Daughter of Empire (20 page)

As we processed slowly up the aisle, I could see Cousin Philip standing with his best man, David Milford Haven, another of our cousins. The bridegroom was so dashing that it made you realise why
every girl in England seemed to think she was in love with him. The service was very moving, and as Princess Elizabeth and the newly created Duke of Edinburgh said their vows, the crowd outside
could hear every word through the loudspeakers. When the veil was pulled back from Princess Elizabeth’s face, everyone could see the beauty of her peaches-and-cream complexion. Once the
service was over, a fanfare of trumpets and a rousing organ voluntary accompanied our procession back down the aisle. We followed the newly married couple through the ecstatic crowds back to the
palace, closely followed by the King and Queen and most of the royalty of Europe.

‘Baron’, Prince Philip’s friend Bill Nahum, had been chosen to take the photographs – much to the chagrin of Cecil Beaton – and when the bridesmaids were no longer
needed, we sat down to watch the huge group being bossed around and the way in which different people responded. Freddie of Greece kept chatting to Juliana of the Netherlands irrespective of
instructions; the long bird-of-paradise feathers on my mother’s hat obscured several people behind her and Grandmama – no fan of group photographs – positioned herself firmly on
the edge of the group, leaving a little space between her and her neighbour, hoping she might be left out of the picture. I thought she looked particularly smart in the long black coat beautifully
embroidered in white that my father had brought her from Kashmir. Princess Helena Victoria, known in the family as Thora, was in a wheelchair at the time and held her stick protectively against her
as if she expected the young Prince Richard of Gloucester to do something sudden and unexpected to her. Grandmama, rather mockingly, always referred privately to Thora and her ancient sister
Princess Marie Louise as ‘The Princesses of Nothing’, even though they were both granddaughters of Queen Victoria and had been princesses of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1917, when King
George V had anglicized everyone’s titles, they hadn’t gained an English family name.

After the photography session was over, we bridesmaids, the pages and the best man accompanied the bride and groom, the King and Queen and Queen Mary on to the balcony. We were met by an
incredible sight: the police had been holding everyone back around the Victoria Memorial, but when we came out, they let them go and we could see – and hear – a sea of people surging
forward. Every time the newly-weds waved, the volume of cheering increased. We were later told that while they were waiting the crowd had been singing ‘All the Nice Girls Love a
Sailor’
.

We had been on our feet for a long time, so it was a relief to sit down to the wedding breakfast, a splendid banquet of fish and partridge, ice cream and cake for 150 people. After the couple
had changed and were ready to leave, we hurried through the palace courtyard to shower them with rose petals. Princess Elizabeth was delighted to discover that Susan, her favourite corgi, had been
hidden under a rug in her carriage so that she could join them for their honeymoon at Broadlands; this was particularly poignant for my family as we weren’t going to get a chance to go back
there before we returned to India. I could only imagine the excitement of the staff as they awaited the royal couple’s arrival. Before they left, Philip gave each of the bridesmaids a silver
powder compact. Mine had two bands of gold with an E and a P surmounted by coronets and two bands of gold decoration with six dark blue sapphires running down the centre.

Towards the end of the evening, the bridesmaids went out to dine and dance at a party hosted by David Milford Haven. I hoped – in vain – that Prince Michael of Bourbon-Parma would be
there, as he had been by far the most handsome young man at the reception. David was good looking too but he was older and far more sophisticated than us – his girlfriend at the time was the
stunning Swedish model Anita Ekberg – and it was clear he found us dull and prim, for he kept leaping out of his seat and darting over to talk to a dazzling girl at the next table. The girls
seated on either side of him looked furious.

The wedding and the attendant celebrations were now over and in no time at all we had to leave England. ‘Lovely to be home,’ my father wrote in his diary once we were back in India.
We were still laughing at Queen Mary’s reaction to the piece of specially woven white cotton that we had brought from Gandhiji for Princess Elizabeth and Philip. When the gift was displayed,
Queen Mary was horrified to discover what she took to be ‘a loin cloth’. For us, there was now a sense of familiarity to life in Delhi, and a sense of belonging. And so it was that we
vowed to make the most of our remaining, precious time in India.

13

O
n our return it was clear that the post-partition crisis was far from over. Now that he was Governor-General – a merely decorative title
– my father decided to reinforce the message of independence by leaving the new government to its business and honouring the tradition of visiting the Princely States. It was to be an arduous
undertaking by my parents and the ADCs. My father was a stickler for precision and such a tour was demanding on his staff – they had to ensure protocol was observed, that all schedules ran to
time, and no one was offended. This was no easy task.

Our party now always contained extra guests because my parents, thinking that we would have plenty of time to entertain them, had extended invitations to their friends. Sadly, this proved not to
be the case, and the friends were often dragged along in our retinue or left pretty much to their own devices until we returned. As I was reminded each morning on our ride, my father was delighted
that Yola was to be our first visitor, accompanied by another friend, Kay Norton. She had once found her bearer looking through a keyhole into her room. When reprimanded he replied, quite
obviously, ‘But if I don’t, how do I know when to go in?’

