Violet Bonham Carter

Violet Asquith was born in Hampstead, London, England, and grew up with politics. She lived in 10 Downing Street from 1908, when her father occupied it. She was educated at home by governesses, and later sent to Paris to improve her languages. In 1903 she attended a finishing school in Dresden.{{cite book |last1=Clifford |first1=Colin |title=The Asquiths |year=2003 |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-6525-0 |page=104 }}

Her mother, Helen Kelsall Melland, died of typhoid fever when Violet was four years old. Her stepmother from 1894 was Margot Tennant: their relationship has been described as "stormy".{{cite ODNB|id=30482|first=Eleanor|last=Brock|title=Asquith, Margaret Emma Alice, countess of Oxford and Asquith}} Her four brothers were Raymond, Herbert, Arthur, and Cyril. Violet's best friend when she was young was Venetia Stanley, who later had an intense emotional relationship with her father.

Presented at court in 1905, Violet Asquith entered the social world of parties in her first London season.{{cite book |title=Book Review Digest |year=1997 |publisher=H. W. Wilson Company |page=81|volume=93 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2m4OAQAAMAAJ }} Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet, Margot's father, hosted with his wife Marguerite a dance in Grosvenor Square for Violet and his granddaughter Frances Tennant, who married in 1912 Guy Lawrence Charteris and was mother of Ann Fleming.{{cite book |last1=Crathorne |first1=Baroness Nancy Dugdale |last2=Dugdale |first2=James |title=Tennant's Stalk: The Story of the Tennants of the Glen |year=1973 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-333-13820-5 |page=215 }}{{cite book |last1=Asquith |first1=Margot |title=Margot Asquith's Great War Diary 1914-1916: The View from Downing Street |year=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-822977-3 |page=28 note 2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cy2TAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA28 }}{{cite ODNB|id=40227|first=Andrew|last=Lycett|title=Fleming, Ann Geraldine Mary}} Guy's sister Cynthia was one of Violet's close friends, and married her brother Herbert in 1910.{{cite book |last1=Clifford |first1=Colin |title=The Asquiths |year=2003 |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-6525-0 |pages=166 and 173 }}

In October 1907 Violet had a proposal of marriage from Arnold Ward, a college friend of her brother Raymond. She turned it down. Sutherland suggests her parents were against the match: financial matters were probably a factor, and the Wards were Tories.{{cite book |last1=Clifford |first1=Colin |title=The Asquiths |year=2003 |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-6525-0 |page=85 }}{{cite book |last1=Sutherland |first1=John |title=Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian |year=1990 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-818587-1 |page=284 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1nlbAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA284 }}

Raymond Asquith belonged to The Coterie. By 1908 this group of the younger generation was being noticed in social gossip, and a press story included Violet:

Mrs. Raymond Asquith [...] was the leading spirit of the coterie of "Young Souls" which comprised as its members Lady Marjorie and Lady Violet Manners, Miss Cicely Horner, Miss Violet Asquith, and Miss Viola Tree.{{cite book |title=The Bystander: An Illustrated Weekly, Devoted to Travel, Literature, Art, the Drama, Progress, Locomotion |year=1908 |page=210 }}

Violet was close to Winston Churchill, promoted to the Liberal Cabinet in 1908: Churchill said later they were "practically engaged", and they were friends for life.{{cite book |last1=Lovell |first1=Mary S. |title=The Churchills: In Love and War |year=2011 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0-393-34225-3 |page=209 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=igXGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA209 }} He actually became engaged that year to Clementine Hozier, whom Violet thought "as stupid as an owl". In late August, between his engagement and his marriage, Churchill spent a holiday with the Asquith family at New Slains Castle on the Scottish coast. Some days after his departure, but while Arnold Ward remained a guest, Violet went out one evening, to look for a book left on the rocks. She was discovered after a search of several hours, lying uninjured but unconscious near the coastal path. Michael Shelden suggests Violet's experience may have been "an unhappy young woman's cry for attention".Shelden 2013, pp. 180–91.{{cite book |last1=Sutherland |first1=John |title=Mrs. Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-eminent Edwardian |year=1990 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-818587-1 |page=298 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1nlbAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA284 }}

