372. The First British Indians: The Sisters Rejected By Queen Victoria (Ep 4)

11:03William:Just to clarify the chronology here, is it your working theory that he's met Ada long before he goes off to Aden and that she then joins him. She joins him, yes.

11:17Anita:100%. It's a segue that is clear.

11:21William:Where do they meet?

11:22Anita:Paris, first of all, as I said. Once he leaves Aden, he's vowed he's never going to go back to England again. So he goes to Paris instead as a jumping off point to get to Moscow. Boxing Day, this is a gift that nobody really wants, Willie, because he's waiting for Tsar Alexander to do his thing. Tsar Alexander III is not giving in the time of day. And Ada gives birth to a daughter, Pauline, in this same dilapidated boarding house, the Hotel Bolshoi. And Dilip, this whole reason Dilip is there is because he is single-mindedly trying to woo the Tsar. Although he doesn't actually, when he first arrived, thinks he needs to woo the Tsar at all.

12:05Anita:he's just going to be called upon. It is becoming completely clear to him that the Tsar does not value him at all. He's not this great piece in the great game at all.

12:17William:Do you have a sense of who he's calling on? Is he just sort of turning up himself at the Foreign Office and dropping his card? Or what's the process by which he's approaching the Russian authorities?

12:26Anita:He has sent letters. He sent carte de visite. He has made it known that he is here and he is waiting. There is a very, very good book by a man called Christy Campbell. If you want to get into the depth of that particular story, he does it brilliantly well, The Maharaja's Box, where he also does talk about the kind of spies who are following Dilip, who sort of pick his pocket, who make sure he's completely destitute while he's in Moscow. And his dwindling funds are just disappearing. There's an Irish connection. It's far too complicated to go through here. But I tell you, on top of that, there is a suggestion, and I got the sense, although Chrissie doesn't say it explicitly, that Ada might have been a spy too for the British.

13:08William:For the British?

13:09Anita:To just kind of keep chopping away the ground underneath Duleep's feet for the British.

13:15William:What gives you that impression? Because it's an important detail.

13:18Anita:Oh, well, you'll see later on in this here episode, Willie, because there are things that will go on towards the end of his life that will tell you why I think this. But anyway, Pauline, it's left to Ada to name her. I mean, Dilip does a little bit of a medal and says, okay, I know. I worked with Sophia when I sort of gave a middle name that pleased Queen Victoria. Let's do it with Pauline as well. Alexandrina is the name given to her. Now, it could be to flatter the Tsar, or it could be just to hedge your bets with Queen Victoria, you know, just keep everybody cool with her. But, you know, the way he was naming his children at this time felt, I mean, homage if you feel generous, but leverage if you feel actually this is a man who knows he's going to be hitting hard times and might need to call upon people.

14:09William:So, he eventually gives up in Moscow. There's no word from the Russians, no word from the Foreign Office, no word from the Tsar. and he heads back to Paris, which has now become effectively his base. And there, two years later, he gives birth to another girl, Irene. And by this stage, they're actually married. Is that right? That they've had a small civil ceremony in April 1889.

14:35Anita:Yeah, because while Bamber is alive, which she is, when Pauline is born, they can't get married. And also, I don't know if he probably was that bothered about getting married, But once Bamba is safely dead, he can marry again. And so, you know, Irene is technically legitimate where Pauline is not. And again, Irene, Helen, Beryl, those are the names. You know, there's nothing Sikh. There's nothing Punjabi. There's nothing even to flatter royalty. So you get through the children's names, I would suggest, a bit of the psychology of the Maharaja as well.

15:07William:And the world that he's living in. Yeah.

15:09Anita:The world that he's living in, but also the world that he thinks he can reach. You know, there's no point in giving this child, this little baby, a flattering name. What's the point? You know, it's not going to work. It hasn't been working. And what is very important is that, you know, these children are rejected by everybody, by the rest of the family, by Queen Victoria's court, by everybody. No, you know, people just think he's nuts. He's got nothing. He'll amount to nothing.

15:38William:And do we have, Anita, any sense at this point of his relationship with Ada? They've been together for a while. He made his bed and now he's sleeping in it. It isn't like he's just dropping this chambermaid now that things are not working out. He sticks with her.

15:52Anita:Well, he sticks with her, but I would suggest maybe not out of love, but there's nothing else for him. Queen Victoria will not receive Ada. She won't receive Duleep either unless he apologises, which he's not keen to do. She will not give any time to Pauline or Irene. These girls are never going to be blessed with that kind of court dress coming out.

