequivocally in their more than 57 years of light hearted, happy, and hugely supportive marriage.

And this is instructive, because all the love he missed from his mother and father, he found it in his new “Woom” his “pussy cat” that he cherished, and kept in comfort, at any cost, like any good man ought to do. And it was this contrast between his Mother Jennie, and Clemie, that made their relationship tick, as it was also the subject of discussion amongst many, the happy couple included. They talked about the contrast of his Mother Lady Randolph Churchill’s lack of maternal love for Winston Churchill, that made his choice of marrying a loving yet poor and out of society’s circle of monied and powerful brides that swam around him like sharks. Instead Winston chose Clementine, a strong willed girl. And this is so utterly fascinating as a rebellious choice against Society’s standards — that always defined Churchill as an iconoclast and as a young Alexander, taking from Life what he wants and not what is prescribed for him.

 

 

 

 

Yet the simpler explanation is that Clemie also loved him dearly, and he loved her back just as much as she did. A measure of Balance and Harmony prevailed in their life.

 

 

 

 

Her love was assuredly requited, as Winson Churchill always returned his share of Love and Kindness to Clemie, even though he had been neglected and felt loveless by his biological Mother as a child. So much so, that he was more ‘in-touch’ with his governess the towering Miss Everest — his one and only “Woom” until she died, and he was obliged to go search and find his one and only Clemie.

 

 

 

 

Somehow this tells me that he was mostly a “one woman man” yet as all men have amours and paramours — he had to have a few rodeos on the side, and some are more publisized than others. Yet none serious enough, to derail his home-house family life made of peace, harmony, and love.

 

 

 

 

But still in the days before he was even able to Love someone else — he had to go through some serious soul searching in order to lighten his heart from the burdens of his complicated family life. Indeed his Mother Jennie Jerome’s behaviours and background were extraordinary enough to cause her to be a different person than the ordinary Courtesans for the Prince of Wales. She was quite possibly descended from an American Indian who had raped a white settler, and she was born into a notoriously lascivious family, conceived in Italy, and named after a popular singer, who was most definitely one of her father’s multitude of beautiful mistresses.

And as contrast to Winston’s matrimonial happiness and longevity of Marriage — here is Winston Churchill with his Mother Jennie when she was going to marry George Cornwallis, his classmate:

 

 

 

 

The apple never falls far from the tree, and here Jennie did not disappoint her father Leonard Jerome, nor his habits of sexual prowess and licentious behaviour. Indeed Jennie was pregnant with Winston from her coupling with the Prince of Wales, when she walked up the British Embassy steps in Paris — in order to marry Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill.

After several years of free and open marriage, and a long lasting relationship with the Prince who was scheduled to become the Sovereign King, during which time she entertained all of London’s aristocracy — when Lord Randolph Churchill died, of syphilis, she took to wooing other suitors for a profitable marriage. Indeed her next two marriages were to wealthy men more than 20 years her juniors, thus sealing her reputation for sex, vanity, treasure seeking, and social frivolity.

And she needed ‘treasure’ because her spending was out of control and thus her finances were always amiss. Yet even though she was always hard up, she was also a shameless spendthrift, and wafted around London in the finest Paris gowns, entertaining the smartest trendsetters, courting lovers and sporting a provocative snake tattoo on her wrist.

Wherever she went, she was the talk of the town. Heads turned and gossip flowed, and for good reason, because she used sex as a tool and not as a weapon, and therefore her lips were sealed, and all the gentlemanly indiscretions of the Prince Edward were safe and secure from the world. Now because of that, and because of her bouts of stony silence — she came to be known as a vault. She never spilled words, she never traded gossip, and she never repeated any gossip. Jennie was always discreet, almost always quiet, and certainly obedient like a Japanese geisha, as she protected those she sought to share her charms with — sensing that it was always wrong for a lady ‘in waiting’ to tell the world about ‘whom’ she is waiting for… (as she often said). Jennie was also a do gooder, because she often attempted to stop her society friends from indulging in gossip, by saying that any gossip might be harmful to someone. Having suffered her share of gossip attacks, from the various tatlers of her ever widening social circle — she had developed a soft heart that way.

Jennie Jerome was born in New York in 1854 – and named after the opera singer Jenny Lind. Her father, Leonard Jerome, had been an investor in railroad stock. But when the stock fell, he lost everything and declared himself bankrupt.

