Violet Asquith on the marriage of Venetia Stanley and Edwin Montagu.
Curious and disturbing news reached us on Wednesday evening of Montagu's engagement to Venetia... Montagu's physical repulsiveness to me is such that I would lightly leap from the top story of Queen Anne's Mansions - or the Eiffel Tower itself to avoid the lightest contact - the thought of any erotic amenities with him is enough to freeze one's blood. Apart from this he is not only very unlike and Englishman - or indeed a European - but also extraordinarily unlike a man... He has no robustness, virility, courage, physical competency - he is devoured by hypochondria - which if it does not spring from a diseased body must indicate a very unhealthy mind. As against this he has imagination, ambition, fire in his stomach (my favourite quality!) and real generosity and powers of devotion. A better friend than lover I should say.
I asked Montagu about the religious difficulty - he replied "we can get round that". I have since learned that by getting round it - he meant Venetia going through it. This shocked me to the marrow. To renounce England and Christianity - even if one has never held it - at the dead bidding of foul old Lord Swaythling and to secure his filthy £10,000 a year - for that to renounce one's religion and take on a new one - become a Jew - seems to me the most impossibility, squalidly cynical antic.
It is true that Venetia believes nothing - has no spiritual "apprehension" whatever - but she then is not entitled to masquerade as a believing of the case. She seemed quite calm - rather cheerful than happy - admitted she felt no "glow" about it and used one phrase which haunted me "there was nothing else much there". I cannot help feeling she would have done anything else if there had been.
http://spartacus-educational.com/Edwin_Montagu.htm
Curious and disturbing news reached us on Wednesday evening of Montagu's engagement to Venetia... Montagu's physical repulsiveness to me is such that I would lightly leap from the top story of Queen Anne's Mansions - or the Eiffel Tower itself to avoid the lightest contact - the thought of any erotic amenities with him is enough to freeze one's blood. Apart from this he is not only very unlike and Englishman - or indeed a European - but also extraordinarily unlike a man... He has no robustness, virility, courage, physical competency - he is devoured by hypochondria - which if it does not spring from a diseased body must indicate a very unhealthy mind. As against this he has imagination, ambition, fire in his stomach (my favourite quality!) and real generosity and powers of devotion. A better friend than lover I should say.
I asked Montagu about the religious difficulty - he replied "we can get round that". I have since learned that by getting round it - he meant Venetia going through it. This shocked me to the marrow. To renounce England and Christianity - even if one has never held it - at the dead bidding of foul old Lord Swaythling and to secure his filthy £10,000 a year - for that to renounce one's religion and take on a new one - become a Jew - seems to me the most impossibility, squalidly cynical antic.
It is true that Venetia believes nothing - has no spiritual "apprehension" whatever - but she then is not entitled to masquerade as a believing of the case. She seemed quite calm - rather cheerful than happy - admitted she felt no "glow" about it and used one phrase which haunted me "there was nothing else much there". I cannot help feeling she would have done anything else if there had been.
http://spartacus-educational.com/Edwin_Montagu.htm
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