The Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874-1911, Peter de Mendelssohn

In his book. there are brief references to the Cornwallis-West family

page 99 - The London celebrations reached their climax with the great Fancy Dress Ball at Devonshire House on 2 July 1897.....But there was only one Cleopatra, revealed as the beautiful Daisy Pless, who was with her strikingly handsome brother George Cornwallis-West, and there was only one Empress Theodora of Byzantium (Lady Randolph Churchill) easily recognisable because of the famous Marlborough jewels. The young Lieutenant (Winston Churchill?) accompanied the Empress.....

page 158 - The Churchill family were fully represented in the Boer War...Lady Randolph Churchill had come out to South Africa herself....looking out for a young Lieutenant in the Scots Guards (George Frederick Myddelton Cornwallis-West)...

page 164 - Churchill decided to resume his "full civilian status" and hurry home....he reached London in time to attend the wedding of Lady Randolph and George Cornwallis-West on 28 July 1900...

page 170 - Jennie Jerome's second marriage lasted for thirteeen years and was dissolved in 1913...George Cornwallis-West, in the year following his separation from Lady Randolph married the famous actress Stella Patrick Campbell: she was nine years older than he. In her correspondence with Bernard Shaw he is frequently referred to as the "Gold Pheasant". Shaw thought nothing of the marriage and it broke up in 1921...Stella Patrick died in 1940, the year in which George Cornwallis-West married a third time; he died in 1951. Nowhere does Churchill mention this whole bizarre part of his world with as much as a single word..

page 349 - Lady Randolph, was living at Salisbury Hall, a delightful little Tudor mansion with moat and rose-garden near St Albans, which had once been Nell Gwynn's retreat. He (Winston) visited her often bringing Lloyd George....

page 352/3 - The wedding (Winston's) on Saturday 12 September 1908...the register was signed "Jennie Cornwallis-West"....

page 461 - The following night (Saturday 7 May 1910) (after Edward VII had died) Margot Asquith dined at "Mrs George West's"...

page 518 - (In 1911) Mrs Cornwallis-West was not to be outdone by Lady Londonderry or Lady Charles Beresford. At Earls Court she organised a famous tournament of knights in armour where the Duke of Marlborough was unhorsed in the tilting-yard...

Colin Bower
30 June 2025

Cornwallis-Wests - Index