He didn’t stay down for long and soon developed a peculiarly topical talent best known to stock jobbers, short sellers, and speculators: ‘Selling short.’ “Selling Short” is, selling ‘borrowed stock’ in the hope, the seller, could buy it back, when it had gone down in value.

It was as uncertain a trade then, as it is now. It was a form of arbitrage that is quite regulated today for obvious reasons, and prohibited to all those possessing inside information — but not at all back then. Thus for some Speculators it proved a goldmine and it made them a shit-load of money through this practice. But that was back then… One of the most successful arbitragers and stock speculators, was indeed Leonard Jerome, who was not above manipulating issues and prices, and thus kept shifting the position of stocks to his favour, often times by using PR and by summoning newspaper editors to lunch, and spreading some self-serving rumor about a stock; so that he drove the price up, or down, based on his designs and assumed positions. And he did this well and often. Before long, he was one of the nouveau riche millionaires of the so-called “Flash Age” and his family along with his daughter Jennie benefitted accordingly… She and her two sisters, Clara, and Leonie, learned how to be proper young ladies, riding, skating, and playing the piano, learning ‘manners,’ both in finishing schools, and at home, while their parents entertained on such a grand scale that there was always a fountain flowing with champagne at their parties.

The Jerome family spent the winters in Manhattan, and the summers in fashionable Newport, Connecticut, with billionaire neighbors such as Cornelius and William Vanderbilt, Edward Julius Berwind, and many other notable and wealthy New Yorkers. Leonard Jerome bought himself a big yacht and built a private theatre where he paraded a series of opera-singing mistresses in front of his long-suffering wife.
He later became an influential newspaper proprietor and noted racehorse owner, and his political activities in support of President Abraham Lincoln and his anti-slavery drive during the Civil War stimulated an interest in world affairs in all of his children but especially in Jennie, who happened to be his favourite daughter. And the love for Lincoln and his Republican ideals was passed down through Jennie to Winston Churchill who loved Abraham Lincoln more than any other Statesman and Political Leader the world over, and in some measure he fashioned himself after old Abe by studying his speeches and modeling his oratory after the sparse and effective words of Abraham Lincoln.

At times of despair and gallows humour, Winston would ‘threaten’ to cross the Atlantic and join the Republican party as an American because of his own and of his mother’s allegiance to the Founder and the Intelligence behind the Soul of that party, Abraham Lincoln.

Yet as it happens with all financiers, Mr Jerome’s financial ups and downs, and his constant involvement with his various demanding mistresses ad businesses — became too much for his wife Clara, who in 1867 took off for Paris with all of her daughters in tow. Jennie, by then was an impressionable 15-year-old, who was bedazzled by the Bohemian decadence of the city of Light, and loved living it up early on. The Moulin Rouge beckoned, and attracted her impressionable obsession and thus her goal became to succeed as a principle Can-Can dancer there, for the pleasure of men…

And of course, as it invariably happens, by then history took control of events in Europe through the simmering conflicts coming to a boil… Thus in 1870, Germany invaded France and the Jerome family fled to England. And it was there, on a trip to the Isle of Wight, that the 19-year-old Jennie met the Prince of Wales, who took control of Jennie’s heart & mind and of her subsequent destiny. He also introduced her to his friend Lord Randolph Churchill, the 23-year-old second son of the Duke of Marlborough, with whom Jennie seemed to hit it off, as fast as platonic friends can often do these things.

Back then, the Marlboroughs were also disreputable in England same as the Jeromes were disreputable in the United States. Always charming and arrogant, they spent lavishly, demonstrating, as Prime Minister William Gladstone noted, neither morals nor principles. But they indeed lived up to their name…

The “Princely Affair’ therefore had to be covered somehow because the frisky Prince and heir to the throne of England and the Imperial Crown — had sowed his seed into young Jennie’s womb, and her ‘belly‘ soon enough bloomed for all to see. Back then abortion wouldn’t do, and thus the Deep State machinery of the Sovereign family and Queen Victoria’s government was informed of this ‘unexpected yet not unwanted pregnancy and they officially hatched a cover plan.

