ALONE IN OLD AGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21530, 30 December 1931, Page 12

ALONE IN OLD AGE

WOMAN’S PATHETIC END ONCE OUTSTANDING BEAUTY SARAH BERNHARDT’S FRIEND. A lonely, friendless, white-haired old lady—once an outstanding beauty in the diplomatic social life of Paris —left only with memories of her friend, Sarah Bernhardt, and other celebrities of her time to spend her last days in loneliness in Florence and Marseilles. This was the picture of Lady Arnould given to the News-Chronicle in London recently by the last Englishwoman to see her alive before her mysterious death in 1922 in a house in St. Barnabe, Mai - - seilles. The Paris police have been making investigations regarding her death. The Englishwoman is Miss Edith M. Wedd, and this is her story: "T travelled to Florence in November, 1920, with an invalid friend, and stayed at the Pension Constantine in the Via Solferino. We had only been there a few days when we met Lady Arnould—a charming old lady with snow-white hair, very infirm and invariably confined to her bedroom, where she would sit reading for days on end. “ Lady Arnould appeared' so lonely and 1 felt so sorry for her that I did what I could tg help her. She was very poor, and made a special arrangement with the proprietress to take only two meals a day —morning coffee and dinner. ‘ You see, I am very old, and do not require so much food now,’ was her pathetic explanation. Every afternoon I shared my tea with her. “ The old lady told me how in her younger days she had enjoyed the gay life of Paris. She would talk brilliantly of the places she had visited and the famous people she had met —I particularly recall her mentioning Sarah Bernhardt, “ Lady Arnould was an accomplished linguist, speaking Russian well and Italian fluently She could converse with anybody on any subject, and her greatest delight was to’ follow the trend of politics in the newspapers—all this in spite of the fact that she looked very much older than 80 and could only walk painfully slowly with the aid of sticks. “ Early in 1921 Lady Arnould proposed going to live with some people, whom I took to be relatives, at Marseilles, but it was some time before she could save enough to make the journey. Her clothes were so poor that I had to mend and sponge them before she left. “Afterwards Lady Arnould wrote me two letters from Marseilles, in which she said she was not at all happy. ‘ 1 suppose 1 can hardly look for happiness at my age. . , . Perhaps it would be better if 1 died,’ was the strain in which she wrote. 1 replied and tried to cheer her up, but my last two letters were returned, and I concluded that she was dead. “Lady Arnould must have been very beautiful as a girl. 1 can still see her as a tall figure with fine features. The only reason which led her to go to Marseilles was that she felt she was too old to go on living alone and needed somebody to look after her. But the change, apparently, was by no means a success.’ According to her will, filed at Somerset House, Lady Arnould left £B3B 17s 2d. Her trust moneys, stock and securities were given in equal shares to her two daughters, Ethel Geraldine Vere (commonly called Blanche) Arnould and Marie Beatrice Carnegie, Duchessa di Civitella. All her real and personal property was left to Miss “ Blanche ” Arnould,