Why else the rush, the discreet ceremony, and the pointed absence of the Marlboroughs - followed by a notably uncomplicated birth seven months later, of the lusty baby who was christened Winston. Was already pregnant? Piety says no, but the evidence suggests she might have been. ![]() The Duke and Duchess were conspicuously absent. There was none of the splendor that an international society wedding of such wealth and standing would normally receive, no public ceremony, and little mention in the press. The wedding took place in the British embassy in Paris on April 15, 1874, with all the signs of a somewhat hushed and rushed affair. She was rushed back to the Palace, where, in the early hours of November 30, he son was born.Ī volume entitled The Private Lives of Winston Churchill sounded promising, and there we found the suggestion that Churchill hadn't been born prematurely at all and that the story about his mother's taking a fall may have been concocted to cover a pre-marital dalliance: A few days later, while riding in a pony carriage over rough ground, labour began. That November, his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, then less than seven months pregnant, had slipped and fallen while walking with a shooting party at Blenheim Palace. Winston Churchill was born in 1874, half way through the Victorian Era. So we tried other Churchill biographies, but they scarcely noted the circumstances of his birth at all, saving their detailed narratives for later portions of his life: Well, maybe the author had to leave some things out in order to keep an already sprawling biography from spanning more than one volume, and the item we were looking for was one of them. We tried to stop them, but it was no use.' Neither the London obstetrician nor his Oxford auxiliary could arrive in time, although it was over twenty-four hours to the birth from the onset of labor pains, and the baby was born very early on the Monday morning with the assistance only of the Woodstock country doctor. This house not being ready, they had taken autumn refuge in Blenheim, and, as Lord Randolph put it in a letter to his mother-in-law in Paris, ' had a fall on Tuesday walking with the shooters, and a rather imprudent and rough drive in a pony carriage brought on the pains on Saturday night. He should have been born in January in the small but fashionable house in Charles Street, Mayfair, which his father had rented to receive him, or more purposefully perhaps to use as a base for the somewhat rackety metropolitan life of which Lord Randolph and his bride of only seven and a half months' standing were equally fond. ![]() The accident arose out of his being two months premature. He was born on 30 November 1874 and, mainly by accident, in Blenheim Palace, although in a singularly bleak-looking bedroom. The brief description of Churchill's birth found there mentioned nothing more remarkable than that he was born two months prematurely (labor having been brought on when his mother took a fall) in a "singularly bleak-looking bedroom" at Blenheim Palace: To research this type of item (an anecdote about a famous figure), we generally first turn to the most recent biography of that person we can find, which in this case was Roy Jenkins' 900-page Churchill: A Biography (2001). ![]() Given that Churchill was one of the most important figures of the 20th century - a long-lived statesman of international prominence whose career spanned two world wars and beyond - this would seem like a fairly easy item to verify, but once again things were deceptively less simple than they appeared at first blush. The claim that British prime minister "Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room at a dance" has been circulating on Internet-based trivia lists for as long as we can remember.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |