JENNIE: A Biography of Lady Randolph Churchill

Undoubtedly the fact of their famous son Winston kept historians and biographers relatively circumspect in commenting on his parents, Lord Randolph and his Lady, the American debutante, Jennie Jerome. And it is doubtless true that by the standards of Victoria's day the beautiful Jennie was a swinger. However, the first of a projected two volume biography is replete with racy speculation and devoid of documentation for such ideas as these: that Jennie cuckolded a complacent Randolph with metronomic regularity and that Randolph was a homosexual. That Jennie was probably preggers (the hefty Winston arrived a short seven months later) at the time of her marriage in 1874 is old news and so is the progressive syphilis that killed Lord Randolph only 20 years later. Vol. I leaves Jennie at this point--only 39, still beautiful, with only the money from her marriage settlement left after paying off her husband's debts. It reads with more gossipy energy than scholarship and Vol. II ought to be a doozey since Jennie went on to marry twice more, in one case, a very much younger man. It is to be hoped that along with that seldom mentioned aspect of her life there will be a chance to scan the author's sources for what--at least so far--manages to diminish the remarkable woman who refused to surrender her husband's robes of office when he self-destructively ended his brilliant political career with the words: ""I am saving them for my son."" And she lived to see him wear them, too.