Katya & The Prince of Siam

‘In Suez, Chakrabongse’s adjutant, his wife and their two children will rejoin us. Our ship will be huge and therefore most comfortable. Is it really me who now stays in palatial hotels without any concern about luggage and so on, when I used to travel third or fourth class with lots of trunks and parcels and a cat?

‘Chakrabongse is very worried that I shall not stand the climate, but I feel heat is more bearable for me than cold – but there is no need to rack one’s brains beforehand, we’ll see what happens when summer comes.

‘I tease Lek – this is my husband’s Siamese nickname and means “little” – saying I shall lie in a cold bath all day and sleep at night under those famous electric fans! Anyway when we get to Bangkok, I’m going to play the piano, study Siamese and English, and go for drives as we’ll have a car.’

 

 

The Suez Canal.

 

Nevertheless Katya was unable to maintain this more cheerful note for long, making one of her characteristic, almost panic-stricken, modulations into a sombre minor key:

 

‘What will become of all this later? It terrifies me. Everything happened too quickly. My poor one, how much you had to endure in January. Thank you for everything, dear Vanya. But if all ends unhappily, I’ll take the blame because it was I, who undertook the whole thing. Let God be with you. Bless me too. Remember, from now on you’ll have a sister in Siam. Kissing you tenderly.’

 

On 19th February, Katya and Lek left Cairo and sailed for Siam via Port Said and Suez, where they were reunited as arranged with Chakrabongse’s adjutant, his Russian wife, Elena Nicholaievna, their two children and two nursemaids. In a letter to Ivan, Chakrabongse writes: ‘The trip was wonderful. The weather was good, and the sea was calm, so Katya didn’t suffer and was in good health all the time.’

With each passing day as Russia and the West receded still further, and the sounds and scents of the Far East took over, it sometimes seemed to Chakrabongse that he had never been away, for they reminded him only too sharply of the elaborate ceremonial, the inflexible protocol and respectful obedience to the demands of his royal position that awaited him in Siam. To him it was a way of life familiar from childhood, but how would it seem to the young woman at his side whom his ardent love had torn away from her native land and brought many thousands of miles, not, as he would have wished, to a warm welcome, but to face shock, dismay and bitter anger from the King and Queen and the Royal family?

Far away in St Petersburg, his passion for her had blinded him, but now, trying to visualise his eagerly awaited return as an eligible prince of the blood, not alone as expected, but accompanied by an alien wife of a different race and creed, he unwillingly concluded that news of his marriage must be ‘broken gently’. Therefore, after much torturous soul-searching, he decided to leave Katya with Elena Nicholaievna in Singapore and proceed to Bangkok without her. As he wrote to Ivan: ‘It would have been absolutely impossible if we both came to Bangkok. A lot of ceremonies will be held especially for me, and Katya in this case would not be comfortable and her situation would be very complicated. So even though I want us to be always together and although my heart was broken at leaving her, I believe she had to stay behind for our common good.’