For those who think this whole "cuckold" thing is some new twist in the world of sexual gamesmanship, I would refer you to a new book recently reviewed in the New Yorker titled "Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction and Intrigue". The book documents the remarkable life of a woman who grew up in one of those posh Downton Abbey style households then married Randolph Churchill, son of England's pugnacious Prime Minister on the cusp of World War II.
Here's where it got interesting: With the blitz in progress, a new born little Winston (jr.) Churchill on the scene, her husband, in uniform, was shipped off to Egypt. But Pamela had a more important role in the Britts' war effort. Clementine, her mother-in-law, "noticed Pamela's power over older men (including her husband) through a rare cocktail of flattering attention, smoldering sex appeal and an impressive grasp of geopolitics".
Little Winston and her nanny were shipped off to the "safer" confines of the country estate of "Lord" Beaverbrook, the Rupert Murdock of his time, who had taken on a job in the war effort to maximize airplane production. The child care arrangement allowed "an unencumbered Pamela to move into the Dorchester Hotel, in London, and work her magic on influential Americans", who Churchill needed to provide US support for the struggle against Hitler. Beaverbrook "would outfit her for her mission . . . with a wardrobe of 'tight fitting evening frocks, high heals and natty tailored suits to help her in her new role in Britain's desperate struggle to survive."
US President Roosevelt sent W. Averell Harriman, 49, to London to monitor the use of US "lend lease" aid by our ally. Harriman "would require some tender persuasion and Pamela, now barely in her 20's, was up for the job. "At a dinner at the Dorchester soon after [Harriman's] arrival, Pamela, wearing a 'skin tight shoulderless gold lame dress bought specially for the occasion by Beaverbrook and dazzilingly conversant in matters military and political." That evening, a fortuitous Luftwaffe bombing had Pamela and Averell 'sheltering in place' in his hotel suite. The rest was history. Soon Pamela moved in with FDR's envy. Both were married to others.
As in some of the hotter cuckold fiction of our day, the cuckoldress's in-laws seemed to encourage her dalliance to the deterrent of their pathetic son. "The Churchill's seem to have known and tacitly encouraged their daughter-in-law's useful affair. Years later, in a divorce proceeding, Randolph accused his parents of encouraging her infidelity for the sake of the war effort. Ouch!
Was Churchill "pimping out" the mother of his grandson, as some have accused? During the war years, Pamela juggled multiple relationships with US military big wigs and media personalities like Edward R. Murrow. But despite all these suitors, Pamela made her own decisions on her sexual partners. "Pamela said no when she wanted to, and it appears she she never had her heart broken. She seemed to feel completely free to sleep with whomever she was drawn to or deemed useful. . . . By her own account, she relished her London life, supercharged as it was with danger, sex and political urgency."
After the war and her divorce, Pamela moved to Paris and was involved with an Italian auto magnate. Later she
married a US movie mogul. When her husband died, she and Harriman hooked up again, and married, She moved to the US and, later in life, became a power broker in DC's Democratic establishment. She died as US Ambassador to France in the Clinton years.
But for those of us intrigued by the cuckold dynamic, her WW2 exploits standout. One can only wonder whether "poor" Randolph secretly got off on it all. Let's hope.
