Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

During the time of the ninth guru, Tegh Bahadur, forced conversions to Islam were gaining pace in Kashmir, and a group of high-caste Hindus fled to the Punjab and begged for protection. Tegh Bahadur heard their petition and agreed to act as their shield: he told them to send a letter to Emperor Aurangzeb offering unconditional conversion if he managed to convince the Sikhs’ ninth guru to embrace Islam. Deliberately, Tegh Bahadur focused Aurangzeb’s ire on himself.

  The full wrath of the emperor descended on Guru Tegh Bahadur in July 1675. He was arrested and tortured for more than three months before finally being brought before the emperor in Delhi in an iron cage. Still he refused to renounce his religion. He was mocked by the Mughal court and told to perform a miracle so that he might save his life and prove that his God was real. He refused, saying he had no need to do so: the truth was the truth and needed no trickery to prove itself.

  It came as no surprise then, when Aurangzeb sentenced the guru to death by public execution. Tegh Bahadur was beheaded before a large crowd of spectators in Chandni Chowk, Delhi’s busiest bazaar, on 11 November. The spectacle was supposed to serve as a warning to any who would defy the will of the emperor.

  Before his death Tegh Bahadur had appointed his young son Gobind as his successor. The boy vowed to continue his father’s defiance of the Mughals. He spent his adolescence training as a soldier and other young Sikhs followed his example. Very soon, Guru Gobind Singh had assembled an irregular army. He also decided that the time had come to give his followers greater discipline and structure.

  The Sikhs usually assembled at the guru’s headquarters at Anandpur Sahib11 for the annual harvest festival of Vaisakhi. In 1699, Guru Gobind Singh encouraged Sikhs from all over India to gather and hear him speak, and they came in their thousands. Emerging from a tent in the middle of the field, he addressed the crowds, asking whether any of them was willing to give up his life for his religion.

  After initial hesitation, one man stepped forward from the crowd. He bowed before the guru, who motioned towards the tent. The crowd did not know what to expect as the guru led the volunteer into the darkness, his hand tightening on his long sword. Only those closest heard the swish of metal through air and the sickeningly dull thud which followed. What had the guru done? Had he killed the man who only moments before was standing among them?

  An anxious murmur radiated through the crowd as the Sikhs tried to make sense of what they had just seen and heard. Their worst suspicions seemed to be confirmed by what happened next. The guru emerged from the tent with his blade dripping with blood. Again he asked if any man was willing to step forward to prove his devotion. To gasps a second man stepped forward. The guru led him into the tent, his sword swung and a thud rippled the thick silence which had now settled over the field. Three times more, the guru came out and three times more a young man offered his life for his religion while thousands held their breath outside.

  After what seemed like an age, Guru Gobind Singh emerged from the tent leading out ‘the five beloved ones’ or panj pyare. Far from being killed, they had been blessed by the guru for their unquestioning devotion and trust. The men had been bathed and dressed in fresh clothes symbolising their new lives as the first members of the Khalsa. After their initiation, the guru told each man to find five others who were as worthy. So it was that the Khalsa grew until eventually it became the bedrock of Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Kingdom.

  The baptism of Duleep Singh on 25 May 1886 did not take place before any crowds. Five Sikhs, representing the panj pyare of 1699, and a granthi, or scripture reader, were needed to re-initiate him into the faith. Thakur Singh Sandhawalia and two of the Maharajah’s menservants, Aroor Singh and Jawan Singh, stepped forward to play their part. Hogg, the British Resident, found a granthi and had him brought to his home. This still left the ceremony short of two Sikhs. So a couple of turbaned merchant seamen, whose ships happened to be anchored in the port of Aden, found themselves summoned to attend.

  The Maharajah, wearing the five symbols of the Khalsa initiate,12 knelt on the ground holding his hands together in supplication. The officiants blessed the amrit, a mixture of sugar and water, as they stirred it in an iron vessel with the tip of a double-edged dagger. They poured it into his cupped hands so that he could drink and sprinkled the remainder onto his head until the vessel was dry. Then they distributed karah prasad, a sanctified mixture of cooked wheat, sugar and butter among the small group. Only when it had been consumed in silence did Duleep Singh rise to his feet. He was a Sikh once more.

