Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  In the years that followed, Emmeline’s friends did what they could to keep her memory alive. The most hardened militants, who had formed the Suffragette Fellowship, met from time to time to compare battle scars and share anecdotes. Made up of women who had broken the law and endured force-feeding as a result, the Fellowship was an exclusive club. It welcomed Sophia into the fold in 1928, even though she had never served a day in prison herself, perhaps realising that it was not for want of trying to get arrested.

  Close to the House of Commons, in Victoria Tower Gardens, a statue of Emmeline was unveiled two years after her death. It showed the WSPU leader elegantly dressed, with one hand casually showing future generations of women the way to Parliament. Hundreds of former suffragettes and national dignitaries gathered for the unveiling on 6 March 1930. The former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin gave an emotional speech in which he summed up Emmeline’s impact on history. As a police band played ‘Rise of the Women’, Sophia stepped forward and placed large bouquets of flowers at Emmeline’s feet. She had been made responsible for the floral tributes that day, and had executed the task with the flair of a princess and the dedication of a true friend.

  For the years that followed, Sophia lived quietly at Hampton Court, travelling to Blo Norton regularly to administer Freddie’s estate. Her brother had left detailed instructions in his will and it fell to Sophia and Bamba to ensure they were carried out. He had collected so many artefacts in the course of his life that wrapping, cataloguing and crating Freddie’s treasures took almost two years. Not since the eviscerating court case had Sophia and Bamba spent so much time together. Shared grief helped them put the past behind them, but things would never go back to the way they once were.

  Sophia took responsibility for Freddie’s Jacobean collection, taking it to the museum of Inverness, where it remains to this day. Bamba administered almost everything else. Freddie had wanted to leave over a hundred of his East Anglian portraits to the museum he himself had created in Thetford. After supervising delivery and installation, Bamba took it upon herself to ensure the pieces were being well looked after. For months curators dreaded her unannounced visits. She was happy to show them their shortcomings.

  With her short temper and long memory for grudges, Bamba had always been a difficult woman. The maids at Faraday House simply referred to her as ‘The Bitch’,4 and argued with each other about who should answer the bell when she rang. However, Sophia was also becoming harsher as the years went on. Once known for her kindness, she was now perceived as a grumpy, remote figure by all but her housekeeper. Some of the junior servants disliked her almost as much as her sister.

  A change in Bosie’s circumstances had also helped to harden Sophia in middle age. While the princess had resigned herself to spinsterhood, her much treasured housekeeper had fallen in love. Bosie’s romance with the quiet and unassuming John Lane, the man who worked as the princess’s driver, was brief and intense. The two married in 1935, and even though Sophia continued to see her every day, the knowledge that Bosie had someone else to love hurt her.

  Lillian Coram was fifteen when she came to work for the princess with her older sister Dorothy. They had lived in Blo Norton village all their lives, but were taken out of school when the family needed extra income. Lillian’s mother called on Sophia during one of her many visits to her late brother’s home, and asked if the princess might find a position for her girls. Sophia, who always found it hard to say no to people who came to her for help, agreed to take them on as parlour maids, even though she was struggling to pay the servants she already had.

  Arriving at Faraday in 1935, Lillian and Dorothy found a house just managing to hang on to its former glory. ‘At first there were lots of servants – a cook and a housemaid, the princess’s personal maid, the housekeeper and a chauffeur called Lane.’5 Dorothy and Lillian settled in, and although the hours were long, and Bosie was terrifying, they enjoyed their time at Faraday. Lillian was captivated by the lavish rugs, and the exotic brass ornaments and silk cushions they had to keep free of dust. In particular, she was attracted to a large portrait of Sophia’s father, which hung in the ‘Blue Room’. It was a copy of the Winterhalter painting, and the parlour maid, like the former Queen of England, found the young Maharajah’s beauty captivating. However, when it came to Sophia, she regarded her merely as a ‘bad-tempered old bat’.6

