When I picked up Robert Harris’ PRECIPICE, I believed I was going to read yet another non-fiction book about how Britain tumbled into the First World War. Imagine my surprise when the Author’s Note at the begnining informed me that whereas Asquith’s letter were (alas) real, Venetia’s were entirely made up.
H. H. (Herbert Henry) Asquith (1852-1928) was the British Prime Minister who led Britain into World War One. He was also the last Liberal Prime Minister to ever govern England. After his calamitous ouster in 1916, Britain was thereby governed either by the Conservative Party, or by Labour. Asquith was succeeded by the calculating and fiery Welsh leader of the Labour Party David Lloyd George (1863-1945.)
Beatrice Venetia Stanley (1887-1948) was the best friend of Asquith’s daughter Violet (1887-1969) until their relationship soured. What caused this coolness? In all probability it was because Violet’s father fell in love with Venetia Stanley.
Of course Asquith was a married man, he was married to Violet’s much-disliked stepmother, the aristocratic and well-connected Margot Tennant (1864-1945), who saw to it that her husband rose to the heights of the Prime-Minstership. But that has never stopped passion from breaking out, and it certainly didn’t prevent Asquith from treating his much younger mistress as his wife.
What is so jaw-dropping about this wonderful novel is the letters that Asquith wrote Venetia during the period between 1909 when they first met (he would have been about 57, she was 22) and 1915, when their relationship abruptly ended. Asquith was well known for enjoying the companionship of a circle of clever and attractive women, which his second wife Margot, rather disparagingly referred to as “the harem.” But something about Venetia Stanley was different. By 1912, three years after they’d met, she’d become his constant companion and correspondent. By 2 July 1914, when PRECIPICE opens, Venetia therefore had become firmly enconsced in Asquith’s life for a couple of years.
No-one knows exactly what happened in private. Social mores one hundred years ago were very different than they are today. If this had happened between 2012 and 2015, rather than 1912 and 1915, we would be expecting them to “going all the way” and would refer to them as girlfriend and boyfriend. But Asquith’s treatment of an unmarried aristocratic girl was probably a bit different. This is not to say that they weren’t intimate – his passionate outpourings suggest that they were – but not, perhaps, in the ways we take for granted.
As Asquith was an emotionally needy man who wrote Venetia several hundred letters at the rate of about three a day, it is hardly surprising that she began to chafe. Matters were not helped by the fact that England went to war with Germany on 4 August 1914. Even more jaw-dropping is Asquith’s behavior during 1914 to 1915, when he shared vital goverment documents on military maneuvers with Venetia. On the one hand, this seems to be entirely crazy. How could the Prime Minister repeatedly flout his own Official Secrets Act of 1911? He seems to have completely lost his moral compass. On the other hand, perhaps his judgement was not so bad, for it seems that Venetia Stanley never went to the press, never leaked any of this highly valuable material in any way whatsoever. Instead, she must have hidden her volumious correspondence plus attached telegrams, perhaps in a suitcase, perhaps in a box.
But tongues were nevertheless beginning to wag, for everyone noticed how close they were becoming, and some even noticed that he was writing to her during cabinet meetings. And that is what the title of the novel really refers too, the precipice of reputation loss, the precipice of the consequences caused by infatuation and poor judgement. For when Venetia Stanley abruptly broke off their relationship in 1915, by announcing that she was going to marry Edwin Montagu (1879-1924), this sent Asquith into a tailspin. So much so that author Robert Harris believes that Asquith’s emotional instability led to the dismemberment of his government and the Liberal Party.
By the time he was actually ousted from government by Lloyd George on 6 December 1916, the Liberal Party was no more than a corpse, and it has never governed Britain since.
