Lady Meg Colville

Olá

esta Lady inglesa morreu recentemente. O seu obtuário é muito divertido, os ingleses se especializam, como todos sabem, neste tema muitooooo pouco explorado em outros países. Lady Meg Colville ( http://www.geneall.net/P/per_page.php?id=87057 ) é relevante para este fórum por ter vivido em Portugal onde até aprendeu a língua (outro elemento de relevância é ter sido dama de companhia da Rainha Mãe e da actual soberana).
Deixo aqui o seu obtuário do "The Telegraph":

Lady Meg Colville, who has died aged 85, was a lady-in-waiting to the young Princess Elizabeth for three years after the Second World War, and later spent more than a decade with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Both greatly prized her readiness to rally round and the vigorous, self-deprecating sense of humour she displayed. She was responsible for recommending the couturier Hardy Amies to Princess Elizabeth, and also came to the rescue when the Princess announced shortly before her wedding in 1947 that she wanted the Crimond setting of The Lord's my Shepherd for the service.

Since no written score was available in London, Lady Meg, who had sung it in Scotland with the two princesses, repeated it in her fine soprano voice for the organist and precentor of Westminster Abbey, who took down the notes and then taught the Abbey choir.

When the Queen Mother decided at the last moment to attend a royal wedding at Windsor some years ago, Meg Colville insisted on accompanying her, to find she had no seat; so she remained alone in the Castle, boasting afterwards that she had bounced on Prince Philip's bed, and had read everyone's letters.

The fifth of the six daughters of the 4th Earl of Ellesmere, Margaret Egerton, always known as Meg, was born on July 20 1918. She was brought up at the family seat Mertoun House, Roxburghshire, where she was educated by governesses and enjoyed fishing and playing tennis; she was less enthused about being forced to ride every day.

After learning French in Paris, she joined her cousin the Duke of Sutherland on his yacht in the Pacific; when it was holed off California, the party was taken aboard the yacht of the aircraft designer Tommy Sopwith. As a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, Meg Egerton was posted at the outbreak of war as a clerk at Scottish Command headquarters at Edinburgh.

On being recommended for a commission, she found herself answering "I don't know" to a stream of questions from the interview board, until she was asked what she did all day. "I type all morning, and rub out all afternoon," was her candid reply, which reduced the entire room
to laughter.

After being commissioned, she was sent back to Scottish Command's reception department to train recruits, and then to Orkney. When the Victory Parade was held in Edinburgh Meg Egerton led the ATS section down Princes Street on VE Day.

With the return of peace, she was appointed one of three ladies-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth, accompanying her on the Royal Tour of South Africa. It was a gruelling experience, in which Meg Colville had to be taken off the royal train at Ladysmith after developing a chill following a downpour.

On her return her attention was caught by the princess's private secretary Jock Colville, a former secretary to Winston Churchill. In his diary Colville recorded how he fell head over heels in love with the good-looking, vivacious Meg Egerton, although she had many suitors: "But I had an unfair advantage because my office, on the second floor of Buckingham Palace, was next door to the lady-in-waiting's suite of rooms. So she found it hard to escape."

When the couple were married at St Margaret's, Westminster, in 1948, Princess Margaret was one of the seven bridesmaids, and there was a traffic jam in Parliament Square. The bride wore a dress of white, silver and orchid pink with a Greek coin motif, and was no less attentive to her clothes when the couple set off on honeymoon near Venice. She was accompanied by a ladies' maid and 26 suitcases, which proved particularly onerous when loaded on to donkeys.

But soon after their return from honeymoon, the young couple gave up the royal service for Colville to return to the Foreign Office, which posted him as head of chancery in Lisbon. While he seemed always at his polished ease, Lady Meg was so put out at the prospect of sitting next to the dignified French ambassador at a dinner that she talked to him in Portuguese. She did this as a mark of respect, but the embassy fumed for weeks afterwards about what they thought a deliberate ploy by the Foreign Office to show that French was no longer the diplomatic language.

The couple had returned home on leave and were attending a race meeting at Newmarket just before the 1951 election when Colville was told that the prime minister was on the telephone. "Whatever he asks you to do," said his wife, "say no"; but his answer was "yes" when he was offered the post of principal private secretary. Churchill did not always care for friends' wives, but he had a strong affection for Meg Colville, not least because she played bezique with him.

But when Churchill retired and the second of their three children had been born, Colville resigned from the civil service to go into the City, which involved him in undertaking many trips around the world with his wife.

At home, she became president of the Friendly Almshouses and the Cecil Houses. In recent months, she had enjoyed helping to prepare her husband's diaries for republication.

Even on her deathbed Meg Colville never lost her sense of humour, announcing that she had changed her name to "Lady Margaret Moribund". When she heard the groans of another patient at night, she would say, "I pretend I'm in the Highlands, and he's a rutting stag."

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