KING'S OLDEST SUBJECT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12272, 16 May 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

KING'S OLDEST SUBJECT.

DEATH OF MRS. NEVE, OF GUERNSEY, AGED 111. We regret to announce that Mrs. Margaret Neve, the .well-known centenarian, died at Guernsey the other morning in her 111 th year. Mrs. Neve, who had travelled much in her younger days, »vas a most interesting personage, spoke several languages, and had a good memory of many stirring incidents which occurred during her life. She was a woman of wealth, and resided at her charming estate in St. Peter's Port with two nieces. She began to fail in November last, and death was due, needless to say, to senile decay and nothing else. Mrs. Neve, who had no children, was a widow for over 50 years. To the end Mrs. Never retained a keen interest in the affairs of the island. Her eyesight, of all her faculties, she retained the longest, and was wont to mend her own stockings and do other needlework long after she passed her hundredth year. Do you know," she once said, in the course of a brief conversation, "I can well remember entertaining in this very house Napoleon's generals before the battle of Waterloo, and, what's more, the great Marshal Ney was among them. Curiously enough the ground at the time was covered with snow, a very rare occurrence in this island." As became the oldest subject of the Sovereign Mrs. Neve was intensely loyal, end amongst her most cherished possessions was a signed photograph of the late Queen, sent to the old lady in exchange for one of her own, which used to hang at Windsor or Osborne. It was her delighted custom while the late Queen lived to send Her Majesty a- congratulatory telegram on her birthday, and Queen Victoria returned the compliment on each anniversary of the old lady's birth. It is not known whether Queen Alexandra maintained this interchange of messages. Mrs. Neve had travelled considerably in the course of her long life, her last long journey being undertaken when she was 92 ! She then went to Cracrow, in Poland, to see Kosciusko's monument, and also to Russia, her only companion being her sister, who was then 89 years of age. Hei days were spent in simplicity, and as much of them as possible in the open air. She knew every flower by name in her garden, and tended each with maternal care. Early in the morning she might be found pulling up buttercups or weeds ; then she would go indoors and read for a couple of hours French or Italian history. Milton and Dante were her favourite books, next to the Bible, of which she was a devoted student, sometimes employing a Greek Testament. After her dinner at two o'clock, when she ate much as others do, the centenarian would enjoy a nap till four ; then she would talk and knit and have her tea. She always concluded the day as she began it, by reading family prayers— the light was good, without glasses retired to bed about ten o'clock. Once a week until quite recently Mrs. Neve gave a luncheon party, at which her favourite guest was often her great-nephew, over a hundred years younger than his host. After the meal the old lady would conduct her guests to the meadow to see the cows and poultry, walking thither quite unaided and .vithout a stick. Kot so verv long ago she went up a stepladder into a loft to look for something she wanted. Altogether, Mrs. Neve was one of the most remarkable women of the three centuries in which she lived.