The Jeanne d’Arc of Lebanon’s splendid cultural heritage, Lady Yvonne Cochrane Sursock, has died aged 98 from injuries suffered during last month’s blast at Beirut’s port, which ravaged the city and killed more than 180 people.
Her death came one day before Beirut marked the 100th anniversary of its creation, when France carved Lebanon out of Syria.
The only child of a wealthy Greek Orthodox mercantile family, Lady Cochrane was raised in the elegantly restored 19th-century palace where she still lived with her Irish-born son Roderick and his family.
She was hurled from the terrace where she was taking tea with friends at Sursock Palace when shock waves from the August 4th explosion shattered windows and tore a heavy iron door from its hinges. She was taken to a hospital in the mountains and, when discharged, to a family cottage to recover, but she lost this battle.
Ottoman empire
Having survived the collapse of the Ottoman empire, two world wars and two Lebanese civil conflicts, the palace she loved sustained major damage. The roof was holed, second-floor walls and ceilings were cracked and the valuable collection of Ottoman artefacts was damaged.
Having spent 20 years restoring the house after the 1975-1990 civil war, Lady Cochrane insisted it would be rebuilt. Roderick Sursock said he intended to reconstruct the palace once Lebanon was stable and the current corrupt political class was removed.
Married in 1946 to Sir Desmond Cochrane, Ireland's honorary consul in Beirut, Lady Cochrane not only became the grande dame of Beirut's 1960s golden days but also Lebanon's caretaker. She fought throughout her long life to preserve Lebanon's villages and countryside as well as its splendid Ottoman and French mandate-era heritage.
Decades of warfare
Despite decades of warfare and instability, Beirut still hosts Italianate houses with graceful Arab arches, first and second storeys connected with curving flights of stairs, and furnished with fine antiques.
Lady Cochrane managed Beirut's Nicolas Sursock Museum, the villa of her uncle, from 1960-1966 and co-founded with architect Assem Salam and Camille Aboussouan the Association for the Protection of Natural Sites and Ancient Homes in Lebanon and served as its president from 1960-2002.
After Lebanon’s latest civil war she castigated successive governments for tearing down more cultural heritage than they replaced. She labelled the reconstruction effort an “archaeological massacre”.
“Beirut, once a joy of the Mediterranean, has been turned into a junkyard,” she remarked when referring to the decade after that war. But, always an optimist, she took the view that Beirut would once again become the “garden of the Middle East”.
