Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  Freddie was spending more time and energy than ever living the life of a true-blue English gentleman. He was a fervent supporter of the Primrose League, a political organisation inspired by the beliefs and values of Benjamin Disraeli, the former Conservative prime minister. The Primrose credo was a total anathema to Sophia and her sisters; members swore: ‘I declare on my honour and faith that I will devote my best ability to the maintenance of religion, of the estates of the realm, and of the imperial ascendancy of the British Empire; and that, consistently with my allegiance to the sovereign of these realms, I will promote with discretion and fidelity the above objects, being those of the Primrose League.’26 Freddie seemed untroubled by the polarity of his beliefs and those of the rest of the family. He was a conservative of both the big and small ‘c’, unquestioningly loyal to the throne and to the idea that Britain reigned supreme. There were few royalists as ardent as Sophia’s brother; he even procured a valuable portrait of Oliver Cromwell just so that he could hang it upside down in the toilet of his Suffolk home.27

  Freddie never concerned himself with issues of his Indian heritage, lost empires or sub-continental politics. In letters he wrote to Sophia he made no secret of his intense dislike of foreign places and the ‘simply dreadful people’ who lived in them. Freddie preferred to live in places anchored firmly in British history and filled his days collecting Jacobean art and studying the coats of arms of East Anglian aristocracy. Impeccably polite, chivalrous and refined, the once obstinate child was now the spirit of kindness and generosity loved by all. To the locals, the ‘black prince’ was a quintessentially English country squire with confusing dark skin and a cumbersome foreign name. The bachelor lived his life in a bubble, where modernity was the enemy and change was to be avoided at all costs. At times his olde-worlde quirkiness tipped into downright eccentricity. Prince Frederick was lost and perplexed by the modern age. Electricity was just beginning to make its way into British homes, and Freddie hated it. It was a new-fangled intrusion he would eschew for most of his life, even though all around him lit up gratefully. He was also in the dark about the extent of Sophia’s malaise.

  Freddie had always been deeply fond of his sister. They shared an even temper and stoic quality that made them dependable. Freddie appreciated beauty and since her coming out Sophia had been praised for her looks and poise. He had loved to chaperone her around the aristocratic balls of England. Lately, however, Sophia seemed unwilling to make the effort: her appetite for society had dwindled, as had her appetite for food. Reflecting her change of outlook, Sophia’s shopping bill at the fashion houses of Paris went into steep decline as she accepted fewer invitations. Freddie had no idea how to make his sister happy again.

  The simple truth that escaped them all was that Sophia needed to be needed. Since the time of Eddie, Sophia had taken responsibility for somebody more vulnerable than herself. She was only able to pull herself from the whirlpool of grief after the deaths of her brother, mother and father by turning her attention to her sisters, who, despite being older than Sophia, seemed ill equipped to deal with the world. Now that they had left her behind to pursue their own happinesses she did not know what to do. Sophia was uncomfortable and awkward again. Recent Indian experiences had soured her view of England. Victor’s tribulations mirrored her father’s problems which had blighted their childhood. Everywhere she looked, she saw greyness.

  It was a desperate call for help that brought Sophia back from the brink. In the autumn of 1906, quite from nowhere, Bamba begged her little sister to come immediately to Lahore. Somebody, she said, was trying to kill her.

  11

  The Princess and the Madman

  As early-rising children put finishing touches to Guy Fawkes effigies, ready to drag them through London for pennies, Sophia scrambled to dress within the cold, lamplit bedroom at Faraday House. She was uncharacteristically tetchy, filled with dread for her sister.

