MARGARET, Duchess of Argyll, was buried far from Scotland yesterday.
Family members and more than 100 loyal friends, who praised the kindness
of a woman once described as the most beautiful of her generation, were
at the funeral in London.
The occasion brought together estranged family members, but could not
avoid mention of the animosities which have riven the Argyll family
since her spectacular divorce from the Duke in 1963.
It took place at the Jesuit Church in Farm Street, Mayfair. The
Duchess had asked in her will for a funeral at the Brompton Oratory and
for her ashes to be scattered in the grounds of Inveraray Castle. The
family objected, however, and she was buried in Surrey next to her first
husband, American Charles Sweeny.
In her declining years she ran out of money and was forced to move
from her large Mayfair house to a hotel suite, then a nursing home in
Pimlico, where she died last week after a fall, aged 80, by all accounts
lonely and ignored.
The mourners were led by her two children, Frances, the Duchess of
Rutland, 56, and investment consultant Brian Sweeny, 53. Also attending
was the 74-year-old Duke of Rutland, who had not seen his mother-in-law
for 10 years.
The Duchess, a Roman Catholic convert, was estranged from her daughter
over the latter's decision to raise her children as Protestants. After
the Duchess spoke out against the decision the Duke of Rutland banned
her from his house.
On the steps of the Church of the Immaculate Conception Lady Colin
Campbell, 43, for a brief time the Duchess's step daughter-in-law and
now a royal pundit, blamed the late Duke for the Duchess's reduced
circumstances at the time of her death.
''She was set up by my stinking, rotten, drunken father-in-law who
thought that he would blackmail her. When she refused to succumb to
blackmail he dragged her through the mud. It was all so he could make
money out of her.''
Everything about yesterday's service was appropriate to the scandal
which had dogged the Duchess, and the morbid fascination it has exerted
on followers of the aristocracy.
The requiem mass opened with the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,
Forgive Our Foolish Ways.
In his sermon Father Michael Beattie, speaking to a text from St John,
reminded the congregation that charity covered a multitude of sins.
''Many things have been said about Margaret in recent days,
justifiably or otherwise I cannot pass judgment,'' he said. ''Much
should have been said about her qualities of generosity, of friendship,
of her care and concern for many people.''
Mr Larry Adler, who played for the Duchess at her wedding to Mr Sweeny
in 1931, played a concerto for harmonica composed by Vaughan Williams.
