Bleeding Edge

THE YEAR 1874 BRINGS FORTH A BASTARD PRINCE

Eighteen Seventy Four [1874] was the year that Winston Churchill was born.

That was the year the apparent Randolph Churchill’s son, the weighty, plump, and red faced baby came out of the womb of Jennie Jerome Churchill, sliding out easily like a ripe fruit.

He was christened Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, as he was born into this world.

 

 

Winston arrived on St Andrews’ day, inside Blenheim palace, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, in Oxfordshire.

This was greeted as a good omen by all, and especially by the child’s grandparents. He was the newest addition to the clan, and was loved by everyone for his good nature. But somehow his arrival on St Andrews day, symbolized that he was destined for great things and the local fortune teller said that he was suited to assume the mantle of the original Duke of Marlborough.

But for the time being, little ruddy and plump Winston became the plaything for the whole household, sharing joy with all who saw him, and held him for a while. Everybody wanted to pet him…

Indeed he became the favorite and he played all the time as little children often do…

 

 

With a good and healthy appetite and a strong buxom wet nurse; he drank plenty of milk, grew fast, and was as healthy as can be. Good genes account for that, and also a good predisposition. Those two qualities can go a long way for a healthy child. And having a Mrs Everest as a nursemaid can really help you climb up those towering peaks of Life, starting up early on…

Still at the same time baby Winston was sucking the milk out of the Mt Everest dual peaks, the political glow of Randolph Churchill’s temporary fame, must not have quite registered with such a young child, because only the stories about his prodigal ancestor the Duke of Marlborough made the young lad smile. Indeed young Winston loved the military success stories just as much as he loved his toy soldiers, the dual magnificent domes of Mrs Everest streaming with milk, and of course the detailed battle plans of the famous war games.

All these became his constant playthings, and in some ways, he continued playing out these battles, throughout his lifetime.

 

 

Somewhere along these lines, between milking and battling, Randolph Churchill must also have been seen as an inspiration, because although rarely sen around the house, at this time Randolph was one of the most spectacular men of the day, and this must naturally have been another cause to excite Winston’s plentiful imagination. For Randolph was a great dresser, a bon vivant, a super dandy, and a caricature of a serious politician — therefore he astonished all the people he met, and of course between his vulgar self promotion, and his astonishing emotional highs and lows rollercoaster, he admonished his son about the value of being a sharp dresser. Probably he must have astonished young Winston viscerally, because of his visual, as well as because of his auditory stimulation, as only a strong male figure with a stentorian voice can do.

And Randolph indeed knew how to speak… loud and clear. Perhaps too clear…

Lord Randy as he was called by his friends and intimates, was vulgar, coarse, and flamboyant, and his career took off, and flashed across the late Victorian sky like a meteor. Still Randy was the talk of the town amongst the ‘In” crowd of actors, vaudevillians, artists, entertainers, and the working class masses. He was theatrical, he was popular, he was dandyish and always shooting from the cuff. What’s not to like? He was gay as gay can be, but gay in a way that was not quite acceptable at the late Victorian era. Still due to his name and all other skills, he was given a “Free Pass” but that is only, if he could “keep-it-in-his-pants.” And for a while he did, and thus he advanced in his meteoric political career. He advanced by means of a brilliant and savage tongue, and without much of a strategy besides a basic grasp of Disraelian political ideology. Lord Randy shifted from the political back benches of the House of Parliament in the “Commons” to become the Leader of the House, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lord Randy, “schooled” as he were, amongst the theatre people — knew how to attract attention. He soon became a brazen politician actor and he reckoned that the Parliament was his stage. He indeed become the outrageous matinee idol of the hustings, the brilliant wit, the verdant flowering rosebush — and indeed he became the “enfant terrible” of British politics. A dandy with a potty mouth that wouldn’t quite quit…

 

 

In some fawning biographies Randy is portrayed like a late Victorian pop star, but that is pure Churchillian propaganda and should be dismissed as such. Along the way of this propaganda, Randy was credited with revitalizing a defeated, dejected, and dispirited Tory Party, and through his energetic fervor and under the leadership of his Mentor the famed Lord Salisbury — were all led to victory in the upcoming elections and thus secured the government. The newly formed cabinet had a place of honor for this young and aristocratic rebellious and pugnacious man.

That’s a beautiful story, except that its all mostly hogwash…

And as a cover-up story, it was only conceived in order to attempt to explain the unexplainable.

As usual Life is stranger than fiction, and that silly red herring story, had better be discarded in the trash heap of history, right next to the silly story that credits Al Gore with the creation of the Internet, and the other even sillier one that credits Hillary Clinton with the renaissance of the DNC, and of the Democratic party:

“Loser Weeper — Never Admitter.”

Still you know that all major bullshit stories, are manufactured by the puppet masters, for the usual mass media observing folk, who drink the cool aid by the bucketful, and for those evil doers who manufacture that kind of liquid crack as a profession.

The real story about Randolph is a lot more interesting, because not all that Randy was good at, was being a showman. A gay-spark. An actor. A vaudevillian. And a political innovator of pseudo liberal Conservatism. Randy above all else was very “gay.” A sarcastic little man but one with a refreshingly sharp wit and even sharper tongue. And even if he was a pseudo ideologue — his political sarcasm made him so many enemies that they all vied with each other to expose him for his uber-sexual gay lifestyle. Of course Randolph had shot through the ladder of success and achievement like Halley’s comet, but he was always careening this way and that, and when he reached the pinnacle of his political success — he found himself tottering at the very top. Sadly that’s all he could do.

Amazingly he accomplished all this, when he was just thirty-six years old.

 

 

Because at the ripe young age of 36, he became the youngest Chancellor of the Exchequer, to this day, and the occupant of the Chancellor’s house on Downing Street No 11, next to No 10 which is the official residence of the Prime Minister. Sadly Randy kept it together for only a few months. Indeed he only lasted for four months in this exalted and stressful job and e was done in by himself. his one and only budget, his “Magnus Opus” was rejected wholeheartedly by the Parliament and all the major constituents.

And then in a moment of mental illness — he screwed it all up. Some people say that he went for a dramatic political overreach, full of arrogance, and petulant folly — and stepped into the void that surrounds all high peaks, and he came crushing down to earth. And indeed that is the accepted view and the official story, about Randy’s downfall, but the reality is quite different. Randy due to his serious form of STD he had received in his carnal exploration of the annal cavity of hundreds of men — was really really sick with syphilitic encephalitis that caused the splitting headaches that he suffered and the migraines his mushy brain created, that eventually first drove him to be catatonic, then apoplectic, and eventually made him bonkers, and gradually returned him to a stage like a child completely unable to fend for himself and eventually it killed him.

This is the story that is almost historically correct, but not describing the political dimension. Because you’ve got to remember that the Victorian times were the pinnacle of Political Correctness. And in those years very much like today — political correctness ruled. In ways large and small Randolph Churchill was an iconoclast and he became a politician like Donald Trump is today. He was wildly popular but due to his own idiosyncrasies, the popular media and the opinion makers could not stand him. He was antagonistic and sarcastic. He was full of bravado and much like Trump uses Twitter, he used his letters to the Times as his way to communicate with his Constituency that was the masses of England and was always growing.

