Chapter I: Early Years (2)

Although it is much better for the brain, and for the practical purposes of life, to know and understand one book than to have read a hundred, such an educational outfit was no title to academic distinction; and after he had been three years at Merton Lord Randolph determined to work seriously for an honours degree in history and law. He forthwith proceeded to put away his ‘toys,’ as he called them; and the Blenheim Harriers were given up without delay. The county gentlemen and farmers who had followed their fortunes with pleasure, if not with profit, determined to mark their appreciation of the pack and its youthful Master by the customary British ceremony of a dinner. A banquet was accordingly held at the Bear hotel in Woodstock at which Lord Randolph was hospitably entertained and generally praised. He replied to the toast of his health simply and briefly, as one speaking in his own place to his friends and neighbours.

‘Now that the harriers are gone,’ he said, ‘the future seems rather a blank. Perchance, in the course of time and events, I may find myself separated from these scenes of my youth. But you may rest assured that my Oxfordshire home and my Oxfordshire friends will ever be present and dear to my mind; and that, in whatever quarter of the world I may find myself, among whatever people, or pursuing whatever occupation, you, gentlemen, who have asked me here to dinner this evening, the happy hours I have spent among you, the fields and pastures of our well-known and favourite hunting grounds, and, last but not least, the old pack of harriers, will remain amongst those pleasant and gratifying recollections of days that are gone by, upon which I shall at all times delight to dwell.’

After this he began to work in earnest. The time which intervened before the December examinations was all too short to repair the well-spent idleness of previous years. It was fortunate that in these busy months he came under the influence of that good and eminent man Dr. Creighton, who took the greatest interest in him and aided and encouraged his exertions by every means. ‘He was always amenable to expostulation, when wisely administered,’ wrote Bishop Creighton in a letter to Mr. Escott in 1895, ‘and consulted me with freedom on all matters relating to the daily conduct of his life. At first he did not read much, having a habit of going to sleep in his chair after dinner, often for hours, which he only gradually overcame. But from the first I was interested to see his growing appreciation of the value of history, especially on its legal and constitutional side. He would take up a subject and talk about it till he had reached its bottom. As his interest grew he read more....’

The Bishop proceeds to relate an incident which seems to have impressed him. ‘My attention was called to his marked ability for practical politics early in his career. Soon after he came to Merton he deemed it his duty to write a letter in defence of his father, who had been attacked on some question of Woodstock politics. Before sending the note he brought it to me. I was greatly impressed by its dignity and its dexterity--the former as the composition of a son about his father, the latter in the administration of a reproof without leaving a loophole of escape.’ Dr. Creighton advised him not to enter into political controversy at his time of life. Lord Randolph’s answer was: ‘I have thought it over, and decided that point for myself. What I came to ask you was if you saw anything in the letter which you thought unbecoming.’ On this Dr. Creighton admitted, ‘If you are going to send a letter at all, you could not send a better one.’

‘That incident gave me,’ writes the Bishop, ‘a real insight into Churchill’s character, and showed me his capacity for practical politics. He made up his own mind; having well reflected, he chose his ground of attack, and then took every pains about the form of expression. He sought no advice about what he was going to do, but was anxious to do it “as well as possible.”’

[Sidenote: 1870 ÆT. 21]

_Dr. Creighton to the Duchess of Marlborough._

November 14, 1870.

I only wish that greater numbers took the same interest that you
and the Duke do in your son’s proceedings at Oxford, and then its
results might be greater than they are.

As regards Lord Randolph, I still think that he is wise in going in
for examination now rather than in the summer. It is, of course,
always difficult to predict the result of an examination; but I
think that it would be very improbable, so far as my experience
goes, that he should get any lower class than a second: some of his
subjects he knows remarkably well--quite up to the standard of a
first class--others he is not so much interested in. At present he
is quite in earnest with his work, and has vigour and freshness in
his treatment of it. He might no doubt, and probably would, be
better prepared in six weeks’ time; but the interval of six months
would be too long, and would give him temptations to listlessness
and idleness which might leave him in a worse position at the end
of that time than he is now.