They would accompany us to the much-anticipated silver jubilee celebrations of His Highness the Maharaja of Jaipur. This week-long celebration promised to be a magnificent affair, but we were
worried by the continuing riots in the Punjab. The European guests invited to the jubilee were woefully ignorant of the situation in the north and my father was extremely irritated by the glamorous
Princess Peggy d’Arenberg and her friend Rosita de Rosière, who arrived from Paris with a personal hairdresser. He thought this very bad form when there were starving and displaced
Indians all around.

My parents were already friends with the Jaipur family. The maharaja was an international polo player and had often played in England, and they kept a house in London. I had got to know them in
Delhi as his son Bubbles was the commandant of the bodyguard. I was surprised that Ayesha, although Jai’s constant companion in Delhi as ‘Third Her Highness in Jaipur’, was very
much the junior hostess to ‘Second Her Highness’, Jo Didi. I was also surprised to discover that although Jai was only in his mid-thirties, he had three wives (one of whom had died a
couple of years earlier), five children (two of whom were older than me) and had been ruler of his state for a quarter of a century.

This was the first time I had visited Jai’s palaces. He lived in the private apartments of the huge City Palace, some of which had already been turned into a museum. There seemed to be
palaces all over the place – we stayed in the enormous Rambagh Palace, and on a ride on the back of an elephant to the Amber Fort, we saw three more palaces hidden in the steep defile
below.

The festivities began with a grand parade for the Festival of Dussehra, when Hindus mark the triumph of good over evil. We watched men in turbans and courtly dress carrying huge ceremonial horns
and magnificently bedecked elephants process slowly past us in the palace courtyard. It was a shock to see Jai sacrifice a goat, dip his fingers into little bowls of its blood, then, with a
flicking movement, bless a long line of elaborately dressed horses, oxen and elephants as each was brought to him. When the celebrations moved to the Palace Hall, my parents were placed in
positions of honour just to the left of Jai, who sat on a great throne made of pure silver. There he received a long procession of nobles who had arrived to pay homage, kept cool as they waited by
the ministrations of servants with huge plumed fans. It was a world away from the civil war that was rapidly becoming imminent five hundred miles to the north of Kashmir.

A couple of days into the celebrations my father invested Jai as Grand Commander of the Star of India in the City Palace, and I found myself seated next to the old Maharaja of Kapurthala. It was
a relief to be able to talk to him – when I had first met him, soon after our arrival, it had been very awkward as he kept asking me if I had been able to do any sightseeing. I had only been
to the Qutub Minar tower with my mother, but I didn’t like to mention it because his young, sixth wife had just committed suicide by jumping from it. This time I was not so tongue-tied.

We returned to Delhi after six wonderful days – my father in cheerful mood as Jai had organised for him to play in a polo match at which he was reunited with Rao Raja Hanut Singh, the very
man who had taught him to play in Jodhpur in 1921. I was particularly excited about returning as Patricia and John were coming to stay. Sadly they didn’t bring their baby as it would have
been too unsettling for him. Apparently they noticed a great difference in me, and remarked on how serious I had become since swapping my life as an English schoolgirl for that of the Last Viceroy
of India’s daughter. I came in for a lot of teasing and was nicknamed ‘Lady Earnestine’.

At the final gathering of the Chamber of Princes, my father tried his best to see that the princes were left as secure as possible within the new dominions. He felt strongly that they needed to
understand they were responsible for their own destiny. With this in mind he advised them to take up any opportunity that presented itself, and many did find their feet in the new political
landscape: Jai became ambassador to Spain, Patiala became the chief minister in Patiala state and the new Maharaja of Kashmir, Tiger, enjoyed a brilliant career in India. And while some never
recovered from the shock of their changed circumstances, others found themselves on unexpected journeys. Several years later, my father was very surprised to see the young Rao Raja of Bundi –
a seventeen-gun-salute prince and Second World War hero, awarded an MC in Burma – standing behind the president of India’s chair at a banquet as the president’s ADC. My
father’s ADCs had always sat down to eat with us. Bundi asked to see him afterwards and my father feared he was going to complain. He was very surprised when Bundi merely wanted to express
his gratitude to my father for having encouraged him to offer the president his services.

Meanwhile, as violence continued to sweep through the country, Gandhiji was about to fast again ‘unto death’, or until the Muslim and Hindu leaders promised to make peace. The
numbers of dead were rising and millions of people had been forced to flee their homes. The situation was the very antithesis of what Gandhiji stood for, and he felt India had learned nothing from
all the years he had spent teaching non-violence and brotherhood. His silent protests had been very effective in the past, and this time he was showing his distress that Congress was withholding
partition payments from Pakistan by way of sanction, again vowing to continue his fast until it relented.

It was decided we would all still travel to Bikaner as part of my father’s tour, but that as a mark of respect for the fast there would be no state banquet. A party of twenty-eight, we
stayed with the maharaja, and were presented with a sixty-page programme for the days ahead. The entry for Lagoon Terrace read: ‘The Master of the Household will take the necessary steps to
ensure that the crows and other birds are not allowed to settle on trees on the Lagoon Terrace for at least a week beforehand and special care must be taken about this on the day of the
lunch.’ It was, though, a particularly enjoyable visit as my father had known the maharaja for many years. They had first met when they were children, later at the coronation of King George
V, and then when my father served on the staff of the Prince of Wales for his visit to India in 1921.