  Money worries were tormenting Sophia once more and matters reached crisis point soon after Lillian’s arrival. Even though she had already dismissed many of her staff, lack of funds forced her to let go half of those who remained. The cheapest of the servants, Lillian and Dorothy, were retained and found themselves ‘having to do everything with Mrs Lane on our back all the time’.7

  Lillian and her sister would often mock their mistress’s eccentricities. When Sophia wanted to take the dogs out for a walk, she had a habit of standing in the middle of the great entrance hall at Faraday House, wearing a battered fur coat tied with string, and yelling, ‘Houndses, Houndses, where are my Houndses?’ at the top of her voice. Lillian and the others found it hilarious and would follow her about mouthing ‘Houndses!’ and trying not to dissolve into peals of laughter. If the day had been particularly difficult, Lillian took revenge, using one of the princess’s beloved pets. ‘We often used to hide her wretched tortoise, telling her that we thought it had escaped into the garden. She’d search for it for hours, and finally tell us to stop what we were doing and look about the grounds. She would always be beside herself with worry. It was the best way to get off and chat to the boys by the river. The tortoise was never harmed; it just used to sleep in the laundry quite happily.’8

  Lillian’s only fond memories of Sophia stretched back to the day King Edward VIII abdicated from the throne. On 11 December 1936 the entire household had crammed into the main sitting room at Faraday House to listen to the news on the wireless. Sir John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC, introduced the former King as ‘Prince Edward’, confirming his decision to give up the throne. While Lillian felt as if their world was turning upside down, she remembered Sophia’s still and reassuring presence at the centre of the room: ‘She made us feel that things would be alright again.’9

  There was nothing that even Sophia could say or do to give her sister a similar sense of solace a year later. On 26 August 1938, Lina Schaeffer died at the age of seventy-nine. Catherine and the former governess had spent their lives besotted with one another and even though Lina was gone, Catherine longed to stay in Cassel, in the little house filled with memories. She knew no other home than Germany.

  The locals had never understood the presence of the strange Indian lady in their midst. They tolerated her as an exotic eccentricity, and since Lina, a true and patriotic German, had vouched for her good character, Catherine was safe.10 Even when waves of xenophobia washed over the rest of the country during and after the First World War, the couple remained untroubled. However all that changed when Hitler became leader. Friends began to worry for the odd couple, as reports of Jews and foreigners being beaten up in the streets became more common.

  By 1938 the atmosphere had turned pyretic as Germany annexed Austria. All talk was of Lebensraum, and the Führer’s intention to fight for more land for his German, Aryan people. Dr Fritz Ratig,11 a resident of Cassel, worried constantly about the sixty-seven-year-old princess. After Lina died, he could not bear the idea of Catherine living alone and unprotected. He begged her to snap out of her grief, warning Catherine to leave the country before it was too late. His words were frightening enough to make her sell everything and leave within the month.

  Though resigned to spending the rest of her life in England, Catherine was determined not to swap grief for rage. With no intention of moving into the grace-and-favour house she so detested at Hampton Court, Catherine was wealthy enough to make other arrangements. She and Lina had lived frugally in Cassel and therefore the princess had accumulated substantial savings, which she had asked agents to invest for her over the
years. Two of the assets in her portfolio were a smart, six-bedroom manor named Coalhatch House in Penn, Buckinghamshire, and a squat, nine-bedroom, five-bathroom, sprawling bungalow opposite, called Rathenrea.

  Catherine chose elegance and moved into Coalhatch House. She set about decorating and furnishing it in the modern European style of her Cassel home. It was a handsome building with generous grounds, ornamental garden and orchard. The rooms were large, with high ceilings and big windows, and it boasted a large library and music room. Coalhatch House had always been one of the smartest houses in Penn, and the locals craned their necks over the high walls to see the ‘Indian Queen’ they heard had moved in.12

  Catherine begged her sister to leave London and come and live in the village with her, enticing Sophia with promises of countryside, fresh air and freedom. She even promised to give her Rathenrea as her own private residence. Partly this was an act of great generosity; partly it suited Catherine, who wanted her sister to keep her company but could not bear the idea of Sophia’s dogs running their dirty paws all over her clean furnishings. At first Sophia refused, but soon she would have no choice.

