That Churchill Woman

I seem to be stuck in a reading rut about Anglo-American society women of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, Stephanie Barron's That Churchill Woman (#826) being a case in point.  Frankly, I was disappointed with this one.  I'm a fan of Ms. Barron's Jane Austen Mystery series, but I found the Jennie Jerome here shallow and self-centered.  The novel concentrates on Jennie Jerome's affair with Charles Kinsky, a member of Austrian royalty.  They are portrayed here as star-crossed lovers, whose inability to marry blighted their lives.  Maybe so, but Jennie was headstrong, and she deliberately chose her marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill despite vigorous family objections.  She did not choose wisely, yet the product of that disastrous marriage, their son Winston, changed the world.

There's a lot here about dresses and social occasions managed on a tight budget, much time spent apart except when Jennie was still able to assist husband Randolph with a promising political career which he tossed aside in six months.  Little time was spent with her two sons (Jack was not Randolph's child.), following the English model.  That left plenty of time for idle dalliances as long as one was discreet.  Numerous affairs are hinted at here, but apparently Jennie's passion for Charles Kinsky exceeded the bounds of good taste, as pointed out by the Prince of Wales.

Having nobly renounced the love of her life in order to stay with her syphilitic husband until his ghastly death, the cause of which was shrouded in mystery by the family, Jennie does go on to marry a second time.  Curiously, the reader is never given the name of the that second husband, so I looked it up.  She actually married two additional husbands; George Cornwallis-West and Montagu Porch, who was younger than her son Winston!  No wonder she had a reputation as That Churchill Woman!

I think I was so disappointed with this novel because I had just finished A Well-Behaved Woman (See my post of 4/24/19.) about Alva Smith Vanderbilt, a friend of Jennie Jerome's who had a similarly difficult life, but went on to devote her life (coincidentally enough!) to her second husband's political career, and the cause of women's suffrage in the United States.  Alva did something with her own life, and had many admirable qualities.  I did not come away feeling that same sympathy for Jennie Jerome.  It's a miracle, all things considered, that Winston Churchill turned out as well as he did.