Katya & The Prince of Siam

He had risen to the rank of Colonel in the Emperor’s Own Hussars and his popularity with the men was such that on the outbreak of Revolution, though his ties with the Imperial Family were known, the Regimental Soviet voted to continue serving under him. However, probably foreseeing how wretched the plight of officers would become when, all discipline eroded, they would be powerless to command, he wisely decided on flight and took Madame Chrapovitzkaya with him. He was able to do so as, though for many years a naturalised Russian, he had retained his Siamese passport, and with it he engineered their escape. They reached eventually the South of France where, in harsh poverty but in safety, Poum worked in a bank in Monte Carlo to support them both until she died.

Chula, with his strong sense of responsibility, cast about as to how he could enable Poum to live free from financial insecurity without injuring his pride and came up with the idea of appointing him Katya’s secretary. The post was diffidently accepted and, on assuming his duties, Poum took up residence in a modest hotel within easy walking distance of the Rue Parmentier. ‘With him I can speak my own language’, Katya writes more than once, and it would hardly seem far-fetched to infer she meant more by this than that they could merely speak Russian together, as this she could do with her relatives and many of her compatriots now in Paris.

 

Poum on a brief trip to Thailand in 1937.

 

The fact that Poum was Siamese yet spoke her language fluently and had lived in her country among her people as Chakrabongse had done, revived the already existing bond between them so that, as the months went by, the past they had shared together gradually seemed to emerge into the foreground and become part of the living present.

At the same time, his presence in Paris – as unforeseen and unlikely as Chavalit’s journey there to die – must also have rekindled in Katya a painful sense of exile, not only from Russia but Siam, where her life had reached its high point only to be much reduced since.

Poum, who, as no-one else, was aware of the full secret story of her runaway marriage, reminded her of her love for Chakrabongse in all its freshness and her love for his exotic country in all its strangeness where, despite so many obstacles, she had spent her most truly happy years. For Poum, too, she was the only being he now knew, who could remember Madame Chrapovitskaya and could step back with him into that lamp-lit drawing room in the Machavaya Ulitsa in St Petersburg, where the 23 birds sang and twittered and where they could gather around them in memory the light-hearted young people drawn there by the spell of her endearing personality.

XV

Life in Cornwall

 

Prince Chula and Lisba on their wedding day, 30 September 1938.

 

The Munich Agreement, engineered by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, in September 1938, was judged by some in Cabinet and Parliament, and by many ordinary people in Britain, to be not only shameful but ineffective: merely a temporary halt on the march of events towards inevitable war. On the other hand, there were those who welcomed it with joy and thanksgiving and believed Chamberlain when he hailed it as ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace in our time’.

In the year-long respite that followed, a minor effect of the still existing uneasiness – a feeling of waiting for catastrophe – was the number of couples who hurried to advance the date of their marriage. This was the case with Lisba and Chula, whose wedding took place on 30th September instead of October, as they had at first intended.

Their attachment had survived much guarded or straight-forward disapproval on both sides. Chula’s uncle, King Prajadhipok, had more than once begged him not to take example from his father and marry a ‘farang’ and such a union was automatically frowned on by all his royal relatives, while the few among his many English friends to whom he made known his matrimonial intentions, were dubious or, at the best, cautiously lukewarm.

 

An invitation to Prince Chula and Lisba’s wedding luncheon.