Tears of a Duchess: Camilla weeps for her ‘darling’ brother
SWEPT with sorrow, brushing away tears, the Duchess of Cornwall said farewell to her beloved brother yesterday at a poignant family funeral.
With Prince Charles at her side, and surrounded by relatives and friends, she paid her last respects to Mark Shand – adventurer, conservationist, philanthropist, loving father, former playboy and long-time troublemaker.
In a simple service, the ‘bereft’ duchess – whose wreath bore the words: ‘Darling Mark, with happy memories and all my love’ – sat with three generations of mourners to remember the irrepressible 62-year- old who died last week after hitting his head in a fall outside a fund-raising event.
In the same village church that hosted the funeral of Camilla’s father eight years ago, they recalled a fascinating life.
Mark Shand, a committed environmentalist who was buried in a biodegradable wicker coffin, devoted much of that life to his most passionate cause of saving endangered Asian elephants.
And so, at Holy Trinity Church at Stourpaine in the rain- drenched Dorset countryside, elephants became a natural but otherwise incongruous theme for his funeral.
Several guests wore elephant jewellery, although if the duchess was sporting the brooch she is said to have chosen for the occasion, it wasn’t immediately visible on her polkadot suit by Feraud.
But former pop star Cat Stevens, Shand’s friend Yusuf Islam, flew from the US to perform Wild World for the 180- strong congregation; The Elephant from Carnival Of The Animals by Saint- Saens was played; and Shand’s nephew Ben Elliot read a passage from his uncle’s book, Travels With My Elephant, written after a 600-mile journey he made on one across India.
The service concluded with The Elephant Song song from Disney’s Jungle Book.
Camilla’s son Tom Parker Bowles told how his uncle enjoyed causing mischief, particularly in church, and had amused his nephews as children by taking a whoopee cushion to one service.
The duchess had arrived alongside Charles, flanked by Tom, her daughter Laura Lopes, her late brother’s daughter Ayesha, her cousin Katie Elliot, and Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot.
Seldom could the church pews have been packed so tight with so many glamorous women – his exwife Clio Goldsmith, a former French actress whom he married in 1990 and divorced nine years later; his so-called ‘secret love’, 36year- old blonde companion and long-term girlfriend Ruth Powys, accompanied yesterday by her twin sister Mary; his daughter and young nieces; a brace of fashionably dressed young women displaying finishing- school poise; and Camilla herself, from his own generation, a model of dignity.
All were from different strands of Shand’s colourful life. All were yesterday united in grief.
There had been hugs and kisses as the guests met outside the church before the service.
When they all emerged, however, the mood changed dramatically. Prince Charles gripped his wife’s hand and fussed over her as she struggled to raise an umbrella – but her pain was clear. She bowed her head, wiped a tear from her eye and walked into the rain.