 

 

His popularity was peeking the more politically incorrect he was becoming. But his sexuality was his Achilles heel. Victorians couldn’t tolerate a Gay man in high office and especially one that was fairly open about his sexuality much like his friend and fellow apostate Oscar Wilde was.

Surely the political angle of the propaganda story of Randolph wanting to draft the best possible budget, and being denied, and then resigning — is a honorable way for a man to appear to have fallen on his own sword of principle. Yet romantic as that sounds, it is not congruent with reality.

Same as the other story circulating that Randolph was mentally ill, and he went bonkers and run through Parliament naked. Nice but no cigar, because it simply wasn’t true…

Surely he was going mad with headaches and due to the onset of and due to the continued advancement of syphilitic encephalitis, which is a debilitating disease commonly known as syphilis — but that was yet to come…

 

 

In short the decade of the 1880s saw the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the brilliant Lord Randolph Churchill, who sought to succeed Benjamin Disraeli in the leadership of the Conservatives, after the later’s early death while being the leader of the opposition, having stepped down from the Government a few months earlier — having lost the disruptive elections of 1880.

Randolph was an intense personality of dandyism, shining wit, and piercing sarcasm — all aspects of a pugilistic and pugnacious character singularly fitted to propel him to great political heights.

And this he did handsomely and easily, but before he had reached the absolute pinnacle of success at the Prime Minister’s office on Number 10 Downing Street, his career took a wrong turn and was instantaneously extinguished, when he had to resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer, due to a scandalous affair…

Not too long after that the spark of his life was snuffed out too.

His death at age 45, from syphilis, cast a pall over his early fame.

 

 

Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, was born 13 February 1849. Like other young men of his time, he joined in the merry life of the Marlborough House set, where the tone was set by his best friend, the Prince of Wales, who introduced him to his concubine in 1874, with a clear plan and a sweet and rewarding proposal for the advancement of Randolph, and mutual support…

It was a cad’s game but there you have it…

Manufactured history will tell you that apparently Randolph was immediately smitten with the young American debutante and at the ripe age of 25, proposed, and married Jennie, the beautiful second daughter of Leonard and Clara Jerome of New York.

Soon thereafter, he was elected a Member of Parliament for Woodstock, and embarked upon a tumultuous political career.

 

 

Not all of Randolph’s time was spent in the House of Commons. He took to the turf and traveled widely: as far afield as South Africa, from whence he returned in January 1892, sporting a beard. The next year he visited Russia and Germany to relax at spas with Jennie. Against their doctors’ advice, Lord and Lady Randolph made a world tour in 1894 which was cut short by his rapidly deteriorating health. He returned to England in late 1894, “as weak and helpless in mind and body as a little child,” according to his son and biographer.

Even as a young man, Randolph’s health had been unreliable. He was a binge drinker, a heavy smoker out to “burn his tongue,” and family, friends and physicians, all advised him to quit smoking and moderate his drinking. He was a very hard worker, with a frenetic energy that Winston described as “of a temper that gallops till it falls.” Periods of intense activity led Randolph to exhaustion, and were soon followed by periods of profound fatigue, and forced rest, induced by melancholia.

Lord Randolph was seriously ill in 1890, with palpitations associated with exhaustion. His family physician, Dr. Robson Roose, prescribed belladonna, laudanum and digitalis. The following year, he experienced an episode of severe confusion, which suggests acute high blood pressure. Earlier, in 1882, he had had an extended illness which Lady Randolph’s diary refers to as tiredness and fevers. Later, in mid-1893, Dr. Roose told Jennie, who was distraught over her husband’s illness, that Randolph’s heart condition had, nonetheless, been cured. But around this time, Randolph began to have speaking difficulties which were associated with hearing and balance problems.

Over the next two years until his death in 1895, Lord Randolph complained of dizziness, palpitations, and intermittent numbness in his hands and feet. His speech became more slurred, and during one of his last parliamentary speeches, he hesitated, slurred, and was quite unable to complete reading the text of his speech. His friend Lord Rosebery later recorded that “he was the chief mourner at his own protracted funeral, a public pageant of gloomy years.” He eventually became quick-tempered and combative. Finally, he died in a coma, with pneumonia and, probably, kidney failure.

 

 

His biographers, including his son Winston, were divided on the nature of Lord Randolph’s medical problems and the cause of his death. They have generally attributed his deterioration and death to syphilis and its effects when gone untreated and as we know today, in the late Victorian time there was neither cure, nor effective treatment for it…

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by “Treponema pallidum” with human beings, being the only host. Syphilitic infection of the nervous system results in the most chronic, insidious meningeal inflammatory process known. Invasion of the CNS occurs early in the course of untreated syphilis. During the late Victorian era, there had been a drastic increase, in syphilis cases all over London and it’s environs, as well as worldwide, as a side effect of the globalization, commerce, shipping and communications, but above all else — due to the licentious behavior of parts of the population. Syphilis became the disease for the gay men fraternizing with society of thespians, actors, and also with returning sailors, soldiers, and prison inmates — who all together spread the disease widely. At the time syphilis had no known cure. Yet this was the time of sexual revolution like the 1960’s and the ease of intercourse in Society’s fancy balls, and costume parties, was similar to the trade of promiscuous Aristocrats with the prostitutes of Covent Garden, and White Chapel, or with the male whores of Soho, Carnaby, and Leicester Square. And that is how the promiscuous members of the High Society were attacked by the scourge of syphilis, that in it’s heyday was just as destructive, shameful and stigmatized, like HIV-AIDS was seen to be, in the late 1980s, 90s, and even today.

The London gay population suffered the greatest incidence of syphilis, more than anyone else, and it was quite common amongst theatre actors, and covert gay people, especially in urban areas. To be syphilitic was part and parcel of being part of the troupe. This fact led Victorian Doctors to heighten their degree of suspicion, being profoundly alert to the possibility of this infection within the socially and sexually active populations. In the late Victorian era, neurosyphilis, was defined as the maddening Venereal Disease. The pathogenesis of neurosyphilis is similar to that of encephalitis, as it also effects the rest of the human body, because persistent syphilitic abnormalities develop into full blown neurosyphilis, such as what Lord Randy suffered from. Syphilis was first described in a Latin poem written by an Italian physician around 1530. Early on it was thought, that if a patient’s wickedness exceeded his or her natural virtue, then the disease could be incurable. By explaining these incurable causes, physicians were invoking the idea that the “French disease,” or “mal francese,” was sent as a punishment from God. This reinforced the social stigma attached to the disease, associating it with licentious, shameful, homoerotic, and invariably immoral behavior. 

 

 

Does this sound like a fit description for Aids in the 1980s, or even in the 90s, as if it were offered as an explanation for this new scourge for humanity, by some fundamentalist nut job? Think about it. True, or not?

Imagine and transpose that description of HIV-AIDS now, to the Victorian era’s equivalent disease, and that’s when you can finally find out what Randy Churchill was up against. Because in the days before there was any cure for syphilis, it was considered an easily communicable disease in  public, and the ‘carriers” were seen as the chief killers amongst the members of the Victorian society. As a matter of fact syphilis was often used for moralizing purposes, and thus the churches also brought together many incurable men and women to the specially set-up alms houses that helped the feeble minded syphilitics exit this mortal coil, in admittedly Dickensian conditions. And the churchmen, would take children to visit these awful places, in order to scare them away from any sexy behavior for the rest of their lives.