I shall, however, require from him a rigorous account of what he
does in examination; and if I think he has not done himself
justice, I shall advise him to remove his name before the end, and
so put off his examination to the summer. Do not, however, suggest
this to him as a possibility. It is bad for anyone to have an
alternative before him, and it were better that I judged after the
event than that he thought of it during the process. At present I
certainly think he will get a second class at least.

Lord Randolph himself was hopeful:--

_Lord Randolph to his Mother._

Merton College: Tuesday.

I hope you won’t hope for too much when I tell you that yesterday
and to-day I have been doing much better in my examination, which
has been chiefly about what I have been reading this term; so I
have been able to do it. I am very much afraid Saturday’s work
will go against me. A great deal depends on how I do to-morrow
morning, which is the last day. There is no more writing work; it
is what they call _viva voce_ and that is the hardest. I hope that
I will have a little luck and be asked what I know best and then
perhaps it will come right, but even if it does the whole thing has
been a dreadful scramble and I see now, too late, that I had much
better have waited until June. However, I saw Creighton yesterday,
and he was all against my scratching, and thinks I shall get
through all right. I shall know by three or four o’clock to-morrow
and shall telegraph. I am not very sanguine, but shall be
dreadfully disappointed.

I shall not be able to come home until Saturday or Monday anyhow,
as I must keep my term. Poor little Wasp died yesterday. I am very
much distressed, for she was so nice and was the first dog I had
you did not object to. I do not think I shall get another, they all
seem to die.

Gladstone is safe to be beaten they say to-day. The Conservatives
are beginning to pick up a little now, but we shall be in a
shocking minority. I think Papa will be glad to get out of it
though, and that is the only thing that consoles me. The papers
seem to be in a dreadful fright for fear the Queen should send for
Lord Granville. How spiteful they are!

Dr. Creighton’s forecast was, however, justified by the result:--

_Dr. Creighton to the Duchess of Marlborough_,

December 15.

I must own I was sorry when I heard how narrowly Lord Randolph
missed the first class: a few more questions answered, and a few
omissions in some of his papers, and he would have secured it. He
was, I am told by the examiners, the best man who was put in the
second class; and the great hardship is, as your Grace observes,
that he should be in the same class with so many who are very
greatly his inferior in knowledge and ability.

It is rather tantalising to think he came so near; if he had been
further off I should have been more content. Still I am glad he
went in for examination this time. I think he would only have idled
the six months before the next examination.

On the whole I think he has learned a good deal during his time at
Oxford, and I do not think he regrets his residence here. I am
sorry to lose him.

After leaving Oxford Lord Randolph made (1870) another and much longer tour in Europe. He liked few things better than to prowl about at his leisure from one new place to another, seeing all the sights, the galleries, the monuments, the circuses, and above all the zoological gardens, with eyes that never lost their interest even for the smallest trifles. Through France, Italy, and Austria he rambled light-heartedly; and when, after an absence of nearly a year, he came back to Blenheim he had enlarged his fancy and extended his education in various directions beyond the limits of a University curriculum. Behold him now at twenty-three, a man grown, markedly reserved in his manner to acquaintances, utterly unguarded to his intimate friends, something of a dandy in his dress, an earnest sportsman, an omnivorous reader, moving with a jaunty step through what were in those days the very select circles of fashion and clubland, seeking the pleasures of the Turf and town.

This interlude was soon ended.

[Sidenote: 1873 ÆT. 24]

In August of 1873 Lord Randolph went to Cowes upon what proved to him a memorable visit. In honour of the arrival of the Czarewitch and the Czarevna the officers of the cruiser _Ariadne_, then lying as guard-ship in the Roads, gave a ball, to which all the pleasure-seekers who frequent the Solent at this season of the year made haste to go in boats and launches from the shore and from the pleasure fleet. Here for the first time he met Miss Jerome, an American girl whose singular beauty and gifted vivacity had excited general attention. He was presented to her by a common friend. Waltzing made him giddy, and he detested dancing of all kinds; so that after a formal quadrille they sat and talked. She was living with her mother and eldest sister at Rosetta Cottage, a small house which they had taken for the summer, with a tiny garden facing the sea. Thither the next night, duly bidden, he repaired to dine. The dinner was good, the company gay and attractive, and with the two young ladies chatting and playing duets at the piano the evening passed very pleasantly. She was nineteen, and he scarcely twenty-four; and, if Montaigne is to be believed, this period of extreme youth is Love’s golden moment. That very night Miss Jerome told her laughing and incredulous sister of a presentiment that their new friend was the man she would marry; and Lord Randolph confided to Colonel Edgecumbe, who was of the party, that he admired the two sisters and meant, if he could, to make ‘the dark one’ his wife.

