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Tag Archives: Winston Churchill

To Have Her Own Story: That Churchill Woman

04 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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adultery, backstory, book review, feminism, Great Britain, historical fiction, Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, nineteenth century, Parliament, political power, Prince of Wales, scandal, sexual double standard, Stephanie Barron, Winston Churchill, women's fiction

Review: That Churchill Woman, by Stephanie Barron
Ballantine, 2019. 384 pp. $28

Nineteen-year-old Jennie Jerome, heiress to a sizable New York fortune, knows what she wants: to be taken seriously for her intellect and abilities, to have the power she believes she deserves, and to matter as a person. Why shouldn’t she, when she’s a brilliant conversationalist, has all the confidence her buccaneer merchant father taught her, plays the piano with verve and virtuosity, fears nothing and no one, and turns heads whenever she enters a room? But Miss Jerome is a woman, it’s 1873, and as an American, even a rich one, she faces obstacles to finding a husband among the British nobility, for which purpose her mother has brought her to England.

When daughter falls for Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, a rising star in Parliament, and a noted rake, Mrs. Jerome objects, as do the Churchills—the girl has no family to speak of, sniff sniff. However, Jennie has spent her life taking risks to get what she wants, and her mother doesn’t scare her, especially when she has Papa on her side.

Lady Randolph, as she appeared around 1880, age twenty-six, artist unknown (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

History records that Lady Randolph’s first child, Winston, would be the most famous Briton of the twentieth century. But Barron is much more interested in Jennie and what else her marriage to this particular dissolute, scandalous husband brings. Randolph grants her the freedom to do what she pleases, so long as she’s discreet, and even lets her rewrite some of his speeches, removing the intemperate parts that would hurt him politically. Randy means to be prime minister, if ever that dour, Bible-thumping twit, Gladstone, ever falls — and Jennie will help secure her husband’s victory, if she can.

Consequently, Barron intends to rehabilitate Lady Randolph from the status of historical footnote, as mere mother of a great man, and, more importantly, her reputation as a scheming adulteress who drove her poor husband crazy. The author makes her case, for Jennie’s a far more appealing, nuanced character than the scandal mongers would have it, though at times her selfishness and sense of entitlement put me off. She does have love affairs, and she loves passionately, always struggling against the double standard applied to women, in that, and in her political pursuits, the latter activities furnishing some of my favorite scenes. Apparently, she was a fabulous stump speaker.

The narrative lives on splendid descriptions. Barron has a knack for portraying the lives of the rich and famous (which she also displayed in Jack 1939, a thriller written under a pseudonym), and she renders the leading figures of the realm with ease and panache. (I particularly like her portrait of Bertie, Prince of Wales, licentious wretch, court arbiter, and trendsetter.) It takes a sure hand to convey every conceivable setting with accuracy and authority, from royal residences to the House of Commons to opium dens to a fashionable woman’s boudoir. Not only does Barron never miss a step, she connects her descriptions to the characters (and, therefore, the reader), as with this passage from Jennie’s girlhood, about her father’s library:

Jennie never set foot in Papa’s library when he was there, because then it was his place and not the secret one she kept to herself while he was at his offices on Wall Street. The mahogany paneling glowed warmly even on the dreariest days, and the draperies were crimson velvet, so heavy that not a whisper of the carriage traffic from Madison Square filtered through the glazed windows. The only sounds were the settlings of logs burning behind the brass fender and the rustle of thick paper as Jennie turned the pages. A Turkey carpet splashed carmine and indigo at her feet. The library smelled of cigars and brandy and old leather bindings, the dryness of paper in the wetness of ink. It smelled, Jennie thought, of Papa.

It’s the storytelling, I think, that fails to measure up. The novel begins not at any of the first three chapters, where it could, but at Jennie’s funeral. Though by definition unnecessary, this particular prologue is at least very well written and, typical of Barron, shows her command of history. But reading yet another prologue makes me ask whether authors today — or their editors — have mistakenly set the bar too low, fearing that if the context for an almost-famous character doesn’t appear right up front, readers will be lost. Are we that unsophisticated or impatient or have such a short attention span that we can’t appreciate a woman’s life except by looking at it backwards? Are we that star-struck and name-conscious that if we don’t know a character’s bloodlines by the first paragraph, the novel won’t sell?

Speaking of looking backward, the forward narrative often breaks off to tell a story from Jennie’s past. Few of these scenes belong, most feeling as though they’ve been plopped in to give background to the adult Jennie, tacitly—or literally—asking, Why does the protagonist behave in such a way at this particular moment? Answer: Well, it all stems from this incident from her childhood; 2 + 2 = 4.

But people aren’t formulas, psychology doesn’t work that way, and since I believe Barron’s a fine writer, with a gift for characterization, I’m guessing she fell too much in love with Jennie’s backstory. I could also do with less rib-nudging dramatic irony, as when Jennie tells young Winston to go off and be prime minister someday.