16:12William:None of that. Do you have a sense of her at all at this time? Do we have any way of indicating what she's up to or thinking?

16:18Anita:We'll get a sense of her very soon because it will become apparent that this is a woman who likes the finer things in life, particularly she likes to gamble. Let's just do a little more of a contrast, if you don't mind, between these lives. Because you've got Sophia, you know, christened at Windsor, Queen Godmother, you know, the pram that's wheeled around Buckingham Palace, dandling by, you know, Victoria herself. And Pauline and Irene are eventually baptised in a colonial hotel chapel in Algiers in the winter of 1892.

16:48William:How are they suddenly in Algiers?

16:50Anita:I don't know. There are bits of this story which, by virtue of the fact that this man was living quite a shadowy life, we don't know. We just know from the records that's where it happens.

17:00William:Now, this is, of course, the beginnings, and we're going to be dealing with this in a very exciting series that I am deep in the reading for at the moment on the French in Algeria. Do you think there's any sense that he could be thinking of settling there? because this is when large numbers of French have been given land in Algiers and they're given great tracts of land which are being expropriated from the locals. Can we imagine Dulip Singh ending up as a pied noire in Algeria?

17:27Anita:No, no, because this is not a man who knows how to start again. This is a man who is only known in existence where Queen Victoria has been responsible for his downfall, then for his salvation, then for his downfall again. You ask about the relationship between Ada and Maharaja Dilip Singh. We don't know that it's such a sketchy existence that they're living at this time. But what we do know for sure that at the beginning, she's living with the Maharaja in his hotel suite. But then she moves out. She takes her children, she takes her belongings and she moves to the western outskirts of Paris where she sets up home with this new and mysterious female friend, a woman called Madame Paraton, who London spies conclude, because we've seen the documentation, she must be a Russian agent sent by a Tsar.

18:16Anita:And they only know that because they're following him. So they know about Paraton.

18:20William:And is this from British intelligence records?

18:23Anita:British intelligence records. British intelligence records. So London spies thought that Paraton was this kind of Russian agent who's just keeping an eye, even though the Tsar doesn't want anything to do with her, but they're keeping an eye on Paraton, keeping an eye on him. So you can see this is a really sort of weird existence, which is also sad because this marriage just seems to have fallen apart. Ada, her two daughters, Madame Paraton, they're living now in an expensive villa at a place called Le Vicenet, but Delipe is paying for it. And Delipe himself is paying for himself to stay in this Paris hotel suite, which is sort of downgraded suite to what he's used to, and he's dying.

19:03Anita:So what will happen in the Hotel de la Tromie, it's just two minutes' walk from the Champs -Élysées. It looks glamorous from the outside. Inside, though, it was faded. It was described as having this sort of musty smell of neglect at the time. He was only 55 years of age. He looked so much older than that. And he has a devastating heart attack. Friends had stopped visiting him. His family weren't seeing him. Irene, Pauline, the last time Irene saw her father, she was three years old. The last time Pauline saw her father, She was five years old. Ada is living it up, the second family, somewhere else with this mysterious woman, spending his money.

19:42Anita:He dies completely alone on the floor, crumpled up.

19:46William:But the hotel is still there and it's now slightly posher. It's now a tarty five star.

19:51Anita:It is, indeed. It's a much nicer place than it was at the time. So Duluth dies, just to give a date to this, 1893, October 1893. And eventually, the British government settles some money on Pauline and Irene. It puts them, at least in paperwork terms, on a largely equal footing with Sophia, Catherine and Bamber. But they always refer to, and I think this is really interesting, is the two of the second family. They're never referred to by name. In the India office papers that I've seen, Sir Owen Tudor Byrne, the vice or his private secretary, writes about them really coldly. And this is how every piece of documentation about these girls.

20:29Anita:The five girls, Bamba, Catherine, Soph, and two of the second family will receive about£22 ,000 each. So you get names for the senior three. The other two are the other two. So you've got Pauline then sort of growing up and she's super sociable. She's got some money behind her. She's the more sturdy of the sisters.

20:51William:Where's the money from? Is it the India office or Dilip has left or something?

20:56Anita:It's the India office. There is a part of their agreement when they take the whole of the Sikh kingdom is that they will settle on Duleep to give him a livable amount of money, which he then challenges and says it's not livable, and to his progeny they will get some kind of pension, some kind of settlement. And that is what this is. It's coming basically from a fraction of what was the Sikh kingdom. And the amount is always something that irks Dilip because he says, I was a child. You made me sign this. I didn't realize how little you basically you're letting my children sink in this world. What are you giving us?