Those visits and that level of scary sigh seeing, must have contributed to the amazing drop in birth rates at the end of the Victorian era. Methinks that is because when you see some vision of hell like that, as an impressionable young ,child and your teacher tells you that this happens when people have sex — nobody in his or her right mind, would ever even consider having sex. Still to this very day English people are traumatized about sexual intercourse and many choose to abstain. Yet all humor aside, these syphilitic houses acted like today’s hospices for the incurable cancer sufferers or for the Aids patients, and indeed in their own time played a positive role by alleviating some measure of human pain, and serving the social outcasts — the incurable Syphilis sufferers…

This Victorian solution was similar to what happened in 1521, for example, when the Venetian public health office, the “SANITA” officially responded to the civilian epidemic of syphilis, and the resultant military men health crisis that had spread to a critical number of affected persons, who openly begged for alms on the streets. “Incurabili” hospitals were established throughout the Italian peninsula, including in the cities of Rome, Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Naples, and Padua. University-trained physicians and popular healers sold their remedies, as well as recipes for how to make them, and used all of these to attempt unsuccessful treatments. They often also targeted affluent women and men, who might have been far too ashamed of their syphilitic condition, and avoided seeking medical treatment from their regular medical Doctors, and Clinicians. Some Italians for example, they were so stigmatized, and marginalized, that they simply couldn’t cope and committed suicide.

These treatment recipes of note, include a variety of everyday herbs and substances, such as incense, chamomile, earthworms, and chicken fat. Occasionally, more expensive and exotic ingredients, such as Artemisia dracunculus (tarragon), badger fat, bear fat, goose fat, or blood from a male pig, were used, especially if the case seemed particularly stubborn. The Italian Health Board, and the Holy Office of the Vatican Curia, tried to regulate the vast marketplace of cures, suspecting witchcraft, sorcery, and exorcism.  But government action failed just as much as the cures failed to produce any results. Still this governmental regulation is what has given rise and historical justification to today’s FDA and her regulatory powers, dating five centuries earlier than our Agency that regulates Drugs and Food….

 

 

Syphilis, as a disease was introduced into Europe in the late 15th century, by returning explorers from the Americas and the Caribbean, and quickly became an epidemic throughout much of Europe. It was even called the “Indian gift” because this disease and the resultant outbreak, notably represented the only significant infection that Native Americans gave to Europe in return for the many devastating infections brought to America by Europeans. The syphilis epidemic outbreak and it’s worldwide spread were coincidental with the invasion of Naples by the French king, Charles VII. So people credit King Charles with being the royal patron of syphilis, because the dispersal of his debauched mercenary army, throughout Western Europe, was responsible for the rapid spread of the new disease, termed at the time, as the “great pox.” During the first years of its infestation in an immunologically naive population, syphilis appears to have assumed particularly horrific clinical manifestations. Few other diseases have inflicted such a burden of suffering on humankind, as the one that later became known as the “great imitator” because it had nothing to do with the “great pox” or indeed any kind of pox, great or small…

Early treatments, in the Victorian age, included mercury poisoning by Doctor’s prescription, iodides, guaiacum, and arsenic, also on Doctor’s orders. And indeed if you survived any and all of these treatments, that alone would drive a person mad, because at any rate, through their cumulative effect, these treatments were in and of themselves quite deadly and syphilitics were always driven mad before death arrived to liberate the soul.

We now know with certainty, that the Harley Street syphilis specialist, the London Doctor that Randolph Churchill was seeing in order to treat this disease — had prescribed both mercury and arsenic as the first line of defense against the disease of syphilis, which back then was perceived as “pox.”

Apparently Randy Churchill was acting like a mad man, who had lost his bearings, because he was indeed going stark raving mad. To this day, people say that he was seen running naked through the halls of Parliament, but that striking image has to be taken with more than a pound of salt. And although we all know that Englishmen love to streak naked at times of athletic contests — we need to add that this is a recent phenomenon. Indeed showing a bit of flash, flesh, and two perfect buns, in athletic events and especially in the game of footie, has only been a right of passage since footie became a thing. Sadly for the Victorians, during the Victorian era, footie was not such a draw.

Furthermore if Randolph Churchill were to be found streaking naked — it would most likely be in Holland Park at night, frolicking in the lake, along with the rest of the fairies. Or one can imagine that naked whiteness being chased by the Police after been found to be shaking the bushes with fellow sodomites, and other dandies given to these exclusively male pursuits after nightfall, with the likes of Oscar Wilde and his posse of pretty boys in the park…

 

 

Lord Randolph was a real Dandy and clearly the best One of them all.

And of course he had vastly overestimated his own importance, strained his mental faculties, and thus overshot his mark, along with some other importune and inappropriate acts that he engaged into, and that made him totally unfit to hold the office of the second in command member of the English government’s cabinet.

In retrospect, we realize that he had a mental breakdown, and it was his syphilis that had thrown it all away…

Damn … those American Indians and their disease.

Yet in an ironic twist of fate and fortune, and in a thespian manner, it could correctly be said that the “Great Imitator” Randolph Churchill who greatly imitated Disraeli and all of Shakespeare’s great villains — had succumbed to syphilis, the disease labeled as the “Great Imitator.”

Small wonder then, that Randolph Churchill had to resign his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer, lose his political standing, lose his friends and followers, and he was never able to reach any position of authority ever again, becoming a bitter and spoiled man-child.

Yet it is vitally important to remember that Lord Randolph Churchill had first entered the world of politics, just as his assumed son Winston — the scion of Prince Edward and Jennie Jerome — had also entered the world, during the last twenty-five years of Queen Victoria’s long and successful reign, which was the best times and the worst times… Or at the very least it was the high-time of the Industrial Revolution.

During the first sixty years of that century, Great Britain had turned from her victory against the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, towards peacetime industries. The ensuing Victorian industrial era saw Britain developing the talents which soon transformed her from a landed agricultural gentry driven society, into the greatest manufacturing country in the world, blessed with a new middle class of merchants, traders, financiers, shopkeepers and professionals. These were the fruits of the industrial revolution, and the Enlightenment coming to a head…

These were also the years that transformed Britain into Great Britain, and turned her into an Empire. Disraeli indeed was the Prime Minister whose skill and craft with Diplomacy and Visionary International Affairs were of such magnitude, that he was able to transform the Queen into an Empress. The wind blowing the sails of her fleet and her capable administrators of the Civil Service and the Overseas Service, allowed the English mind to become the Global Brain, and thus made Great Britain the Empire to behold.

And at this point the British Empire had many rivals, but none that could approach the glory of the sun that never set over the British empire, because her dominions were interspersed in all the geographical longitudes and latitudes of the known world, and somewhere above the skies of the empire — the Sun would be shinning, even when it was dark in London. This geographical expansion and the mighty fleet plying the waters of the seven seas and supplying the needs of England and Europe with many goods and services, not only extended the English commerce to the ends of the great and growing Empire across the seas, but they built the interconnected network of a global communications infrastructure via flash post and the vaunted Royal Postal Service that served the needs of all across the world. The rise of shareholding companies and global international concerns are also seen as the cause of the explosion of communications and commerce that changed the world and made everybody richer…

The Internet and Communications convergence revolution of today with the Digital Renaissance, cannot even compare with the changes the late Victorian era saw in expansionary commerce and global communications and trade, because that was the first time that the world was connected fully…

These were heady times indeed, and by 1868 England was a proud and prosperous nations and the Great British Empire stretched from Australia to Northern Canada, and from Greenwich standard time to Hong Kong and Burma time at the other end of the time zone. The aristocracy and the newly rich merchants, shippers, manufacturers, and financiers, all lived in affluence and style; and although they were divided by birth and breeding — the public schools provided the necessary link by educating the children of both, to be gentlemen of a single, approved pattern. These children were brought up to take their places in the powerful and exclusive oligarchy by which Britain was governed in a democratic parliamentary system.