Violet became engaged to Archibald Gordon (Archie), son of John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair and his wife Ishbel in 1909, after he had had a car accident and was on what became his deathbed.{{cite ODNB|id=33462|first=Lyndsey|last=Jenkins|title=Gordon [née Marjoribanks], Dame Ishbel Maria, marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair}}

Violet travelled to the Sudan, where her brother Arthur was in the civil service. On her return to the United Kingdom, she found that her good friend Olive MacLeod, sister of Flora MacLeod, had lost her fiancé Boyd Alexander, killed in Africa. Under Violet's influence, Olive played the part of a widow. She then travelled to visit Alexander's grave.{{cite ODNB|id=63622|first=C. J. F.|last=Alderman|title=Temple, Olive Susan Miranda}}

In May 1912 Violet accompanied her father and step-mother on a Mediterranean cruise, aboard HMS Enchantress, with a party comprising mainly Churchill, members of his family, and his political entourage including Edward Marsh, but also Louis of Battenberg.{{cite book |last1=Soames |first1=Mary |title=Clementine Churchill |year=1979 |publisher=General Publishing Company |isbn=978-0-7736-0074-4 |page=80 }} That year she acquired a long-term correspondent, Matthew Nathan.{{cite journal |last1=Haydon |first1=Anthony P. |title=Sir Matthew Nathan: Ireland and Before |journal=Studia Hibernica |year=1975 |issue=15 |page=171 note 29 |jstor=20496080 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20496080 |issn=0081-6477}} In March 1913 she met Rupert Brooke, at a dinner given by Marsh to celebrate Brooke's Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, with W. B. Yeats, Clementine Churchill and Cynthia Asquith.{{cite book |last1=Hassall |first1=Christopher |title=Rupert Brooke: A Biography |year=1964 |publisher=Faber and Faber |isbn=978-0-571-10196-2 |page=380 }} She was the chosen confidante of Marsh after Brooke's death in 1915.{{cite book |last1=Hassall |first1=Christopher |title=Edward Marsh, Patron of the Arts: A Biography |year=1959 |publisher=Longmans |page=340 }}

Violet made an effort to befriend Ottoline Morrell, in 1913. Her house in Bedford Square offered conversation with Henry James, Wyndham Lewis and Desmond MacCarthy. Morrell found her conversation dazzling rather than profound.{{cite book |last1=Seymour |first1=Miranda |title=Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale |year=2008 |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton |isbn=978-0-340-74825-1 |pages=252–253 }}

File:Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith; Lady Ottoline Morrell; unknown man from NPG.jpg

On 16 January 1915, the ageing Henry James visited the Asquiths at Walmer Castle in Kent. Violet Asquith and her half-sister Elizabeth saw James's lapidary but orotund and halting conversation being treated without respect by Winston Churchill, who had not read his books. James referred, on leaving, to the "very encouraging experience to meet that young man".{{cite book |last1=Edel |first1=Leon |title=The Life of Henry James |year=1977 |publisher=Penguin |location=Harmondsworth |isbn=9780140551181 |pages=784–787|volume=2}} In February she saw off Rupert Brooke, who had become a friend and correspondent, sailing with his division bound for the Gallipoli campaign and death.{{cite book |last1=Brooke |first1=Rupert |title=The Irregular Verses of Rupert Brooke |year=1997 |publisher=Green Branch |isbn=978-0-9526031-3-9 |page=96 }}{{cite ODNB|id=32093|first=Adrian|last=Caesar|title=Brooke, Rupert}} Violet wrote in 1915 to Aubrey Herbert that Brooke's death was one of the greatest sorrows of her life;{{cite book |last1=Clifford |first1=Colin |title=The Asquiths |year=2003 |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-6525-0 |page=259 }} and according to Virginia Woolf, in 1916 she said that she had loved Brooke "as she had never loved any man".{{cite book |last1=Asquith |first1=Herbert Henry |title=H. H. Asquith Letters to Venetia Stanley |year=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-872291-5 |page=569 note 3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rJ6OoAEACAAJ }} On 30 November 1915 Violet married Maurice Bonham-Carter, her father's principal private secretary.{{cite book |last1=Clifford |first1=Colin |title=The Asquiths |year=2003 |publisher=John Murray |isbn=978-0-7195-6525-0 |page=333 }}

