Countess Pes di Villamarina

Countess Pes di Villamarina

Mr. H. S. Salt writes:- It is difficult for an octogenarian to know when he has quite passed the date at which his memories can be of interest; but your obituary notice of my first-cousin, Ethel Pes di Villamarina, has set me wondering whether there may still be in Shrewsbury some recollection of her mother, Emily Allnatt, a woman of singular beauty and gentleness, who was married, 80 years ago, to the Rev. H. S. Polehampton, an ardent Old Etonian and Salopian. They went out to India, and their diaries, concerned chiefly with the siege of Lucknow, were published by Messrs. Bentley after his death. She afterwards became the wife of Sir Henry Marion Durand. Owing to the Couintess Villamarina's absence abroad, I lost touch with her for a long time, but during the last three years we have had a good deal of correspondence, and I was able to supply her with certain diaries which threw light on events in the life of her mother (my aunt and godmother), to whose memory she was much devoted.

The Times, October 20, 1933, p. 17