That aristocratic oligarchy was based not only on wealth and position, but also on merit and influence of skill. Even though only men of property had the right to vote and only men of property were chosen as Parliamentary candidates — many ways existed for capable men to bypass and overcome the difficulties of not owning land and make their way into politics. Disraeli was one of them as so many other leading Prime Ministers and leading Parliamentarians.. As a class though this Aristocracy, considered it their natural prerogative to rule, and proudly displayed to the world the strong, rich nation that had emerged under their guidance. But beneath this impressive show of prosperity and country estates with impressive piles of stone built upon them as magnificent houses that still adorn England, there was also the underlying poverty, bitterness, and unemployment. The lot of the working man was indeed quite hard, because he lived in crowded slums, laboring long hours for low wages, with the fear of the workhouse always in his mind. Without the right to vote this man’s struggles for improvement of his conditions was limited, but the fact that the Trade Unions were slowly gathering strength — revealed his sombre determination.

The restlessness of the masses did not escape the notice of William Ewart Gladstone, who was Prime Minister from 1868 to 1874, so he devoted his first administration almost entirely to attacking the privileges of the riding class. Gladstone ended the patronage system by which the Civil Service was run, and opened it to competitive examination. He  stopped the buying and selling of commissions in the Army and opened it to talent. He extended primary school education throughout the country; and he extended further the vote to the middle classes. He allowed the Unions to be represented and to be heard without having to go on strikes. He also looked after protecting the jobs of the lower classes from cheap imports, and textiles from abroad and instead sought to make the English textiles and goods the defect stock and trade of the British Empire’s commerce and of that of her Commonwealth countries…

Although Gladstone came close — he did not destroy the oligarchy, but merely broadened its basis, so much so, that people like the Duke of Marlborough, and the rest of the thirty or so Dukes of  England, considered Mr Gladstone a dangerous Radical. So that when young Lord Randolph left Oxford the Duke and the Duchess, his father and mother, begged him to hold himself in readiness, for the next election when he could stand for the family seat of Woodstock and prevent it from falling into the hands of the hated class enemy — the Gladstone politicians who were seen as the mortal enemies of the Conservatives.

As a boy Lord Randolph had none of the harsh insolence which characterized his career in the House of Commons. He grew up at Blenheim palace with his elder brother, Blandford, under the care of a doting father and mother. His parents followed the normal practice of the aristocracy in sending him to Eton and Oxford where he appears to have been an able though not a brilliant pupil. At Eton one of his masters, Mr Brinsley Richards, described him as ‘a rough and tumble urchin. ‘Churchill.’ he wrote, ‘was an easy lower boy to catch whenever anything had to be done, for his whereabouts could be ascertained by his incessant peals of laughter.’

After graduating from Oxford Lord Randolph obediently idled away the next three years waiting for a General Election. He was not at all politically inclined but Woodstock had been represented by a member of the family for ‘years and years’ and he felt it his duty to maintain tradition.

He travelled abroad for a year then returned to enjoy himself as a “gay spark” in the fashionable and exclusive circles of London society with intimate friends amongst the Oscar Wilde crowd and the rest of the gay-sparks.

 

 

Although Oscar Wilde at the time was not revealed as the ultimate gay hedonist, or a corruptor of the youth, that he really was, and instead was described as a bon-vivant, as a wit, and a great Thespian, if not an Epicurean — let’s keep in mind that at this period of time; Randolph Churchill was also hanging out with this same group of men, and was also described by his biographers as “a gay-spark, and such a ‘cheerful and impulsive’ personality of a man about town, that all the young theatre goers, play actors, and other gay-sparks, emulated his fashionable dress code and his idiosyncratic lifestyle” … whatever that means.

Yet the “official propaganda” machine that whitewashes the historical record, describes Randolph, as a born again lover of women — which seems to be an afterthought borne out of necessity to hide the manufactured fact of the “fake wedding” and the “immaculate lily white marriage” to Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill who was impregnated by the Prince Edward, the soon to be King of England. And the fact that she never had any biblical intercourse, or even simple carnal relations with Randolph Churchill, is what saved her and her children from the scourge of Syphilis. And that is the further proof of her quiet intelligence n selecting the best possible genes for her children while also getting a good name “Family Father” to protect those children from cruel Society’s name plating them as bastards.

Jennie Jerome Churchill, indeed went on to live her life as a healthy woman free of syphilis or any of that venereal STDs, long after Randolph had succumbed to this terrible disease.  Both of her children Winston & Jack, also were vitally healthy and never exhibited any of the signs of syphilis that the children of syphilitics always share with their parents.

As for the revisionist and popular myth that the young gay-spark Randolph went to Cowes in August 1873 where he met a beautiful dark-haired, nineteen-year-old American girl Jeanette and was smitten by her beauty, because he engaged her in deep conversation, and then he wooed her, and forty-eight hours later he proposed, and she immediately accepted, and they communicated their love to each other’s parents, and they got engaged, and then they got married in Paris, and then they had a kid named Winston, and then they had another kid named jack, and then lived happily ever after, and then Randolph got crazy and left his job, and then they went around the world, and then he died, and then Jennie got married again… ad infinitum. Great story if you believe it, but its all just major bullshit. Yet if it gives you any degree of comfort, please enjoy it, because it is the official bullshit, and you can have your fill…

And if you like this type of official bullshit — here is some more: Because the Camelot story goes as follows: The two love birds Randolph & Jennie, fell so hard for each other, that along the way, Randy sent a picture of Jennie to his father with a long dramatic letter of explanation, in which apparently he said: “I do not think that if I were to write pages I could give you any idea of the strength of my feelings and affection and love for her; all I can say is that I love her better than life itself, and that my one hope and dream is that matters may be so arranged, that soon I may be united to her, by ties that nothing but death itself, could have the power to sever.”

He then went on to say: ‘Mr Jerome is a gentleman who is obliged to live in New York to look after his business. I do not know what it is.

Apparently Mr Jerome was a New York business man who had made and lost several fortunes doing stock arbitrage.

He was a stock jobber, stock picker, promoter, shill extraordinaire and a fabulously wealthy man — when the season was the running of the bulls and the taming of the bears. But as we all know these things change fast. And so do the fortunes of war and love. And of political passions.

And thus came to pass that during the American Civil War, Mr Jerome, the father of Jennie Jerome Churchill, owned and edited the newspaper called then same as today: The New York Times.

Jerome was a passionate supporter of the Northern cause and of Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican party, to which he subscribed and gave large sums for the reelection of Honest Abe Lincoln to the White House.

