Katya & The Prince of Siam

Therefore the nervous chatter, forced laughter, sudden silences and tension common to the most ordinary departures, were intensified, mingling with shamefaced relief as the engine got up steam, doors slammed, handkerchiefs were wept into and finally waved as the great train drew slowly out and on its way. En route for Odessa on the Black Sea, it would stop briefly at Kiev and one can imagine Katya’s feelings as the train pulled out again and, craning from the carriage window to catch a fleeting glimpse of the city she had left only two short years before and might never see again, she pondered the extraordinary twist of fate that had presented her with a destiny so strange and so totally unforeseen.

Their marriage, which was duly celebrated in Constantinople, was not arranged without difficulty as Chakrabongse explained in a letter to Ivan dated only 1906.

 

‘The marriage took place in the Greek church of St Trinity on Pera Street in the usual way without any special pomp. I went beforehand to see the priest and had a very long talk with him. It was extremely difficult to arrange everything in strict secrecy. Secrecy was necessary as, if my parents heard about it, there would be a huge scandal, as it is unheard of for a Siamese Prince, the son of the only Buddhist monarch in the world, to marry in a Christian church.

I therefore impressed on the priest that he must never talk to anyone about it and that if anyone should ever attempt to obtain information on the subject, he should not disclose any relevant documents or information from the church register, and in the last resort he must say that no such marriage ever took place. This secrecy is most important to me and I would not be able to sleep at night without having made these arrangements, for, as you know, Ivan Ivanovitch, intelligence gathering in the Orient is very well developed!

Now I feel confident that even the most ingenious and clever sleuth would be unable to extract a word about the marriage of the Prince from Siam in Constantinople!’

 

Here Chakrabongse displays not only remarkable confidence in his own powers of persuasion, but also in the discretion of a priest, who probably suspected that the bridegroom’s conversion to Christianity was merely a matter of temporary expediency. Meanwhile, in a more informal letter to Ivan, Katya wrote from the Hotel Savoy in Cairo on 12th February:

 

‘Cairo is a dream. The city is beautiful, the weather is fine, it is not too hot but warm and agreeable’

 

much to be preferred in her opinion to Constantinople which she considered

 

‘dirty and dull.’

 

She continued,

 

‘To-morrow we will go up the Nile to the North for five days and, after one night in Cairo, we will leave for Port Said and then on to Siam. I am frightened and cannot understand why. The worst thing for me is that there is no Orthodox Church in Bangkok. Think of it! It is terrible to lose it forever!

‘This morning I went on my own to a Greek church service which began at eight a.m., but it was rather different from ours and the singing was terrible.’