Katya & The Prince of Siam

After lunch on 6th January, they rehearsed My Friend Jarlet, which ‘went off very badly, as we all laughed the whole time, Siddhi making funny faces and talking rot at inopportune moments. I have really not laughed so much for years’. But the dress rehearsal went better, though the seamstress was convulsed with merriment when Chakrabongse assumed his womanly guise and make-up.

Next evening, ‘We had the acting. Oh, how nervous we all were while waiting to begin. However, as soon as I appeared and was greeted with applause it braced me up directly. In The Rivals, Vajiravudh was successful as Sir Anthony Absolute and, at the end, there was handclapping, cries of “bravo”, and I was presented with some flowers. After it was over we joined the guests for supper. I received many congratulations and was told my fainting was good, as well. Because I had a fine teacher!’, he records, and sent the flowers he was given to Kchessinskaya ‘who said she was deeply touched’.

On 9th January 1901, Vajiravudh and party left for London on the next stage of their tour, and the day after Chakrabongse writes: ‘I observe today as a day of rest, as I’m tired out after all the excitement for, while Vajiravudh was here, even when we went early to bed and not to a party, theatre or ballet, there was no end to what we had to talk about and we chatted half the night.’

 

 

Chakrabongse in female dress for the role of Marie in ‘My Friend Jarlet’.

 

The next afternoon, fully recovered, he went to The Sleeping Beauty

at the Marinsky. ‘K danced awfully well and was so pretty in the red dress’. The Grand-Duke was obviously not present for Chakrabongse notes happily that ‘she bowed to me many times’. But soon, alas, he received bad news from Bangkok. Phraya Suriya ‘has written to Father about my friendship with K to prove I need stricter supervision and less freedom and independence. I’m sorry. Father, and Mother especially, will be troubled in vain. Phraya Suriya seems out to ruin me’. Fortunately no more is heard of this, but a little later he noted: ‘K behaves in the most uncommon manner. Her complete silence continues. Really I suppose I should end our acquaintance as it’s become known in Bangkok. It’s extraordinary how people think that if one finds a woman charming and attractive, one is necessarily having an affair with her’. However, in view of the disclosures by the sanctimonious Phraya Suriya, it would not be surprising if it had not been tactfully hinted to the ballerina that the relationship should not be encouraged.

On 19th January, more tidings of a frivolous nature came about Crown Prince Vajiravudh in the form of ‘awful news from England’. The prince while apparently seeing off a certain Mabel Gilman at Euston Station, was persuaded to travel as far as Rugby with her, and Siddhi was dispatched to the booking-office to check that the train really did stop at Rugby and buy him a ticket if it did. Mabel and Vajiravudh awaiting his return, sat chatting in the carriage, when to their horror, the train moved off and, far from stopping at Rugby, turned out to be an express that carried them all the way to Liverpool! Chakrabongse comments, ‘in this manner Vajiravudh went to Liverpool under unfortunate circumstances, and the incident is most regrettable because, if it becomes known, our enemies will make a capital story out of it’. He obviously feared that, like his interest in Kchessinskaya, the news would be carried even further than Liverpool – all the way to Bangkok in fact!

There were several houses where he and Poum were able to drop in casually – at Prince Constantine of Oldenburg, Prince Yourievsky, son of Alexander II by his morganatic wife, Princess Yourievsky, and above all at the home of Madame Chrapovitzkaya, where they were received as dear friends. This lady, the wealthy widow of a Hussar officer, was, from her portrait, a most delightful woman, utterly feminine with that elusive Russian grace and charm that casts a spell like music. ‘In her apartment in the Machavaya Ulitsa, there were many rooms, fifteen servants and twenty-three birds.’ Here, often jaded from overwork and the sometimes stifling etiquette of court life, the two young men met a lively society of artisits, writers, actors and singers, and young people of their own age who gathered at her hospitable table to enjoy themselves.