Pippa Middleton of her day
Lady Ursula d’Abo, lady-in-waiting: b November 8, 1916; m (1) Anthony Freire Marreco, (2) Erland D’Abo; 2s, 1d; d November 2, 2017, aged 100.
When Lady Ursula Manners was jumping hedges with the future Edward VIII on hunts at Belvoir Castle, she was blissfully unaware that his forthcoming abdication would change her life almost as much as his.
At the Coronation of her parents’ close friend George VI in 1937, Ursula was a maid of honour for Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother. As she stood with the royal couple on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, she smiled demurely, her ivory skin unblushed. A tiara nestled in her inkblank hair above a distinctive widow’s peak.
The captivating 20-year-old in the Norman Hartnell gown became the Pippa Middleton of her day, upstaging Queen Elizabeth. When the photograph of the royal party was printed in newspapers, Lady Ursula Manners became world famous. Campaigns were launched to find out ‘‘who’s that lady-in-waiting?’’. Poems were written in her honour.
Shy, giggly and unpretentious, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Rutland was pursued by the artist Rex Whistler, who sent her letters strewn with amusing sketches, while Winston Churchill took an avuncular interest and nicknamed her ‘‘the cygnet’’. The Maharaja of Jaipur spirited her away to his pink palace in Jaipur.
Lady Ursula eventually settled into happy married life with her financier husband Erland D’Abo, but after his death she began to take to the party scene again. She had a final encounter with the Duke of Windsor, whom her father had barred from Belvoir Castle after the abdication, at a casino in Cannes.
As they reminisced, the Duchess of Windsor glared at her before taking him away. ‘‘He was very nice, not particularly amusing, and completely controlled by her,’’ recalled d’Abo.
John Paul Getty, the world’s richest man, would later ask D’Abo to marry him. She turned him down, although she did consent to be his mistress.
Ursula Manners was born in 1916, the eldest daughter of the Marquess of Granby and his wife, Kathleen, nee Tennant, who was the niece of Herbert Asquith.
Her education in the many-turreted Belvoir Castle comprised cooking and sewing. Ballet was taught by Tamara Karsavina, who had danced for Diaghilev and fled Russia during the revolution.
Ursula recalled playing with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret on the beach at Bognor Regis, laughing as the nannies paddled while clad from head to foot in stiff navy blue serge.
She was ‘‘finished’’ in France and Italy, where she taunted the carabinieri to spoil their ‘‘Mussolini pomp’’.
She lived out the years before the war in the company of glamorous friends such as the younger Mitford sisters.
When war came her father gathered the family together at Haddon Hall and said: ‘‘We will never have lunch at this table again.’’ Within weeks the Rutland estates had been lent to the government to stock public records and antiquities such as the Domesday Book.
Ursula ran a factory in Grantham, where she oversaw 2000 women making bullets.
She was being courted by a brilliant young barrister, Anthony Marreco, who was ‘‘amazingly handsome in his Fleet Air Arm uniform, brilliantly clever, but conceited, full of fun and very progressive. He pursued me relentlessly, threatening to commit suicide if I didn’t marry him.’’
She succumbed in 1943, but he was immediately posted to the Far East. ‘‘When he came back he was a stranger and I did not love him any more.’’ They divorced in 1948.
A financier called Erland d’Abo and Johnnie Dalkeith, heir to dukedom of Buccleuch, competed for her affections. She preferred the former, but knew he was a ‘‘ladykiller’’.
One night when it was pouring with rain d’Abo crashed his Bentley into a stationary lorry and Lady Ursula’s nose was pushed into her skull as her face slammed on the dashboard. Rainsford Mowlem, the eminent plastic surgeon, operated that same night. A guiltstricken d’Abo proposed.
They married in 1951. Three children followed but magical years in a bucolic idyll came to an abrupt end when her husband told her he was having an affair with Paul Getty’s mistress. In due course the world’s richest man began to pursue Lady Ursula.
After Erland’s death from a heart attack in 1970, she gave in to Getty because ‘‘I felt so lost and lonely I fell for this dear old man’s kindness and charm’’. He died in 1976.
Horses kept d’Abo buoyed in old age. Watching the runners parade before the Derby in 2011, she felt convinced that Pour Moi was going to win. She decided to stake 50,000 at 10-1. ‘‘I desperately rang friends who had accounts with Ladbrokes, but couldn’t get in touch with anyone in time. Pour Moi beat the favourite and the Queen’s horse Treasure Beach by a head.’’
She had lost out on half million pounds, but she claimed not to care about money, a romantic to the end who inspired the verse:
Who is that beautiful lady in waiting News photographers, privee speak, Quiet these hearts that are palpitating. Say who is that girl with the widow peak? — The Times