21:38Anita:This is nothing. This is not what you said you were doing. And so that leads to the resentment before he dies. The one interesting thing that does happen is that after Dilip Singh dies, there are two members of the family who extend a hand to Pauline and Irene. And they are, I would arguably say, the most altruistic and the people I probably most like to spend time with. And that is Sophia and Freddie, Frederick, you know, your favourite.

22:06William:The antiquarian.

22:07Anita:The antiquarian who's living in Norfolk, who's collecting Jacobite art, who's just living a quiet little life. They welcome him. So, Freddie's got a home at a place called Blow Norton in Norfolk and the door is open to these two other girls. And they are also welcome at Faraday House. Not only does she welcome the girls, but that photo of Sophia, Ada, Pauline and Irene is taken at one of Sophia's places. So, you've got this sort of warmth that opens up to these girls. And in January 1911, Pauline, who is the more gregarious of the children, and she's quite a beauty. She is now, because of Sophia and Freddie, and the position that their affection has given them, is being recognised, at least in society papers, because they're scandalous.

22:59Anita:They may not be venerated in the way that Sophia ever was in the press as their daughters of a Maharaja, but they are glamorous.

23:07William:So, Anita, she's on the cover of Country Life in the Girls in Pearls section, where you always have a beautiful girl, even to this day, sitting there about to get married or something. Is she called Princess on that cover?

23:17Anita:Yeah, they call her Princess Pauline. And it's one of those sort of sniggering titles where you know that it is, for those who know where she and Irene come from, there is never a time where they don't feel that they're being sniggered at at the same time as they're being addressed by their correct...

23:35William:Nonetheless, the cover of Country Life is a kind of marker at the time for society. And there she is on it.

23:42Anita:For upper middle class England, this is really impressive. You know, in 1911, the upper middle classes would have looked. And she looks beautiful. She's a beautiful. I mean, you could do the description of her on Country Life. She's attractive. She's a very attractive woman.

23:56William:So she is depicted on what looks like a chaise longue. And she's wearing a sort of ball gown. And she doesn't look at all Indian. Unlike her sisters. She could pass very easily in a Norfolk village if she was wandering around with Freddie for someone from Norfolk.

24:15Anita:And she's beautiful. You know, she's got that sort of classic Edwardian look, a very fashionable haircut. She looks lovely. So Pauline, who is the more acceptable of the sisters, is keen to get to know the others too. And Sophia wants to be the bridge, the ambassador to that. So, when Sophia is out seeing Bamba in Lahore, she says, Pauline, come out and meet us. Come and learn about your father. Come and learn about your history. And Pauline goes out in 1907. Bamba is completely against it. She does not want her to come.

24:51William:We are not surprised that Bamba gives her the curl shoulder. Bamba is that kind of woman.

24:56Anita:Well, it's also, you know, in her mind, her beloved father, and she does love her father, rejected them for this other woman. And these are the children of the other woman. So, you know, Sophia blasts through this and says, look, you've just got to give her a chance. Pauline does not make this easy at all. Because when she turns up, she turns up with these three, and these are from Sophia in her diary, three huge boxes and several small, she says. I brought enough for 10 years, she's brought enough for 20, which is, you know, just this is sort of, again, you know, she's playful, but critical as well.

25:35Anita:Within six weeks, despite bringing enough stuff for 20 years, Pauline's back on the boat to France because Bamba and her are rowing constantly, constantly. And that is largely because Bamba's being really cruel while she's there. She does not hesitate to tell Pauline what kind of a woman her mother was.

25:55William:Do we know that? Does Sophia say that in her diary? We know that. Sophia says that in her diaries.

25:59Anita:So not only what kind of woman her mother was, but she got all of her undesirable qualities from her mother. Pauline, in turn, let me tell you, according to Sophia's diary, doesn't make life easy at all. She just won't get out of bed on time. She'll flirt with the wrong people. She'll be rude to people who matter. She is a sort of silly 19-year-old who is not making an effort. But also, why would she? She's in a hostile environment. Pam is being just awful to her. So, look, when she sort of realizes that things aren't comfortable, she looks for another family. She had a chance. Sophia opens the door, Freddie opens the door to this old family.