  Aden with its intense dry heat soon became too much for the Maharajah and he fell gravely ill. In late May 1886, two weeks after putting his family on a ship to England, Duleep was given permission to leave the British residency and depart for wherever he wished, as long as it was not India. Failure to obey would result in drastic action. Left with few options, on 3 June Duleep boarded a French mail steamer bound for Marseilles. Almost as soon as he reached France, Duleep began to plot again. At his side, according to the spies sent after him by the British, was a mysterious young English woman who had travelled to Paris at about the same time Duleep left Aden.

  Duleep and his pretty young companion were soon seen cavorting around the most exclusive parts of Paris. More worryingly, they were also seen meeting with known Irish Republicans. It was a nexus which alarmed the Foreign Office. A particularly successful British spy, Charles Tevis, was now sent to befriend the Maharajah. Duleep, who had never been the best judge of character, welcomed Tevis into his inner circle. Soon his every move and intention was being reported in detail back to both England and India.13

  The mysterious woman with the Maharajah was Ada Weatherill, the chambermaid from Cox’s Hotel who had swept all the dancing girls from Duleep Singh’s bed. The Maharajah and Marini now took the city by storm. They attended glamorous parties and socialised with political radicals. Paris played host to a nest of anti-British activity. As well as establishing links with Irish Fenians, Duleep Singh consorted with Russians, who promised to introduce him to the Tsar. Duleep started to dream of an international army that would scythe its way through British troops stationed in Punjab and put him back on his throne. He had now graduated from a major irritant to a full-blown traitor.

  Even before their return to England, Bamba understood immediately how bleak their futures might be. With no husband, no money and no home, the Maharani and her children had nowhere to go and nothing to live on. It was only thanks to Queen Victoria that they were ushered into one of London’s grandest hotels. A suite at Claridge’s was prepared, which would be their home while the Queen and her government discussed what should be done with them. Victoria felt a moral obligation towards Duleep’s children, particularly those whom she had sworn before God to protect, and it was decided that the family should be allowed to move into Duleep’s old London residence at 53 Holland Park, a place he had previously abandoned to his creditors. A handsome, white-fronted townhouse, it nestled among some of the most fashionable homes in the capital. Clean lines and a quintessentially English appearance provided an antithesis to the colourful eccentricity of Elveden. Yet not even the drastic change of scene could pull Sophia’s mother back from what had now become an abyss of depression. Her mood was made worse by the fact that 53 Holland Park had hardly any furniture in it, beyond a few beds. It fell to Victor, the eldest, to write to his father asking for help. The Maharajah’s venomous reply left the children in no doubt as to where they stood:

  I am delighted to see your handwriting but what a fool you are, my son, to write such a letter . . . how dare you tell me to write and ask for money said to belong to me at the Indian Office . . . You will soon be of age and will consequently be able to settle your debts. Let the Trustees sell the pictures or the jewels if they please, for I cannot be bothered afresh with matters connected with England. All that is over as a dream and I have awakened to a new life and the destruction of the British power. But if you wish to retain my affection for you, childie, do not mention again to me such m
atter, nor ask me to humble myself to my bitterest enemy. Look upon me as dead. But I will never be swerved from my purpose or I would not be the son of the Lion of the Punjab whose name I dare not disgrace . . .

  P.S. I could see you starve and even would take your life to put an end to your misery, but will never return to England. I am entirely changed since you last saw me.14

  As if such a homecoming were not traumatic enough for young Sophia, a couple of months later, the family was dealt another hammer blow. Duleep placed a startling notice in the personal columns of The Times: ‘I, the undersigned Maharajah Duleep Singh, having resigned all the property professed to me in England for the benefit of H. H. the Maharani Duleep Singh and my children, and hereby declare that I am no longer responsible for their debts or for articles ordered for them in my name.’15

  Overnight the Maharajah relinquished any responsibility for his family. Fatherless, abandoned and broke, the children became near urchins, living in a shell of a house, surrounded by packing crates, in a city where their misfortune was the source of much gossip. Moreover, their mother was seeking consolation elsewhere: Queen Victoria was informed that the Maharani ‘whether from despair or being neglected, had taken to drinking alcohol to an injurious extent’.16