The prince and his advisors ‘hired’ Jennie’s gay friend Randolph with her consent, and promised to betroth the two of them in exchange for security, and life long safety from want, and a complete ‘taking care of’ the royal ‘secret son’ to be born. The British Crown always needed these young unrecognized princes, and all their brethren, as they sometimes were even recognized as children of the Crown and the seed of the Sovereign outside of wedlock. So there was a waiting line for that eventuality and the machine simply needed to be turned on. Once Jennie’s and Randolph’s agreement was secured — the relevant PR shop of the government released a good cover story that goes as follows: ‘Jennie and Randolph, who would soon become Winston Churchill’s parents, fell in love at first sight.’ And they want to be married. But first they had to endure seemingly strong opposition from Randolph’s family until a settlement brokered by the Prince of Wales with $250,000 provided secretly by the Crown, through the “helpful offices” of Jennie’s father, the smart financier Leonard Jerome. This largesse and the promises of an extraordinarily large career for Randolph and full protection from infamy over his peculiarly strong predilections for buggery — finally “won” the Marlborough family & clan over. Escaping the charge of having a “pervert” son was enough to convince them but having a bit of cash and fame, helped too.

The young “couple” then began taking frequent trips abroad to Paris, in order to hide their separate affairs. These journeys were later termed through the publicists, as “pre marital trysts in Paris” but in reality were the assignations of Jennie with her real lover the Prince of Wales, the future King of England Edward, which became so intense by early 1874, that the future King offered his solemn promise to be her faithful lover for as long as she would have him…

And that explains quite well how Winston was conceived in the Prince’s rooms at the Ritz hotel in Paris a full nine months before his birth at the Blenheim palace in Oxfordshire in old England.

As for Jennie, her “so called trysts” in Paris were the setting for her fake “husband” to seek the company of ‘Quartier Latin’ fairies, sailors, and homosexuals, for nightly erotic assignations away from the prying eyes of the British tabloid press. And for Jennie to enjoy the company of the Prince of Wales privately, and again away from the prying eyes of both the English press, and of the jealous ladies in waiting, of the English Royal Court. The jealous English court ladies, that vied for the attentions of the future King as the ladies and their matrons were jockeying for position to offer him a proper English Queen… were eventually all disappointed as Edward was married off by his parents Queen Victoria and Albert, to a foreign born royal Princess Alexandra of Denmark, with whom he had half a dozen children but not a single love child like Winston. And instead of sitting home with homely Alexandra, the Prince of Wales continued his affair with Lady Randolph Churchill, and also enhanced his repertoire with an assorted bevy of other beautiful concubines that filled his years of waiting for Queen Victoria to retire so that he can receive the Crown and assume the Throne…

Back to when Jennie first found out that she was with child — pregnant and a couple of months along — the Crown wasted no time in coming up with a scheme worthy of Churchill himself.

Naturally a child born of intrigue later became the Master of Intrigue himself, and never lost a game of diplomacy and skill in his life… That is why today, when people see a Good Statesman who understands the game of intrigue and diplomacy — that he or she must have studied under Churchill himself…

Yet back then the English Crown enlisted all of their cunning and diplomatic stratagems, and along with the office of the Prime Minister went on overdrive to provide “Cover” for the Prince and thus a solution appeared to them. They noticed the budding friendship between Jennie and her harmless friend Randolph, who were both sharing dress ideas and other feminine pursuits, and they decided to “hire” Randolph who at the time, was just another pretty boy from a good family — gadding about… The people representing the Crown did this out of expediency and necessity and yet they also did it because they wanted to protect first and foremost the child, and then the pregnant Mother of the royal offspring to come. Bastard or not — the child had to be protected, as much as any other scion of the future Monarch.

So as Jennie found herself a couple of months along – they went on overdrive, in order to quell down the rumours of the Royal seed growing in her belly bump, and also to secure for her a “situation” that would be above suspicion, or at least defensible. And in that pursuit the Crown was assisted by the Foreign Office and those masters of Subterfuge, the Secret Service. And of course it was the Prince of Wales himself, who insisted that the “Happy Couple” of Jennie and his “homo” bon vivant friend Randolph Churchill, be swiftly married. After the arrangement was financed and finalized, this they did and were married in a civil ceremony, inside the British embassy at the City of Light. Fittingly they “married” at the ‘Gay Paree’ the very same April, Jennie’s pregnancy was discovered. They had a secret wedding, in the British embassy in Paris, in an expedited and strictly private proceeding, careful to avoid any publicity. And thus it came to pass that Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the seedling of a Prince, was born fittingly seven months later inside the Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire as the son of the “randy” and flaming gay-boy, Randolph Churchill who was the secure boyfriend of Oscar Wilde, and yet the lifelong “husband” of Jennie Jerome, who herself was the unofficial consort and full girlfiried to the future sovereign King of England Edward II.