26:42Anita:But when she realizes it just doesn't fit her, Her skin doesn't feel right with these people. She married. In 1914, just before the war, she meets and falls in love with a young army officer called John Shirley Archibald Torrey, 2nd Lieutenant, Rifle Brigade.

26:58William:Do we know much about his background?

27:00Anita:We know that he was killed at the Battle of Luce in just a year after their marriage, just one year in 1915.

27:07William:But we don't know what class he's from. Has she made the class jump? Now she's on Country Life and so on.

27:12Anita:He's upper middle class. That's what he is. He's exactly the kind of person whose family would have read that magazine. But we do know how he died, because you can look into the war records. And he died. Loose was one of the most horrific engagements in the war for the British. And it's because of the use of poison gas. They released chlorine from cylinders, the Germans did. The wind blew it back into the British trenches.

27:36William:It's a catastrophe.

27:37Anita:I mean, they lost something like 60 ,000 men in four days, William. and this is one man who was caught up in it, Pauline's husband. So, she's married at 25. She's a widow at 27. What is interesting at this time is what the war does to all of these sisters. Some of them are begging their family to side with the Germans, i.e. Catherine, who's with Lena in Germany. Some of them will drop their rocks and decide to be nurses for the war effort, like the majority of suffragettes, Sophia. Bamba, willing the British to lose from India. And then you have Ada and her daughters. Ada does something altruistic, which from the little we know of her, doesn't come naturally to her.

28:29Anita:She volunteers for the French Red Cross at Limoges and she's part of the ambulance call. We know this.

28:34William:This is not an automatic move for someone who's been hanging out in Monte Carlo casinos.

28:39Anita:No, no, but she does it. And, you know, she tends to soldiers at Verdun, which is, as everyone who knows this period in history, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war. And then she returns afterwards. That shows some character. It 100 % does, you know. So it's from being this chambermaid to a suspected spy living with a Russian agent, then to becoming, you know, somebody. I love this house.

29:04William:Two rival agents living together. Yeah. Paris suburb, exactly.

29:09Anita:It's wonderful. And if only we knew more. I mean, if only there were more records on who said what to whom and when. Ada does then return to London in 1919 because, you know, after experiencing what she's experienced, Willie, she never wants to see, ever wants to see France again. And she has run up debts, her lifestyle and her time with Madame Barreton and her time at the casino tables of Monte Carlo, So debts of over, we know,£17 ,000. Nowhere to call home. Desperate. Destitute. And it is, again, you know, one of the nice people from the first family who steps in to save her. Where Sophia tried to ease the way for Pauline, at least, to join the rest of the family, Freddie steps in with some material help.

29:56William:Freddie sounds lovely. Always trust an antiquarian, I say. Okay. A nice Norfolk antiquarian. Just the man you need in a tight spot.

30:04Anita:So, Freddie is a darling, actually. He sort of gives her money. Sometimes he gives her money anonymously. We sort of subsequently find out from records that he was sending money her way. And eventually, it's actually Ada is not the kind of person who's going to live on the perhaps promise of somebody's kindness, which may dry up. So, she goes to the India office herself, Ada does, and she says, I'm going to make you a deal. You give me a small house and you give me a hat shop and I will never bother you again. I mean, she's plucky, man. This is a survivor.

30:36William:Does that correspondence survive?

30:38Anita:It survives. Yeah, and because the Indy Office is thinking about it and you've got them saying, you know, the whole conversation if she came in, she said that's all she wants. She wants to be a milliner so she can support herself and she wants a small house. And then you've got this to-ing and fro-ing and the Indy Office, they give it to her. They give it to her. And that's what she does. That's the hat shop.

30:57William:So she starts up in a knocking shop. She goes to the casino. As who knows what.

31:03Anita:May well have been a chambermaid. I don't know.

31:06William:Then she's a Verdun as a nurse. And now she's a milliner.

31:09Anita:And also not, you know, not so close to her daughters. You know, you get the sense, if not, you know, the concrete proof, but just the tidal movements of these daughters, that they are not close to their mother. They're just kind of, you know, they're lost. And Pauline is in grief. You know, you ask me what we know about Torres. We don't know much except that she loves him because she never remarries. Right. You know, she visits with Sophia, but she really doesn't have a home of her own. And by the 1920s, she's drifted back to Paris, you know, trying to be a free Parisian, but quietly running out of money.

31:48William:And French is kind of her first language now.

31:51Anita:It is. Yeah. Look, we haven't talked about Irene. Shall we come back after the break and talk about Irene, who is the most neglected sister of all?