  Sir Henry Ponsonby was dispatched to find out if rumours about Bamba were true. He found that there was nobody to supervise the servants, the younger children were unkempt, and the Maharani rarely left her bed. The situation was becoming desperate for the family and Ponsonby sent urgent letters to the India Office asking: ‘Who is looking after her and can the Queen take any steps to save her?’ Maharani Bamba was trying to save money, he wrote, ‘by the entire neglect of the health and education of her children’.17

  Letters began to be exchanged between the Palace and the Secretary of State, and the India Office swiftly settled a pension of just over £6,000 a year on the Maharani. It was also decided that the two eldest sons needed immediate order and stability. To that end, twenty-one-year-old Victor was enrolled at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, and Freddie, two years his junior, returned to Eton to finish his final year before going up to Cambridge.

  It seemed prudent to remove Victor from London as soon as possible. He was fast developing a gambling habit to rival that of his father’s; he had also run up huge debts during his time at Cambridge. By enrolling him at Sandhurst it was hoped that he would learn some much-needed self-discipline. After graduating, Victor was to embrace a military life under the benevolent yet firm watch of some dependable British officer, yet to be appointed. Ordinarily foreign princes were forbidden from entering the British Army, but Queen Victoria was willing to bend the rules for her godson. Victor’s future, at least, seemed settled.

  As for Queen Victoria’s other godchild, eleven-year-old Sophia had been plunged into chaos with her remaining family. Hearing disturbing reports that the princesses were running wild in the overgrown gardens of Holland Park, the Queen refused to stand by any longer. Arthur Craigie Oliphant was chosen to keep an eye on the family and make sure things were not getting out of control.

  Arthur Oliphant was a decent man with a strong sense of fair play, as well as extensive experience of the civil service in India. It was a peculiar irony that he was the son of the well-respected Colonel James Oliphant, former director and chairman of the East India Company. Oliphant senior, the figurehead of the very organisation that had swallowed great swathes of India, had been appointed by Queen Victoria to attend to the young Duleep Singh when he first arrived in England, and served the Maharajah as equerry and comptroller of the household at Elveden. Now, it was left to Oliphant’s son, Arthur, to save the Duleep Singh children from their wretched fall from grace.

  Not only was Arthur delighted to carry on the family association with the Duleep Singhs, he was also happy to act as an amateur spy. Every word the children uttered about their father was reported back to the government, and the contents of letters passing between Victor and Duleep in France were also conveyed. Oliphant’s assessment was damning: ‘From the letters I have had from the Maharajah, all of which you have seen and are at your disposal, and from all the circumstances which have come to my knowledge about him, I have long since arrived at the conclusion that he is a traitorous and dangerous lunatic.’18

  Lord Henniker, Queen Victoria’s lord-in-waiting, was formally named the children’s legal guardian, but it was Arthur Oliphant who took care of their day-to-day needs. He made sure there was food in the pantry, furniture in the rooms and linen in the cupboards at 53 Holland Park. In a letter sent to Sir Henry Ponsonby in July 1887, Arthur expressed relief that his father had not lived to see the predicament faced by a once illustrious family: ‘It is all a sad sad story, and I feel most thankful that my dear old Father was not spared to know him [the Maharajah] as he is.’19 Oliphant had little or no help from Bamba, on whom drink and depression were taking a toll. The Maharani had been particularly devastated by a terrible experience at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations that summer.

  Victoria marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession with a magnificent banquet. The guest list included fifty kings and princes from around the world and the following day the sixty-eight-year-old monarch participated in a procession that, in the words of the American writer Mark Twain, ‘stretched to the limit of sight in both directions’.20 Later, she attended a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey. Victoria made sure that the Maharani was prominent on the guest list. However, when Bamba arrived in the abbey to take her seat for the service she found it had already been occupied by someone who would not move, and she was forced to withdraw in embarrassment. Some of those who had watched her leave hissed at her as she passed. They called her the ‘thief’s wife’, and her face flushed hot with the humiliation.21 The Maharani Bamba would never venture out in public again.

