Precipice: A Novel

“A more imaginative writer would have made Venetia’s fascinating story more vibrant.”

The story of the correspondence between H. H. Asquith (1852–1928), Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1908 and 1916, and young socialite Venetia Stanley during the events leading to World War I should make a thrilling novel. Smitten with the 26-year-old Venetia Stanley, the married 61-year-old Asquith shared with her top-secret diplomatic correspondence. One of the more amazing aspects of this story is that Asquith’s irresponsible sharing of government secrets was never exposed during his career.

Alas, Robert Harris’s dry Precipice doesn’t do this fascinating story justice.

Throughout, Harris mixes fact with some fiction. Much of the novel is devoted to the correspondence between Asquith and Venetia. While Asquith wisely destroyed all his correspondence from her, Venetia foolishly kept every letter and document Asquith sent her. The 560 letters Asquith sent to Venetia are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and have been published. Harris’s principal interest seems to be in inventing Venetia’s letters to Asquith.

There are three narrative threads woven into Precipice: the story of the relationship of Asquith and Venetia Stanley; Asquith’s ineffectual role as Prime Minister during the deliberations leading up to World War I; and the fictional story of the young working-class detective, Paul Beemer, assigned to investigate the correspondence.

Harris’s novel begins on a summer night in 1914 when two men are drowned at the end of a lively Thames river cruise attended by a group of young socialites. Venetia Stanley had decided at the last minute not to join the group. An ambitious young policeman, Paul Deemer, is assigned to investigate the circumstances of the drowning. His excellent work and careful, respectful interviewing of the young aristocrats leads to a transfer to the intelligence division, where he is asked to look into the appearance of crumpled up top secret government communiques at various places around London. How these communiques got onto London roadways is one of the more bizarre aspects of Harris’s story. Eventually Deemer’s investigation leads to his intercepting and copying the letters between Asquith and Venetia.

All this might be interesting if Harris endowed Deemer with any personality. He is nothing more than a plot device, a reason for presenting large chunks of the Asquith-Stanley correspondence.

Asquith emerges as a man out of his depth politically and personally. Venetia, the more interesting character, is an aristocratic young woman who would like to be an active part of a man’s world. Her future husband tells her that “She has a man’s mind in a woman’s body.” Venetia values the fact that Asquith takes her seriously as an intelligent person and a wise adviser and the government secrets he shares with her make her “the most well-informed woman in the country. And if she was honest, she also enjoyed the thrill of it—the secrecy, the illicitness, the risk.”  The price for her position is having to endure the Prime Minister’s cloying possessiveness.

Venetia’s knowledge doesn’t give her any real power. When the War comes, she takes an active role the only way a woman can—by becoming a nurse. Even there, her relationship with the Prime Minister almost sabotages her position.

Sadly, the only way Venetia can free herself from the potential for scandal in her relationship to Asquith is to embark on what is bound to be an unsatisfying marriage to Edwin Montague, a man she doesn’t love. Montague, a protégé of Asquith, wielded considerable political power, so the marriage at least kept her in the inner circles of British government. Venetia consents to marry Montague if he doesn’t insist on her sexual fidelity. The real Venetia had a series of affairs with important men during her marriage. The novel intimates that Montague was homosexual, so the open marriage was a convenience to him as well.

Harris’s prose is so flat and colorless that what could be a gripping story becomes an arduous reading experience. A more imaginative writer would have made Venetia’s fascinating story more vibrant. Other writers have created more fascinating sagas of the many blunders that led to the Great War.