1910 was a year of two general elections, the first in January and the second in December. At both elections the Liberal Party was led by Herbert Asquith, who had been prime minister since 1908.
On 29 March, The Times diary column, TMS, had a piece which asserted that “after the second poll …the prime minister rushed off to the south of France to get some sun. He was so desperate to get away he forgot he had a commitment to dine with the King [Edward VII]. The monarch was not amused.”
In fact this extraordinary prime ministerial blunder occurred after the January, not the December, election.
Alistair Lexden wrote to The Times to point out the error (the latest of a number he has spotted in the paper over the years).
He cited the amusing description of this act of lèse-majesté given by Jane Ridley in her brilliant biography, Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (2012): ‘Bertie invited Asquith to dine and sleep at Windsor. In a breach of etiquette which seemed to confirm Bertie’s view that he had no manners, Asquith rushed off to France without even writing a letter. When Margot [Asquith] realised what a blunder her husband had made, she hastened to explain to Knollys [the King’s Private Secretary] that Asquith was exhausted after sitting up for two nights with his daughter Violet who was devastated by the death of her fiancé Archie Gordon in a car crash. Margot asked to see the King to apologise. “I would much like to do this in person if only to stop all the insufferable gossip and the joy my political enemies (few I think!) have in repeating that the King is angry with us”. Knollys replied that “as the matter in question is an official one, it will perhaps be better that, if anything is said to him on the subject, it should come from the Prime Minister himself.” ‘
What, if anything, the contrite Asquith said to the King does not seem to have been recorded.
