Subscribe now and receive weekly newsletters with educational materials, new courses, interesting posts, popular books, and much more!
Articles
How Serious was the Relationship of Churchill with Violet Asquith?
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | April 25, 2023
- Category: Personal Matters Q & A
Q: Violet Asquith, 1908
Some years ago, Michael Shelden produced a flurry in the press over Violet Asquith, the Prime Minister’s daughter. Shortly after Churchill’s engagement to Clementine Hozier in August 1908, Shelden wrote, 21-year-old Violet flung herself from a cliff in despair and disappointment. The strong implication was that she was jilted. Is there anything to this story? —R.K., Tennessee
A: Unproven and unlikely
Violet Asquith, later Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, is one of the most reliable close friends who wrote about Churchill. Her book, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him is a standard work, often cited by historians. This helped fuel media speculation, accompanied by lurid headlines, about her supposed suicide attempt after WSC’s marriage.1 In retrospect, more was made of the story than evidence supports.
In March 2013, Mr. Shelden published a well-researched book on WSC’s youth, Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill. Writing in the Daily Mail before publication, he speculated that Violet Asquith, shocked by Winston’s marriage to Clementine Hozier in September 1908, had flung herself in despair from a Scottish cliff. Wet and bedraggled, she was found on a ledge under the cliff in Cruden Bay, near Slains Castle, where the Asquiths were on holiday.
Just a few weeks before, Violet had walked that very cliff path with young Winston. Violet’s father, Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, said at the time that she fell by accident.
In the Mail, Shelden mentioned evidence in “the Asquith family papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford,” contradicting the official story. He also cited a comment by WSC to his friend Lord Rosebery: “I behaved badly to Violet, because I was practically engaged to her.”2 The implication was that she was desperately in love with Churchill, recently promoted to her father’s cabinet as President of the Board of Trade.
Romance or friendship?
Violet had invited Churchill to visit Slains Castle on August 17th. Following his engagement to Clementine two days before, Churchill wrote her, postponing his trip. Violet, Shelden concluded, was “utterly devastated.” Churchill did visit the following week, “with the wedding less than three weeks away.” Shelden considered this a “last-minute dash [to] explain his decision face-to-face.” He added that a “furious” Clementine threatened to call off the wedding.
There is no evidence of this in the Clementine’s letters. She and Violet Asquith were not much alike and were not close—especially after 1915, when her father sacked Churchill from the Admiralty. But this proves nothing, nor is there any evidence of a romance with Violet. None of Winston’s letters suggest that he felt toward her as he had toward Pamela Plowden or Ethel Barrymore. It was more of a hero-acolyte relationship.
Shelden wrote that Violet refused to attend the wedding in London on September 12th, a week before she plunged from the cliff. Later, he added, her father forbade her from joining Churchill at his constituency, Dundee, hoping to discourage her infatuation.
Asquith’s prohibition was more likely political than personal. Mark Pottle, editor of Violet’s letters, said Asquith was dissatisfied with Churchill’s interventions in foreign policy—namely, WSC’s opposition to the naval estimates, in alliance with Lloyd George.3 Dr. Paul Addison wrote that it was unlikely Churchill would have wanted marry into, and tie his fortunes to, another political family.4
Published account
We all waited for the publication of Young Titan, thinking it would answer the questions. Were Churchill and Violet Asquith ever romantically linked, except perhaps in her imagination? Was Clementine “furious” over Winston’s August visit to the Asquiths? But nothing in the book or her letters substantiated this. Of Violet’s fall from the cliffs, reviewer Christopher Sterling wrote:
Just two endnotes provide references for this event and both cite unpublished sources: Margot Asquith’s personal diary and letters between Violet and her close friend Venetia Stanley, all now held in the Bodleian Library. Without taking a trip to Oxford to examine these documents, it’s impossible to say for sure what Shelden is reading: solid evidence or surmises between the lines. He never overtly says she tried to kill herself, and the suggestion appears in no other published source.5
One final piece of the puzzle. Churchill collector Richard Marsh sent us a letter from Churchill to Asquith at the time of WSC’s engagement. Churchill thanked the Prime Minister, “Mrs. Asquith & Miss Violet” for their congratulations on his engagement. He then explained why Clementine was not joining him at Slains: “Clementine has to buy all sorts of important things, so that she cannot accept your pleasant invitation. But I will keep my tryst & propose to travel North by the night train of Tuesday.”6 Mr. Marsh wrote: “It is interesting that Churchill used the word ‘tryst’ in describing his upcoming visit, although I am sure that he was not describing a meeting of lovers.”
Endnotes
1 Michael Shelden, “The PM’s daughter who ‘jumped off a cliff’ after being ditched by two-timing Churchill,” in the Daily Mail, 24 November 2012, accessed 19 April 2023. (This is the Mail’s headline, not Mr. Shelden’s.)
2 Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead, Churchill 1874-1922 (London: Harrap, 1929), 112. This is the only appearance of this quotation, which Birkenhead does not footnote.
3 Mark Pottle, ed., Champion Redoubtable : The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham-Carter (London: Weidenfeld, 1998). Agreement with Lloyd George didn’t last after WSC became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. He then demanded increased spending to counter Germany’s naval build-up. See Joshua Waechter, “Winston Churchill’s Statesmanship before the First World War,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, 2021.
4 See Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front (London: Cape, 1992.)
5 Christopher Sterling, review of Young Titan, in Finest Hour 159, Churchill Centre, Summer 2013, 51-52.
6 Winston S. Churchill to H.H. Asquith, 14 August 1908, collection of Richard Marsh, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Further reading
Fred Glueckstein, “Great Contemporaries: Violet Bonham-Carter,”