Katya & The Prince of Siam

In fact, he decided to tell neither his father nor the Emperor, reasoning rather speciously, that if they knew of his intended marriage and forbade it, he would not be able to disobey, whereas if they said nothing, for the good reason that they knew nothing, he felt free to do as he pleased. Similarly, Katya did not discuss her plans with other members of her family, neither the Borodins with whom she had lodged, nor her autocratic Uncle Vanya, her mother’s brother, who, after the latter’s death, had assumed a moral if not a financial responsibility for the young girl. From all accounts he had disapproved of his late sister’s extravagant life-style and, latterly, his niece’s decision to become a nurse. He was therefore hardly a sympathetic uncle who might have given her sound counsel on this decision.

Secrecy therefore was of prime importance and, a wedding in St Petersburg being out of the question, it was arranged that it should take place in Constantinople. This also meant concealment of his plans from the over-generous Sultan Abdul Hamid, who might otherwise have wished to organise nuptials of embarrassingly oriental splendour.

Chakrabongse’s plans were apparently so well-laid and carried out with such military precision and attention to the smallest detail that no hint of them disturbed the orderly progression of his ceremonial passing-out of the Military Academy and his leave-taking of brother officers in his regiment. He duly paid his final visit to the Emperor, who created him honorary colonel in the Hussars, invested him with the Order of St Andrew – the equivalent of the English Garter – and bade him a fatherly farewell, quite unaware that his exemplary protégé was returning home with a young Russian bride.

Poum, who should have been returning to Siam with Chakrabongse, had decided not to leave Russia after all for, due not only to his close association with Chakrabongse but to his own marked abilities, opportunities were open to him in Russia that his humble birth precluded him from in Siam. He therefore applied to Chulalongkorn for leave to remain, but this was refused and he was ordered to return. Secure in his position and certain of further promotion in the Hussars in which he was extremely popular, he ignored the king’s command, greatly angering the Monarch, who thenceforth regarded him as a ‘deserter’. After some time he decided to be baptised into the Orthodox church, taking the name of Nicholas, the Emperor himself standing godfather, and thus he became a naturalised Russian. But although nothing was ever said about it openly, there had of course been another reason for his determination to stay on – his love for Madame Chrapovitzkaya. Although she was significantly older than him, this was an enduring love which ended only with her death, far from Russia, in years to come.

At the beginning of January 1906, Katya and Chakrabongse were seen off on the first stage of their journey to Constantinople by Ivan and Poum. They were accompanied by Chakrabongse’s aide-de-camp, Suriyavut, and his bride, Elena Nicholaievna, the daughter of the head of the St Petersburg Academy, the latter acting as chaperone for Katya until she should be married a few days later.

 

 

Elena Nicholaievna, who married Prince Chakrabongse’s aide-de-camp, Phraya Suriyavut Yotaharn.

 

For the lovers themselves it must have been an occasion fraught with conflicting emotions. Ivan, as his letters to Katya and Chakrabongse prove, was still deeply troubled as to whether he had acted rightly in entrusting his sister to her princely suitor and to life in a remote and unknown land. Poum, although he stood firmly by his decision to remain in Russia, would certainly have felt the parting from his close companion and friend for the last ten eventful years, especially since Chakrabongse would be returning to their homeland without him. And Chakrabongse, even though he was successfully carrying off the girl he loved so passionately, must surely have feared that his elaborate deception of all the key figures in his life would inevitably end in discovery hard to face and recriminations hard to bear.

For Katya, combined with the tremulous excitement of the elopement, must have been a fear of an unknown and unimaginable life opening in front of her. It is clear from her later letters to her brother and Madame Chrapovitzkaya that she had not realised how homesick she would be, not only far from her country, her friends and relatives, but also the comfort of her religion.