32:00William:This is a tragic story. More after the break.

32:24William:print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. WISE keeps things simple. WISE is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. WISE uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today.

33:05William:Be smart, get wise, T's and C's apply.

33:08Anita:Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.

33:18William:Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Heat up your 4th of July at the Home Depot with our wide variety of grills under$300 and make every gathering one to remember. Give your outdoor space a glow up. Whatever your budget is, with savings on seasonal plants starting at$5. With the grill fired up and your backyard set to perfection, you'll be able to invite friends and family over to kick off the party.

34:00William:Start celebrating with low prices guaranteed at The Home Depot. Prices may vary by store. Exclusions apply. See homedepo.com slash price match for details.

34:11William:Welcome back. We've seen what happens to Ada, Dulip Singh's last wife, who was last seen in a hat shop. We've now followed Pauline, who is a widow and living in Paris. But what has happened, Anita, to Irene?

34:28Anita:Irene, Irene, the more fragile of the two children, largely sort of left in neglect by everybody who should have cared with her. Well, not surprising. And if you know anything about psychology, people will look for their own families. If their families have let them down, they try and create their own. So in 1910, so even before Pauline gets married, even though she's a younger child. She marries a Frenchman called Pierre-Marie Alexandre Villemont. And he's a wealthier man than Torres is, because the wedding we know takes place at the Church of Saint-Philippe-de-Roule in Paris on the 15th of March, 1910.

35:02Anita:She is a society wedding. It is a society wedding. She's a society bride because, you know, we see her portrait is taken by Ellis and a wailery.

35:11William:It's a gorgeous image. Yeah. Yeah.

35:14Anita:I mean, they are society photographers. They don't bother with just anybody's marriage.

35:18William:So then she's got some money.

35:20Anita:Well, her husband-to-be has some money.

35:22William:I mean, she's dressed up in a proper bridal outfit here with a long train. She's got a sort of fluffy, not a tiara, what do you call it? Those ostrich feather hats. It's a fascinator. Yeah. It's a fascinator. It's a fascinator. It's a fascinator. And she's looking pretty fascinating in her fascinator, standing on some steps, all set to get married.

35:41Anita:This should be her happily ever after, Willie. and it clearly isn't because we know that actually it's a bit of a disaster from the start. There are records of her having epileptic fits as early as 1915. We know that she starts unraveling psychologically and we can't immediately draw the line, but it is suggested that her husband does not treat her very well. So, in the 1920s, she spends time in a nursing home being treated for something called neurasthenia, one of those Edwardian catch-hole diagnosis for somebody who is just burnt out, depressed and anxious. There wasn't another name for all of that.

36:20Anita:So, severe depression and anxiety.

36:23William:So, my grandfather had that and he was subjected to electric shocks at this period.

36:27Anita:So was Irene. So was Irene. So, that was the cure back then, electroshock therapy. And Freud was saying it was at the time, this is what the thinking was, that it was the result of unfulfilled sexual stimulation or non-completed coitus that causes... Very Freud. We have learned a lot since then. So after this rather brutal treatment, and I don't know how your grandfather was after the electroshock therapy.

36:53William:And it scarred him for life, actually.

36:55Anita:Well, you know, Irene moves back to an apartment that she has in Paris on the Avenue Hoche. It's an elegant, expensive street. It must be something that was settled through, you know, her separation with her husband. Although she does have some funds of her own, we know this. And she seems okay. She takes up painting. She has friends. We know that she dines out. But secretly, you know what? This return to France is not good for her because she's estranged from the people who knew her best. And Paris reminds her of her most miserable times with them. Remember, she was born in Paris. It wasn't a good time.

37:37Anita:Her father dies in Paris, Maharaja Dilip Singh dies in Paris, who didn't really give much of a damn about her. And Ada, who also didn't give very much of a damn about her, sort of left her to go and gamble in Monte Carlo. So, you know, this is not a good place. And it is in Paris that she starts losing touch with reality. So, no amount of the painting or the reading or, you know, there's a music scorebook from her childhood that she was trying to learn in Paris. She's trying so hard to push back against what today we will call quite clearly depression and anxiety. And she is fighting and doing her best, but there just weren't the tools or the understanding at that time to help her.

