![]() The couple had their differences, but when it came to Winston’s career, Clementine was firmly in his corner. Winston Churchill campaigning with his wife Clementine in his constituency of Woodford. “I tell Clemmie everything,” Winston confided in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The couple spent much of their time apart due to Winston’s demanding schedule, but maintained a lively correspondence. Randolph struggled with suicide, and Sarah married three times, once without her parent’s knowledge or approval. She was the only Churchill child who grew up without grappling with alcohol, divorce or suicide: The couple’s oldest daughter, Diana, killed herself with a drug overdose in the 1960s. When her next daughter, Mary, was born a few years later, the couple resolved to raise her differently. However, the tragic fate of her daughter Marigold, who died when she was two years old, deeply traumatized both Winston and Clementine. Instead, she threw her efforts behind her husband. Though Clementine had five children with Winston, she spent little time with them. (Credit: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) Winston Churchill, with her daughters Mary and Sarah, after her investiture by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, where she became a Dame of the British Empire, 1946. “He never uttered one word and was very gauche.” “Winston just stared,” she recalled later. Clementine was not impressed, especially when he did not ask her to dance. Already a member of parliament, Winston was best known for his noticeable ambition and his dramatic escape from captivity during the Second Boer War. In 1904, when Clementine was 19, she attended a dance at which 29-year-old Winston Churchill was present. ![]() The incident-and the effects of an unhappy, neglected childhood-stayed with her for the rest of her life. ![]() Clementine was sent to stay with an aunt during Kitty’s illness, and did not realize she was saying goodbye forever. The tragic death of Clementine’s 16-year-old sister, Kitty, from typhoid fever, also affected her deeply. In a 2002 interview, Clementine’s daughter Mary blamed that period for her mother’s lifelong anxiety and lack of confidence. Though it was customary for women of Clementine’s class to become debutantes, Blanche, fearing her bad reputation could harm her daughter, hesitated to launch her into society. This presented not just financial problems, but social ones. He left Blanche when Clementine was six years old, plunging her mother-a notorious gambler-into relative poverty. Clementine’s parents, Lady Blanche Hozier and Henry Montague Hozier, despised one another and were so famously unfaithful that associates assumed none of their children were fathered by Henry. Born to aristocratic parents, her early life was lonely and marked by rumor and scandal. Clementine’s life is a success story in and of itself.
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