June 29, 2013

Finest Hour 135, Summer 2007

Page 58

Hack Work

By Christopher H. Sterling

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Dark Lady: Winston Churchill’s Mother and Her World, by Charles Higham. New York: Carroll & Graf 250 pp., hardbound, $25.95, member price $20.75.


This is a disappointing, perplexing and decidedly odd book. It appears to have been written with, on the one hand, a listing of people and events to include and, on the other, a soup bowl of scandals to be detailed and a forest of family trees to wend through. There may have been a page limitation, too, with the result that we have a breathless presentation, almost telegraphic in style, and often confusing. The book and the story seem rushed. Higham jerks the reader from topic to topic, with little sense of flow or connection. Subjects jump about with nary a transition—we are reading about Jennie, then suddenly about one of her friends, or her son Winston. Specific source notes are not offered.

There are the (now sadly usual) signs of inadequate editing—double words, misspellings, and the like. Sometimes the editing is unwittingly funny, as when we read: “whether or not [Jennie] had been his mistress as Prince of Wales, she was deeply fond of him,” which suggests a sex-change operation. (196). The facts get more than a bit hazy—are readers aware that around 1911, Churchill “used 50,000 troops to crush a railway strike” (199)? The jacket on the British edition has a picture of Jack Churchill labeled as Winston!

Higham, author of “secret lives” of Howard Hughes and the Duchess of Windsor, seems as interested in the seamy social history of the 19th century elite. We get lots of asides about the sharp economic and social divides of the gilded age, and the sexual peccadilloes of the rich, interspersed with details of Jennie’s life. Indeed, we dwell more on her roguish father Leonard (with almost nothing on her mother) during the first two decades of Jennie’s life. Some of this commentary almost seems like filler to flesh out a relatively brief book, in spite of the rushed character of other sections. Broad comments carry no support or commentary. such as the notion that Jennie loved Jack more than Winston while having more in common with the latter (213).

While the text appears to have been researched through a long list of archives, how could the author fail to mention Ralph Martin’s two-volume, 900-page biography in his listing of published sources, even though he makes text references to it? Martin barked up some of the same seamy trees (his book was withdrawn in England for falsely alleging that Jack was not Lord Randolph’s son). Higham implies that he corrects his predecessors, but there are no real notes and only informal documentation; we are told simply that earlier biographers (usually un-named) have erred in one way or another, and here is the true story.

Too many asides are unexplained or have nothing to do with Jennie. Queen Victoria allegedly “detested” Lord Randolph (41), but we are not told why. And it gets almost numbing trying to keep up with the bed-hopping. Perhaps there should have been a family tree as a guide to who was sleeping with whom.

Does Higham add to our knowledge of Lady Randolph Churchill? No. There are hardly any aspects of her life here that have not covered more thoroughly in previous biographies and Jennie’s memoirs.

Higham does mention an unusual 1914 lawsuit filed by Jennie against Jack and Winston (over, of course, money, specifically the terms of Randolph’s will). Her lawyer was her son’s good friend F. E. Smith, and Jennie won. Having produced this case, which he says no previous biographer has mentioned, Higham gives it all of one page, based apparently on a single press account (206-07). At virtually the same time, Higham tells us that Jack supported his mother in her divorce proceedings from second husband George Cornwallis-West, and that all the family summered together.

Something is odd about this story. Take the bit about the Lusitania sinking (214), which had nothing to do with Jennie; the tragedy is Winston’s fault and all but described as the reason he was forced from the Admiralty. Gallipoli is mentioned, but with little detail. We are told incorrectly that the Cabinet prevented WSC serving on the front after he left the government.

Higham’s entire analysis of Lady Randolph, in wrapping up his tale, consists of three paragraphs added as a “postscript.” Readers, please save your money for something more useful. This seems little better than hack work.

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