 

 

Yet when the New York war party became discredited in 1862, furious mobs attacked the New York Times office. But Mr Jerome had fortified his position with rifles and cannon and beat off the attacking mob’s violent raid, having shot them full of holes, and thus causing some considerable bloodshed. Well done Mr Jerome. Well Done. Now I finally  understand how Winston Churchill came to order field cannons to be brought in the heart of London to defeat some anarchist holed up inside a small house in White Chapel. He followed after his grandfather Mr Jerome, who in some of his calmer moments, he managed to found the first two great American race-courses, Jerome Park, and Coney Island Jockey Club. He also found the time to get a lady friend pregnant and to marry her, and thus had two daughters, besides Jeanette, both of whom escaped with their mother to Paris, and later having tired of the French suitors as being too soft — hoped across the channel and went and married British subjects. One became the mother of Shane Leslie, the distinguished Irish writer, and the other of Clare Sheridan, the equally distinguished sculptress.

Leonard Jerome was a real life fortune seeker, and a speculator after happiness, money, and success. That is also proven beyond doubt, because Leonard Jerome was a flamboyant and successful stock speculator in the wild West days of the New York Stock Exchange. He had made and lost several fortunes, and was known as “The King of Wall Street.” He held interests in several railroad companies, and was often a partner in the deals of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was a patron of the arts, and had founded the Academy of Music, one of New York City’s earliest Opera houses. During the New York Draft Riots, Leonard Jerome defended the New York Times office building with a Gatling Gun, sandbag barricades and armed snipers at the windows of the building along with some field artillery, facing the Avenues in both directions.

Yet although he had significant holdings in the New York Times, and he was perhaps the majority shareholder, he had many other stock owning powerful partners, and he was keen to protect their interests, and thus was the one trusted as a leader, to defend and protect the New York Times as the newspaper of record, the as it almost still is now…

 

 

The Jerome Mansion, on the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street, had a six hundred seat theatre, a breakfast room which seated seventy people, a ballroom of white and gold with champagne and cologne spouting fountains, and a view of Madison Square Park. It was later sold and housed a series of private clubs. The mansion was torn down in 1967. Leonard Jerome was an avid sportsman. He enjoyed yachting with his friend, William K. Vanderbilt. They shared a special passion for thoroughbred horse racing and helped found the American Jockey Club. In the late 1860s, Jerome was part of several hunting trips in the American West. These trips were guided by Buffalo Bill Cody. In 1866, Jerome bought the estate and mansion of James Bathgate near Old Fordham Village in what was then in the very rural Westchester County, but is now called “The Bronx.” Leonard Jerome and financier August Belmont, Sr. built Jerome Park Racetrack on the Bathgate land, and this is where the first Belmont Stakes were held back in 1867. Leonard Jerome and his brother Lawrence had a wide boulevard made from Macombs Dam to the track, which city authorities attempted to name “Murphy Avenue” after a local politician. This incensed Jerome’s wife so much that she had bronze plaques saying “Jerome Avenue” made up and bolted into place along the road, forcing the city to accept the name. The racetrack was acquired and demolished by the city in 1894, to make way for Jerome Park Reservoir. The Bathgate mansion served as a summer home for the Jerome family. In the early 1900s, the mansion was razed and replaced by the Kingsbridge Armory. Jerome became a resident of Brooklyn. Leonard Jerome, then along with Julius Vanderbilt, and other notable investors founded the Coney Island Jockey Club, which in 1884 built the Sheepshead Bay Race Track that held the thoroughbred Astor Cup races, and later became the Jamaica Race Track, and has been converted in the 1950s to the Rochdale village which is still around today, as housing development of fine homes.

Back in the day, Leonard Jerome, finally married Clarissa Hall (1825–1895) in Palmyra, New York on 5 April 1849, and they had four daughters together. One daughter, Camille, died at age eight. The other three – Jeanette, Clarita, and Leonie – became known, in some quarters, as “the Good, the Witty and the Beautiful”. Leonard Jerome’s wealth afforded his daughters the opportunity to spend much time in Europe, where they associated with the aristocratic elite of the day. All three married British or Anglo-Irish husbands: Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jeanette Jerome; known as Jennie) married Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895), younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, and was mother to Winston Churchill and John Strange Spencer-Churchill. Clarita Frewen (née Clarita Jerome), known as Clara, married Moreton Frewen (1853–1924), fifth son of Thomas Frewen MP, a charming spendthrift who ran up huge debts trying to operate a ranch in Wyoming, and through gambling, sports, and women. They had two sons, Hugh and Oswald, and one daughter Clare Sheridan. Leonie, Lady Leslie (née Leonie Jerome) married Sir John Leslie (1857–1944), an Irish baronet, whose family estates covered 70,000 acres (280 km²). They had four sons. For many years, she maintained a liaison with Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. Jerome was also rumored to be the father of the American opera singer Minnie Hauk. He also had an affair in the 1860s with Mrs. Pierre Lorillard Ronalds, then separated from her husband. Mrs. Ronalds later lived in London, where she remained a friend of Jerome’s daughter Jennie.  Mr Jerome continued conquering all manner, and all kinds of ladies, from the polite (?) New York society, well into his late age, and indeed he was not only rich but the proverbial Ladies’ man.

He was somewhat of a prototypical Donald Trump of his day and age but that is also not a politically correct thing to say — yet I trust that you get my drift…

Leonard Jerome died at the age of 73 in Brighton, England. He is buried in the GreenWood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

 

 

Yet going back to old Randy the gay-spark of London — it is worth remembering that according to the official biography, the Duke of Marlborough was alarmed by his son’s sudden love affair with a female no less, and also by his threatened precipitous marriageable action, and although Randolph assured him that Jeanette was beautiful, accomplished and rich, and that she moved with the most exclusive society in France, where she lived with her mother — the Duke was not so enthusiastic about his son marrying a person that was completely unknown to him. And especially a young American girl from uncertain lineage, and from profane New York stock. Hear – hear… Therefore the Duke of Marlborough insisted that the young couple must wait, until time proved the value of their affections. Or not… Yet quite wisely, at this first sign of reluctance on the Duke’s part, Mrs Jerome indignantly took her daughter back to Paris and refused to let her see Randolph Churchill.

Indeed Jennie followed her Mother as they left the cosmopolitan vacation spot of Cowes at the Isle of Wight, and didn’t see Randolph again until… the hastily arranged marriage was to take place in Paris.

Apparently a period of frantic letter writing followed, the escape of the Jerome from the Isle of Wight…. And then suddenly the English Parliament was dissolved, and amongst all others, Lord Randolph faced a new electoral contest. That is what the record sets out for us to believe…

Indeed, elections had to be fought; and heartily contested — but not so much in the by-election of Woodstock in Oxfordshire, because in those days only a total of 1,071 people in the Churchill family borough, were eligible to vote. The prime Minister Disraeli’s Act of 1867 had extended the voting franchise to the lower middle class, but the agricultural labourers who made up the bulk of the population of Woodstock, were not included. Today, when the constituency of a Member of Parliament, averages fifty thousand voters, Victorian elections seem leisurely affairs. But evidently Lord Randolph did not think so; because he wrote to Jeanette: ‘My head is in a whirl of voters, committee meetings and goodness knows what. I am glad it is drawing to an end, as I could not stand it very long; I cannot eat or sleep.’

