page_title: Viva Seton Montgomerie
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Viva Seton Montgomerie / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Sandleford Cottage, Newbury, England.
context_page_description: Viva Seton Montgomerie was a British socialite and minor author, daughter of the Hon. Seton Montolieu Montgomerie and his wife, Nina Janet Bronwen Peers Williams, daughter of Lt.-Col. Thomas Peers Williams.
context_section_description: Viva's aunt Evelyn was married to Henry Wellesley, 3rd Duke of Wellington, and she spent much of her childhood at their home, Stratfield Saye House. She also lived at Temple Hill in Maidenhead, London; Elm Leigh Farm near Winkfield; Sandleford Cottage near Sandleford Priory; Stoughton Grange near Guildford; Rydes Hill Lodge, Guildford; and finally the 'Willows', Chiddingfold.
  Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith was part of Viva's social circle, as was Ethel Beatty, wife of David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty. Viva recalled an anecdote regarding Admiral Beatty:
  There was a certain armchair which accompanied them everywhere they went, and when the Admiral was leading forth his fleet, en route for his great Battle of Jutland, he discovered that the chair had been left behind. I shall have no luck without it, he said, and the whole fleet had to be drawn up while his talisman was fetched. It was a chair he had looted during his campaign in China and he firmly believed it was haunted by its former owner. Ethel confirmed this, for she told me that she had distinctly seen a Chinese figure sitting in it as she came into the room, and she saw it fade as she drew near.
  Viva recalled meeting, but not liking, Oscar Wilde at high society parties held at Park Gate near Richmond Park by Lord and Lady Charley Beresford. In her unpublished memoirs she says that
  He was a very large man, but he walked with a noiseless tread so no one heard him coming, and when his dominating presence appeared in the room everyone at once stopped talking. He was accustomed to this and immediately dominated the conversation and 'took the floor' as they say.
  Viva took a mild interest in the Oxford Group led by Dr Frank Buchman, commenting that:
  The programme seemed to be, for any of the guest who felt inclined, to get up and speechify and pour out a history of their private thoughts and mistakes and experiences of all kinds. This confessional process apparently afforded them great relief, for I must admit I never met such a delightfully happy society.
  Viva never married and spent her final years at the 'Willows', Chiddingfold, in Surrey. She died in 1959, aged 80.
caption: Sandleford Cottage, one of Viva's former homes.
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