Princess Bibesco Elizabeth

Vocation

English writer active between 1921 and 1940. A final posthumous collection of her stories, poems and aphorisms was published under the title Haven in 1951. She was the first child of Herbert Henry Asquith (British Prime Minister, 1908–1916) and his second wife, Margot Tennant. In 1919 she married Prince Antoine Bibesco, a Romanian diplomat stationed in London, a man 22 years her senior. It was the society wedding of the year, attended by everyone from the Queen to George Bernard Shaw. Bibesco was a lifelong friend of Marcel Proust and after his marriage to Elizabeth she too became a favorite of the reclusive writer. She was connected with Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, neither of whom treated her well in their letters and diaries, especially after a liaison between Elizabeth and Mansfield's husband, John Middleton Murry. She travelled with her husband in his capacity as Romanian ambassador, first to Washington (1920–1926) and then to Madrid (1927–1931). She was in Romania during World War II and died there of pneumonia on 7 April 1945. Link to Wikipedia biography