One's only chance is within oneself
This week I finished a biography about Winston Churchill’s mother. “Winston Churchill’s mother!”, I hear you say. “Why?”
Well, I’ve been researching American women who married into the British aristocracy in the 19th century and she was one of those women. But the truth is as soon as I started reading about Jennie Jerome I was hooked. Some people manage to really live, to take a firm grip of their years on this earth and squeeze and squeeze. She was one of those people.
But I’m not going to recount her story here. Instead, here are two take-aways:
The elite in the 19th century lived like nomads, sometimes they had several homes, sometimes they didn’t even have their own homes, instead they travelled, they went for extended visits to friends and relatives, spent weekends in country houses, rented apartments in Paris, moved in with their in-laws, did a season in London and then went to New York. Some of them moved around a lot, there was never a longterm home.
The elite in the 19th century was sometimes incredibly poor. Jennie and her sisters, and her son, were often deeply in debt, as were many of their contemporaries. This didn’t prevent them from living in a grand and spendthrift way, they bought expensive clothes and knickknacks, threw extravagant parties and travelled a lot. Often they were living hand to mouth. They were able to live like this precisely because they were part of the elite – there was always a friend to ask for a loan and no one ever refused them credit. When Jennie died her sons and her third husband were left with a ton of debts.
What I take from this is that there are many ways of looking and thinking about money and wealth. Here is a quote from Jennie herself, advice to her second husband several years after their divorce.
Peace is essential to life and if you have that you are on a fair way to happiness. Life is frightfully hard. One’s only chance is within oneself.
There was of course also desperate and appalling poverty in the 19th century. That’s part of the story too, but that is perhaps for another day.
– Facts from “Jennie Churchill – Winston’s American mother” by Anne Sebba.
– Picture from the Internet.