 

 

 

 

English relations are a bit of a muddle but if you can get past the official story it gets clear rather quickly who does what to whom and who gets what from the relationship. What is not always apparent is whose bits fit into whose other receiving bits, who is the male vs female i these complicated gender fluid relationships.

And you thought your relationships were complicated.

Blenheim palace of course is the only other ‘House’ that can officially be called a ‘palace’ besides the one occupied by the Crown’s Sovereign King or Queen of England, the United Kingdom, and the Empire. Therefore the Blenheim palace was naturally a fitting place for the ‘Secret Royal Baby’ the Scion of Prince Edward, the Future King of England, to be born into, and to be received properly into this world. Especially this one child coming from the most adorable and loving woman of Prince Edwards’s royal concubines. Thus out of this masterpiece theater play, and the intriguing diplomacy of English obfuscation and subterfuge, came Winston Churchill in existence. This was his early life story in the womb, already rife with intrigue.

And maybe it is best explained as an “Ultra Complicated” situation, because there were far too many cooks in this particular kitchen. Thus it might appear that Winston Churchill was produced straight out of the Crown’s willful intrigue, and played out with Disraeli’s central casting, and some assistance from the secret services branch. As it stands Winston Churchill was under the discrete tutelage of the famed Prime Minister Disraeli’s diplomatic handling of the manufactured ‘Reality’ for a socialite wedding in Paris between a “Debutante and a Fag” in order to protect and shield baby Winston as he came into this world — and as he took him under his wing in later life too…

Fancy that…

And as the English are always fond of saying: “The proof is always in the pudding” and the fact that Jennie was not worried about prematurely delivering the baby, was because she knew that she was at full term. This is proven by the fact that Jennie called for her Doctor and midwife, during the previous day before St Andrew’s ball got started in the Blenheim palace. She was ready to deliver on time, and certainly well prepared before her ‘water broke’ later that evening. She expected that birth, at the exact moment, and this was no-premature baby; although the newspapers were fed this ‘story’ in order to explain the space of time from the Paris Consulate wedding to the baby’s arrival in the end of November, seven months later. And of course ‘Blenheim Palace’ is one of the great houses of England, and it was built as a ‘Palace’ with that official designation from the beginning of the building — nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, when this “Palace” was inaugurated with a gift of ‘Monies’ voted by Parliament as a ‘Thank You’ from a grateful nation in the form of a princely home for John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, whose military genius saved Europe from the autocratic and quite fascist domination of the French King and Emperor Louis XIV.

From that time to this, the palace has been occupied by the dukes of
Marlborough and since the 1950s the grounds, the Visitor’s Center, the Chapel, the Great Hall, much of the palace, all the Collections, and the whole of the West Wing, have been open to the public. Many thousands of sightseers have strolled across the rolling green parklands and wandered through the house inspecting the priceless tapestries and murals, the wonderful carved ceilings, the gold and silver work, the china and furniture wrought in the days of Queen Anne.
Many of these tourists write their impressions in a Suggestions Book in the chapel, and it is amusing to notice that whereas the English visitors usually comment on the beauty of the treasures, many of the Americans remark on what a privilege it has been to see “the home of Mr Winston Churchill.”

Blenheim, of course, has never been Winston Churchill’s “home.” His
father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the seventh Duke
of Marlborough, and lived in the palace from the age of eight until he
married. The estate eventually passed to his eldest brother, and then in
turn to his nephew, and is now in the possession of Winston Churchill’s
second cousin’s grandson, the 12th Duke Charles James Spencer-Churchill otherwise known as Jamie Bradford, who incidentally is also the Godson of Winston Churchill.

Yet back in the day, strictly speaking Winston Churchill had arrived in the world as the poor relation of the great ducal family of Marlborough. Nevertheless from the very first he asserted himself as an aristocrat and with a fine disregard for propriety and a certain measure of Schadenfreude — he managed to be born at Blenheim Palace in the midst of the St Andrew’s Ball celebrations and dances, thus disrupting a well scripted social occasion. People many years later joked that this was “Typical Winston — Coming out ‘early’ and eager to conquer Life with a flair, always ready to lead the Party himself.”

