Lady Rose McLaren nee Paget (1919-2005 d aged 86)
Shinjinee
The death was announced (presumably) since the Daily Telegraph obituary
of Lady Rose McLaren, 4th of the five daughters of the 6th Marquess of
Anglesey and his wife Lady Marjorie Manners, has been published
recently. From it, I snip a bit
"She was born Rose Mary Primrose Paget, the fourth of five daughters of
the 6th Marquess of Anglesey, on July 21 1919 at the family's house on
Arlington Street, behind the Ritz Hotel in London. Her mother, Lady
Marjorie Manners, was a daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland; thus, Lady
Diana Cooper was Rose's aunt.
The Angleseys' elder daughters, Caroline and Elizabeth, were to become
famous beauties; their third daughter, Mary, was brain-damaged, and
Rose made herself responsible for her sister's welfare until Mary's
death in 1996."
Elizabeth was married (as his 2nd or later wife) to Raimund von
Hoffmansthal, son of the poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal; Raimund had been
2nd husband of Alice Astor (by whom he had previously fathered a
daughter Sylvia Guirey nee Obolensky, during her first marriage - the
daughter refused to acknowledge Hoffmansthal as her father - source
Sylvia Guirey's obit). Elizabeth and Raimund had 2 children - Arabella
(formerly wife of Piers von Westenholz, whose children by his 2nd wife
are making waves in London society) and Orlando.
Caroline was married (as his 2nd wife) to Sir Michael Duff, Bt. They
had one son, of whom I know very little. Caroline was an actress and
went around with an interesting set in the Thirties.
"Her most prominent and persistent suitor was the handsome Valerian
Wellesley, now the 8th Duke of Wellington, and it would have been a
resonant match, since the two families had close historical
connections: Rose's ancestor Henry William Paget, the 2nd Earl of
Uxbridge, had been created 1st Marquess of Anglesey for his service at
the Battle of Waterloo, in which he commanded the British, Hanoverian
and Belgian cavalry, losing a leg in the process. But although Rose
Paget twice allowed herself to become engaged to Wellesley, she twice
broke it off.
Instead she married, in 1940, John McLaren, second son of Lord
Aberconway, the creator of the famous garden at Bodnant in north Wales.
McLaren was serving as a Mosquito pilot, and in order to see more of
him, Rose made use of her role as a Land Girl to follow him from one
RAF base to another, finding work on farms nearby. He later became a
fighter pilot instructor, but died in 1953, leaving his wife with two
young daughters."
Interesting possibility. The Pagets were already related to the
Wellesleys, through the 6th Marquess's ancestress Henrietta Bagot,
whose mother was IIRC a niece of the 1st Duke of Wellington. And they
also had descent, of course, from Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount
Combermere. The future 8th Duke of Wellington went on to marry Diana
McConnel (any relation to the late Mrs Jocelyn Hambro, formerly Duchess
of Roxburghe and her son the present Duke?) and father several
children, including the Marquess of Douro, whose elder son married this
year.
Lady Rose apparently never remarried, and started a successful flower
business
"Among her commissions was Princess Margaret's wedding to Antony
Armstrong-Jones in 1960, for which she provided 30,000 pink and red
roses to decorate The Mall."
Survivors -
"Although, in the years after her husband's death, she received many
offers, she never remarried. Her two daughters survive her."
There was also mention of two grandsons, with whom she played cricket.
Shinjinee