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Mutability of Death
Sir Henry, who had been stayed with his chauffeur's family had few personal possessions left: two brass guns, a silver horseshoe encircling a clock, a horsefly swatter, a silver trowel with the handle broken off, a warrant of knighthood with seal, a painting of the nape of the neck of Lady Mary Pellatt, a book by several authors titled Romantic Castle and Palaces, another entitled Stock Exchange Sayings by Dudley Hardy, a brass bound green-and-red pail, a signed picture of Queen Victoria, a pint metal flash engraved "H.P. Southwood," a general's sword and epaulettes , a certificate of life membership in the St. George's Society, two invitations to be present at the coronation of George V in 1911, an invitation to a ball at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, 1897, the seating plan for a dinner at Balmoral in 1910, a wax seal of the Order of St. John in a tin case, and an old powder puff in a cheap cardboard box. |
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The Queen's
Own Rifles honoured Pellatt with a full military funeral, and thousands of people braved
the frigid Saturday afternoon March weather to line King Street West around Sr. James'
cathedral. Earlier, thousands had filed through the hushed, cavernous confines of the
church to pay their mumbled respects at the bier in the four hours before the funeral was
to begin. So many hundreds found sanctuary in the church that afternoon that the doors had
to be closed half an hour early, trapping many of the Queen's Own riflemen outside where
they tried to keep warm with rum and running back and forth to a nearby restaurant.