Not What She Looks Like

 

If anybody of the female sex have been sporting what I see as a very distinctive "English Lady-Look", then it is Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury (1887-1969). Not much sprightly womanhood to be found in those sort of elonged and rather stiff facial features. No, she is a lady of the old, genuinely, English stock, and it shows in all photos of her. To me she looks like a prudish, humorless and rather dried-up tea-drinker which isn't what I like women to be. One shouldn't suspect that someone like her might be the grandmother of the very sprightly, vivacious and charming actress Helena Bonham Carter who've made many fictive characters stand out, especially in movies by her former husband, Tim Burton. Nonetheless, the stiff-faced baroness is the grandmother of sprightly Helena. However, I came to realize that I'm biased and shouldn't go after looks and demeanor as they all too often prove to be misleading: The fine lady may not look or behave like her granddaughteer, but she had qualities of her own.

I simply had to rethink my first impression of Helena's grandmother, the typical English lady. It turns out that she was the daughter of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, who was knighted in 1925. That gave his daughter the "courtesy title" of "Lady Violet" which was the name she was known by as a writer and liberal politician in her own right. Many of her writings was fierce attacks on the Nazis, and it has been said that she did so well in her criticism that Hitler himself is supposed to have sworn to arrest her when he "conquered England". Something he, as we know, never did. However, it takes some special qualities to be seen as a thoroughly hated personal enemy of a dictator, whom he wants to jail - or worse - whenever he gets the opportunity. In my opinion that Hitler-hatred was a genuine recommendation of the aristocratic, but stiff-faced English lady. As it is Lady Violet had a fine career when she stood for Parliament and she became a life Peer. What. to me, also is a recommendation of her character is that she was the closest female friend of Winston Churchill and often fought side by side with him.

 

There is no doubt that she in character and demeanor was a typical Englishwoman as they were a few generations back. That's also obvious when looking at the cartoons that figured her. I have to admit that I was biased against her without even knowing her. At first glance I saw her as a special woman type of the past that I don't like very much, but I have to admit that she was so much more than just another English, stiff-faced prude.

 

Wikipedia