Mary Wesley - Final Years

Final Years

Only in the last year of her life did she agree to a biography being written. She cooperated fully with Patrick Marnham, on the condition that nothing would be published prior to her death. She provided her reminiscences from her sick bed, and commented "Have you any idea of the pleasure of lying in bed for six months, talking about yourself to a very intelligent man? My deepest regret was that I was too old and ill to take him into bed with me". The authorised biography (published in 2006), was titled Wild Mary, a reference both to her childhood nickname, and to her sex life as a young woman, when she had many lovers. In her biography nothing is held back: "It was a flighty generation ... e had been brought up so repressed. War freed us. We felt if we didn't do it now, we might never get another chance". "It got to the state where one woke up in the morning, reached across the pillow and thought, 'Let's see. Who is it this time?'"

But Wesley finally did get tired of her wartime lifestyle, she realized that her way of life had become too excessive: "too many lovers, too much to drink...I was on my way to become a very nasty person". When her son Toby Eady read the book, he was so amazed at how much he did not know about his mother that he did not speak to anyone for a week.

Late in life Wesley ordered her own coffin from a local craftswoman and asked it be finished in red Chinese lacquer. She kept it as a coffee table for some time in her sitting room. She suggested that she be photographed sitting up in it for a feature in the magazine Country Living - this idea was politely declined.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1995.