Townshend Edward Villiers

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Biografie:
Edward Villiers Townshend 1876-1969
'E. V.', who died on 22 April 1969 in his ninety-third year, was educated at Bedford Modern, and lived a bachelor life in the insurance world, retiring in 1936 as deputy investments manager of the-Scottish Widows Fund and Life Assurance Society. He served as a Captain in the Rifle Brigade during the First World War, and was elected to the Club in 1931.
Although he travelled widely throughout his working life, and during the latter half of it wintered in South Africa with his niece, Mrs. Pettet, Switzerland was his great love, and he went out each year until his health failed at the ripe age of ninety-one. I found it hard to match his pace in the valleys when he was a chicken of eighty-three (A3 men please note), and though we spent many hours together at home and walking the foot-hills, the disparity in our ages-thirty years-prevented our climbing together. Most of his climbs were done after the age of fifty, and this ensured that he would be a climber of the old school. He took a guide-usually Joseph Krönig of Zermatt-and toured a great many ofthe classic routes, loving the pastime for its freedom and rhythm of movement, its companionship and for what Leo Amery has called 'days of fresh air', and insisted that the fitting end to a tour should be in the hotel with a cafe kirsch. Even had he been born into the modern world, and endowed with its talents, one can imagine one eyebrow raised at the sight of a piton, and both lost beneath the peak of his cap at the sight of the contemporary steeple-jacks' kit.
As a man his manners matched his marches, and he would have been at a loss to find other than a courteous reply to the vulgar taunts now thrown by youth at old age. If he was unable to make his mark as a climber, as a gentleman he was an exemplar, and I hold it an honour to write in his memory.
Guy Carrell
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 76, 1971, Seite 336


Geboren am:
1876
Gestorben am:
22.04.1969