  The urgency of Bamba’s letter1 left Sophia very little time to prepare: her passage, booked for 5 November 1906, could not come soon enough. The maid had woken her while it was still dark; Sophia had rarely seen that time of the morning and was feeling harried. First she had to take a train from London to Southampton, leaving hardly any margin to catch the ocean liner leaving for India. All in all, the journey to Lahore would take about two months. Stressed and tired, she marshalled her hastily collected belongings. The task was made no easier by the numerous noisy dogs, excited by the change in their usual regime. Hating the upheaval, Sophia barely managed to catch the 9.25 train to Southampton docks. As she noted in her diary, she was feeling hungry and unhappy, ‘having had not one mouthful of breakfast’.2

  The train from London was busy and uncomfortable but Sophia struggled more than most thanks to a puppy just weeks old wriggling constantly in her lap. The shivering little creature was so new to the world it did not yet have a name. Well aware that the runt was ill-suited for the long voyage ahead, Sophia took it with her anyway, considering it too feeble to leave behind. Newspaper articles had written many times about her ability to look after sick and fragile animals, as if she possessed mystical abilities. Vanity had convinced her that what they wrote was true, even though the puppy was already showing signs of incontinence.

  The whimpering bundle was not the only four-legged companion being jostled along with the luggage that day. Clinging to her side, like a tiny, twitching shadow, was the princess’s beloved black Pomeranian, Joe. Sophia’s last long trip had taught her that she could not live without her favourite dog. Since she had no idea how much time it would take to convince Bamba to come back to England, the princess had decided Joe must this time accompany her. The dog failed to appreciate his mistress’s devotion and snapped and yapped. Sophia instructed her valet to dose him with magnesium in order to keep him calm, while her own nerves remained on edge.3

  Stormy weather delayed the first crossing and Sophia’s thoughts were just as unsettled. She and Catherine had been worried about Bamba for some time but they had never guessed that she was in fear for her life. Until the strange letter from her sister arrived at Faraday House, they just assumed that India was making her a bit out of sorts. As Sophia thought back on recent months, she realised that there had been many worrying signs. Once the most punctilious of correspondents, Bamba had for the past few months been missing the post on too many occasions. The sisters always had a strict code of conduct when it came to letter-writing: scattered in different corners of the world they relied on regular correspondence for reassurance. It was normal for the sisters to write to each other twice weekly and failure to do so was met with overwhelming disapproval. Traditionally, Bamba had been more unforgiving than anyone if the post yielded unsatisfactory news from her sisters. Nevertheless, her own correspondence had been erratic, bland and cagey for some months. When she wrote, she gave little away and sometimes her handwriting was shaky, verging on the illegible. The scrawl suggested the letter had been dashed off absentmindedly and in haste.

  When, in the middle of 1905, their teasing yielded no improvement in Bamba’s demeanour, Catherine and Sophia grew concerned. She had been alone in India for almost a year, and Sophia decided it was now time to summon her back to England. When Bamba failed to respond and Sophia turned to nagging, she was met with a tidal wave of scorn: ‘There were these pages of wrath from you at my remaining here rather more than I anticipated, but still I continue to survive it.’4 . . . ‘Many thanks for your letter but why always so much about my staying here?’5 . . . ‘I am once more in this paradise while you both are suffocating in Hampton Court – Why when a paradise is so easily obtainable, sit on earth! . . . Why do you particularly want to know whether I am coming back next year, and you know I never make such promises.’6 ‘Don’t be surprised if I stay here another year! . . . How I pity you in Faraday.’7

  Not even an act of God could persuade Bamba to return to England. On 5 April 1905, the deadliest earthquake in modern Indian history left almost 20,000 people dead in the n
orth of the country. The epicentre of the quake was located in Kangra, a district nestled in the Western Himalayas, bordering Punjab. Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, the earthquake caused widespread devastation spreading through Dharamshala (more recently the mountain home of the Dalai Lama in exile) all the way down to the major Punjabi cities of Lahore, Jalandhar and Amritsar. Such was the force of the quake that even Calcutta, almost 250 miles away, felt the tremors.