The suspense soon ended with victory for Randolph, and victory for the whole Tory Party. Disraeli displaced Mr Gladstone as Prime Minister. But Lord Randolph was more concerned with his personal triumph. He wrote Jeanette elatedly: ‘There was such a burst of cheers they must have made the old dukes in the vault jump. There is nothing
more to do, but pay the bill which I have left to my father.”

The official story goes that shortly after this election, the Duke of Marlborough and Mr Jerome somehow amicably reached a settlement and both agreed to let the young couple marry. And then why the two young loves, in a fit of passion apparently eloped, and hastily married in Paris, inside the British Consulate, without any witnesses, nor any family members present, to cheer them on — remains unanswered to this day…

Why?

One wonders why…

Perhaps the lady was with child?

Maybe she was “preggers” with somebody else’s bun in her oven?

No matter, because exactly six months after the secret wedding, Lord Randolph brought his new bride to Blenheim to give birth, and she did like clockwork on the seventh month after the wedding day. That little thing out of the way, and with young Winston in diapers, after a few months the newlyweds settled down in a London Mayfair flat, where Jennie Jerome Churchill, soon established herself as one of the most fascinating and popular hostesses in the good society.

 

 

Indeed from then on, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill lived in London for the next two years where they entertained Mr Disraeli, the Prince of Wales, and many other illustrious figures of the day. Lord Randolph dutifully made his maiden speech but he was more interested in the pleasures of life than in Parliament. He attended the House only spasmodically, spending his time at fancy dress parties, society balls, dinners, and weekend excursions.

Then suddenly an event took place which altered the whole course of his life. In his biography of his father Winston Churchill finds an explanation and states this for the record: ‘Engaging in his brother’s quarrels with fierce and reckless partisanship, Lord Randolph incurred the deep displeasure of a great personage. The fashionable world no longer smiled. Powerful enemies were anxious to humiliate him. His own sensitivity and pride magnified every coolness into an affront. London became odious. The breach was not repaired for more than eight years and in the interval a nature originally genial and gay, contracted a stern and bitter quality, a harsh contempt for what is called “Society,” and an abiding antagonism to rank and authority.’

This discreet statement by Mr Winston Churchill was amplified some years later by Lord Randolph’s nephew, Shane Leslie, who explained that the ‘great personage’ with whom Lord Randolph’s brother, Lord Blandford, quarrelled was the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. The quarrel was over a woman. Lord Blandford had succeeded the Prince in a certain lady’s affections, whereupon the Prince, through pique, encouraged the
lady’s husband to sue for divorce and name Lord Blandford. Lord Randolph was outraged by this behaviour and audaciously intimated that ‘any divorce case would bring to light some friendly letters which had escaped the Prince’s pen and memory’.

But how did Lord Randolph came into possession of a lady’s letters, or could these be some other lady’s romantic letters exchanged with the Prince? A lady like his own wife Jennie Jerome?

No matter what letters Randolph had that proved the Prince’s romantic penmanship – it was daft to threaten the Prince. And as if this was not bad enough — Randy went on to brandish a lady’s love letters from the soon to be King in public, and he threatened to have them published into a newspaper. At the time this was not just scandalous — it was quite unthinkable. These were the points around which the scandal raged, and Randolph had to get out of Dodge city.

Of course there is a much richer subtext but that we will soon come to find out and get to know it in subsequent chapters of the book.

Because surely there must have been some deeper backstory, but in the end, the Prince of Wales, declared that he would not enter any house which had received Randolph Churchill, and as a result all the doors of polite London Society, were firmly shut to the face of the young Churchills. The ban was so severe and complete; and the mutual feelings of animosity ran so high, that the Duke of Marlborough consented to accept the position of Viceroy in Ireland, so that he could take his son Randolph away with him as his own State Secretary, across the Irish sea, and thus save him from himself and from the wrath of the Court, the Crown, and that of the Sovereign, that had turned squarely against him.

Randolph was up creek without a proverbial paddle, but his young son, Winston saw things quite differently.

Indeed Winston Churchill thrived in Dublin, and his earliest memories are of the green parks and the giant commons in beautiful Dublin, where he first fell in love with his long living wet nurse, his Governess, “The Woom” tasked to raise him, in the total absence of his parents attentions. The lovely and buxom Mrs Everest from then on, was always seen walking with baby Winston in her pram, and her towering above everyone else in her wake, made her an accurate representation of the very size of the British Empire, if not Mount Everest itself.

 

 

The reason for Winston Churchill growing up in Dublin Ireland, is because just before the young kid was two years old — his father Randolph had a monumental row and a rather serious quarrel with the Prince of Wales, and future king Edward VII. The fight had become so overheated that Randolph’s father and Winston’s grandfather accepted the position of ViceRoy just to get his son out of London and away from a hostile Royal Court, and the court of public opinion stacked firmly against him. Apparently the previous ‘Arrangement’ of covering up for the Princely Concubine, and protecting the ‘Royal Bastard’ in a nice warm and cozy family environment, did not quite “satisfy” Randolph any longer, and he had threatened Prince Edward with Exposure.

We of course know that Randolph held the Prince’s correspondence about this matter, but to expose it to public scrutiny or even publication would have been “murder” seeking for blood. Randolph was indeed quite unthinking in his social miscalculations…

It was then that wiser heads prevailed, and Winston Churchill’s Grandfather ‘The Duke of Marlborough’ dragged his son Randolph and his new bride and fresh grandson, as the whole family to Ireland, because this is where he had accepted the position as Viceroy of Ireland. He did this in a haste, in order to remove his impulsive son Randolph, from the looming storm where he had invoked the serious wrath of the Crown, of Queen Victoria, of the Prince of Wales himself, and of the whole of the Court of St James, and indeed of the whole of the English Aristocracy, and London Society. Exposing and Socially “traumatizing” the Prince, was not something done, or even contemplated, in the English Society of the Victorian Era. It was not done then, nor done at any time before, or even since, and certianly not done today.

So the flaming and rebellious “gayspark” otherwise known as “Randy-homo” would not apply himself to the rules of the day, and thus in order to get Randolph Churchill out of the way, the “Crown” offered him, an official appointment as his father’s the Duke of Marlborough’s Private Secretary. And thus Randolph had to go to Ireland to be with his father and get into fresh company in Dublin, where he would be out of reach of the many journalists. Randolph eager to get out of town having sown wild seeds aplenty left for Dublin and for the Irish wild lifestyle of the city of poets, and he installed himself, and his young family in the ‘Little Lodge’ which is a fine house located inside the park of the Viceroy’s Mansion in Dublin.

It was to prove a great place for young Winston as one adventure followed another in a safe environment.

Indeed one of Winston’s first recollections is the forbidding figure of his grandfather unveiling a statue to Lord Gough, with the thrilling words ‘and with a withering volley he shattered the enemy lines.’

 

 

The Churchills did not return to England for nearly three years… Winston was seven years old by then, and soon afterwards Disraeli’s Government came to a surprising end, and Gladstone was again in power. The Grand Old Man’s second administration lasted from 1880 to 1885. Its most important legislation was the Third Reform Bill giving the vote to the agricultural labourers, and the miners. Otherwise he was mainly concerned with the serious problems of Ireland, Egypt, Africa, and the Commonwealth…

The new government’s Tory members took their places on the Opposition benches in a discouraged and uncertain frame of mind. They had been out of power for twenty two years except for one short interval until Disraeli brought them back in 1874. Naturally they wondered: ‘Was this the beginning of another long period in the wilderness?’ It seemed as though Mr Gladstone exercised a magic spell which no one could break.