38:24Anita:There was electroshock therapy. So what you see at this point is that a creative, very beautiful young woman is breaking into pieces. In August 1925, any kind of idea that she is happily married with Villemort, that just goes out the window because Villemort decides to separate with her. And within days, Irene climbs to the top floor of their apartment building in Paris and throws herself from a window. The fall breaks her body, but she doesn't kill herself. And what it does, oh God, it makes her life already, a really difficult life, even worse, because you've got the French press descending, you know, la princesse indienne suicidaire is what they, you know, sort of headline it.

39:11William:1925, she's throwing herself out of a window, but hasn't died. 1926, Freddie, her half-brother does die, the antiquarian in Norfolk. Is that old age? Because he's not, He can't be that old by then.

39:25Anita:He's quite fat and not very healthy and clearly there's a heart problem that runs in the family because his father dies at 55, remember? So, he dies, he just keels over and dies. I mean, what Freddie's death means is that that one person who's trying to, particularly since we're talking about Irene and Pauline, who was trying to be that father figure, who tries to get them to come to Blow Norton, his home in Norfolk, who puts adjoining coach houses in so that his sisters can come and go as they please and feel like they have a safe place. When he dies, all the gloves come off and Bamba, who is the one who has been perhaps biting her tongue a little bit, she basically comes out and swings.

40:11Anita:She hates them. Now she doesn't even have to play nice now that Freddie has gone. Irene is alone now in Monte Carlo trying to cheer herself up. like her mother before her, she's been gambling. She has been spending what little she has, and she's been losing. And the funeral, Freddie's funeral, is the last time you'll see the other four sisters in the same place. They'll get together at St. Andrew's Church in Blow Norton, but Irene will not be there. She can't come because she's on the Riviera and she's convinced that she is losing her mind. So she's in no fit state, even though she has affection for Freddie, who could not have affection for Freddie?

40:54Anita:Freddie is the only really very lovely person who shows sort of unconditional love to these young women. She won't come even for the funeral, even though Pauline will put aside all her differences with Bamba and stand at a graveside with the woman she most detests in the world. Likewise for Bamba, Irene can't.

41:12William:And this is now turning into this wonderful succession of stories that you've presented us with in this series. We now sort of end up in this side of paradise. We're in a kind of F. Scott Fitzgerald novel because we're in the south of France and Irene is down there with mental health issues.

41:33Anita:Yeah, and I should probably say that it's a trigger warning, this is what it is. But if you find any discussion of people taking their own lives difficult, this is what we're going to talk about next. So just be aware of that. On the 8th of October, 1926, less than two months after Freddie's funeral, Sophia receives a telegram. A fisherman has dragged out a woman's body out of the waters of the Riviera. She was wearing expensive clothes. She was believed to be in her mid-30s. And they know it's Irene because Irene has left a note on a nearby rock explaining who she is and what she's about to do.

42:15Anita:In fact, she writes two notes, Willie. One note on the rock identifies herself. One letter is for her lawyer and a very sort of loyal friend, if you like, a man called Lancelot Smith. And she writes it on the morning of her death. And I'm going to read the letter because I think actually we owe it to Irene because she so easily just disappears through the cracks of these stories. And because I think she deserves to speak in her own voice. Nobody will ever hear of me again as I am going to commit suicide this afternoon. I am homeless. My nerves have prevented me continuing my studies, but I have grasped my object.

42:55Anita:I've been staying a week at Monte Carlo, but here I only play the fool and lose my pocket money. Please forgive me for troubling you in such troublesome times, but it is the last time.

43:07William:I am homeless. Now, that is something that doesn't speak well, really, of the rest of the family, because they're not looking after their sister. Her sisters have Faraday House, and Bamba has Gulzar in Lahore. Catherine has Coal Hatch House in Penn. And Irene, at 36 years old, the dust daughter of the last Maharaja of the Punjab, has nowhere. She's literally homeless. And that's what she writes in her letter.

43:34Anita:Yeah, but you know, doors were opened to her. Sophia absolutely would have taken her in, but she doesn't want anything to do with this family that she, in some way, thinks of as part of her disease, part of her sadness. You know, this name, this lineage, this family story has brought her nothing but sadness and perhaps made it impossible, although we don't know how her husband treated her, but impossible to form and keep an attachment because he does certainly leave her.

44:06William:They're not good at marriages in this family.

44:09Anita:Well, that letter, when I read it, was heartbreaking and it's heartbreaking to read it now. So, as I say, if that triggers anything for anybody, I do apologise. Do reach out. There are people who can help. Let's talk about what happens after Irene dies because Irene did have some money, quite a bit of money.

