Katya & The Prince of Siam

During their last meeting in Bangkok when he had attempted to dissuade his sister from leaving her husband, he had also informed her of his own marriage and that he was the proud father of an infant son, also named Ivan. Not unnaturally under the circumstances, Katya had been too distracted to learn more about her sister-in-law except that her name was Olga and that, but for the upheaval of the Revolution, she and Ivan would never have met.

This was because, like many of her fellow countrymen, Olga had fled before the Bolshevik menace, walking from Kazan to Ufa with her friend Marussia. At Ufa quite by chance they met one of Olga’s uncles, who generously gave them a red blanket, beneath which they shivered a little less than they would have done, jolting for one month across the Siberian Plain in a cattle truck to reach their destination, Omsk. This was where Admiral Kolchak had based the headquarters of one of the White anti-revolutionary forces in an heroic but doomed endeavour to weld their many factions together. Here Olga and Marussia joined a settlement of about sixty refugees, sheltered in a dilapidated abandoned mansion.

Also at Omsk was General Sir Alfred Knox, Chief of the British Military Mission to Siberia, who was more comfortably accommodated in a special train. Sir Alfred had not only spent many years in Russia as Military Attache at the British Embassy, but was evidently a man of feeling with great sympathy for the dispossessed refugees. He hired a cook and found a stove for them, though there was precious little food to prepare, and milk when available was sold by the frozen plateful. And on discovering that Olga slept on a table under the stairs, covered only by her trusty red blanket, he somehow tracked down a camp-bed and bedding, which made her staircase nook comparatively homely. Despite the discomfort and disadvantages of living in this makeshift fashion, after their meagre evening meal the refugees sang and played folk and gypsy music, though far from homes they might never see again, and facing a harsh future – if indeed they had one.

In addition to his great knowledge of Russia, Sir Alfred loved music and therefore delighted in Olga’s glorious voice and doubtless in her great good looks, for she was a tall statuesque beauty with magnificent eloquent eyes. Also to Omsk eventually came Katya’s brother, Ivan Desnitsky, sent by the Russian Minster in Peking under the purposely vague title of ‘Advisor’, to report on Kolchak and the situation at Omsk. Besides his official duties, this plain hitherto unromantic man fell in despairing undeclared love with the captivating Olga, who remained serenely unaware of the havoc she had wrought in his troubled heart. It was the observant Sir Alfred, by now unhappily convinced that the days of the Kolchak regime were numbered, who drew her attention to this fact.

Taking her aside one day, he advised her in no uncertain terms to get out of Omsk. ‘But where to?’ ‘To Peking: ‘Peking?’ ‘Yes, don’t you realise that the Advisor is madly in love with you? Marry him and leave – the sooner the better!’ So on 29th September, Olga became Madame Desnitsky and the bridal couple left the same evening for China. In this manner, though it could hardly be called a love-match on her part, Ivan acquired a beautiful charming wife, and Katya a sister-in-law.

No mention exists in a diary, letter or even a postcard, of Katya’s arrival in Peking, but one imagines she must have stayed awhile with her brother and Olga before moving to Shanghai and renting a small house for herself in Wankashaw Gardens.

As Katya found herself in a city teeming with refugees, some in a deplorable state of destitution, others resolutely taking almost any employment however grand their previous status might have been, she energetically set about joining the Russian Benevolent Society. And being an excellent organiser, with practical nursing experience, she was welcomed with open arms, and soon found her days well-filled with committee and welfare work. She reverted to her maiden name, calling herself Madame Desnitsky, but the contrast in this existence of earnest endeavour, living in a small house on a small income, with the opulent ease and aura of royalty surrounding her at Paruskavan, must have seemed very great.