Next day they met again ‘by accident’--so runs the account I have received--and went for a walk. That evening he was once more a guest at Rosetta Cottage. That night--the third of their acquaintance--was a beautiful night, warm and still, with the lights of the yachts shining on the water and the sky bright with stars. After dinner they found themselves alone together in the garden, and--brief court-ship notwithstanding--he proposed and was accepted.

So far as the principals were concerned, everything was thus easily and swiftly settled, and the matter having become so earnest all further meetings were suspended until the Duke of Marlborough and Mr. Jerome, who was in America, had been consulted. Lord Randolph returned to Blenheim shaken by alternating emotions of joy and despondency. He had never been in love before and the force and volume of the tide swept him altogether off his feet. At one moment he could scarcely believe that one so unworthy as he could have been preferred; the next he trembled lest all his hopes should be shattered by circumstances unforeseen. Nor indeed was his anxiety without reason; for many and serious obstacles had yet to be encountered and smoothed away. From Blenheim he wrote to his father.

_To his Father._

Blenheim: Wednesday, August 20, 1873.

I must not any longer keep you in ignorance of a very important
step I have taken--one which will undoubtedly influence very
strongly all my future life.

I met, soon after my arrival at Cowes, a Miss Jeannette Jerome, the
daughter of an American lady who has lived for some years in Paris
and whose husband lives in New York. I passed most of my time at
Cowes in her (Jeannette’s) society, and before leaving asked her if
she loved me well enough to marry me; and she told me she did. 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 now 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.

I know, of course, that you will be very much surprised, and find
it difficult to understand how an attachment so strong could have
arisen in so short a space of time; and really I feel it quite
impossible for me to give any explanation of it that could appear
reasonable to anyone practical and dispassionate. I must, however,
ask you to believe it as you could the truest and most real
statement that could possibly be made to you, and to believe also
that upon a subject so important, and I may say so solemn, I could
not write one word that was in the smallest degree exaggerated, or
that might not be taken at its fullest meaning.

I hope you won’t feel any annoyance with me for not having
consulted you before saying anything to her. I really meant to have
done so; but on the night before I was leaving Cowes (Friday) my
feelings of sorrow at parting from her were more than I could
restrain, and I told her all. I did not say anything to her mother,
but I believe that she did after I was gone; for she wrote to me
just as I was starting (I did not, after all, leave Cowes till the
Monday), and she said in her letter that her mother could not hear
of it. That I am at a loss to understand.

I told Mama when I got here and should have written at once to tell
you; but I was so wretched and miserable at leaving thus, I was
quite incapable of writing quietly.

I now write to tell you of it all, and to ask you whether you will
be able to increase my allowance to some extent to put me in the
position to ask Mrs. Jerome to let me become her daughter’s future
husband. I enclose you her photograph, and will only say about her
that she is as nice, as lovable, and amiable and charming in every
way as she is beautiful, and that by her education and bringing-up
she is in every way qualified to fill any position.

She had an elder sister, and one younger, who is not yet out. 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. He is reputed to be
very well off, and his daughters, I believe, have very good
fortunes, but I do not know any thing for certain. He generally
comes over for three or four months every year. Mrs. Jerome has
lived in Paris for several years and has educated her daughters
there. They go out in Society there and are very well known.

