I wonder what it would be like to grow up in an Italian mansion inside an English park as Winston Churchill did.
It would be like being in Masterpiece Theater or Jeeves and Wooster I suppose without all the fags now.
To think of a region which was a thousand years. A place of Saxon, Norman and Plantagenant rulers who held court there. Granted England is not all that large of place, but it had to be an interesting childhood in having more than where the horse chewed it's oats in the barn.
Woodstock must have spoken from antiquity in the ghosts and auras. Blenheim which is quite German as the English derive from the same Israelite roots, must have been a romantic puzzle of Anglo greatness tempered by infused Norman conquests to British rule for a young Winston.
To think of a place that Alfred the Great had trod the same lands in uniting England.
In Woodstock, the Romans made their villas there in conquest, Henry I enclosed the park with walls for his foreign wild beasts. Fair Rosemond and her well bubbles to this day there and for those who have dallied in the cinema history of Elizabeth I, this was the place that she was imprisoned and watch Bloody Mary the Catholic rule in her reign of terror.
The Churchills came to this region upon the war victories of John Churchill for crown and country over the French in the 18th century. In a history and beauty which drew in monarchs, one can see why the location was chosen and why that quaint east coast area was named as such in likeness, which was polluted by hippies in the 1960's Tavistock counter culture revolution.
It must have been inspiring to have your family have names like Marques of Blandford as son of the Duke of Marlborough, to live in a little Blandford house and then upon the end of the life of the father to rise to the palace and become a numeraled Duke of Marlborough.
Some titles just sound intoxicating with the nectar of turning common mortals into something more. It is like if you heard Bearick Hussein Obama and the wife being announced, you would look up, but if you heard, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Duke and Dutchess of Marlborough" you would really pay attention.
Same with battle in you would really put on the brave show if you were the troops for a Duke and if you were a Duke, you naturally would do all sorts of splendid things like being shot at in battle as that is what you would be inspired to do.
Lord Randolph who was Winston's father was a delightful boy by my judgment and had a childhood I would prefer as an adult. Before telephone, the telegraph was in use at a station, and the telegraph boy would ride out on a pony called The Mouse.
Randolph home from school, being sent away at age 8, and now age 9, set upon his parents to purchase the pony, as he was well suited to riding. That being accomplished, he now set out to go hunting and ambushed the houndsman coming in from a hunt, and persuaded him to ask his father for permission to go fox hunting the next day.
It was a banner day as the little boy rode well, and was at the front for the kill in the King's Wood, and after ceremony in being baptised with the fox's blood, he returned home all rose cheeked for a lifetime affection for hunting, hounds and riding.
There is great artform to the fox hunt and the boy who would grow up to be leader of the House of Commons was a fine artist from the start in etiquette and admired manly qualities.
There was a game they played at school in the boys pretending to be horse and one driver with four in hand, as Randolph would excell at this, along with reciting on Sunday from Ecclesiates "to everything there is a season".
At 14 to enter Eton College and pen letters from an era of 1863 shows a great deal what the civilized nature all that breeding, religion and hunting produced in strong willed little men.
"Lord Randolph to his Mother. Eton College, Windsor, 1863.
I am very sorry I did not write you before, but I wrote one letter to you and I cannot find it anywhere, and I have not had a bit of time since, for I had to bring a hundred lines every day to Mr.—— for cutting my name on the new table in the new schools.
Mr.—— is such a horrid man; I had one or two punishments for him yesterday and I put them in his pupil room and somebody must have taken them away for he said he never saw them . He has been rude too; he called me a ‘little blackguard’ the other day just because I was sitting with my legs on the form, and he is always calling the fellows names. I shall never do any good with him, he is so unjust.
There is smallpox in the barracks and half Eton is being vaccinated. They offered to perform on me, but I declined. The Queen came to Windsor from Osborne on Thursday night and rushed off on Friday morning to Balmoral, which struck me as being rather eccentric. There has not been much going on here, though they have had a grand reformation of the rifle corps. They made everybody re-enlist and they had to take a sort of oath and sign their names to a lot of nonsense."
Such an interesting world where not being stupid, self abusing nor the regime were dangers, and the dangers were an epidemic would end your life and you chose whether to be vaccinated or not.
To have pleasant letters from a father of warm affection from a Duke, who wrote of lessons in life and even more of pheasants, partridges and hounds.
I have always thought it would be lovely to be in such a mansion which had a hunting arsenal, and while all the others were off, I would find some 100 year old gentleman in the den, where we would examine all the guns and the stories of hunts and hunters with them.
If one had such a life as this, of course you would amount to something wonderful.
I found this quote from the Duke of Marlborough, to his son, and it is something which I believe all could take benefit from at any age as it is the reality of always remembering to be a good Christian.
‘I fear that you yourself are very impatient and resentful of any control; and while you stand upon some fancied right or injury, you fail to perceive what is your duty, and allow both your language and manner a most improper scope.’
Duty is what being a Christian is, for Christ had disciples who became Apostles. It is duty in experiencing the wrongs of life, that one performs their duty in not reacting, but acting always properly.
agtG