Indeed the circumstances of his birth were highly unusual. His mother, a beautiful, vivacious young bride, was seven months with child. She loved gaiety and against the advice of her doctors insisted on attending the Ball, held at Blenheim on the night of 30 November. In the middle of the evening she was rushed from the ballroom to the cloakroom where, amid a setting of silk hats, velvet capes and feather boas, she gave birth to Winston.

The newborn was deemed to be rather healthy, pretty, and content, for a premature baby, but this rumour was also swept under the royal rug.

Up until Jennie Jerome married Randolph, she had never seen Blenheim palace, which was in a shocking state of disrepair. Its 200 rooms were lined with old masters but many were destined for auction to raise funds for the Marlborough’s lifestyle and for the upkeep of the old pile.

And Jennie was most often left alone with her mother-in-law, while her “husband” pursued press, buggery, and parliamentary business in London.

Increasingly Jennie found married life lonely and difficult, so she started socializing furiously. Randolph not being interested in women and especially in Jennie, he had his own Life and so Lady Randolph Churchill, had to develop her own life too.

Additionally, Sir Randolph was mercurial, unstable, and angry, who despite being in poor health, smoked 40 hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes a day and drank almost a liter of Gin and would always go out at weird hours of the night and day. Meanwhile, Jennie missed the fun of her courtship with the Prince, and showed little interest in her son, who was largely cared for by his loving nanny, Miss Everest, the towering woman that Winston came to call her for the rest of his life “My Woom.”

But back to his biological mother Jennie Churchill (nee Jerome) — right from the start, nasty society ‘tongues’ and the Tatlers all around, started a booming gossip business about her many biblical relations with men. So when she gave birth to a second son, John, six years later, rumours about whether Randolph Churchill was his father or someone else, were again justifiably rife, now that everyone who is ‘Anyone’ in Society and especially inside the Court of St James, or a member of the English Aristocracy or Parliament, already knew who the real Father of Winston Churchill was. The assumption was that the next seedling came from the same happy gardener… who was generously spreading his seed around. After all “fornicating” was the Royal Right since time immemorial, and those well established and well serving English traditions are not to be forgotten anytime soon.

Yet apart from anything else, Jennie Churchill was spending less and less time with her “lawful husband” who, according to the planted fake news “rumours” accounted for his contracting syphilis, because apparently he had visited a toothless old prostitute after drinking too much champagne in Paris. Always Paris had to be blamed for even a venereal disease. But that was the English way after the hundred year war. And thus the story went that Randolph had contracted syphilis, a disease that eventually killed him. Indeed syphilis was the disease of homosexual men who had uninhibited sex with anyone and anything that had a pulse or even remotely moved, and therefore suffered the consequences as the current crops of diseases such as HIV and AIDS ravage that lascivious community today. Back then at least, people were more circumspect about where they place their sexual attentions, than today’s debauchery that has become a sign of identity politics and perhaps honor amongst misguided youth who want too much television about the Kardashians and Kaitlin Jenner’s gender fluidity. We see this today with alarming frequency; so much so, that the straight laced population does not even know how to compute… the numbers of partners homosexual men might have had, and thus avoid them wholesale.

Yet back in the Victorian days, Randolph Churchill’s syphilis was a frequently occurring homosexual affliction in London and in Paris as well as in all capitals of Europe at the time, and all those who fraternized with the “sailor boys” and with the salon boys and the “stage actors” got it sooner rather than later. However the fact remains that Randolph and his wife Jennie never had any intimate relations, and certainly never engaged in intercourse, and this security precautions and established practice is what prevented the syphilitic infection from damaging the Mother, and her offsprings as well.

As a matter of fact, In January 1875, only a month after Winston’s birth, Randolph made repeated visits for an as yet “undisclosed ailment” to the family doctor, Dr Oscar Clayton, a specialist in the treatment of syphilis, at his London practice at number 5 on Harley Street. Today we can say with certainty from official documentation that this disease Randolph sought help with at the kind Doctor’s office was syphilis. Plain and simple venereal syphilis that is described as untreatable at the time of Randolphs life.

Syphilis is a highly contagious disease spread primarily by sexual activity, including oral and anal sex. Occasionally, the disease can be passed to another person through prolonged kissing or close bodily contact. Although this disease is spread from sores, the vast majority of those sores go unrecognized. The infected person is often unaware of the disease and unknowingly passes it on to his or her sexual partner. Pregnant women with the disease easily spread it to their babies. This disease, called congenital syphilis, is visible in disadvantaging and even disabling the immune system of the baby, and thus causing serious health hazards, and can also cause severe abnormalities, or even an early death to the child while in the womb, or quickly after birth, or soon thereafter.