I have told you all I know about them at present. You have always
been very good to me, and done as much and more for me always than
I had any right to expect; and with any arrangement that you may at
any time make for me I shall be perfectly contented and happy. I
see before me now a very happy future, almost in one’s grasp. In
the last year or so I feel I have lost a great deal of what energy
and ambition I possessed, and an idle and comparatively useless
life has at times appeared to me to be the pleasantest; but if I
were married to her whom I have told you about, if I had a
companion, such as she would be, I feel sure, to take an interest
in one’s prospects and career, and to encourage me to exertions and
to doing something towards making a name for myself, I think that I
might become, with the help of Providence, all and perhaps more
than you had ever wished and hoped for me. On the other hand, if
anything should occur to prevent my fondest hopes and wishes being
realised (a possibility which I dare not and cannot bring myself to
think of), how dreary and uninteresting would life become to me! No
one goes through what I have lately gone through without its
leaving a strong impress and bias on their character and future.
Time might, of course, partially efface the impression and
recollection of feelings so strong as those I have tried to
describe to you, but in the interval the best years of one’s life
would be going, and one’s energies and hopes would become blunted
and deadened.

I will not allude to her. I believe and am convinced that she loves
me as fully, and as strongly if possible, as I do her; and when two
people feel towards each other what we do, it becomes, I know, a
great responsibility for anyone to assist in either bringing about
or thwarting a union so closely desired by each.

Good-bye. I have written to you all I have done, all I feel, and
all I know.

Anxiously wishing for an answer from you, I remain Ever your most affectionate son, RANDOLPH.

The Duke was very seriously disturbed at the news of his son’s intention and declined to commit himself to any expression of approval until he had made searching inquiry into the standing and circumstances of the Jerome family. He deplored the precipitancy with which the decision had been taken. ‘It is not likely,’ he wrote upon August 31, ‘that at present you can look at anything except from your own point of view; but persons from the outside cannot but be struck with the unwisdom of your proceedings, and the uncontrolled state of your feelings, which completely paralyses your judgment.’ His rebuke was supported by his wife, who urged affectionate counsels of caution, patience, and self-restraint, and was pointed by a set of witty and satirical verses from his brother, Lord Blandford, setting forth the unhappy fate of those who marry in haste and repent at leisure.

It will easily be understood how this attitude--most Americans being proud as the devil--raised corresponding objections on the other side. Mr. Jerome was himself in many ways a remarkable personality. He had made and lost and made again considerable fortunes in the enterprise and struggle of American life. He had founded the first two great American racecourses, Jerome Park and Coney Island Jockey Club, and divides with Mr. August Belmont the claim to be the father of the American Turf. He owned and edited the _New York Times_. A vehement Federalist in the Civil War, he was said to have subscribed nearly half his fortune to the Federal war funds. When in 1862 the war party in New York was discredited by the disasters of the campaign, and riotous mobs attacked the _Times_ office, Mr. Jerome--having purchased a battery of cannon and armed his staff with rifles--beat them off, not without bloodshed. Altogether he was a man of force and versatility. He had at first, indeed, written a conditional assent to his daughter’s engagement, but he withdrew it with promptness as soon as he heard a murmur of opposition. Mrs. Jerome and her daughters retreated to France; and all interviews, and even communications, were forbidden by all the parents. Randolph Churchill, however, knew his own mind in many things, and most especially in this. Such was his vehemence that the Duke was soon persuaded, for the sake of his son’s peace of mind and of his own authority, to acquiesce--at any rate, provisionally--in a formal engagement. But he insisted upon delay. Nothing, he declared, but time could prove an affection so rapidly excited; and with this decision, supported and emphasised by the Jeromes, the lovers had perforce to be content.

The control of parents over grown-up children was in those unregenerate days much more severe than now. Letters were indeed allowed to pass freely between the lovers; but visits were grudged and restricted. Only at intervals of a month, or even six weeks, were they permitted to see each other, and in these circumstances it may be imagined that both pens were busy. In this field the young lady had a great advantage. The placid succession of the duties and amusements of country life--the round of shooting parties, the varying totals of slaughtered hares and pheasants, the mornings on the Woodstock bench, and descriptions of relations and county folk--however vivacious, were inadequate materials to set against days spent in Paris during the autumn of 1873, when the gossip of the world was reviving after the gag of the war, when Bazaine was upon his trial for his life, when Gambetta declaimed in the Assembly, and when the drawing-rooms, even of foreigners, were full of Royalist and Bonapartist whisperings. For the most part his letters were strictly confined to the subject of main importance. They told over and over again, in the forcible, homely English of which he was a natural master, the oldest story in the world. Indeed, but for the contributions of Miss Jerome the correspondence would certainly have lacked variety.

