General

After the seventy-third mention of venereal strabismus in Earthly Powers, I finally checked Google, and what should I find but our very own Portland Anna explaining it in another group years ago. A variation on cross-eyed, at least one eye fixed while the other wanders or vice versa, and of a kind that is considered comely in a woman.

I agree.

Yes! I had a lot of fun looking it up. Wow, what a strange term. Sadly, a lot of charming dated terms are no longer in widespread use.

All the women seem to be afflicted by it in EP ?

Oh no, just a few...

I liked this explanation from Cheryl :

That's a tough one. 'Venerean' and 'venereal' and similar words usually
have something to do with sex. Strabismus is sometimes called 'wandering
eye'. 'Wandering eye' can also mean being unfaithful, or at least paying
rather too much attention to members of the opposite sex other than the
one you are married to, engaged to, or otherwise committed to.

Perhaps Hortense liked sex and was always eyeing up lots of different
attractive men?

We can't assume anything random in this book, even the name, tense whore, but that being so, I don't yet have an explanation that makes it work. Hortense wandered so her husband's infertility would go unknown and he would have his male heir. But I don't yet know what horrors lie in wait for her as WWII begins. I suspect it won't be pleasant.

Don't give anything away !! I am only at Hortense mariage.
The book reads smoothly, is very funny at times and I wonder where it is going.
But Norman douglas is obvious the bad one : )

Oh, so she hasn't joined the circus yet?

Lol

Has Norman Douglas undergone his abortion yet?

Nah, I put the book away, you spoiled it. I taught he was going to have his twins and raise them on the island of caprice

Well, I for one am glad because with Norm for daddy those boys would be _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

Before their seventh birthday.