  Though the newspapers in England were filled with alarming stories of damage and loss of life, Bamba described the experience with infuriating flippancy, writing to Sophia a day after the quake: ‘My experiences were only minor but it was a tragedy in the city and in other places. I was just having, or rather had just had my choti huzari 8 when it began and I thought it[s] only an earthquake I will stay in bed but it began getting worse. In a few seconds the whole room seemed to rock and the ceiling seemed to be cracking so I left my bed and went out into the garden . . . The crows were making such a noise, I certainly will tell you the rest later. There was a Purdah party yesterday at the Shalimar and it was very lovely.’9 When Sophia questioned the flippant tone of her sister’s account, Bamba again responded tersely: ‘Did you really think the earthquake would frighten me back!!!’10

  By late October 1906, however, the swagger had gone from Bamba’s letters. Something or someone had definitely frightened her. She had been violently ill, poisoned, she believed. Her sister’s terror was real enough to persuade Sophia to drop everything and rush to her side.

  The SS Barbarossa was designed to soothe and pamper even the tautest of travellers. The upper decks stretched out like vast wooden boulevards and the cabins which led off them were decorated in the height of fashion. Cream and gold panelled ceilings were filled with frescos and in the capacious dining room, heavy, polished walnut and mahogany furniture gleamed. The smoking room, in which Sophia would spend a significant amount of time, had leather armchairs and leather-covered walls and smelt darkly of mink oil and tobacco. Those seeking privacy could find it in the numerous and discreet booths that had been created for games of cards and sensitive conversations.

  Such luxury was only enjoyed by a small proportion of the ship’s passengers. In total, the ship could accommodate around 2,500 passengers, though most of these travelled as steerage,11 a population all but invisible to Sophia and her fellow passengers. Some evenings, the atmosphere on the upper decks could feel hedonistic and uninhibited: Sophia attended a fancy-dress party for the whole of first class, though did not go in costume herself: ‘Mrs Howlett was a milk maid, quite good, she had a little stool and a toy cow which was splendid. Miss Reid as a Greek statue was excellent, quite the best as she had dressed herself in sheets. But only got 2nd prize. There was a lady in Frangi Chrysanthemums who was very good . . . an excellent Chinaman and one man as an Arab woman was very good.’12

  Though Sophia adored the ambience of the Barbarossa, some of the passengers immediately grated on her, being a little too vulgar for Sophia’s prudish disposition. Miss Stewart, travelling as far as Egypt, drew her particular disapproval: in Sophia’s opinion, the young woman would make a fool of herself with any handsome chap who caught her eye: ‘She is a shocker, she is good hearted and really nice, but very crude, no manners at all and an awful flirt. She goes too far . . . and it gives such a wrong impression.’13 Sophia was more than a little amused by the frisson she herself was creating, however. ‘The Balfours are very nice, Miss Stewart went up to them and said I wanted to know them, so up they come and he has “your highnessed” me ever since . . . Rather awful!’14 Her objections were not convincing. Sophia rarely corrected anyone who used the title which had been forbidden to her by her godmother.

  As one of the most distinguished guests on board, Sophia was invited to the captain’s table every night to dine. The princess particularly approved of the formal evening meals, which often comprised seven courses, and throughout the voyage she relished the attention, along with the constant bowing and scraping from the crew and passengers. It would take a tiny four-legged creature to prick her dangerously inflating ego.

  By the time the Barbarossa reached Aden, Sophia was on her hands and knees clearing up copious amounts of excrement and vomit: her puppy had become violently ill. To make matters worse, Joe, the Pomeranian, was also finding seafaring difficult. The nights in the princess’s luxurious cabin were too hot and stuffy for the dog,15 and the princess was kept awake by incessant panting and the overwhelming smell.16 Sophia refused suggestions that she might put the dogs in steerage with her maid; still adamant that she was the best person to care for them, she fed the dogs on fine cuts of meat and the occasional nip of brandy.17

  Eventually, after days without sleep, Sophia was forced to reconsider her position. She paid a young boy from steerage to help her care for the dogs, giving her time at least to sleep. The arrangement helped her mood but not the puppy’s health, and it continued to deteriorate, although the princess refused to believe it: ‘He will eat nothing of his own will, I have to pour everything down his throat in spoonfuls. I am giving him thin eggs and brandy and milk today – the owner of the dachshund [a fellow passenger] says he is not better and thinks he will die. As a matter of fact he is slightly better whatever he says.’18