Towards the end of September the Duke committed himself with preciseness to the opinion that one year’s delay was necessary. To this Lord Randolph was far from agreeing and he conceived himself possessed of a lever which might be used to shorten considerably this weary period of waiting.

_To Miss Jerome._

Blenheim: Tuesday, September 23.

I cannot tell you what pleasure and happiness your letter gives me;
it makes me feel quite a different being, so you really must not
threaten me with a long silence. You certainly have great powers of
perception, and I cannot but own that there is a good deal of truth
in what you say about my being one moment very despairing and
another moment very sanguine. I cannot help it; I was made so.

My father has been away for a few days, and yesterday I got a
‘piece’ from him on the subject of his consent. After a good deal
of unnecessary rigmarole and verbosity he says:

‘The great question is still unsolved, whether you and the young
lady who has gained your affections are, or can be, after a few
days’ acquaintance, sufficiently aware of your own minds to venture
on the step which is to bind you together for life. What I have now
to say is that if I am to believe that your future is really bound
up in your marriage with Miss Jerome you must show me the proof of
it by bringing it to the test of time. I will say no more to you on
this subject for the present, but if this time next year you come
and tell me that you are both of the same mind we will receive Miss
Jerome as a daughter, and, I need not say, in the affection you
could desire for your wife.’

Now these are his words, but I do not mind telling you that it is
all humbug about waiting a year. I could, and would, wait a good
deal more than a year, but I do not mean to, as it is not the least
necessary; for though we have only known each other a short time, I
know we both know our own minds well enough, and I wrote a very
long and diplomatic letter to my father yesterday, doing what I
have never done before, contradicting him and arguing with him and,
I hope, persuading him that he has got very wrong and foolish
ideas in his head. You see, both he and my mother have set their
hearts on my being member for Woodstock. It is a family borough,
and for years and years a member of the family has sat for it. The
present member is a stranger, though a Conservative, and is so
unpopular that he is almost sure to be beaten if he were to stand;
and the fact of a Radical sitting for Woodstock is perfectly
insupportable to my family. It is for this that they have kept me
idle ever since I left Oxford, waiting for a dissolution. Well, as
I told you the other day, a dissolution is sure to come almost
before the end of the year. I have two courses open to me: either
to refuse to stand altogether unless they consent to my being
married immediately afterwards; or else--and this is still more
Machiavellian and deep--to stand, but at the last moment to
threaten to withdraw and leave the Radical to walk over. All tricks
are fair in love and war.

These desperate expedients were not, however, necessary. The parents on both sides only wished to be assured that the attachment of their children was no passing caprice, but a sincere and profound affection; and as the weeks grew into months this conviction was irresistibly borne in upon them. In October the Duke was willing to admit that the period of probation might be considerably curtailed. But he still had strong reasons for not wishing the marriage to take place immediately. The dissolution was certainly in the air. By-election after by-election had gone against Mr. Gladstone’s Government. Greenwich, Stroud, Dover, Hull, Exeter, East Staffordshire, and Renfrewshire had renounced their allegiance; Bath had been barely retained, and the Solicitor-General, whose victory at Taunton had been a much-paraded compensation, was threatened with a petition for bribery. It was most important that Woodstock should be held for the Conservatives. No one could possibly have so good a chance as the young cadet born and bred on the soil, who knew half the farmers and local magnates personally, whose excursions with the harriers had made him familiar with all parts of the constituency, and whose gay and stormy attractiveness had won him a host of sworn allies.