Jackie Fisher the First Sea Lord, at odds with Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, over the Gallipoli campaign, resigned on 15 May 1915. It set off a train of political events that led to the end of the Liberal Cabinet in favour of a coalition, the removal of Churchill, and then in 1916 Asquith's replacement as prime minister by Lloyd George. Bonham Carter influenced the later historiography of these events, clashing in particular with Robert Blake who adhered more to Lord Beaverbrook's account. Through her, Asquith's biographer Roy Jenkins was given access to family papers.{{cite journal |last1=Koss |first1=Stephen E. |title=The Destruction of Britain's Last Liberal Government |journal=The Journal of Modern History |year=1968 |volume=40 |issue=2 |page=258 |doi=10.1086/240192 |jstor=1876732 |s2cid=143612675 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1876732 |issn=0022-2801|url-access=subscription }}{{cite news |title=Bonar Law and Beaverbrook (II) " 13 Jan 1956 " The Spectator Archive |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/13th-january-1956/9/bonar-law-and-beaverbrook-ii |work=The Spectator |date=13 January 1956}}

The Liberal Party split between followers of Asquith and of Lloyd George. As it fell on hard times in the 1920s, Bonham Carter campaigned for her father at the 1920 Paisley by-election. That election was won, and she was asked to become a Liberal candidate herself. Lord Kilbracken was in favour, but she decided to give her children priority. She was active as President of the Women's Liberal Federation (1923–25, 1939–45) and was the first woman to serve as President of the Liberal Party (1945–47). She campaigned with Eleanor Rathbone for family allowances.{{cite book |last1=Hartley |first1=Cathy |title=A Historical Dictionary of British Women |year=2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-35533-3 |page=56 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pFGR2OvCAS4C&pg=PA56 }}

Bonham Carter spoke on many platforms in the 1920s and 1930s, and along with Winston Churchill (and others), she early saw the dangers of European fascism. She joined and animated a number of anti-fascist groups (such as The Focus Group), often in concert with Churchill, and spoke at their gatherings. In a 1938 speech she mocked Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Nazi Germany as the policy of "peace at any price that others can be forced to pay".{{cite ODNB|last=Pottle|first=Mark|title=Carter, (Helen) Violet Bonham, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury (1887–1969)|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31961|access-date=15 April 2014|date=May 2007|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/31961}} After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was created from Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, she supported Czechoslovakian refugees and those persecuted by the Nazis.{{Cite book|title=S projevem nejhlubší úcty: Dopisy, zprávy a depeše Huberta Ripky Edvardu Benešovi (1922-1948)|last=Ripka|first=Hubert|publisher=Masarykův ústav a Archiv Akademie věd ČR|year=2018|isbn=9788087782781|location=Brno, Czech Republic|pages=256}}{{cite ODNB|id=50269|first=Judy|last=Slinn|title=Falk, Oswald Toynbee}}

In the 1945 general election Bonham Carter stood for Wells, coming third, while in 1951 she stood for the winnable seat of Colne Valley.{{Who's Who | title=Asquith of Yarnsbury | id = U48771 | access-date = 18 January 2021}} As an old friend, Churchill arranged for the Conservatives to refrain from nominating a candidate for the constituency, giving her a clear run against Labour. She was nonetheless narrowly defeated. In the 1953 Coronation Honours she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).{{London Gazette |issue=39863 |date=1 June 1953 |page=2953 |supp=y}} She continued to be a popular and charismatic speaker for Liberal candidates, including her son-in-law Jo Grimond, her son Mark, and Jeremy Thorpe, and she was a frequent broadcaster on current affairs programmes on radio and television.

