Later Life
She became more eccentric in old age. As a widow, she scandalised society by wearing thick make-up and organizing steeplechases through the local graveyard "and became everyone's idea of a merry widow." She kept her coffin in the house, she would often lie in it, asking for opinions on her appearance. Eventually her profligate spending led to bankruptcy which forced the sale of many of her clothes, carriages and horses. She was often seen, locally, cycling clad in her first husband's regimental trousers. She smoked cigarettes in public at a time when it was considered improper for a lady to smoke in private. She died at Deene Park and was buried near her first husband in the Deene parish church.
A character who may have been very loosely based on her was portrayed in the 1968 film, The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Read more about this topic: Adeline, Countess Of Cardigan And Lancastre
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“I devoutly believe it is the writer who has matured the film medium more than anyone else in Hollywood. Even when he knew nothing about his work, he brought at least knowledge of life and a more grown-up mind, a maturer feeling about the human being.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)