Jane de Wardener

Dominican Republic's Honorary Consul

Janet Lavinia Bellis Simon, consular official: born Southsea, Hampshire 23 July 1916; married 1939 Hugh de Wardener (one son; marriage dissolved 1947); died London 26 December 2002.

Jane de Wardener did not conform to most people's preconceptions of an Honorary Consul.

She attended a school run by Theosophists, never went to university, and her only training was a secretarial course in Westminster in the Thirties. It was charm, diligence, efficiency and experience that found her, after 30 years as private secretary to the ambassadors of the Dominican Republic, a one-woman diplomat in her own right, legalising shipping documents, issuing visas and tourist cards, helping unfortunate nationals with their problems, all from the dining room of her mansion-block flat in Hammersmith, west London.

She was born Janet Simon (though always known as Jane) in Southsea, Hampshire, in 1916, but after her father was killed in action in 1918 the family moved to Normandy, where they had been offered a free house in which to live; the neighbours, Madame and Monsieur Georges Braque, would pop in to borrow some coffee or a cup of sugar. She went to boarding school in Surrey, always staying a night or two in London with a family friend in Jermyn Street before the first day of term. He would take her to such places as the Alhambra Music Hall in Leicester Square; once at the Café Royal, when a woman at the next table got out her compact and started to touch up her makeup, Uncle Lennie was so outraged that he loudly called the waiter to bringing him a bowl of water, shaving foam and a razor.

Her first job was as secretary to David Tennant and Hermione Baddeley at the Gargoyle Club – but she didn't last long. Tennant fired her because she couldn't spell "omelette". She always claimed this was grossly unfair as she used a French spelling and Tennant insisted on "the English way". She married Hugh de Wardener, a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps, just before the Second World War. He was captured at the fall of Singapore in 1942, and reported missing presumed dead, only returning to England after the Japanese had surrendered. The marriage ended a few years later. She subsequently brought up her son, Simon, alone.

In 1951 came a move that changed her life. She went to the Embassy of the Dominican Republic in Eaton Square in London as secretary to the ambassador for three months, while her friend, the ambassador's regular secretary, went off to have a baby. Her friend never returned to work and de Wardener continued her association with the Dominican Republic, "managing" eight different ambassadors and becoming Honorary Consul, until 1997.

The embassy at 37 Eaton Square had been Ribbentrop's house before the war and the butler was so old and blind that many a visitor had left the front door before the bell had been answered. De Wardener found herself having to cope with duties she would never have imagined. Once she was called in the middle of the night to dress the body of the mother of the ambassador's wife, who insisted that no one should go near the body but Jane. She had to change the old lady's stocking three times before they got the colour right.

But her most challenging moment was when two of the three diplomats of the embassy, the First Secretary and the Air Attaché, shot each other one Saturday evening after a long afternoon playing cards. The Air Attaché survived but the First Secretary didn't. When the President of the Dominican Republic recalled the ambassador in a fury, de Wardener was left to sort out the muddle – and deal with the undertakers, who complained that it was very difficult to embalm the body of someone who had been shot so many times in the intestines.

She was decorated by the republic as "Caballero del Orden de Cristóbal Colón" – Gentleman of the Order of Christopher Columbus. Unfortunately, in the Dominican Republic, Christopher Columbus is regarded by many as so unlucky that his name cannot be mentioned. People say "the Great Discoverer", "the Navigator" or "the Admiral", and make the sign of the evil eye. De Wardener was so superstitious that she wasn't too unhappy when the medal itself never arrived.

It was after the embassy was closed in 1984 that de Wardener was made Honorary Consul and became the republic's representative in Britain for the following 13 years. After a day's hard work in the dining room of her flat, up 40 stone stairs – even into her eighties she would sometimes process up to a thousand letters a week – she would take her Pekinese for a walk on Brook Green, and return to have a stiff gin and tonic. At weekends she would go racing, play bridge, or visit the opera – but not anything too modern. If her son returned from seeing anything new she would say, "How was it? Was it awful?", with anxious sympathy.

Although a fervent royalist, she was also something of an eccentric. Before she learnt to drive, she would often shell the peas for dinner on the bus and at the age of 70, on a trip to Harrods, to buy fish for supper, she once discovered that, though wearing a coat, she had completely forgotten to put on a skirt. Even in her late seventies, she would stand up in buses for "poor old ladies" and used to say that she was saving Proust for her old age. "And before you ask," she would say, "that's not yet."

She was always a delight to talk to, generous and funny and on equal terms with everyone, young or old. Only a month ago I saw her at a funeral, frail and using a stick but gamely laughing with fellow mourners. At the age of 84 she finally plucked up courage to have her ears pierced – by a New Ager with a pony-tail in a shop in Wexford. Once she'd had it done she announced that there was "nothing to it" and advised two middle-aged ladies behind her to have it done immediately.

Virginia Ironside