In 1923 Sargent married Eileen Laura Harding Horne (1898–1977). She was the younger daughter of Frederick William Horne – a prosperous miller, farmer, coal merchant and carter – and the niece of Evangeline Astley Cooper of Hambleton Hall in Rutland, where she lived in the early 1920s. Sargent was a guest there in the same period, and his name occurs alongside hers in local press reports of social gatherings such as hunt balls. When they married, the press headlined her name rather than that of her still little-known husband. The couple were married at St Mary's Church, Drinkstone, the service conducted by the bride's uncle, who, as her grandfather had been, was rector there. By 1926, the couple had two children, a daughter, Pamela, who died of polio in 1944, and a son Peter. Sargent was much affected by his daughter's death, and his recording of Elgar's "The Dream of Gerontius" in 1945 was an expression of his grief. The marriage was unhappy and ended in divorce in 1946. Before, during and after his marriage, Sargent was a continual womaniser, which he did not deny. Among his reported affairs were long-standing ones with Diana Bowes-Lyon, Princess Marina and Edwina Mountbatten. More casual encounters are typified by the young woman who said, "Promise me that whatever happens I shan't have to go home alone in a taxi with Malcolm Sargent."