This was the stage on which Lord Randolph made his entrance.

The five years he had spent in Ireland had whetted his appetite for politics and he was spoiling for a fight. ‘The duty of the Opposition is to oppose.’ he announced, and lost no time in doing so. He was no longer the amiable young man of London society. Many people still refused to receive him in their houses, but now he did not seem to mind. He had developed a hard, cold armour and his tongue had become a formidable weapon.

He at once plunged into the attack. Yet he did not only cross swords with the great Gladstone, but turned on his own leaders as well, ridiculing them for their vacillation and defeatism. With three followers he sat below the gangway in the House of Commons, and carried on his own blistering opposition to the powerful Liberals, regardless of what his party leaders had to say.

 

 

This small group became known as ‘The Fourth Party.’

Lord Randolph’s house gradually became a meeting place for all shades of political aspirants, influencers, and of politicians.

Lady Jennie Churchill later wrote: “Many were the plots and plans, which were hatched in my presence by the Fourth Party, who, notwithstanding the seriousness of their own endeavours, found time to laugh heartily and often at their own frustrated efforts.”

She went on to add: “Sometimes to hear Randolph discussing the situation, in ways the uninitiated might have thought the subject was a game of chess. There is no doubt that Lord Randolph and his followers enjoyed themselves. They referred to their respectable, die-hard leaders as the ‘Old Gang’, and derisively nicknamed the weaker members ‘The Goats.’”

Under these circumstances it is small wonder that Lord Randolph was not popular. While he made his strenuous and unorthodox efforts to infuse a new spirit into the Tory Party and bring it back to power, the Tories stood by, always ready to benefit by his success — yet smarting with resentment. “To them” Winston Churchill wrote, “he seemed an intruder, an upstart, a mutineer who flouted venerable leaders and mocked at constituted authority with a mixture of aristocratic insolence and dramatic brutality.”

This was not the only sin of Randolph, but his utterly vulgar displays of his insidious “gay-spark” made him the Oscar Wilde of English Politics. In addition to that he behaved like a cad in all his social contacts and his conduct was seen as unbecoming by all and sundry. His strategy might have been brilliant, or at the very least innovative, but his tactics were certainly not the tactics of an English ‘gentleman.’

On one occasion he wrote a scorching letter to ‘The Times’ criticizing Sir Stafford Northcote’s ‘pusillanimous’ leadership in the House of Commons. His friends begged him not to send the letter, warning him against public disloyalty to his own leader, and reminding him that Sir Stafford had just recovered from an illness, and enjoyed the sympathy and affection of most all English people. Yet Lord Randolph persisted and send the letter that was promptly published. Yet when he entered the House the next day, scarcely a soul would speak to him; and when Sir Stafford rose to ask a question he was greeted by a tremendous ovation.

On another occasion Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, criticized Lord Randolph in the House of Lords, and the latter again wrote a letter to The Times; where he accused Granville of ‘the petty malice of a Whig’ and ‘of his usual shamelessness’ that ‘of sneaking down to the House of Lords to make without notice a variety of deliberate misrepresentations, deliberate misquotations and false assertions which were quite in accordance with the little that was known about the public career of Earl Granville, Knight of the Garter, and, to the misfortune of his country, Her Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs’. The Times did print the letter, but devoted a column and a half, to dissociating itself, from the insults and the bad form and horrible taste of the author Sir Randolph Churchill, the “randy-caddy.”

Lord Randolph, however, continued along his sensational path with cold indifference. It must be borne in mind that a majority of the Members of Parliament were the same men who ruled the fashionable world which had turned its back on him. He was paying them back, and showing that he scorned their good will. Gradually he developed a creed for
his small party, borrowed from Disraeli’s political philosophy, which became known as ‘Tory Democracy’. Upon examination there was nothing particularly new in this faith. ‘Tory Democracy,’ Lord Randolph once explained blandly, ‘is a Democracy that votes for the Tory Party.’

 

 

Randolph’s tactics were to appeal to the patriotic sentiments of the English working man and to convince him that no one could defend Queen and Country better than the Tories. This was accompanied by a slashing indictment of Mr Gladstone’s handling of Foreign Affairs. But when it came to the acid test, Tory Democracy faltered. Mr Gladstone presented his Bill to extend the vote to the agricultural labourer and Lord Randolph opposed it. ‘As the representative of a small agricultural borough he could not, as he himself said afterwards, be expected to look on a measure for the extinction of Woodstock “with a very longing eye”,’ his son explains somewhat naively. As things turned out the extension of the vote did not mean ‘the extinction of Woodstock’ because Lord Randolph easily won his next election; yet it remains a blot on the career of the Tory Democrat, who toured the country crying: ‘Trust the People’.

Nevertheless whatever he did, it did not seem to affect Lord Randolph’s popularity with the masses who only remembered his popular cry of “Trust the People.” His public meetings were packed, and he went from strength to strength in his speeches. He was always greeted by cries of ‘Yahoo Randy!’ and ‘Give it to ’em hot’ to which he complied with relish. During this period his range of invective was inexhaustible. He called Chamberlain a ‘pinchbeck Robespierre’ and Gladstone a ‘purblind and sanctimonious Pharisee’ and ‘an evil and moonstruck monster’. He accused the Government of ‘treachery and incapacity, of ‘imbecility’, of ‘sinking below the level of slaves’; and he declared that ‘general destruction and all around plunder are alike their pleasure, their duty and their pride.’

By 1884 Lord Randolph was a national figure. A slim man with bulging eyes and a huge moustache, he became the delight of the cartoonists. Although he was of medium height it pleased the artists to picture Him as a diminutive figure; sometimes as Jack the Giant Killer; sometimes as a wasp, a pug dog, a monkey or a down. This publicity served him well and helped to swell the already large, excited crowds. His wife flung herself into the political fray, and even fought an election for him. On this occasion Lady Randolph and her sister-in-law toured Woodstock in a smart tandem with the horses wearing brown and pink ribbons, Lord Randolph’s racing colours. Soon the music halls were singing:

“Bless my soul! that Yankee lady — Whether day was bright or shady;
Dashed about the district like an oriflamme of war.
When the voters saw her bonnet with the bright pink roses on it — they followed her as the soldiers did the Helmet of Navarre.”
[Lord Randolph Churchill: Winston S. Churchill]

As Lord Randolph’s popularity in the country grew, the Liberals attacked him with increasing vehemence. A pamphlet entitled The Woodstock Bantam was published by a Mr Foote, who wrote angrily: “Incessant abuse of Mr Gladstone has been the principal means of Lord Randolph Winston Churchill’s advancement.”

“The Tories hate the great Liberal Chief who is at once it’s Nestor and its Agamemnon; and they are ready to applaud any young jackanapes who will pull him by the beard.”

“Finding how cheap and easy it was to bait Mr Gladstone and what golden honours the performance won among the Conservatives, his lordship flew at the Premier night after night like an impudent bantam.”

“Yet if anything Randolph, when outside of the halls of Parliament, he was even more pugilistic against his political opponents…”

“There is scarcely an epithet in the vocabulary of vituperation which he has not flung at Mr Gladstone from Tory platforms. At recent Woodstock elections his lordship circulated a printed certificate of his good manners from no less a person than Mr Gladstone himself.”

