Biography'I have the clearest recollection of seeing her for the first time," wrote Viscount D'Abernon in the most famous description of the youthful Jennie Churchill, as he went on to recall there being "more of the panther than of the woman in her look, but with a cultivated intelligence unknown in the jungle".
As it happens, at the time she was resident not in the jungle but in the Phoenix Park since her father-in-law, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, had been appointed Viceroy of Ireland in 1876.
Two years earlier, the American-born Jennie Jerome had married his son, Lord Randolph Churchill, the great also-ran of late-19th-century British politics, a man who systematically squandered his chances of achieving the high office and success for which he seemed intended. It was left to the couple's first-born, Winston Churchill, to realise his father's ambitions.
Ever since the younger and greater Churchill's death, in January 1965, there has been steady interest in the role played by Jennie in shaping her son's character and destiny. She was unquestionably a formidable woman, who used her renowned physical charms to full advantage; Jennie Churchill had many lovers even during her first marriage and after Randolph Churchill died she married twice more, on both occasions to men at least 20 years her junior.
For almost half a century there were few persons of importance in European political, cultural and social circles with whom she was not familiar and her exceptional energy allowed her to embark on numerous projects across a range of very different spheres. No wonder one observer commented in 1899 that "the versatility of Lady Randolph is quite unusual".
It has been noted on several occasions that Jennie Churchill's life is the stuff of a novel by her fellow Americans Edith Wharton or Henry James and it would have been better had her latest biographer opted for the same genre.
This is especially the case since Anne Sebba seems to have taken as a stylistic role model not Wharton or James but the late Barbara Cartland, as when she discusses a long trip taken by the Churchills not long before Lord Randolph's death.
At this point, we are told by Sebba, Jennie "saw staring at her a blacker and deeper abyss than anything she had hitherto known or prepared herself for. Like Wagner's Flying Dutchman, she felt herself forced to sail around the world for an eternity until she could grasp the romantic love constantly eluding her".
Likewise, on the subject of the Austrian Count Charles Kinsky's love letters - none of which have survived - Sebba writes that "one can imagine how Jennie's heart lurched when she received one". Well no, actually, one cannot imagine this and nor when reading a book with any pretensions to scholarship should one be expected to do so.
Neither does one expect to read sweeping generalisations such as fin de siècle Paris being summarised as "glittering, amusing, seductive and full of artists", a city where Jennie and her two sisters "knew how to enjoy themselves and between them there was never any shortage of scandal and tittle-tattle". This sort of prose does nothing to give "one" any real understanding of Sebba's subject and ought to have been eradicated before the book was published.
VARIOUS CONFUSIONS SHOULD have been cleared up at the same time: an American woman called Fanny Ronalds - classified as the lover of Jennie's father, Leonard Jerome, although no evidence is provided to justify such a sobriquet - is described early in the biography as "a beautiful young divorcee". Yet some 70 pages later, we are told that Mrs Ronalds "never divorced".
Similarly, a picture caption explains that the Jerome sisters were popularly known as the beautiful (Jennie), the witty (Leonie) and the wise (Clara). But in the main text these epithets are redistributed among the siblings. There are even instances where the author simply fails to make any sense at all. After discussing whether Randolph Churchill might not have been the father of Jennie's second son, Jack, Sebba concludes that "At all events, Winston always loved Jack, protected him, deliberately sought out his company and considered him his brother". Presumably this was because, regardless of their paternity, the two men shared the same mother and were, in fact, brothers.
It is hard to find a reason for this new biography as several already exist, not least that written by Jennie Churchill's great-niece, Anita Leslie, in 1969 (and not 1960 as the bibliography erroneously proposes). There is also Fortune's Daughters, Elisabeth Kehoe's excellent history of the Jerome sisters which appeared only three years ago. Anne Sebba's book adds nothing to either and, whatever her intentions, does nothing to enhance the reputation of Jennie Churchill.
Robert O'Byrne is a writer and journalist. His history of Dublin's Gaiety Theatre will be published later this month
Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother By Anne Sebba John Murray, 398pp. £25