  Moved by the wretched plight of his charges, Oliphant quickly decided that the place which offered Sophia, her siblings and their broken mother the greatest stability was not London but rather his own home in the coastal town of Folkestone in Kent. The house at 21 Clifton Street with its cheerful white façade was just moments from the sea. With large sash windows and broad bays letting the sunlight stream in, it seemed the perfect place for the family to regroup and convalesce in private. The first thing Arthur Oliphant did was try to recall the children’s nanny, Miss Date. After many years of service at Elveden and having returned to the children in London, she had quit the unhappy home at 53 Holland Park when the Maharani’s behaviour became too erratic to cope with. She had since taken a position looking after the children of the Crown Princess Gortschakoff in Russia. Arthur Oliphant begged the governess to come back to England to take care of the Duleep Singh children again. To his delight she agreed, but shortly before setting off on the trip home, Miss Date contracted a virus. She died before even setting foot on the boat back to England.

  Oliphant sheltered the children from the shocking news for many months, until he felt they were less fragile. The death of Miss Date dealt a terrible blow to his plans for the children’s rehabilitation, of which there was clear and urgent need. Neglect had left its mark. As Arthur wrote in one of his reports to the Palace, the princesses ‘did not know how to walk like young ladies’;22 ‘the poor Maharani was also going to give them lessons in calisthenics, and always going to take them to church, but these intentions, as indeed all others, were never carried out . . . [The] poor little things have had no play with other children for a long time . . . [They are] too shy to touch the piano . . . they have never had books.’23

  Queen Victoria began to show much more of an interest in her goddaughter. She sent Sophia gifts, including a miniature dinner service and cutlery fit for a toy banquet.24 On another occasion, she sent her a large doll with a fine bisque face and exquisitely painted features. It was more of a masterpiece than a plaything. ‘Little Sophie’, as she came to be known, had real blonde human hair glued to her china head, delicately blushing cheeks, rosebud lips
, bright blue eyes with distinct black pupils and long, curling lashes.25 Such was the detail that even the cuticles of the doll’s toenails were painted with a light pink blush and her lifelike porcelain ears were pierced by tiny jewelled earrings. But what made Little Sophie truly special to Princess Sophia were the accessories she came with. Queen Victoria sent the finest Parisian outfits for the doll: costumes for the opera, grand balls and glamorous garden parties; jewels, kid gloves, hats and tiny opera glasses, as well as a fine leather valise in which to keep them. The stitching on the doll’s clothes was perfect, right down to her bloomers and corsets, and in a splendid added detail which would have delighted any young girl of Sophia’s age, Little Sophie even had her own little china-faced doll to play with. Sophia would treasure the gift all her life.

  Queen Victoria sent the toys to amuse and distract her young goddaughter from her awful reality, but also to inculcate her with some refinement. As Arthur Oliphant reported, the older girls were becoming increasingly feral under the neglect of their mother, and were dragging Sophia down with them. Arthur enlisted the services of tutors and governesses to ‘civilise’ Sophia and her sisters. They included a drill sergeant from Thorncliff army camp, who taught the princesses how to walk with decorum by marching them up and down the house26 and a tutor who attempted to show the princesses how to curtsy and sit correctly.27 Finally there was a German governess engaged; the kindly young Lina Schaeffer would become a particular favourite with the children.

  It seemed as if some structure and semblance of normality was being brought into the turbulent lives of the young Duleep Singhs. But then, as so often in Sophia’s life, events threw her into chaos once more.

  Industrialisation, the very thing that was bringing Victorian England power and prosperity, was also killing it with dirt and disease. London’s population had surged from one million in 1800 to six million by the dawn of the twentieth century. The picture was similar in towns and cities up and down the country. Everywhere people crammed into substandard housing in order to feed the hunger for labour in the mines, mills and factories. Overflowing drains and cracked pipes leaking sewage were commonplace. Human excrement and the corpses of decaying animals were left to mingle with the mud of the unpaved, slimy streets. A public health catastrophe was inevitable. Disease favoured those living in the slums, but it had no regard for rank and social standing. Rivers running through quarters of poverty and affluence alike were sluggish with tonnes of raw sewage. As a result, contagious diseases like cholera, typhus, influenza and typhoid fever laid waste to towns and cities. As early as 1843 it was estimated that for every person who died of old age or violence, eight died of specific diseases caused by the lack of sanitation.28 Thanks to the new rail networks, the disease could spread to the very edges of England.