OWN TOMB PREPARED

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 November 1929, Page 2

OWN TOMB PREPARED

PASSING OF LADY WATTS.

A woman who for some time past had willed her death has just passed awav suddenly at Mentone, in the person of Lady Watts, the widow of Sir Philip Watts, the naval constructor to the Admiralty. Many times during the past few years Lady declared that she was tired of life and really wanted to go. So firmly was this longing for death fixed in her mind that some years ago she had the following inscription carved on a timbstone in Kensal Green Cemetery:—“Lady Elsie Isabelle Watts, F.R.G.S., citizen and shipwright of London. Born in Brussels, August 10, 1853. Died The \mb is that of Lady Watts’ uncle, Francois Simonau, the famous Belgian painter of the Victorian epoch, who died in London. Lady Watts was very fond of showing a photograph of this tombstone with her own name on it. She was a prominent character on the v Riviera, witty and sarcastic. Her expressions were frequently characterised' by frank outspokenness, while her stories won her renown.

After her husband’s death, Lady Watts’ allowance had not been sufficient to enable her to lead the brilliant Riviera life to which she had been accustomed, and she began to take in paying guests at her villa and even gave luncheon, dinner and bridge parties, to which she invited royal personages and introduced ambitious mothers and their daughters. Lady Watts’ doctors knew that she was. not in the best of health. They believed that she would live three or four years longer, but a heart attack on September 13, brought death unexpectedly. It is thought she willed her death even against the desires and belief of her doctors.