44:31William:She left, you found a will, didn't you, Anita, which you show has rather more in it than one might have expected for someone who says she's homeless. She left£30 ,000, which is a fair amount of money in the 1930s. And so while she's homeless, she's not destitute.

44:52Anita:No, she's not. I think it's completely fair. And also, you know, there's a material settlement from Ville Moix as well, you know.

44:58William:Who was an aristocrat and had money.

45:01Anita:Yeah, and who may not have been able to live with her anymore or wanted to live with her. And we don't know how cruel he may have been with her. But, you know, he certainly, they weren't together. But he still puts aside money to look after her. But she was homeless in spirit. You know, I say that. And, you know, that letter to Lancelot Smith, that letter to Lancelot Smith, she changes her will in it. This is like it tells you everything you need to know about her because her old will had left everything to Sister Pauline. The new will leaves everything to Dr. Barnardo's, which is a children's charity.

45:35Anita:So the message can't be clearer. She at the end wanted to leave everything that she owned, around this 30 ,000 that you're talking about, to Dr. Barnardo's home for poor and unwanted children. What do you see in that? I mean, the message to the family is clear. I've been unloved. I was unwanted too. And that's all she can think of. They don't deserve anything. It is only, you know, she wants the money to help others who are in her same situation.

46:03William:And because of this, because of this changed will at the very end, we have this terrible postscript where Bamba shows herself at her very worst.

46:12Anita:Yeah, Bamba really does behave appallingly. So Pauline contests the will, you know, you're not going to be surprised by that. These two are full blood sisters, you know, saying that she was not of sound mind in her final hours. It goes into the courts and Dr. Barnardo fights back. And then out of absolutely nowhere, Bamba decides to intervene. She hires one of the most feared king's counsels in the country. He's a baronet. He's a conservative MP. His name is Sir Ellis Hume Williams. He is an absolute rottweiler in court. and for days, William, he tears Irene's reputation apart. And you can see in the way that papers cover this, it is awful.

46:55Anita:You know, things like black blood ran in her veins and she would scratch to get it out.

47:00William:This is what he says. This is Ennis Hume Williams.

47:03Anita:Yeah, and you know, this is the scratching of her, you know, that she would self-harm. That's how we get to know that she was self-harming. Things that, you know, the family would really possibly rather not have made public. But, you know, Bamber, when she's fighting for something, she's all in fighting for something. You know, he talked about her skin conditions, you know, the fact that she was causing that herself as well, pulling her hair out, you know, all of this kind of stuff that really was humiliating and embarrassing to the postscript of somebody who, when, you know, she was covered in the newspapers, it was that beautiful photograph of her.

47:41William:It's a complete train crash, this.

47:42Anita:Oh, it's just hideous. And Pauline and Bamba after this case, which by the way, Bamba loses. And not only does she not get a penny of Irene's money, but she has to pay all the court costs. This whole thing.

47:55William:Yeah.

47:56Anita:Oh, it's just awful. So, you know, they never speak to each other again. Pauline disappears after this terrible experience with her family. And the only other time that Pauline will see Sophia is at Ada's funeral in 1930. 30, neither Bamba nor Catherine will come. Sophia's the only one who shows up. And they mourn together, a woman that Sophia would have had every reason to despise, but the only mother that Pauline has ever known. There is a postscript to this. All of what we've talked about is in the book that I wrote, Sophia. But there is new stuff which I didn't know about and which Peter Bunce, who I've mentioned, the historian, who has sort of spent years tracking the Dilip Singh story.

48:39William:He's been following this trail ever since, hasn't he?

48:42Anita:Even before he was collecting all the ephemera of Dilip Singh. And it's largely his stuff that you can see at the Kensington Palace exhibition.

48:50William:Which you should go, should read and buy Anita's book. And then you should go and see Peter Bounce's exhibition because they're both extraordinary.

48:57Anita:Well, that's very kind of you. And just for me, the trail kind of stopped after the funeral. Maybe I just stopped looking perhaps. But in the 1950s, when there's a Patiala University historian called Gander Singh, he actually interviewed Bamba in Lahore for his book, Maharaja Dalip Singh and his correspondence. And he asked Bamba, whatever became of it, because nobody knew what happened to your half-sister Pauline. And she says, I don't know. And just kind of barked at him, didn't know, didn't care. And there were really lots of lurid theories that she might've been killed in a bombing raid during the Second World War, that she might have ended up in a German concentration camp, that she might have been a collaborator, that she was part of the resistance, that she simply disappeared in wartime France.

