Death of a Dame

Nearly all 560 subjects of the medieval fiefdom of Sark gathered last week around a gnarled oak tree in their parish churchyard to mourn Dame Sibyl Mary Collings Beaumont Hathaway, 21st Seigneur of Sark. She had died suddenly of a heart attack in her palatial home on Sark at the age of 90. During almost five decades of rule over the minuscule (4 1/2 sq. mi.) Channel island, Dame Sibyl had labored to keep the 20th century at bay in what she pridefully called "the last bastion of feudalism in the modern world."

Chicken Tax. Holder of a hereditary fief granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1565, she kept her latter-day serfs in most agreeable thrall. "What was good enough for William the Conqueror is good enough for us!" was the grande dame's battle cry against the incursions of modernity. As a result of her efforts, the farmers and fisherman of Sark pay not a farthing of British income taxes; neither are they plagued by automobiles, transistor radios and unemployment.

The tribute Dame Sibyl exacted from the islanders included the traditional tenth sheaf of all cereals harvested and a live chicken each year as tax on every kitchen chimney on her tenants' houses. Even so, she observed with her usual wryness, "they only give me the thinnest and oldest." Other seigneurial privileges included the right to keep bitches, forbidden to the Sarkese for fear that a proliferation of dogs might drive sheep over the island's 300-ft. cliffs into the English Channel. That noble prerogative caused one of the rare Sark rebellions against Dame Sibyl's authority. The islanders overruled her prohibition, and bitches are now allowed on Sark--provided they are spayed, of course.

Maintaining the islet of anachronisms was no joke for Dame Sibyl. Nor was it merely a commercial venture designed to bring 50,000 tourists to Sark each year to savor medieval folkways and buy tax-free cigarettes and liquor.

"Sark is not a sort of feudal pageant to amuse visitors," she wrote in her autobiography Dame of Sark. "It is a real live community of people who are happy to have retained their ancient form of government, and possess a subtle dignity of their own, born of many years of independence, honorable work and satisfied old age." Dame Sibyl often complained that it was not easy to maintain the unchanging character of Sark. For example telephones, electricity, and tractors have been allowed in. She noted that "it is not easy now to get horses suitable for drawing our carriages. Some of the carriages themselves are 100 years old and it is hard to get wheel replacements and so on for them."

When the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands in World War II, Dame Sibyl heroically remained on Sark, to keep up the islanders' morale and "to look after them," as she put it. That included maintaining a haughty refusal to listen to any orders from the Germans, who helplessly fell under her commanding charm.

Later, recalling the Occupation, she said: "We experienced near starvation.

Although I never doubted we would win, it was the complete isolation--apart from the occasional Red Cross messages and BBC broadcasts--that was so depressing." Her eldest son died in the war, and she survived two husbands. In recent years, the crippled old lady maneuvered her electric cart along Sark's unpaved roads, greeting every islander by name. "So long as my life may be extended," she said, "I shall strive to maintain this little feudal paradise, with all its traditions, laws and customs, as an oasis of quiet and rest."

Feudal Utopia. Last week Dame Sibyl's grandson and heir, Michael Beaumont, 46, took leave from his job as a design engineer of guided missiles at the British Aircraft Corp. and prepared to move into the Seigneurie, the manor house of Sark. The 22nd Seigneur of Sark showed every sign of preserving his grandmother's feudal Utopia. "We want to keep the island quiet and peaceful," he asserted. "I believe the life of a seigneur to be infinitely more rewarding than making weapons of war."

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