  Sophia took to sitting on the windy top deck, exhausted, with her listless dogs in her lap, in the hope that the sea air would revive them all. Seeing the forlorn figure, passengers would come and offer her unsolicited advice. Most were well meaning, but one young man seemed to take perverse pleasure in mocking her predicament. She recorded her first impressions of him in a diary she had purchased for the trip, a handsome, black leather book with a brass lock and catch for privacy. ‘Lots of people came and spoke to me, including a man I could not stand as he said he hated dogs . . . besides I could not stand him by the way he talked,’19 she declared. In the days that followed, the unnamed passenger kept up a flirtatious teasing of the exhausted princess.20

  The brazen behaviour turned from irritating to charming in a short space of time. Sophia began to record in her journal even the smallest interactions with the fellow she would eventually come to refer to as ‘The Madman’.21 His presence filled her thoughts as the ship passed Port Said, where she and her family had been humiliatingly evicted from the SS Verona many years before, though she made no mention of it. Sophia was too distracted: ‘Very odd, I am beginning to like the man I at first hated. But he does talk nonsense. We had a dance this evening, it was rather fun. I had 2 dances with that man. I like him . . .’22 Recording her emotions with the self-awareness of a girl with a crush, she wrote: ‘The Madman came and talked to me for a time, it’s curious how he fascinates me, because I think he is really a devil. He imagined me about 21, so I have in the end to tell him my age [thirty]. It was a great shock to him.’23 His flirting and flattery were intoxicating.

  Sophia had so much experience of London’s social life but she had little experience of romance. At home there had been no question of courting: the opportunities simply had not presented themselves. Victor and Freddie were too absorbed in their own lives to play matchmaker for their sister. Even if they had, an Indian princess whose father had been a traitor and whose brother was a notorious bankrupt did not make Sophia much of a catch. Moreover mixed-race children were looked down upon and judged as inferior. Only two years later, in 1908, a journalist would speculate on the whereabouts of Sophia and her siblings, referring to them as Duleep Singh’s ‘dusky tadpoles that drove about the King’s Road at Brighton’.24 It would never have entered the minds of the British aristocrats who danced with Sophia all night to fall in love with her. Bamba knew this and had previously tried to lure her little sister to India with talk of handsome and eligible Sikh suitors in Lahore. She even included badly sketched portraits in her letters; however Sophia had never taken the bait. These men with their turbans, beards and foreign manners did nothing to excite her. The Madman, on the other hand, was more like the men she had grown up around. The mo
ments where their paths crossed were the best part of Sophia’s day. Their flirtation would last the entire duration of the voyage.

  Four weeks passed blissfully, but as she neared her destination, Sophia’s mood began to change. She confessed to her diary that the end of her time with the Madman was distracting her from everything else: ‘writing and pretending to study Urdu etc. . . . we arrive late tonight. Shall be able to go off ship early tomorrow morning . . . Madman now comes to walk . . . after dinner while I was sitting alone on my chair talking to Joe, suddenly he appeared, talked his usual nonsense . . . The lights of Colombo quite plain before I went to bed.’25

  In the morning, as the passengers bustled in preparation to disembark in Ceylon’s largest port city, Sophia looked out for the Madman to say her farewells. But he was nowhere to be seen. She spent the day glumly dealing with her luggage and her dogs, as she was transferred to a seafront hotel for the night. The puppy provided a sad but welcome distraction. It had taken a turn for the worse sometime during the night and was clearly very ill. The next leg of Sophia’s journey would be long and arduous, taking her from Ceylon to the southern tip of India, from where she would have to make her way north to Bamba in Lahore. With heavy heart, Sophia found a local vet who agreed to take the puppy and look after him while she travelled.

  That evening, with only little Joe at her side, Sophia looked out from her hotel window on to the ink black sea and watched the anchored Barbarossa bob gently in the distance, its lights prickling in the darkness. Returning to her diary she noted with a tone of sadness: ‘The Madman never said good bye to me.’26 Sophia never mentioned him again, or disclosed his identity. Nor did she speak of her puppy, which died just a few days later. Over the years it had become easier for Sophia to block out the pain.