Yet he had often in words and in letters expressed a disinclination for public life. It is curious to notice how even in the days of buoyant unconquered youth, moods of depression cast their shadows across his path. Although possessed of unusual nervous energy, his whole life was a struggle against ill-health. Excitement fretted him cruelly. He smoked cigarettes ‘till his tongue was sore’ to soothe himself. Capable upon emergency of prolonged and vehement exertion, of manifold activities and pugnacities, of leaps and heaves beyond the common strength of men, he suffered by reaction fits of utter exhaustion and despondency. Most people grow tired before they are over-tired. But Lord Randolph Churchill was of the temper that gallops till it falls. An instinct warned him of the perils which threatened him in a life of effort. He shrank from it in apprehension. Peace and quiet, sport and friends, agricultural interests--above all a home--offered a woodland path far more alluring than the dusty road to London. The Duke felt, and with reason, that unless Lord Randolph were member for Woodstock before his marriage, not only would the borough be seduced to Radicalism, but that the son in whom all the hopes and ambitions of his later life were centred might never enter Parliament at all.

Lord Randolph was very grateful for the friendly attitude his family had now assumed and was quite prepared to repay concession by patience in one direction and by energy in another:--

_To his Father._

Blenheim: Thursday, October (?), 1873.

I write by an early post to acknowledge your letter and to thank
you very much for it. It is indeed a most kind letter and I am most
grateful to you, as it is all I could have expected. Mama tells me
that you got up early in the morning to write it, and indeed I
thank you very much indeed for writing to me as you have done, and
I only hope you did not tire yourself very much before your long
journey.

I go to London to-day and to Paris to-morrow. I enclose you a
letter from Hawkins about the registration, which seems to be
satisfactory. I am sure you need not fear my doing my very best to
get in, and therefore to be some credit to you. I feel that in this
you have acted very kindly to me and I feel very grateful to you,
although I know there are circumstances now which would have led
some people to very different conclusions. I am, however, perfectly
confident that ultimately you will never regret for a moment having
acted as you have done.

_To Miss Jerome._

Blenheim: Monday, October (?), 1873.

I was so happy to see your handwriting again; it is next best thing
to seeing you. As you will have seen from my letter of Friday, we
have no cause now to be disappointed or to be in bad spirits;
everything goes on as favourably as we could expect, and my father
does not wish, for a moment, to prevent my seeing you as often as I
can, and has promised to give his consent to our marriage when he
is sure we are fond of each other. As to the year, I have every
right to say that I do not think they will insist on it....

The clouds have all cleared away, and the sky is bluer than I have
ever seen it since I first met you at Cowes. It is exactly six
weeks to-morrow since we met on board the Ariadne, and I am sure I
seem to have lived six years. How I do bless that day, in spite of
all the worry and bother that has come since; and I am sure you
will not regret it. I have not had a further conversation with my
father since I wrote to you, for I think it is best to leave things
for the present as they are. Our early golden dreams of being
married in December won’t quite become realised, but still it won’t
be very long to wait; and I shall be able to see you from time to
time, and write as often as I like; in fact, we can be regularly
engaged, and all the world may know it....

It is curious what an effect books have on me; I have two old
favourites. When I feel very cross and angry I read Gibbon, whose
profound philosophy and easy though majestic writing soon quiets me
down, and in an hour I feel at peace with all the world. When I
feel very low and desponding I read Horace, whose thorough
epicureanism, quiet maxims, and beautiful verse are most
tranquillising. Of late I have had to have frequent recourse to my
two friends, and they have never failed me. I strongly recommend
you to read some great works or histories; they pass the time, and
prevent you from worrying or thinking too much about the future.
Novels, or even travels, are rather unsatisfactory, and do one no
good, because they create an unhealthy excitement, which is bad for
anyone. I wonder whether you will understand all this, or only
think me rather odd.

There are three new elections to come off, owing to death
vacancies; and if they go against the Government, as they very
probably will, we are sure to have a dissolution, and then I shall
become member for Woodstock. But, after all, public life has no
great charms for me, as I am naturally very quiet, and hate bother
and publicity, which, after all, is full of vanity and vexation of
spirit. Still, it will all have greater attractions for me if I
think it will please you and that you take an interest in it and
will encourage me to keep up to the mark.

I hope your sister is quite well, comforts you, and sticks up for
me when you abuse me to her or doubt me.