And according to Frank Harris, the editor of Fortnightly Magazine, who first wrote and published the homosexuality and syphilis part of the Randolph Churchill story, in his scandalous 1924 autobiography: “My Life and Loves” — Randolph had caught syphilis early on. And indeed Doctor Clayton was a very well known specialist for syphilis in London and was perceived as a “society doctor” with many patients among the British upper classes, and even amongst the large Royal family and ducal families too — who needed treatment for syphilis, because the English are peculiarly randy and indulge in an awful lot of fornication, unlike their American cousins who tend to be prudish and puritans in these matters. At least on the face of it…

Harris’ book recounted a story told by Louise Jennings, who had published Randolph’s 1880-1888 speeches, and who also knew about Randolph Churchill’s bouts with syphilis. Yet for reasons of political correctness many other Doctors of the time and today who have never examined Randolph Churchill tried to whitewash this matter and have tried to explain in vain, the unexplainable, in a way revisiting History and whitewashing a very English and a very active tradition of Buggery amongst both the upper and the lower classes, affecting indiscriminately those of a weaker testosterone disposition.

Recent suggestions at revisionism have even been presented by London’s Churchill Center and Museum, as they call into question Doctor Harris’ veracity, and examination record of Randolph’s visits, and they seek to offer the alternative theory of a left side brain tumour, which they claim would be consistent with Randolph’s observed afflictions. In a Victorian twist for rewriting history, the Churchill Center offered a Press Release where they noted that: “There is no indication that Lady Randolph or her sons were infected with syphilis. If it is accepted, as reported, that both boys were born prematurely, this was more likely to have been due to a weak opening to the womb than to the disease. If the boys were not born prematurely, that would cast even greater doubt on a diagnosis of syphilis. Neither son was born with the infections that resemble secondary syphilis, nor did they have late hereditary syphilis, commonest between the ages of 7 and 15, manifested by deafness, partial blindness and.’or notched teeth.”

In my humble opinion, amid much laughter and mirth that this statement above generated inside the right circles at the Court of St James, and in the drawing rooms everywhere in the realm and especially inside the expensive salons at Blenheim — this statement is Revisionism plain and simple. It is also hybristic because it retrospectively applies Victorian ethics, to an era that is far more accepting of Homosexuality, than the time when Randolph Churchill lived. A bit of Stalinism here but there you have it. It happens to the best of families too…

And if anything this statement by the Churchill Center proves that the “Marriage” of Jennie Jerome to Randolph Churchill was a white wedding. A sham marriage for mutual benefit. A simple Stratagem to legitimize the children of the then Prince of Wales and later King of England, Edward VII who was responsible for the seed growing in Jennie Jerome’s womb.

And this white wedding happy as it might have been was the essence of the King’s plan for his highly desirable concubine, who was his preferred Mistress and that is why he had her located in Paris after he had ‘discovered’ her in the Isle of Wight where they had their first chances at intercourse, frolicking happily together during their summer holidays.

So we can announce here that Winston Churchill was the bastard son of the future King of England, and that is why he had to be born into a Palace, but it couldn’t be the Royal palace — so Jennie was hastily installed into Blenheim Palace, to give birth. Because that is the only other “House” that can be called officially a Palace within the English realm, besides the Royal Palace that houses the Sovereign, for reasons that go back to the Duke of Marlborough and his relations with the Sovereign Queen of is time…

The right to call Blenheim a palace was the ‘Right’ conferred by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marlborough after he saved Europe at the famous Battle of Blenheim and was recognized as the best warrior England ever had. So Blenheim is an official palace fit for the male son of the Sovereign to be born into. The English people think of these things because the prince loved Jennie and this was to be the first heir the King had knowingly and willingly produced. He sired this kid willingly with his favourite Courtesan and if his Monarchical wedding didn’t produce a male heir he had the option to fall back on this palace-born other ‘Heir’ to the throne of St James. And this custom is still true today.

Same as was the custom to make sure that all the kids of the Sovereign be born in a manor or palace because only the manor born and bred can succeed the Crown. So that is how it came that WInston was born into the Blenheim palace which is the only other ‘Palace’ besides the Sovereign’s home in England that is allowed to officially hold that title. A ‘title right’ holding strong today, as it was the day this title was conferred to John Churchill who was a leading Statesman, a successful General and a Leader of Men, and who as a Gentleman and a Warrior Duke, was also the consort to an unhappy princess and an unhappy Queen.