49:44Anita:But thanks to Peter, actually, none of it's true, because we know now that he got an email from a distant relative of Lieutenant Torrey.

49:53William:The guy killed in the Battle of Luz.

49:55Anita:Yeah, exactly that, you know, and this relative had been researching his own family tree, and had come across this French record, a burial of a woman, date 1941 in the southwest of France. So this is a place in the foothill of the Pyrenees at a place called Sanatorium de Trespoix, and it's high above the town. And Peter did spend months pursuing this, and he recovered Pauline's French death certificate.

50:20William:Well done, Peter. Brilliant work.

50:22Anita:And recovered her last will and testament. Yeah, I know, really, I mean, excellent, excellent work. And all it said, the document that he recovered just said, death report of a foreign subject in France. And so we could piece together what happened. She developed TB towards the end of her life in the late 1930s. And in those days, it could be a death sentence, no antibiotics, nowhere for them.

50:48William:Not a nice death at all.

50:49Anita:No, I mean, you would put in quarantine units in these sanatoriums. And sometimes then the only other way to go is the graveyard. she did not tell her sisters that she was dying. You know, she couldn't tell so far. She couldn't tell anybody. And so she died at this sanatorium on the 10th of April, 1941, at the age of 53, and was buried by the authorities in a cemetery where no family was present, no mourners were present, no word was sent.

51:14William:Like a dad.

51:15Anita:Sad. Sad, sad, sad.

51:18William:It's been a decade now, nearly, since you wrote your book. And when you look back at this tragic succession of train crashes, for most of them, it's a very, very sad story. What do you take away from this story?

51:33Anita:That it is exactly that. It's a sort of a tragedy that does have a hard full stop. Because what to me has always been remarkable, that none of the children of the first or second family ever have children of their own. You know, apart from Freddie, who finds some modicum of happiness. Is Freddie married? No. No. He has a very close relationship with a local priest. Yeah, I mean, he's happy being a collector and he goes on trips with this local vicar. And they seem to be having just a nice life, sort of bumbling about. But he's an avowed bachelor, he never gets married. Victor, we mentioned in one of the previous episodes, dies fairly young, is buried in Monte Carlo, never has children.

52:19Anita:Sophia has some kind of purpose to her life, even at the end. Catherine has love, loses love, but then also has a mission when she's, as it has been put, the Indian Schindler. And then you've got these two, Pauline and Irene, who sort of just evaporate, which is very sad. And there's no one else left. So, I think what I'm struck by is, number one, truth is stranger than fiction. Because I know for a fact, if I'd have taken this as some kind of proposal for a Bridgerton series, people would have said, can you go back and make this more believable? Because this many things can't happen to one family.

53:00Anita:It's crazy. Are you nuts? And number two, isn't it good to put people back into their story? Because for many, the story has always been really simple. Duleep Singh was the one with tragic life and his children, the Sikh children, the cubs of Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab, were Sikhs and then not much else. So, to actually follow them through and follow that story and follow to deal with the complexity even of Dilip himself because he's not a hero in this story. When he's older, he's not a hero.

53:36William:And although these are now mascots for the Sikh community in Britain and people, there are blue plaques and there was a massive party for the exhibition opening and all that sort of thing. Yeah. None of these girls, I get the impression, nor Freddie particularly embraced their secret. They're Christians.

53:53Anita:They were Christians. I mean, they were Christians. Their father converted to Christianity. Their mother was a devout Christian. He converted back in the end. He did. But by that time, he's estranged from his children. He's doing it because it's, well, look, there's one school of thought that says he converts back because he really truly believes and he was duped while in the care of a Scottish foster father and mother to give up his Sikh identity. But there is another that suggests actually converting back will again make him beloved by his old sort of countrymen who will then help him with this revolution to get the British out and pay Victoria back for doing all the things that he says she had done to him.

54:39Anita:But all the children were Christians. They were all Christians when they died. And when you go to Elverdon, it is in a Christian graveyard. It is in a Christian graveyard. And how ironic is it that he, the Maharaja, is buried next to Maharani Bamba, the woman whose life he kind of ruined and whose heart he broke, and little Eddie, who's the most innocent of them all. Anyway, that's all we've got time for. Hope you enjoyed this mini-series.

55:07William:You've really cheered us up today, Anita. Thank you for that. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you.

55:12Anita:Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon.

55:15William:Goodbye from me, William Durinville.

55:35William:a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach, built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health.

56:10William:Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

56:38Anita:Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.