Violet Mary Coates Odds and Ends
Memoirs of John Percival Waterfield
Philip was married to Violet Mary Coates, daughter of an Indian Army officer, I believe. At any rate my parents did not find her congenial. On their death their estate passed to their two, unmarried then, daughters, Phoebe, who was at one time an actress, and Rosemary. Lee and I used to visit Phoebe, who never married, in her small and hideously untidy house, with layers of old newspapers littering the rooms, which she built in the grounds of her parents’ Bishops’ Hull house. She called it the Eagle’s House but I cannot remember why. Perhaps it was because of the eagle engraved on my grandfather’s book mark ‘ex libris’ which we took to be a sort of un-entitled family crest. My father gave me a gold signet ring which I have always worn, with the same eagle engraved on it by Hemings of Conduit Street, whom my parents, and we also in a limited manner, used for all jewellery and silver. My gold pocket watch, also from my parents, was made by Hemings. We got on well with Phoebe, but she sadly died comparatively young. She left everything to her sister Rosemary, who was Polly’s godmother. Rosemary’s American husband, whom she married late in life, Fred Delaney, died before her. We went to his funeral in the Abbey where Fred and Rosemary had done good works guiding visitors, but Rosemary moved to Suffolk and we did not see her again before she died in the eighties. We were in America, I think, certainly not in England, at the time of her funeral."
"Philip had two daughters only, both now dead. The younger, Rosemary, was Polly’s godmother. She married, late in life, a gentle American called Fred Delaney, and they both did good works escorting visitors at Westminster Abbey. Phoebe, her elder sister, was an actress; she never married. Lee and I became quite close to Phoebe, who lived next door to her father’s last house, Bishop’s Hull House, outside Taunton. We went to Phoebe’s funeral at Bishop’s Hull, and, later, to Rosemary’s husband’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. Mary reminds me that she and I also went to Rosemary’s funeral in the Abbey’s Henry VII chapel. She had retired to Suffolk, as I remember, before her death. Philip and his family lived at Bucknell House, a substantial country house, west of Honiton, for most of their married lives. We used to make a ritual call there when my parents drove us, in a large Armstrong Siddeley, for our summer holidays at Dawlish Warren. My father’s cousin Dick wrote that Philip’s wife, of an Army family, was the rudest woman he ever met. I remember that we did not like her!"
Later Day Saints Record
Philip Joy <Waterfield>
Male
Birth: 12 JAN 1872 India Office Ecclesiastical Returns-Bengal Presidency,
Misc, India
Father: William Waterfield
Mother: Louisa Bentall
Source Information:
Batch No Dates Source Call
No Type
C750229 1872 0499047
Film
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