H. H. Asquith - Marriages

Marriages

He married Helen Kelsall Melland, daughter of a Manchester doctor in 1877, and they had four sons and one daughter before she died from typhoid fever in 1891. These children were Raymond (1878–1916), Herbert (1881–1947), Arthur (1883–1939), Violet (1887–1969), and Cyril (1890–1954). Of these children, Violet and Cyril became life peers in their own right, Cyril becoming a law lord. Raymond died during the First World War.

In 1894, he married Margot Tennant, a daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Bt. They had two children, Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy (later Princess Antoine Bibesco) (1897–1945) and the film director Anthony (1902–1968).

In 1912, Asquith fell in love with Venetia Stanley, and his romantic obsession with her continued into 1915, when she married Edwin Montagu, a Liberal Cabinet Minister; a volume of Asquith's letters to Venetia, often written during Cabinet meetings and describing political business in some detail, has been published; but it is not known whether or not their relationship was sexually consummated. Bobbie Neate (Conspiracy of Secrets) recently claimed that her stepfather Louis T Stanley was the illegitimate son of the Asquith and Venetia. Within days of his rejection by Venetia, Asquith started an intense relationship with her older sister Sylvia, which lasted for several years.

All his children, except Anthony, married and left issue. His best-known descendant today is the actress Helena Bonham Carter, a granddaughter of Violet.