That Churchill Woman makes entertaining reading, for the most part. But I wonder whether the author tried to cram too much into it, paradoxically winding up with less than she could have had.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Awakening in Egypt: Dreamers of the Day

14 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1921, book review, Cairo, diplomacy, First World War, Gertrude Bell, historical fiction, Lawrence of Arabia, literary fiction, Mary Doria Russell, romance, Treaty of Versailles, Winston Churchill

Review: Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell
Random House, 2008. 249 pp. $15

Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old Ohio schoolteacher, knows she’s ugly, drab, incompetent, ungrateful, unworthy, and just about un-everything else. How does she know this? Why, her sainted mother, may she rest in peace, told her so every day, and Mumma’s voice still resounds in Agnes’s head every time the still-dutiful daughter dares call a thought her own.

But it’s 1921, and the influenza pandemic that has killed even more people than the First World War has set Agnes free. Her entire family has died, including Mumma, which results in a financial windfall–three estates to inherit–but, most important, nothing to stop Agnes from learning what life can be like when nobody’s degrading her. On a whim–a new experience in itself–she shops in the fanciest department store in town and manages to hold off the maternal yammer in her ear while she acquires a bob haircut and an up-to-the-minute wardrobe. Thus equipped, she decides to expand her horizons and take a vacation, another first. Her destination is Cairo, and her only companion will be her dachshund, Rosie.

Egypt might seem an unusual destination for Agnes, but she recalls, with excitement, a lecture she attended about Lawrence of Arabia. And it’s nothing short of wonderful that when she reaches Cairo, she meets the man himself–and Winston Churchill, Britain’s minister for the colonies, and Gertrude Bell, the famous Arabist and traveler in the Middle East. They’re in Cairo to negotiate an agreement ancillary to the Treaty of Versailles that will redraw the map as we essentially know it today. Agnes, at first abashed to be in such august company, gradually scrapes her confidence together and contributes to dinner-table conversation about colonial politics, crossing swords with Churchill and Bell.

Lowell Thomas’s 1919 photo of T. E. Lawrence (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the U.S.)

That description illustrates the charm with which Russell has imbued Dreamers of the Day. In the abstract, it seems completely implausible that an Ohio schoolteacher could crash a diplomatic party, let alone be welcomed into its midst, yet Russell makes that work. There seems no reason to doubt that when their paths cross at the best hotel in town, Agnes will be swept up into dinner parties and social excursions. What’s more, I love Russell’s characterizations of the diplomats, especially that of Lawrence, who comes across as more sensitive and thoughtful by half than anyone else there, and believably so. Russell says she’s let the famous characters speak the words they wrote or were ascribed to them in multiple sources, and I believe that too.

The best historical novelists render the period through their characters’ internal lives so that you can practically breathe the atmosphere on the page. So it is here, from the second paragraph:

You must try to feel the hope and amazement of those years. Anything seemed possible–the end of ignorance, the end of disease, the end of poverty. Physics and chemistry, medicine and engineering were breaking through old boundaries. In the cities, skyscrapers shredded clouds. Trucks and automobiles were crowding out horse-drawn cabs and drays in the boulevards below. The pavement was clean: no stinking piles of dung, no buzz of flies.

However, this viewpoint also demonstrates the chief weakness of Dreamers of the Day. The sense emerges both between the lines and in them that Agnes realizes what the future will hold, a dramatic irony that needs no emphasis, since the reader already knows that the diplomats failed utterly to create peace in the Middle East. Her uninformed skepticism, especially balanced against the more optimistic views of Bell and Lawrence, sounds forced and artificial. The “hope and amazement of those years” might have served Russell better in Agnes’s mouth.

Russell compensates somewhat by letting Agnes fall in love with a man who may or may not be a German spy. Karl offers a political counterpoint to the Brits, but he also shows her attention and kindness and even tells her forthrightly that Mumma doesn’t sound very nice at all. I like this part and wish there had been more of it, for Dreamers of the Day works best when the politics share the narrative rather than overwhelm it.

That’s why I don’t understand the last chapter, which drops into magical realism, a mode I dislike and one at odds with the book. It’s there, I think, to allow Agnes to soapbox about subsequent politics–another no-no–when the real story ends in Cairo.

Not only that, but as someone who admires Russell’s skill and diligence, I’m startled that she cuts corners about Gallipoli, Churchill’s great failure. I like her take that Churchill was a such a narcissist, he’d never miss a chance to rehash the campaign and exonerate himself. But the scene relies on so many historical inaccuracies, he sounds like an ignorant fool, and that’s plain wrong.

So I think that, unlike Doc, which I reviewed in these pages and liked very much, Russell gets ahead of herself in Dreamers of the Day; despite some fun bits, it doesn’t quite come together.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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