[Sidenote: 1874 ÆT. 25]

A fortnight later he insisted that he should be allowed to visit the Jeromes in the middle of December; and this having been agreed to, the process of counting the days began. But upon the eve of departure an unexpected misfortune intervened. His aunt Lady Portarlington was taken dangerously ill. The family were hurriedly summoned to Emo, and the delightful anticipations of a fortnight in Paris under such circumstances were exchanged for the melancholy reality of nearly a month in Ireland, watching in daily uncertainty a painful and unavailing struggle with death. It is easy to imagine the vexation of such delay and the longings which possessed him to leave the house of mourning. But the family leant on him and, while his presence was of real use and value, he felt bound to wait wearily on from day to day. The course of the illness was varied: once recovery seemed almost certain; but after many relapses the end came in the middle of January. Immediately after the funeral--which was celebrated with much Catholic pomp--Lord Randolph tore himself away, crossed the Irish Channel the same night, and was about to proceed the next evening to France, when another even more imperative call arrested him. Parliament was dissolved.

This event, long looked for, often rumoured, had come at last with the suddenness of surprise. But Woodstock was not unprepared. The Duke of Marlborough had waited impatiently for the first General Election after his brother’s lapse to regain his control over the representation of his borough. When Parliament had been dissolved in July 1865, Lord Alfred Churchill, according to his agreement, did not open his candidature; and Mr. Henry Barnett, the Squire of Glympton Park, a well-known London banker, was put forward as the Conservative candidate and (let it not be overlooked) ducal nominee. A Liberal was found in Mr. Mitchell Henry, afterwards better known as the Home Rule member for Galway; but the Squire carried the election by 24 votes, and, having been again successful in 1868, was the sitting member at the time when another cadet of the great house had ripened to a Parliamentary age.

Mr. Barnett now, as it turned out, very conveniently, expressed an earnest wish to relinquish the toils and responsibilities of public life; and the ancient borough, with an imperturbable solemnity and a conservative reverence for the form in which things should be done, was prompt in sending a regular requisition for Lord Randolph’s services. The electors, according to this document, declared that no one could better champion their cause at this crisis, or more fitly represent their views in the ensuing Parliament. They urged him to stand; and in view of the fact that there happened to be that very afternoon a coursing meeting in the Park which all the local farmers were expected to attend, he had to set off for Blenheim without delay.

The series of letters to Paris was sadly broken into by the contest, and for the most part only telegrams had to fill the gap: but here and there a moment could be snatched.

_To Miss Jerome._

Blenheim: Monday.

It was perfectly impossible for me to get any letter off by last
night’s post, as I have not had a moment to spare. Since ten this
morning I went and saw several people at Woodstock, and had, on the
whole, satisfactory answers and assurances of support. It was a
most fortunate circumstance that the Annual Coursing Meeting, which
my father allows every year in the Park, had been fixed for to-day;
all the farmers were there, and as they had a good day’s sport were
all in great spirits. I took the chair at their dinner at the Bear
hotel, and you cannot imagine how enthusiastic they were for me.
They all go as one man. I hear nothing certain as to any
opposition; there are no end of rumours, but no one as yet has
appeared publicly; I suppose we shall know for certain to-morrow.

I am now off to a part of the borough four miles distant, to see
more people, and I have a large meeting of my committee at four in
Woodstock. I think I may say that for the present everything is
satisfactory. There are 1,071 voters, and I do not think more than
800 will poll; out of these I calculate at least on 460, which will
be enough. But this is, of course, mere guess-work; it is all still
very uncertain, and I am glad I lost no time in arriving.

Blenheim: Tuesday.

The radical candidate, Mr. Brodrick, arrived this morning; I made
his acquaintance, and we shook hands and were very friendly. The
contest will be a hard one and the result doubtful; it is
impossible to say how the labourers will go. However, I have made a
very good start, and have nothing to complain of as yet.

Blenheim: Saturday.

I am sure it is not necessary for me to excuse myself for not
writing to you; you would not believe what work it is. We had a
great meeting last night, which was very successful; we had a good
speaker down from London, and I made a speech. How I have been
longing for you to have been with me! If we had only been married
before this! I think the reception you would have got, would have
astonished you. The number of houses I have been into--many of them
dirty cottages--the number of unwashed hands I have cordially
shaken, you would not believe. 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.

