Violet Bonham Carter

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
In office
21 December 1964 – 19 February 1969
Life Peerage
Personal details
Born
Helen Violet Asquith

(1887-04-15)15 April 1887
Hampstead, London, England[1]
Died19 February 1969(1969-02-19) (aged 81)
London, England
Cause of deathMyocardial infarction
Resting placeSt Andrew's Church, Mells
Political partyLiberal
Spouse
Sir Maurice Bonham Carter

​
​
(m. 1915; died 1960)​
Children
  • Hon. Helen Bonham Carter
  • Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham Carter of Yarnbury
  • Hon. Raymond Bonham Carter
  • Laura, Baroness Grimond of Firth
Parents
Relatives

Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury,

diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, and she was known as Lady Violet, as a courtesy title, from her father's elevation to the peerage as Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925. Later she became active in Liberal politics herself, and was a leading opponent of appeasement. She stood for Parliament and became a life peer
.

She was also involved in arts and literature. Her diaries cover her father's premiership before and during the

First World War and continue until the 1960s. She was Sir Winston Churchill's closest female friend, apart from his wife, and her grandchildren include the actress Helena Bonham Carter
.

Early life

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.[2]

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".[3] 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.

Edwardian social life

Cynthia was one of Violet's close friends, and married her brother Herbert in 1910.[9]

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.[10][11]

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:

Lady Violet Manners, Miss Cicely Horner, Miss Violet Asquith, and Miss Viola Tree.[12]

Violet was close 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".[14][15]

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.[16]

1910–1914

Violet travelled to the

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.[17]

In May 1912 Violet accompanied her father and step-mother on a Mediterranean cruise, aboard

Louis of Battenberg.[18] That year she acquired a long-term correspondent, Matthew Nathan.[19] 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.[20] She was the chosen confidante of Marsh after Brooke's death in 1915.[21]

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 own conversation dazzling rather than profound.[22]

Violet Bonham Carter, Lady Ottoline Morrell, and an unidentified man

World War I

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".[23] 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.[24][25] Violet wrote in 1915 to Aubrey Herbert that Brooke's death was one of the greatest sorrows of her life;[26] and according to Virginia Woolf, in 1916 she said that she had loved Brooke "as she had never loved any man".[27] On 30 November 1915 Violet married Maurice Bonham-Carter, her father's principal private secretary.[28]

Lord Beaverbrook's account. Through her, Asquith's biographer Roy Jenkins was given access to family papers.[29][30]

Engagement in politics, interwar period

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

family allowances.[31]

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".[4] 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.[32][33]

Later life

In the

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).[35] 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

Old Vic (1945–69).[4]

On 21 December 1964, Violet Bonham Carter was created a

County of Wilts,[36] one of the first new Liberal peers in several decades. She became active in the House of Lords
.

Death

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.[37]

Writings

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.[38]
  • 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".[39]

Family

Violet Asquith married her father's

Maurice Bonham Carter
, in 1915. They had four children together:

Their long-term London address was 21 Hyde Park Square.[34]

References

  1. ^ "FamilySearch". Familysearch.org. Retrieved 8 July 2022. (subscription required)
  2. ISBN 978-0-7195-6525-0
    .
  3. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30482. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31961. Retrieved 15 April 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  5. ^ Book Review Digest. Vol. 93. H. W. Wilson Company. 1997. p. 81.
  6. ISBN 978-0-333-13820-5
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0-19-822977-3
    .
  8. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40227. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  9. ISBN 978-0-7195-6525-0
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-7195-6525-0
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-19-818587-1
    .
  12. ^ The Bystander: An Illustrated Weekly, Devoted to Travel, Literature, Art, the Drama, Progress, Locomotion. 1908. p. 210.
  13. ISBN 978-0-393-34225-3
    .
  14. ^ Shelden 2013, pp. 180–91.
  15. ISBN 978-0-19-818587-1
    .
  16. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33462. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  17. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63622. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  18. ISBN 978-0-7736-0074-4
    .
  19. JSTOR 20496080
    .
  20. ISBN 978-0-571-10196-2
    .
  21. ^ Hassall, Christopher (1959). Edward Marsh, Patron of the Arts: A Biography. Longmans. p. 340.
  22. ISBN 978-0-340-74825-1
    .
  23. ISBN 9780140551181
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-9526031-3-9
    .
  25. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32093. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  26. ISBN 978-0-7195-6525-0
    .
  27. ISBN 978-0-19-872291-5
    .
  28. ISBN 978-0-7195-6525-0
    .
  29. S2CID 143612675
    .
  30. ^ "Bonar Law and Beaverbrook (II) " 13 Jan 1956 " The Spectator Archive". The Spectator. 13 January 1956.
  31. ISBN 978-1-135-35533-3
    .
  32. ISBN 9788087782781
    .
  33. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50269. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  34. ^ a b "Asquith of Yarnsbury". Who's Who. A & C Black. Retrieved 18 January 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  35. ^ "No. 39863". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 June 1953. p. 2953.
  36. ^ "No. 43522". The London Gazette. 22 December 1964. p. 10933.
  37. Time magazine. 28 February 1969. Archived from the original
    on 14 December 2008. Retrieved 3 January 2011.
  38. ISBN 978-0-14-190754-3
    .
  39. ^ 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

Further reading

External links

Party political offices
Preceded by
President of the Liberal Party

1945–1947 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Women's Liberal Federation
1923–1925 		Succeeded by
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