“It was a sign of that great man’s magnanimity but it was also a sign of Lord Randolph Churchill’s consummate meanness. After blackguarding the Liberal chief for years, no one but a miserable sneak would have condescended to have availed himself of an exculpation from the object of his malicious insults.”

 

 

In 1885 Mr Gladstone resigned and the Tories formed a Government. Lord Randolph was made Secretary of State for India. A few months later Mr Gladstone again formed a Government; then in the summer of 1886 a General Election took place.

This election was fought on the stormy issue of Home Rule for Ireland, and was one of the most bitter contests that have ever taken place in English parliamentary life. Home Rule was the great dream of Mr Gladstone’s old age; but it split the Liberal Party in two. The dissenters lined up with the Tories and together the ‘Unionists’ as they were called,
scored a sweeping victory.

Historians do not go so far as to declare that without Lord Randolph, the Tory battle would have been lost, yet no one denies that by his forceful rhetoric, and strongly partisan personality, he played a major part in that victory. Lord Salisbury, the Tory Prime Minister, rewarded him by appointing him Leader of the House of Commons, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Finally Randolph Churchill was at the top.

 

 

However due to his impetuous nature, he did not hold this position for very long. In December 1886, less than six months after, his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he suddenly resigned. He did not want to resign but he used his resignation lever as an alibi to get what he wanted from the cabinet, when he informed the Prime Minister that unless the Army and Navy cut the amount of money they were spending he would not be able to construct the National Budget, he wished. The Navy acquiesced, but the War Minister stood firm. Lord Randolph had forced his colleague to do as he wished twice before, by threatening resignation; so he reckoned, why not try a third time, particularly when, as Leader of the House of Commons and the greatest platform orator of the day, and his influence was at its zenith?

Three times is the charm, and this much drama in politics is seen as too much…and perhaps belonging to the theatre people but not to gentlemen politicians,  So this time the “Randolph resignation move” failed flat on his face, and he was out of the job, out of the cabinet, and out of the government.

Lord Salisbury cooly accepted his resignation, and that was that. Randolph tried to walk it back but the Prime Minister wouldn’t have any of his gay-spark anymore, because everyone had had quite enough of Randolph to last them a lifetime, over the last six months. Randolph went on garden leave…

The news caused a sensation not only in England but throughout Europe, because the public were astonished and all sorts of rumours began to spread as people insisted there must be a more important reason than the one given in the press. The Tory Party was openly alarmed. Could Lord Salisbury’s administration continue, deprived of the support of its most glittering figure?

However, as it became known that Lord Randolph’s resignation was not based on a great principle, but on a minor disagreement, opinion quickly hardened against him. The Times rebuked him indignantly, declaring that ‘Conservative circles regarded him as highly ‘unpatriotic’;’ and the following day they printed an excerpt from the Vienna Tageblatt, which almost equalled Lord Randolph’s own invective: ‘He is one of those men who will always play second fiddle and play out of tune.’

‘The Continental Cabinets which were astonished and perplexed by his sudden rise, must rejoice that Lord Salisbury has not allowed himself to be dictated to by a mere jackanapes.’ ‘Lord Salisbury’s resignation would have been a very serious thing for Europe; Lord Randolph’s resignation means simply this: ‘A noisy personage, who was never fitted to be a Cabinet Minister, has reassumed his proper part as a political brawler.’

 

 

Lord Salisbury’s Government quickly righted itself up, with a better man at the Office of the Exchequer and more public sympathy than before. Practically no voices were lifted in Lord Randolph’s defense, and no one mourned his going out of fashion. Even the Punch magazine, printed a cartoon of a clown walking out of the circus ring, saying:

“I shan’t play any more.”

Underneath was the caption:

‘The Great Little Random’, and the following verse:

“Pet of the Public and pride of the Ring,
Master of excellent fooling,
Beating in pattern and tumble and fling,
Fellows with ten times his schooling,
Great Little Random the company led,
Was it a wonder he went off his head?”

Lord Randolph remained in Parliament, but returned to the backbenches where, only six years before, he had begun his career.

He was never accepted again for his idiosyncratic nature and he tried to hide his sexual nature, his illness, and his deformity, and became quite bitter; so he took a long voyage around the world on a cruise ship. Albeit his deteriorating health due to syphilis, made him take a lead coffin with him — just in case he died while aboard the ship, to be able t be returned to the family seat for burial…

Fate intervened and he fell really sick and cut the cruise short and still he managed to return to England, and in January 1895, at the age of forty-five, after a protracted and lingering syphilitic illness, cerebral meningitis, and all related destructive brain swelling effects, which resulted in paralysis of the brain — Randolph died, and was buried in the chapel yard of Blenheim palace in Oxfordshire.

His son, Winston Churchill, was just twenty years old. And he understood quite well the burden that his non-biological father had to carry around all his Life. Still to this day the world has not accepted Randolph Churchill’s true nature as a Gay man, but I am aiming to get that corrected, by setting the record straight. Mainly because there is truly nothing to be ashamed of, or anything to worry about one’s sexual orientation, nor should there be personal suffering due to illness and disease…

No matter why the disease was contracted and no matter the lifestyle choices of the sufferer. We are still dealing with a sad and unfortunate situation and Randolph was dealt a horrible card from life, and perhaps we ought to sympathize with him for a change instead of throwing him and his life under the carpet. Or under the bus as the situation might demand, in order to please the political factions that want to have a perfect iconography of the origins of Winston Churchill, and thus seek to sanctify the faux-father next to the son as well.

Now we also need to get one other thing straight too:

Being Gay is not a crime, nor a social faux pas, either. It’s just what it is, and whatever way people’s plumbing works — it is ultimately their business and none of ours, or yours.

Yet in the Victorian times this was a jailable offense, and as you might recall one of Randolph Churchill’s best friends, the famed wit Oscar Wilde; had to go to the Old Bailey and serve some serious hard prison time. It was this tough spell of jail time, under harsh conditions, that ultimately weakened Oscar Wilde’s health, and killed him.

So you can understand why Randolph Churchill had to construct a strong barricade around his lifestyle, and had to invent a normal family story, and that is why nobody from those around him, would admit to his gay-spark sexuality. Yet that is also precisely why he found so many insurmountable obstacles during his meteoric rise to power and that is why he had to give up his position as the Minister of Downing Street No 11, the Chancellor of the Exchequer… when the Powers that Be cottoned on to the fact that he was indeed a gay-spark.

It was obvious that after the Chancellorship, Randolph with the power of the masses behind him, would have gone for the Premiership. Yet at that time, Victorian England could not abide with a Homosexual man at the helm of State. And that is why he had to be gotten rid off. One way or another…

Simple as that.

But that was then, and this is now.

Today we are far more accepting of reality, and we have overcome our fears of homosexuality being the scourge of God — and therefore I believe that we could finally tell the truth about old Randolphs’ intimate preferences, and about his many victories, as well as about his all too public defeats, without being bashful about it.

Still there are a lot of people today that want to cover-up this story. But that is a rear guard action, of some erstwhile “Victorians” who have suddenly found themselves to be living in the wrong century…

Capice?

 

 

 

To be continued…