Sibyl Mary Hathaway

Dame Sibyl Mary Hathaway ( Collings, formerly Beaumont; 13 January 1884 – 14 July 1974) was the dame of Sark from 1927 until her death in 1974. Her 47-year rule over Sark, in the Channel Islands, spanned the reigns of four monarchs: George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II.

Hathaway was the daughter of the eccentric seigneur of Sark, William Frederick Collings. Sibyl learned French, Sercquiais, Norman and German prior to becoming feudal lady of Sark. She married Dudley Beaumont in 1901, and they had seven children. One of her children died in infancy, and her husband died from Spanish flu in 1918, leaving her a financially troubled widow. She succeeded her father in 1927, and immediately set about reinforcing her feudal rights and promoting tourism on the island, which she affectionately called "the last bastion of feudalism". When she remarried in 1929, her second husband, Robert Hathaway, legally became her senior co-ruler, but she kept control of the government.

Dame Sibyl's tenure saw the German occupation of the Channel Islands in the Second World War, during which she refused to evacuate and convinced the islanders to stay as well. Her eldest son and heir apparent, Francis William Beaumont, was killed in 1941, while her husband was deported to an internment camp in 1943. The Dame remains best known for her indomitable conduct during the occupation. After the war, she continued her publicity campaign, strengthening the island's tourism industry.

Having been widowed again in 1954, she went on to rule alone, and was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1965. She was described by a British government official as a "lady of unusual personality", and is often referred to as a benevolent dictator. Dame Sibyl died at the age of 90, and was succeeded by her grandson, Michael Beaumont.

Early life Sibyl Mary Collings was born in Guernsey in a house that once belonged to John Allaire, her privateering great-great-grandfather, whose business dealings brought the fief of Sark to his daughter, Marie Collings. Her parents were William Frederick Collings and his Montreal-born wife Sophie (née Moffatt). Collings was born two years after her notoriously intemperate father inherited the fief from his father, William Thomas Collings. She had one sibling, a sister named Doris.

First marriage At the age of 15, Sybil fell in love with Dudley Beaumont, a British painter who could neither shoot nor climb cliffs, and who her father therefore considered a "weakling". Her father made it clear that he was adamantly opposed to the relationship, but Sibyl continued to see Beaumont. By 1901, after a raging argument, her father dragged Sybil out of her bedroom at midnight and threw her out of the seigneurial residence barefoot and in a nightgown.

In her 1961 autobiography, Sybil wrote extensively about her relationship with her first husband. Dudley Beaumont, who served in the British Army as an officer during the First World War, died on 24 November 1918 during the Spanish flu pandemic. Robert was not aware that the marriage made him jure uxoris seigneur of Sark, his wife's co-ruler, until they set foot on the island. Hathaway's strong personality, however, ensured that she had the final say in the matters of government;

Many other German officers in charge of the Channel Islands were also of noble extraction, and Hathaway exploited their "stiff German formality" by making it clear that she "expected to be treated ... with the rigid etiquette to which they were accustomed in their own country." When Germans ordered that all the Sarkese be instructed in German, the Dame offered a room in her residence as a classroom for the children of the island. Her husband was deported to Ilag VII in Laufen in Bavaria in February 1943, where he remained for the rest of the war.

According to British historian David Fraser, Sibyl did not raise her objection to a series of antisemitic orders that had been previously issued by the German authorities, which concerned among others her Czech Jewish friend Annie Wranowsky.

Islanders suffered shortage of food in the last months of the occupation. Hathaway organised a raid on German grain stocks and saved many families from starvation with her secret potato hoard. She made sure the garrison cleared up the island of land mines. Her experience of the German occupation inspired William Douglas-Home's play The Dame of Sark. Hathaway's manner of receiving Germans has been described as both impressive and overly cordial.

Postwar years

Following the war, Hathaway continued to promote Sark's tourist trade and advocated building a new harbour. In 1949, she and her husband welcomed Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II) and the Duke of Edinburgh, who opened the new harbour. The same year, Hathaway became Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Sibyl and Robert Hathaway's happy marriage ended with his death in 1954, to Sark's first seigneur, Hellier de Carteret, Hathaway was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace. She then jokingly referred to herself as a "double dame". However, soon after her quatercentenary, her daughter, Douce Briscoe, died in 1967, having struggled with alcoholism for a long time.

In 1969, Hathaway became increasingly worried by the Royal Commission on the Constitution's intrusion into her affairs. At the same time, she had a sharp dispute with the Chief Pleas, claiming that its members violated the laws they themselves had passed and that their misconduct threatened to make her tourism campaign futile. She shocked the islanders by announcing her intention to resign the charter of the island back to the Crown "in somewhat the same way as the Hereditary le Mesurier Family did in Alderney" and to recommend that the government be taken over by Guernsey. The threat was effective; regulations were suddenly enforced much more strictly. By the beginning of the next year, Hathaway retracted her announcement, having been persuaded "by an enormous number of letters and requests". Sark remained "the last bastion of feudalism", as she proudly put it,