Happily many generations later it was this other white wedding that also afforded the family legitimacy to young Winston Churchill, so he doesn’t have to go around as the “Bastard” son of the Sovereign, because those were a ‘dime a dozen.’ Here comes the fact that Randolph Churchill who was a beautiful man, and a Pan-sexual person, and a flaming Homosexual in his private passions, and although he had a stern visage in public, in private affairs, he was gay and by all accounts a really beautiful party boy — came to be the Family Father of young Winston Churchill and thus provide a cover and a shield to protect him from the constant ridicule and the razing that the ‘bastards’ perceived as weaklings, often receive at the hands of their classmates and especially from the hands of the cruelest ones.

To his credit, the young Prince who later became King Edward was never to betray his ‘extra-marital’ son, and for that purpose young Winston had to be protected from the get-go, That is what this ‘White Wedding’ was all about, and that is why the hastily arranged wedding took place at the Paris Consulate less than seven months before Winston was to be born — when Jennie Jerome was already visibly pregnant. And that is the reason why this wedding had to take place outside of the prying eyes, without any guests, preferably in a foreign country, and it had to happen while the newlyweds were sequestered in Paris France, and not in Merry Old England — lest the English quarrelsome and scrupulously gossipy Society found out and attacked the veracity of the Marriage and the Pregnancy.

It’s a Great Story because it has worked for quite a while now…

But maybe we should lay that myth to rest now…

It’s time to break the news to you and sundry.

Truth telling is all that we are about. Right? And old Winston deserves Nothing less now that his place in History is well secured and his reputation will suffer no damage lest some things get explained. As for Randolph being a ‘poofter,’ that’s not a problem anymore either. Our Society is far too accepting of all that today, to be able to have anyone start clutching their pearls at this ‘Discovery” that everybody within hearing of the Houses of Parliament must have known already.

Again we are not afraid to share this story, because Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. And beautiful as it is, it can stand up on it’s own two feet unaided.

Thankfully for Winston and John — the sensible yet openly loving and freely distributing her charms, Jennie Churchill — never had any marital relations with Randolph Churchill, nor did she try to turn him around, and that is how she avoided contracting the debilitating disease of Syphilis, that killed her lawfully wedded husband. But she maintained her relations with the prince long after he became the king, and to her credit she always ‘opened doors’ for Winston in his trying moments as he was coming to maturity. Jennie’s paramours were all well placed and well heeled and she sought favours for WInston but not so much for John, who was a much more sedate and comfortable child. And perhaps more importantly, through her careful and selective choice of mates, and through her strict avoidance of any type of carnal relations with Randolph — she kept clear of syphilis. And this is how she shielded her children Winston and John, and they avoided being syphilitic at their young age and thus were saved from a venereal disease that comes down from the mother from destroying their lives. Instead they were all the picture of health and kept to a ripe old age, quite unlike their so called “family father” Randolph.

Yet despite the separate bedrooms, the separate lifestyles, and the separate sexual preferences – the Churchills enjoyed a kind of Love or rather a mutual support society of their own. Because despite everything, and however difficult it must have been to maintain the “Public & Private Charades” their “sham-marriage” survived fairly intact.

Jennie moved the family into a new London home, near Marble Arch, which became a curiosity in itself as the first house in the capital to have electricity. But she still held Winston at arm’s length, confessing he was a demanding child who teased his baby brother and could be uncontrollable.

Winston himself understood the particular tragedy well. And as he wrote some years later: “It is said that famous men are usually the product of an unhappy childhood.”

And Winston continued writing on this subject this: “The stern compression of circumstances, the twinges of adversity, the spur of slight and taunts in early years are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother wit without which great actions are seldom accomplished.”

He was certainly speaking from experience. Even by the standards of the age, Winston’s parents were less than attentive. His mother put him on the train to his first boarding school at the age of eight, and failed to read between the lines of his letters sent back home, in which young Winston begged her to write him back, or maybe even visit him.

He was a lonely little boy… and she surely could see that, no?

So Winston decided ay that very moment that he was alone responsible for himself and that he should carve a path to Life by himself, and this he did swimmingly well even if he had to swim through the deserts of sand to get there… That is indeed the only silver lining to be derived in Winston’s particularly loveless and cloudy life as he was growing up, not only as a bastard, but as a full orphan from any attention, and from any motherly love, or fatherly paradigm, or TLC from anyone that mattered to him.

