Family Album

THE CHURCHILLS (430 pp.)--A. L. Rowse--Harper ($7.50).

Britain's A. L. Rowse is to history what C. S. Forester is to fiction. Rowse heroes--Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Winston Churchill--all carry the inimitable Horatio Hornblower stamp and are portrayed by Rowse in the way Sir Winston was advised by Lady Lavery to paint: "Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and white, frantic flourish on the palette . . . large, fierce strokes and slashes ... on the absolutely cowering canvas." In the second of his two volumes on the Spencer-Churchill families (TIME, Oct. 1, 1956), Rowse splashes and wallops his way from the death of the great Duke of Marlborough in 1722 to the epoch of the great Winnie without losing for an instant his zest for large, fierce, frantic flourishes. Little men just disappear like blue streaks under this treatment, but most of the Spencers and Churchills are tough enough to face Rowse without cowering. Two centuries of them include:

P: Sarah Churchill, first Duchess of Marlborough and widow of the duke, who took control of the family fortunes "with her usual energy . . . self-satisfaction . . . omnicompetence and exasperation." Declaring "I mortally hate abuses or money foolishly thrown away," Sarah reigned over her descendants from the cradle to maturity for two full generations. Her letters bubble with energetic, dogmatic advice, orders and maxims, particularly when the young scions are studying on the Continent: "All the French women are cheats"; "It is better to go without . . . civilities than to pay too dear for them"; "Dancing gives men a good air and fencing should be learnt . . . Medals and antiquities, painting and sculpture, I don't look upon to be the most useful knowledge to anybody." As an example to the youths, Sarah cited the case of a Frenchman of "about three score," then in England, "who has learned in [only] a year's time to read all the English authors, and both to write and speak English: his name [Sarah happens to mention] is Voltaire."

P: Charles Spencer, third* Duke of Marlborough, was the first to escape Sarah's whip hand, hailed his freedom with debts and extravagances totaling some half a million pounds. Charles died in 1758 in the Seven Years' War, a few months after his precipitous withdrawal by sea from Cherbourg had given France's Duc 'Ai-guillon the exquisite triumph of sending after him "a vessel under a flag of truce to restore the Duke of Marlborough's silver teaspoons which he had left behind in his hurry."

P: George, fourth duke, exhibited the family's growing "relaxation of fiber," and "withdrew from the struggle of life into seclusion and silence." He spent lavishly on the family seat, Blenheim Palace, beautifying the grounds but so cluttering up the interior that Horace Walpole said: "It looks like the palace of an auctioneer who has been chosen King of Poland."

P: George, fifth duke, is best known for reducing the family "to decay and . . . disgrace" and, simultaneously, resuming "the old surname of Churchill." "The house [is ] ill-lighted," said a visitor, "and all the servants, I believe, bailiffs."

P: Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, brother of the eighth duke, restored the family dignity, whetted the sword that his greater son would wield. "He was a little man, full of vibrant nervous energy." Lord Randolph feared nobody--least of all Liberal Leader William Ewart Gladstone, whose fondness for the healthy exercise of axing trees he excoriated with pungent brevity: "The forest laments, in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire." Other of his brisk remarks have passed into the language, e.g., his description of snobbish businessmen as "lords of suburban villas . . . owners of vineries and pineries"; of Gladstone, "the Old Man in a hurry." At 37, Lord Randolph was Leader of the House of Commons, boss of the Treasury ("the youngest since Pitt"), and husband of the American beauty, Jennie Jerome. He maddened old Queen Victoria with his pugnacity and determination. "The youngest member of the Cabinet must not be allowed to dictate to the others," she barked. "Lord Salisbury must really put his foot down." Eventually, Prime Minister Salisbury put it down hard--and Lord Randolph flashed into obscurity like "Lucifer . . . fallen from among the stars."

In daubing the character and career of Lord Randolph's stupendous son Winston, Rowse makes clear that the father's tragic fall from power served more than anything else to spur the son to glory. Among Sir Winston's faults Rowse cites his lack of "some intuitive tactile sense to tell him what others were thinking and (especially) feeling." Rowse attributes this partly to Sir Winston's breeding: the "very strength of the two natures mixed in him, the self-willed English aristocrat and the equally self-willed primitive American" combined to make him greater as a national savior than as an everyday politician. This view of human character as a sort of neatly mixed blood pudding need not be taken too seriously by Author Rowse's primitive U.S. readers, who will find this hearty, bouncing chronicle a pleasant change from more subtle, sophisticated works of history.

* The second to bear the Marlborough title was no duke but a duchess. In the absence of a male heir to the first duke--whose only son died of smallpox in 1703--an act of Parliament permitted the dukedom to pass in the female line. His daughter Henrietta (1681-1733) succeeded him as second Duchess, became a great and good friend of Playwright William Congreve.

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