Katya & The Prince of Siam

Pleasant though they were, a dispute between them and Phraya Buri, Siamese Minister in London, caused Chula’s removal in 1921 to the household of a vicar, this time in a country parish about 40 miles from London. Here there were twelve other boys, and all of them were obliged to attend church twice every Sunday.

His summer holidays were spent at the Legation in London with his uncle Prince Prajadhipok who, his nephew recounts, was ‘a fanatic shopper, hard at it from ten am until the shops closed, with only a short interval for luncheon!’ As a change from this strenuous programme, in the remarkably hot August of 1922, he welcomed a motor-tour with his uncle in Switzerland during which they attended a session of the recently formed League of Nations under the presidency of Dr Wellington Koo. The three Siamese delegates, however, could not have been particularly effective, as one was deaf, one had a bad throat and could hardly be heard when he spoke, and the third was incapacitated by chronic headache.

It was during this trip that Chula first heard that his Mother had remarried and was now Mrs. Clinton Stone. Though hurt at first at not having been informed of it sooner, he was overjoyed when, at the end of August, she paid her first visit to England to see him. Katya had previously been to stay with her new in-laws, ‘Dad and Mother’, and had not concealed from Chula in her letters that she disliked America and was ‘bored by the dreadful middle-class people’ she had had to mix with in her husband’s home town of Portland, Oregon. Doubtless in a wise wish to spend some time with her son before introducing him to his stepfather. Harry Stone did not join them until September when, according to Chula, ‘they had a lot of fun together’. And it may well have been Chula who nicknamed him ‘Hin’ which means ‘stone’ in Siamese. However that may be, Hin he became and remained thereafter to everyone.

 

 

Queen Rambai Barni and King Prajadhipok.

 

 

Katya and Mr Harry Clinton Stone.

 

It was in 1925 – three years later – before Chula saw his Mother again, by which time he had been two years at Harrow. On this occasion she took him, during the summer holidays, to the South of France and afterwards to stay with friends of hers in Rome. In 1926, Katya and Hin left China for good as the climate no longer suited him. They decided to settle in Paris, where Chula could spend his holidays, and where Katya had many relatives and friends who had fled there during the Revolution.

At first they rented a furnished flat at Neuilly and Katya was soon in touch with her Desnitsky relations. There were comings and goings from the Siamese Legation. The Rahm family kept open house in the old Russian style and Shura Rahm became great friends with Chula. Olga, widow of Katya’s brother Ivan, had remarried, her new husband being Paul Petithuegenin, a charming Frenchman, whom she deeply loved. Her two sons by Ivan Desnitsky, Ivan and Michael, often stayed with them, Ivan later becoming well-known in films as Ivan Desney.

 

 

Katya and Prince Chula in France.

 

Amid the babble and chatter of French, Russian and Siamese, Hin, who had given up his job on leaving China and now devoted himself completely to his wife, felt like a fish out of water. Like any man without definite occupation or great inner resources, especially one at the mercy of a demanding wife, he felt bound to assert himself in other ways, but his sententious pronouncements on world affairs and tedious repertoire of ‘droll’ stories fell equally flat and he felt isolated and alone.

Chula, having hitherto spent holidays at the Siamese Legation in London or with one or other of his royal uncles when they visited Europe, was very happy to ‘have a home to go to’, and sometimes Prince Abhas, one of his many cousins who was also a Harrovian, came with him and Katya enjoyed their company, and made them feel at home by cooking their favourite Siamese dishes for them. She was also always pleased to welcome Henry Maxwell (son of the distinguished Edwardian novelist W B Maxwell) a great friend of Chula’s both at Harrow, Cambridge and afterwards, who describes her on their first meeting in 1924 as ‘very animated, full of fun, amused by people and surroundings, excellent company – a glowing relaxed personality’. Later on, he found entertaining the dogmatic opinions she held on almost any subject, trivial or serious – describing how, when involved in argument, she would light yet another Russian cigarette, then, forcefully stubbing it out, half-smoked, demand: ‘True – yes?’ Thus challenged, it would be indeed a brave man or woman who would dare retort – ‘No!’