So he set out to conquer the world an maybe find some love along the way as well…

 

 

 

 

No doubt she was too preoccupied with her own lifestyle, which consisted of charity work, shopping and entertaining gentlemen friends at lunch.
Even before he went away to school, little Winston had become suspicious of her amorous activities after noting one day that a hole in her stocking was on one leg when she left home and on the other when she returned.

By the mid-1880s, Jennie was madly in love with London’s man of the moment, the handsome Austrian Count Charles Kinsky, who had just won the Grand National.
While everyone suspected the liaison, no one seemed to mind, including Randolph, who enjoyed the Count’s company regardless. Yet, when Winston came home from school one weekend, he discovered his mother and the count openly breakfasting together, after having spent a night of passion in her bedroom…

After the first year of her pregnancy and childbirth with Winston, his mother was living freely in an open marriage, with nary any contrivances. Not only did his father have other women friends, with whom he was strictly a great platonic friend as homosexual men often do — including Gladys, Countess de Grey, the most beautiful woman of her generation, to whom Oscar Wilde another notably witty homosexual, dedicated his play “A Woman Of No Importance” and the actress Ellen Terry — there was also widespread talk of his many homosexual liaisons in London’s Covent Garden, in Holland park, and in the fringes of the East End, as well as his many “male encounters” during his frequent visits to Paris to “let his hair down” so to speak, or as we say today, to let his freak out… and get his freak on.

Randolph himself confessed that he preferred men over women, and even sometimes liked “rough women who dance and sing and drink” to society ladies like his wife…

Jennie, however, put up with it all, content with her place as the wife of a rising political star, and a mother of the two first sons of an Emperor. Regardless of her station in life as a Concubine – she was happy and fulfilled, as only a royal paramour can ever be. But then, out of the blue, Randolph Churchill resigned from his Number 2 spot in the government. He went from the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a stay at home person. What a tragedy… Indeed and unbeknownst to him at the moment — his career was over. His future was in jeopardy and even his family situation came to be questioned as Jennie raised the subject of divorce and this serious matter was seriously discussed. But again here is where the Prince saved Randolph and assured Jennie of his continued favor if she were to remain betrothed to now failed Randolph…

And thus although the marriage survived, Jennie, by then 32, was left with little of her former standing — and without the income which she had once taken for granted. But she still insisted on buying beautiful gowns to keep up appearances, a rule she had learned from her mother, and what Jennie wore immediately became the fashion.

One person who never escaped her debonair flair was the 45-year-old Prince of Wales. Their affair that started when she was 19 years old certainly was rekindled and continued. She received the Prince at home alone and even hired a soon-to-be-famous cook, Rosa Lewis, to prepare private dinners for him.
But her royal admirer was not her only love interest. One American magazine referred to her as Lady “Jane Snatcher” due to her fondness for snaffling up likely escorts, and she was also known as “Lady Randy” due to her randy sexual appetites.
And yet amid all her other distractions, she even found time for a rapprochement with her “husband” Randolph…
Both were so busy that neither found the time to visit Winston at school on his 13th birthday, and when he returned for the Christmas holidays, he found the house empty, because his parents had decamped to Russia together.

“My darling Mummy,’ the boy Winston wrote plaintively, ‘I do wish you were at home, it would be so nice.”

 

 

 

 

And he wrote in vain again and again…

 

 

 

 

At this stage, Winston was not his mother’s priority. She was the center of Europe’s attention. Russia loved her. Germany, including Count Herbert Bismarck, son of the German Chancellor, fell at her feet. And when she visited relatives in Paris at the end of 1888, she added a number of French suitors to her conquests.

While her marriage had now been reduced to a concern for Randolph’s health, she and Randolph still decided to embark on a world tour together, taking with them a lead lined coffin in case Randolph died en route during this World Cruise.

As a matter of fact, he was so ill that Jennie was pinning her hopes on marrying the highly eligible Count Kinsky as soon as she was free.

In Burma’s capital Rangoon, however, her hopes were dashed, because upon her arrival there — Jennie received a telegram announcing Count Kinsky’s engagement to another woman back in the Home Country.

As it turns out Randolph also made it back home to England, but died at the ripe old age of 44, in January 1895, and was buried inside the ground of the Chapel in Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

 

 

To be continued…