THE 40-year love affair between comedienne Beatrice Lillie and her
devoted companion was sealed yesterday when they were buried together at
a churchyard in Oxfordshire.
About 120 friends, relatives and admirers, including actress Amanda
Barrie, filled the small church of St Margaret's in Harpsden, near
Henley-on-Thames, for the double funeral of Miss Lillie and Mr John
Huck.
Miss Lillie, a notorious prankster who once sent Noel Coward a live
alligator, died 10 days ago, aged 94, holding Mr Huck's hand. The
66-year-old former US marine, who described their years together as the
''perfect love affair'', died the next day of a heart attack.
The Rev. John Pinner, leading the funeral requiem, said: ''John was
devoted to Bea for over 40 years. It was not an easy relationship, but
they were deeply loving and loyal to each other. It was tragic John
should have died so soon after Bea, but it is fitting and right that
they should be interred together.''
Miss Lillie, a comic genius who spent 44 years on the stage appearing
in more than 50 West End and Broadway shows, suffered much tragedy in
her life. She was entitled to call herself Lady Peel -- her husband of
14 years, Sir Robert Peel, died in 1934. Her only son died in 1942.
She met Mr Huck when he was required to lift her during one of her
productions. They became inseparable.
Miss Lillie suffered a stroke in the mid-1970s and spent her last
years paralysed and bedridden. Her last wish with Mr Huck was that her
30-roomed home, Peel Fold in Henley, should be turned into an
international college of comedy and musical theatre.
In a tribute after her death, Sir John Gielgud wrote: ''She was by far
the greatest comic comedienne of her generation, surpassing in
originality even her talented contemporaries Cecily Courtneidge and
Gracie Fields, subtler than any in her timing and more inspired in her
sense of the ridiculous.''
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