  A year later, on 1 September 1939, Hitler marched his armies into Poland, seizing the port of Danzig, giving some hint as to the scope of his ambitions. Two days later, at 11.15 a.m., Britain formally declared war on Germany. People listened to the cracking and emotional voice of Chamberlain on the wireless, as he admitted he had failed them: ‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different I could have done and that would have been more successful.’13

  Everybody knew that London would be one of Hitler’s main targets, and that the Luftwaffe possessed enough firepower to devastate the city from the skies. Sophia would rather have stayed on in the capital, despite the threat, just as she had during the first war, but a new addition to her family made that choice impossible. Bosie had given birth to a baby girl at the end of August, and Sophia had fallen in love with her. The tiny fair-haired, chocolate-eyed creature was named Catherine, and the housekeeper, who had never been intimidated by social mores, asked Sophia to be her godmother. The princess agreed instantly.

  Sophia dismissed Lillian, Dorothy and the others, and ordered Bosie to take her husband Lane and their baby girl and leave immediately for Rathenrea. She would follow with her menagerie as soon as she could, after winding up her affairs in London.

  Elsewhere others were doing the same. The government’s evacuation plan, Operation Pied Piper, had already been set in motion. It involved the relocation of more than 3.5 million people from the cities most at risk of aerial bombardment, starting with young children and their mothers and pregnant women. Shirley Sarbutt was a nine-year-old girl at the time. She and her two brothers, eleven-year-old John and seven-year-old Michael, attended the Lamas School in Northfields, west London, where their mother was a teacher.

  On Thursday 31 August, members of staff at the school were told that if war was declared, the children would be evacuated at ten the next morning. Coaches were on standby to take them out of the city. As a teacher and a mother of three Mrs Sarbutt had been chosen to go with the convoy and keep the youngest children calm. She would also have to settle them at the other end, although she had no idea where that would be. Each child was given a rucksack filled with emergency rations, a packet of biscuits, a tin of condensed milk and name tags which were to be filled in and tied to a button.14

  For Shirley and her brothers, the bus journey seemed to take for ever. She woke with a start when the vehicle finally stopped and the children were ushered into an unfamiliar village hall in a village called Penn. ‘There were people with lists, calling out our names and then making us stand in different lines to wait for collection. I heard someone shout “Michael Sarbutt”, and then mutter ‘for the Princess’. Then they did the same for me and John. We were tired and hungry and did not really take much notice. A large woman called Mrs Lane was there to collect us. She had a small baby in her arms and seemed a bit cross.’15

  Before the coaches had arrived in Penn, Bosie had telephoned Faraday House to tell Sophia of the imminent arrivals. ‘Well then. I suppose we really ought to take some,’ said the princess. ‘Put us down for three or four. We have the room.’16 The housekeeper, who had not had much sleep with her own new arrival, was not best pleased with her mistress’s generosity. Shirley Sarbutt, however, was cock-a-hoop.

  ‘I had never seen a house like Rathenrea before,’ she remembered years later. ‘It was a huge bungalow . . . My mother had one room, my brothers were given another, and I was told to sleep in the lounge. There were two maids in the house already and they had bedrooms. I remember they were dressed in beautiful maroon uniforms, with snow-white aprons and caps. It was like a strange fairy tale, a castle-type thing, only there was hardly any furniture in the house. We were told by Mrs Lane that the Princess was bringing everything from Hampton Court Palace in a few days’ time . . . I was so confused.’17

  Ten days later, the trucks started arriving. Shirley watched in awe: ‘They were filled with heavy carved things. Beautiful chairs with high backs. Huge ornate tables and little containers for joss sticks. Everything was inlaid and so pretty.’18 Sophia herself did not arrive for a few days more. It felt like a lifetime for the evacuees, desperate to see the princess.

