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  • Finest Hour

    MICHAEL McMENAMIN’S

    May 05, 2020 5 minutes

    125 YEARS AGO SPRING 1895 • AGE 20 “MASTER OF MY FORTUNES

    Churchill famously wrote in his autobiography My Early Life that, after the death of his father in early 1895, “I was now in the main the master of my fortunes. My mother was always at hand to help and advise; but…she never sought to exercise parental control. Indeed she soon became an ardent ally….We worked together on even terms, more like brother and sister than mother and son. At least so it seemed to me.”

    Eventually, a relationship similar to the one Churchill described had evolved between him and his mother, but it had not begun that way. Jennie still controlled the family purse strings, and his letters to her during the spring of 1895 tell a different story. They show her exercising parental control:

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