Walburga, Lady Paget

Walburga Ehrengarde Helena, Lady Paget (née Hohenthal;[1] 1839 - 1929) was born in Berlin, Germany. She was a diarist, writer and an intimate friend of Queen Victoria. The daughter of Charles Frederic Anthony, Count von Hohenthal, Paget married Sir Augustus Berkeley Paget (1823-1896), British ambassador to Copenhagen in 1860 and later British Ambassador in Rome and Vienna. Lady Paget before her marriage had been a lady-in-waiting to the newly married Prussian Crown Princess. After her husband's posting to Copenhagen, Paget was instrumental in helping Queen Victoria to arrange the marriage of the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Pagets had three children; William Frederick Augustus Paget (1861 - 1927), Alberta Victoria Sarah Caroline Paget (1863 - 1944), and Ralph Spencer Paget (1864 - 1940).

Paget in her book Colloquies with an unseen friend (1907) was an early writer to mention the hollow earth theory, she claimed that cities exist beneath a desert, which is where the descendants of Atlantis moved to, she further claimed that an entrance will be discovered to this subterranean kingdom in the 21st century.[2]

Paget died of burns after falling asleep by the fire at her home Unlawater House, Newnham on Severn, England, at the age of 90.

Paget was also a vegetarian, and she explained her reasons as follows:

I strongly condemn the practice, and do not eat flesh- food myself. Two or three years ago I had occasion to read up certain papers about the transport of cattle and slaughter-houses, and as I read the irresistible conviction came upon me that I must choose between giving up the eating of animal food and my peace of mind. These considerations were not the only ones that moved me. I do not think that anyone has a right to indulge in tastes which oblige others to follow a brutalizing and degrading occupation. When you call a man a butcher, it signifies that he is fond of bloodshed. Butchers often become murderers, and I have known cases where butchers have actually been hired to murder persons whom they did not even know... I was almost fully persuaded that the vegetable diet was the most healthful in every way, and my experience has proved it to be so.[3]

Her published works, mostly memoirs based on her life and experiences, include:

Notes

  1. ^ Packard, p. 98
  2. ^ Paget Walburga, Colloquies with an unseen friend, William Rider & Son., London., 1909., p. 36
  3. ^ As quoted by Charles Walter Forward in Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England, 1898, p. 114.

References

Time Magazine. Oct. 21, 1929.