In the postwar years, Bonham Carter was an active supporter of the United Nations and the cause of European unity, advocating for Britain's entry into the Common Market. In the non-political sphere, she was also active in the arts, including serving as a governor of the BBC from 1941 to 1946, and a governor of the Old Vic (1945–69).

On 21 December 1964, Violet Bonham Carter was created a life peer as Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, of Yarnbury in the County of Wilts,{{London Gazette |issue=43522 |date=22 December 1964 |page=10933 }} one of the first new Liberal peers in several decades. She became active in the House of Lords.

Lady Violet Bonham Carter died in 1969 of a heart attack, aged 81, and was interred at St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, near the home of her late brother, Raymond.{{cite news |title=Died |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900718,00.html#ixzz19wXTAxOM |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081214153122/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900718,00.html#ixzz19wXTAxOM |url-status=dead |archive-date=14 December 2008| work=Time magazine |date=28 February 1969 | access-date=2011-01-03 }}

Violet Bonham Carter was a diarist and biographer. Her works include:

• "Winston Churchill As I Know Him" by Violet Bonham Carter, in Winston Spencer Churchill: Servant of Crown and Commonwealth, ed. Sir James Marchant, London: Cassell, 1954.
• Winston Churchill as I Knew Him, Violet Bonham Carter (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965), published in the US as Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait. This book was begun in 1955, and its publication ten years later was the publisher's decision, awaiting Churchill's death.{{cite book |last1=Reynolds |first1=David |title=In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War |year=2004 |publisher=Penguin Books Limited |isbn=978-0-14-190754-3 |page=522 }}
• Lantern Slides: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter, 1904–1914, eds. Mark Bonham Carter and Mark Pottle (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
• Champion Redoubtable: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter, 1914–1945, ed. Mark Pottle (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
• Daring to Hope: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter, 1945–1969, ed. Mark Pottle (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000)

Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (1965) recounted how during the course of conversation at the dinner party at which they first met, Churchill concluded a thought with words to the effect that "Of course, we are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm".Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965; published in the USA as Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait), p. 16

Violet Asquith married her father's Principal Private Secretary, Maurice Bonham Carter, in 1915. They had four children together:

• Helen Laura Cressida Bonham Carter, Mrs Jasper Ridley, mother of the economist Sir Adam Ridley.
• Laura Miranda Bonham Carter, Lady Grimond, wife of the Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond.
• Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham-Carter, a Liberal Member of Parliament before going to the House of Lords, and father of Jane Bonham Carter, Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury.
• Raymond Bonham Carter, father of the actress Helena Bonham Carter.

Their long-term London address was 21 Hyde Park Square.

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last= Shelden |first= Michael |title= Young Titan |publisher= Simon & Schuster |year= 2013|isbn= 978-1-471-11322-2}} (A biography of the young Winston Churchill)
• Lady Violet Bonham Carter, DBE, "British Democracy Today and Yesterday, the Challenge to the Individual". The Falconer Lectures, University of Toronto, 10/11 November 1953.
• [http://www.spartacus-educational.com/2WWbonham.htm Violet Asquith] at Spartacus Educational, includes quotations. Accessed June 2008
• [http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/bonham-carter/bonham-carter.html Catalogue of the correspondence and papers of Lady Violet Bonham Carter, 1892–1969], University of Oxford, Elizabeth Turner 2003
• Lady Violet Bonham-Carter has also been cited many times in Lynne Olson's 2007 history, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England (Farrar Straus Giroux, Publ.)

• {{UK National Archives ID}}
• [https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/suffragettes/8318.shtml Violet Bonham Carter discussing the women's suffrage movement]
• {{PM20|FID=pe/003033}}

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{{succession box| title=President of the Liberal Party | years=1945–1947 | before=James Meston | after=Isaac Foot}}

{{succession box | title = President of the Women's Liberal Federation | years = 1923–1925 | before = Viscountess Cowdray | after = Margaret Wintringham}}

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{{H. H. Asquith|state=collapsed}}

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Category:1887 births

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Violet

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