Blenheim Palace

Typical of British weather, most days were cold and wet when I visited the Cinques in London in 1980. But it was a delightful day, balmy with sunny skies, on the Sunday that Jack drove Margaret and me into the serene British countryside, where white sheep dotted the incredibly green grass on the hillsides.

In Oxford we peeked into the courtyards of various colleges. Now I see them on PBS tv in the Inspector Lewis Mysteries. Walking down an Oxford street I found a plaque in the pavement where Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake. So many centuries ago, the cobblestones are replaced by concrete, but on a nearby door scorch marks from the flames are still visible.

From Oxford we drove to Blenheim, entering a large park and crossing over the marble bridge where Dr. Johnson remarked to Boswell about how ludicrous it was to erect that elaborate structure over what was merely a small brook. Then through the ancient trees we saw Blenheim Palace, a vast, ornate place, steeped in history.

A hundred years before Napoleon, when England was enmeshed in one of the endless wars in Europe, the British Army was led by a Churchill. (I can’t remember his first name.) Anyway, “the first Churchill" was the husband Queen Ann’s favorite lady-in-waiting and best friend, Sarah Jennings. Churchill was the hero of the Battle of Blenheim, at that time a victory as famous as Waterloo would become 100 years later.

In honor of his achievement, Queen Ann created Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough and had Parliament vote funds to build him a home in the country. Sarah, now a duchess, proceeded, with much quarreling with her chosen architect, to erect the grandest residence ever built in England. Queen Ann was shocked by the extravagance.

Blenheim Palace fostered a rivalry among the British nobility. During the next century, dukes and earls built “great houses” all over Great Britain. Most are now “Open to View” several days a week. I’ve tramped through many.

Those old mansions are expensive to maintain and impossible to live in. The grand salons and banquet halls were never used more than once or twice a year for house parties, when guests would come in droves to hunt and engage in “other recreational activities.”

The rest of the time, when the lord and lady were in residence, they retreated to a small private suite, more intimate and livable. Or, as divorce was not permitted, these houses were so large that husband and wife could live under the same roof in separate apartments and never contact one another.

Living in a mansion does not guarantee a happy life. From all accounts, the first Marlborough remained passionately attached to his duchess despite Sarah’s notoriously quarrelsome nature. She even quarreled with Queen Ann.

But their descendants produced a family tree full of infidelities and unhappiness. An American heiress, Jenny Jerome, married a Churchill, whose father was Duke of Marlborough, and found herself locked in matrimony with a brilliant but unstable alcoholic. Their son, born at Blenheim, was Winston Churchill, World War II Prime Minister. He found happiness with his Clemmy, in a much smaller, and much more charming, house at Chartwell.

As Jack, Margaret, and I wandered through the vast rooms of Blenheim Palace, with huge paintings of the first duke's battles, I thought of all the people who lived there, happy and unhappy. I puzzled about what makes a good marriage. I loved my first husband and tried for years to make our marriage work. And failed. Yet here, going side by side through these elaborately decorated rooms, were Jack and Margaret, who on the surface had many differences: she a Texan, he a New Yorker; she a Methodist, he a Roman Catholic; she a Democrat, he a Republican. Yet I never knew a more loving, devoted, and congenial couple.