| Notes |
- Countess Contardone: Countess Pes di Villamarina
Filed for divorce in 1904, however, it appears to have beed dropped in 1906.
Countess Pes Di Villamarina
Links With Many Lands
The Times, October 18, 1933 p.16
Her friends in many countries and of many nations will lament the loss of Countess Pes di Villamarina, who died at her home in Portman Square on Saturday at the age of 69.
A woman of vivid, attractive, and outstanding personality and wide sympathies, she had travelled much and had lived for long periods abroad, especially in Morocco, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, where she made a wide and varied circle of friends with whom she never lost touch. She was born at Simla in 1864; and was thebdaughter of a distinguished soldier, Major-General Sir Henry Marion Durand, R.E., and half sister of Sir Mortimer Durand, one of the greatest of Indian political officers, and afterwards British Minister in Teheran and Ambassador to Spain and the United States.
In 1884 Ethel Durand married James Sligo Jameson, who took part in H. M. Stanley's expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha. and died l of fever on the Congo in August, 1888. After his death she went to Zanzibar, accompanied by ber biother-in-law, Mr. (now the Right Hon.) Andrew Jameson, who went up-country and learnt the details' of her: husband's and his brother's last days from Tippoo Tib, the famous Arab trader and slave raider. On her return to England she published these with her husband's diaries and letters in the "Story of the Rear Column of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition," a book which gave "the other side" of the controversy which Stanley's often unfair references to his ill-starred subordinates in his book, "In Darkest Africa," had provoked, and aroused enormous interest.
In 1900 she married Count Robert de Cortadonc Pes di Villamarina, who took part in the first Italian occupation of Cyrenaica in 1911, and died in that country. During the War she lived in Egypt, adding to the number of her friends and cheering her circle in the darkest, days by her courage, humour, and sagacity.
"Reine," as her friends called her; was profoundly interested in the art and history of the countries which she visited, most of all in that of Greece, where her enthusiasm for the past never blinded her to the qualities of the modern Greeks. In her later years she lived in London, always alertly interested in people, in politics, and in art, and retaining to the last her ability to evoke in others an instant response to her appreciation of life and her power of making and keeping devoted friends. She leaves, with a son, a daughter, who married Mr. M. S. MacDonnell, formerly of the Egyptian Civil Service and subsequently High Commissioner ot the Free City of Danzig.
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1864 - 1933 (69 years)
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