I am now off again, 10 A.M., to see more people.

Blenheim: Sunday.

At last I have a pretty quiet day; but I have been very busy this
afternoon, and, in spite of its being Sunday, I have been active
among several little odd fellows whom it is important to pick up.
How this election is going I really can form no opinion, and the
excitement and uncertainty of it make me quite ill. Yesterday I was
canvassing all day in Woodstock itself. People that I think know
better than anybody, tell me it will be very close. You see, with
the ballot one can tell nothing--one can only trust to promises,
and I have no doubt a good many will be broken. Our organisation
and preparations for Tuesday are very perfect, and the old borough
has never been worked in such a way before. You have no idea how
this election gets hold of me. One can positively think of nothing
else except voters and committees, &c., till one’s brain gets quite
addled and in a whirl. I have a presentiment that it will go wrong.
I am such a fool to care so much about it. I hate all this
excitement.... I saw my opponent to-day in church. He looks awfully
harassed. I feel quite sorry for him, as all his friends here are
such a dreadfully disreputable lot; and as I have got the three
principal hotels in the town, he has nothing except a wretched,
low, miserable pot-house to stay in.

Unfortunate Mr. Brodrick! The result of the election in no way belied the quality of his accommodation.

Ever since I met you everything goes well with me--too well; I am
getting afraid of a Nemesis. I always hoped I should win the
election, but that under the ballot and against a man like Brodrick
I should have that crushing, overwhelming majority [of 165 out of
973 voters] never entered into my wildest dreams. It was a great
victory--we shall never have a contest again. The last two
contests--‘65 and ‘68--were won only by 17 and 21 majorities; so
just conceive the blow it is to the other side. You never heard
such cheering in all your life. The poll was not declared till
eleven, and the hours of suspense were most trying; but when it was
known, there was such a burst of cheers that must have made the old
Dukes in the vault jump. I addressed a few words to the
committee--and so did Blandford--and was immensely cheered; and
then they accompanied us, the whole crowd of them, through the town
and up to Blenheim, shouting and cheering all the way. Oh, it was a
great triumph--and that you were not there to witness it will
always be a source of great regret to me....

There is nothing more to be done except to pay the bill, and that I
have left to my father.

The Woodstock election being out of the way, the road was cleared for more important matters. The Duke, his political anxieties laid to rest, journeyed to Paris, saw the young lady for himself, and, returning completely converted, withdrew all remaining stipulations for delay. But further difficulties presented themselves. The question of settlements proved delicate and thorny. Mr. Jerome had strong and, it would seem, not unreasonable views, suggested by American usage, about married women’s property and made some propositions which Lord Randolph considered derogatory to him. Although he was to benefit considerably under the arrangement proposed, he refused utterly to agree to any settlement which contained even technical provisions to which he objected; and after an embarrassing discussion went off to prepare determined plans to earn a living ‘in England or out of it,’ as fortune should dictate, for himself and his future wife--‘a course in which,’ so he wrote to his father, ‘I am bound to say she thoroughly agrees with me.’

Face to face with this ultimatum--the first of any importance and not the least successful in Lord Randolph’s forceful career--Mr. Jerome, who after all only wished to make a proper and prudent arrangement, capitulated after twenty-four hours’ consideration. A satisfactory treaty was ratified, and it only remained to fulfil the conditions. The negotiations had already extended over seven months and the ceremony was appointed without further delay. The Duke, though unable to be present himself, sent his blessing in a most cordial letter. ‘Although, my dear Randolph, you have acted in this business with less than usual deliberation, you have adhered to your choice with unwavering constancy and I cannot doubt the truth and force of your affection.’ On April 15, 1874, the marriage was celebrated at the British Embassy in Paris, and after a tour--not too prolonged--upon the Continent, Lord Randolph Churchill returned in triumph with his bride to receive the dutiful laudations of the borough of Woodstock and enjoy the leafy glories of Blenheim in the spring.