  To keep a sense of normality Shirley and the other evacuees were sent to the local school as soon as they arrived. The Sarbutts, tortured by the idea that they might be stuck doing sums when the princess arrived in her carriage, found it hard to settle: ‘We could hardly stand it . . . But one day we came home, and Mrs Lane told us to wash our faces and smarten up. The Princess was in the house and she wanted to meet us. So we lined up and waited.’19 When Sophia finally arrived, she did not look anything like the fairy tale they had imagined. There was no tiara on her wet and wispy hair and she wore a plain dress, brown cardigan, scruffy jacket and Wellington boots: ‘She had just been out with the dogs in the orchard in the pouring rain. I looked at her and thought, “Oh, she’s not like a princess at all”.’20

  The children were asked to step forward one by one to be inspected. ‘What do you want us to call you?’ asked Michael Sarbutt boldly, still somewhat miffed at his first impressions. ‘Well,’ replied Sophia after a pause, ‘You can call me Princess Sophia. That is my name. I am Princess Sophia.’21 She then turned to Bosie, who had been grumbling about the children all week, referring to them as ‘that bleedin’ brood’.22

  ‘Mrs Lane. These are my three evacuees. Any time they want to come and see me they can . . . If they want to help me walking the dogs I would be delighted, because that way I can get to know them better.’23 With that, she left to bathe and dress for dinner at Coalhatch House.

  Catherine and Sophia quickly fell into a comfortable routine. Each would wake in their respective houses at around noon, take breakfast in bed, and read the papers. Then Catherine tinkered about her large house, while her sister took her numerous dogs for long walks in the fields. Sophia would come home at around four, meet the children, interrogate them about their day at school and then prepare for her evening across the road, taking her two maids with her. There the sisters would eat a formal dinner and spend hours sitting by candlelight. They talked, listened to music and played cards – bridge and whist – until the small hours. When they were both sufficiently exhausted, Sophia would take her leave and return to Rathenrea to sleep.

  It was a cosy if uninspiring start to life in Buckinghamshire. Occasionally, to break up the monotony, the sisters called upon neighbours. In particular, Sophia became friendly with Lady Gwendolyn Maclean.24 Her husband, Sir Donald, had been leader of the Liberal Party until 1920, and had moved to Penn for a quieter pace of life. The couple were cultured and kind and Sophia enjoyed talking about her house full of children and hearing about their sons, one of whom was ‘doing very well at the Foreign Office’. Years later, the junior
Donald Maclean would be exposed as one of the Cambridge Five agents who had been spying for the Soviet Union.

  More than anything, Sophia enjoyed watching Bosie’s baby gurgle and flail in her crib. She would pat the child and hum the ‘Skye Boat Song’, and ‘You Are My Sunshine’,25 until she drifted off to sleep. Too awkward to hold her unless someone else placed the child in her arms, Sophia lacked the confidence that went with her maternal feelings. She had very little experience of children – apart from her younger brother Eddie, whom she had loved best of all – and never seemed confident that she was doing the right thing. The princess need not have worried. ‘All of us children adored her,’26 recalled Shirley Sarbutt. ‘Every day she would be on the lane as we came home from school, waiting for us with the dogs. They all had their leads off, ready to run about the orchard. She would ask us all about school . . . while we threw balls and made the dogs run and bring them back . . . She once told me I had to tell her everything, leaving no detail out, because she had never gone to school like us, and wanted to know what she had missed.’27

  In particular, Sophia developed a soft spot for Michael, Shirley’s brother, despite his mother cautioning, ‘He’s a little terror that one!’28 Michael lived up to his reputation early on during his time with Sophia at Penn. ‘He was forever playing tricks on her,’ his sister remembered. ‘He taught the Princess’s Airedale terrier, Peter, how to lie down flat and stay very still. Then he’d go over and say, “Princess, I think Peter’s dead.” “Dead!” she says in mock horror.’29 Michael used to kill Peter off numerous times a week and Sophia always pretended to believe him. She loved his streak of mischief so much she took to calling him her ‘little pickle’. If ever he was out of sight for too long she would say ‘where is my little pickle. He’s up to no good I don’t doubt. Somebody get my little pickle for me.’30