Jennie Churchill was involved in many charities, such as helping the soldiers during World War One, and she also wrote, organized literary festivals, and worked in the arts. Do you think that more emphasis should be placed on her many achievements, such as her war work and her involvement in the arts and writing?
Anne Sebba: Oh yes! I have just been fighting to get a blue plaque put up on the house where she and Randolph first lived in London – Charles Street ( coincidentally it is also the house where Frances Hodgson Burnett lived and had the inspiration for The Shuttle which is based on Jennie and Randolph) and English Heritage says that she was not important in her own right.
Her War work is only just being recognised and she brought to it many typical characteristics, eg. using her contacts ( such as Paris Singer who offered his mansion in Devon as a hospital) and performing the piano and talking to the wounded as real people not as bundles of blood and broken bones which the other lady bountifuls did. She was really gutsy and courageous and expected others to behave like her.
The hospital ship – The Maine – which she took to South Africa caused derision in some quarters but it was a tremendous venture to have undertaken and could only have been done by someone with real drive. She had to raise a lot of money in a short time and oversee the total refurbishment of the former cattle trader into a state of the art hospital and keep the argumentative American and English nurses and doctors in order. No small feat.
Jennie Churchill's Legacy
What do you think that Churchill inherited from her?
Anne Sebba: His good health stamina and robust constitution. His ability to pull through and see the long term and optimism in the face of his occasional depression.
His belief in his destiny as leader of the free world against Nazi Germany.
His genuinely close ties to America and to his ties of blood to American soil and family and belief in the new world always coming to the rescue of the old .
Finally, Jennie she gave him a belief in the healing power of a single woman - hence his long love for his wife Clemmie who supported him immeasurably through critical times.
Sources
Anne Sebba, Jennie Churchill: Churchill's American Mother, John Murray, London, 2007
Lisa Sanderson - Lisa has been a freelance-writer for many years. She used to write for the topic, British Social History, for Suite 101 under the ...
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