Raymond Asquith

Asquith was the eldest son of British prime minister H. H. Asquith by his first wife, Helen Kelsall Melland (died 1891).

He was educated at Winchester, from where he won a scholarship to Balliol in 1896, taking with him a reputation for brilliance. He won the Ireland, Derby, and Craven scholarships, and graduated with first-class honours. Elected a fellow of All Souls in 1902, he was called to the bar in 1904.[3] The tall, handsome Asquith was a member of the Coterie, a group of Edwardian socialites and intellectuals.

Asquith was junior counsel in the North Atlantic Fisheries Arbitration and the British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and was considered a putative Liberal candidate for Derby. However, his rise was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He was initially commissioned, on 17 December 1914, as a second lieutenant into the 16th (County of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Queen's Westminster Rifles).[4] He was transferred to the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards on 14 August 1915,[5] and assigned as a staff officer, but he requested to be returned to active duty with his battalion, a request granted before the Battle of the Somme.

While leading the first half of 4 Company in an attack near Ginchy on 15 September 1916, at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, he was shot in the chest but famously lit a cigarette to hide the seriousness of his injuries so that his men would continue the attack.[6] He died whilst being carried back to British lines. His body was buried at Guillemont in the CWGC Guillemont Road Cemetery (Plot I. Row B. Grave 3.). The grave's headstone is inscribed: 'Small time but in that small most greatly lived this star of England',[7] a concluding line from Shakespeare's Henry V.

In his 1928 obituary tribute to H.H. Asquith, Winston Churchill summarized Asquith's last moments:

"It seemed quite easy for Raymond Asquith, when the time came, to face death and to die. When I saw him at the Front he seemed to move through the cold, squalor and peril of the winter trenches as if he were above and immune from the common ills of the flesh, a being clad in polished armour, entirely undisturbed, presumably invulnerable. The War which found the measure of so many, never got to the bottom of him, and when the Grenadiers strode into the crash and thunder of the Somme, he went to his fate cool, poised, resolute, matter of fact, debonair. And well we know that his father, then bearing the supreme burden of the State, would proudly have marched at his side"[8]

The writer John Buchan devoted several pages of his autobiography Memory Hold-the-Door to his friendship with Asquith. He noted of Raymond's character:

"I do not think he could ever have been called popular. He was immensely admired, but he did not lay himself out to acquire popularity, and in the ordinary man he inspired awe rather than liking. His courtesy was without warmth, he was apt to be intolerant of mediocrity, and he had no desire for facile acquaintanceships. Also – let it be admitted – there were times when he was almost inhuman. He would destroy some piece of honest sentiment with a jest, and he had no respect for the sacred places of dull men. There was always a touch of scorn in him for obvious emotions, obvious creeds, and all the accumulated lumber of prosaic humanity. That was a defect of his great qualities. He kept himself for his friends and refused to bother about the world. But as such who were to his friendship he would deny nothing. I have never known a friend more considerate, and tender, and painstaking, and unfalteringly loyal. It was the relation of all others in life for which he had been born with a peculiar genius."[9]

Asquith's grave in Guillemont Road Cemetery

Memorial tablet in Amiens Cathedral

Memorial in St Andrew's Church in Mells

Battlefield cross for Asquith, in St Andrew's Church in Mells

Raymond Asquith and his wife in 1913

Raymond Asquith was married on 25 July 1907 to Katharine Frances Horner (1885–1976),[13][14] younger daughter[15] of Sir John Francis Fortescue Horner, of Mells, Somerset, descended from Thomas Horner, the Tudor figure on whom the nursery rhyme 'Little Jack Horner' is sometimes said to be based.[16] Her mother, Lady Horner (d. 1940), was Frances Jane Graham, elder daughter of William Graham, a rich merchant, passionate art collector, and Liberal member of parliament for Glasgow.[17] Lady Horner was a notable hostess and patron of the arts, especially the Pre-Raphaelites and John Singer Sargent. The Horners had four children – Cicely (born 1883), Katharine (1885), Mark (who died in his teens), and Edward (1888).

Asquith and his wife had three children:

• Lady Helen Frances Asquith OBE (1908–2000), a school teacher and inspector who died unmarried
• Lady Perdita Rose Mary Asquith (1910–1996) who married the 4th Baron Hylton (d 1967)
• Julian Edward George Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KCMG (1916–2011), nicknamed Trim, who was born a few months before his father's death on active service. The new baby was reputedly named "Trim" in honour of the Roman gourmand Trimalchio, after his father saw his newborn son for the first time while on leave from the war.[18]

Asquith died nearly ten years before his father was raised to the House of Lords in 1925 as Earl of Oxford and Asquith. Katharine eventually inherited Mells Manor because her younger and only surviving brother, Edward Horner (1888–1917), was also killed in the war.[19] He was buried in France, but his memorial in St Andrew's Church, Mells was designed by his mother's friend Edwin Lutyens, who was a patron of Monsignor Ronald Knox. Katharine converted to Roman Catholicism after being widowed and became a friend of Siegfried Sassoon, who also converted, following her example.[20] She also remained in touch with Evelyn Waugh, another convert.[21] All three of her children were brought up as Roman Catholics.

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. K. D. Reynolds, 'Horner, Frances Jane, Lady Horner (1854/5–1940)’, first published September 2004, 580 words, with portrait illustration. Oxford DNB: Frances Horner (citation only), full article available via subscription only.

• Photographs of Raymond Asquith and his wife at the NPG taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell.
• A fuller profile of Raymond Asquith including the text of his Times obituary.
• Mells, Somerset