by Anand, Anita
South of Lahore stood Mamdot, once part of the old city of Kasur. Ranjit Singh had overwhelmed the Muslim rulers in 1807, but when they submitted to him without violence, he allowed them to keep Mamdot as their fiefdom. After a seven-hour train journey, Sophia and Bamba were met at the station by a Major Barton ‘and the Nawab of Mamdot (a boy of 10). The Bartons seem very nice people.’26 The major acted as a kind of substitute parent for the young nawab, and seemed to have a powerful hold over the boy. Barton escorted the princesses to meet the nawab’s mother and three sisters, who lived in strict purdah: ‘they can only speak Punjabi of course . . . B spoke to them and asked them to bring out their jewels to show us. They own very fine things, most of them very old.’27
The following day the princesses were taken by the little nawab and Major Barton to Mamdot’s famous horse fair, where Sophia and Bamba again became the focus of attention: ‘A crowd had clustered round us everywhere this morning as we walked about the show!! I think they must have known who we were.’28 Sophia had little time to appreciate the adulation; it was all she could do to stop Joe from being crushed under numerous hooves. Over the next few weeks, the tiny dog’s antics would come as welcome light relief. Like a clown he dashed excitedly in and out of the path of regally decorated elephants, almost daring them to step on him. He growled at most strangers, whether they were princes or paupers. Sophia was kept busy trying to keep the Pomeranian from being skewered for his insolence.
Later that night the young nawab, whom Sophia described as a ‘fat and funny old boy’,29 threw a formal dinner for his special guests. Bamba and Sophia found themselves seated next to Major Barton and another British officer, Captain Walker, who had travelled from Lahore to attend. The meal turned into an inquisition: ‘Oh dear I was catechised. But Major Barton was very nice about it and said it was from interest he asked these questions. But we think it was to know our own special opinion about things.’30
Sophia found the relentless questioning unsettling, and the effort to conceal her recent friendships and new political convictions proved too much for her at times: ‘I got blocked once . . . not knowing papa’s exact age when he was deposed.’31 The next day at dinner the same thing happened. This time Major Barton sat next to Bamba, ‘with a policeman on her other side’. As Sophia noted, ‘B said she got well questioned.’32 Despite the obvious probing, there were moments in the formality that Sophia and her sister found hilarious: ‘The Nawab had to make his first speech, it was all written out for him but he was so nervous he could hardly get through it and made so many mistakes in spite of the fact he was being readily prompted on both sides poor boy . . . he dranked all the people for having come to his state as guests!!’33
In the early hours of the next morning, as the princesses slept, a mysterious Indian came to see them. Given the hour and the surreptitious manner of his calling, the maid, angered at being woken, told him to get out and never to come back. He begged her to call the Duleep Singh princesses, insisting that his father and grandfather had served the family and that he had something important to tell them. But she would hear none of it and chased him away. Sophia never did learn who he was or what he so desperately wished to tell them under cover of darkness, but the experience put the sisters on edge.
The princesses left Mamdot and continued their tour of princely states, returning to Lahore every so often to relax and replenish their luggage. Sometimes, during their Lahore sojourns, they managed to fit in social engagements. On one such occasion at the beginning of March, the ladies of the India Association, a group which raised money for schools for poor children, threw a garden party for Lady Rivaz. Showing solidarity with her sister, Sophia not only wore Indian clothes for the first time (an embroidered silk shirt which reached down below her knees, over the top of tightly fitting pyjamas) but also snubbed the Lieutenant General’s wife: ‘It was a lovely day, I wore my green kurta and B a yellow sari with a good deal of jewellery . . . Lady Rivaz was there but we did not speak to her.’34
The LG had greater issues to worry about than the insolence of the Duleep Singh sisters. Apart from the continuing challenge to his authority from nationalists, plague had come to Punjab, with devastating consequences. Public health reports, which were sent regularly back to London, noted, ‘the mortality from plague in the Punjab is increasing at an alarming rate, being about a thousand a week, and more than ten times as large as for the corresponding week last year’.35 As the days progressed, people the sisters knew started to die. Bamba decided it was time to get out of the city, taking only boiled water and food which had been freshly prepared by her own cooks under her close supervision. Whenever they stopped, Bamba would disinfect the luggage herself. Sophia thought such precautions were excessive. In her opinion, fresh air and exercise were the answer to all of life’s ailments, even the plague.
Though their luggage smelt strongly of sulphur and carbolic, Sophia noticed that aspects of their travels were becoming a good deal more pleasant. Guards on the trains rushed to help them with tickets and bags; platform staff seemed more courteous too. ‘It was very amusing noting the effect my letter to the Viceroy has had,’36 wrote Sophia. Their weeks touring the princely states of Punjab were often emotionally charged, however. They saw artefacts from their grandfather’s kingdom which had been dispersed by the British as rewards to those who had betrayed his son. They tried on priceless jewels and sumptuous silks in the quarters of ranis, and spoke to men whose families had died fighting for their family. In Gujaranwalla, a district in the northeast which had once been nothing more than a hamlet, Sophia saw the very room where her grandfather had been born. The experience took on an almost spiritual dimension, and Sophia was deeply moved by the humble beginnings of the warrior king.
When the sisters reached Nabha in the south-west of Punjab, Sophia took an immediate and intense dislike to Sir Hira Singh, the Rajah of the princely state. He had a snow-white beard and long bony fingers which held Bamba’s hand too long and too tightly for Sophia’s liking. Hira Singh had sent his men to fight for the British in most of their frontier campaigns for over three decades, and had been knighted for his loyalty. Whispering conspiratorially, a little too close for Sophia’s comfort, he told the sisters that their father had been foolish to defy the Raj, adding sweetly that he thought their brothers Victor and Freddie ought to fight for the English to prove that treason did not run in their blood. (‘He thought he gave valuable advice,’37 Sophia wrote in her diary scornfully.) Sophia held her tongue but as usual Bamba found it impossible to do the same. Sophia noted with suspicion that the Rajah absorbed Bamba’s rage mildly. Later that same night, Sophia could not sleep with worry: ‘I am sorry that there was so much politics talked and that B gave her views so strongly even if they are not always what she really thinks.’ Sophia concluded that the Rajah seemed to be provoking them: ‘We have nothing to lose but our lives!’38
Unnerved by Rajah Hira Singh, Sophia spent her nights in Nabha trying to teach herself how to write backwards, hoping it might foil anyone who might find her diary and pick the little brass lock. She was surprised at how easily she could master the skill. After politely refusing an invitation to extend their stay in Nabha, the sisters carried on with their journey and made their way to the princely state of Faridkot, a dry plain in the south-west of Punjab. It was here that Sophia noticed that they had a rather hapless spy in tow. Major Barton, the man Sophia and Bamba had dined with only weeks before, was skulking in the shadows, watching them as they changed trains. The major seemed entirely unprepared when the sisters waved at him cheerfully, trying to dip out of sight. Sophia and Bamba shrugged off his odd attempts at covert surveillance, leaving him behind to get on their next train. But when they reached their destination Major Barton had mysteriously materialised again: ‘he had been talking to the Indian who came to meet us but as soon as he saw us get out of the carriage he turned his back to the window and read his paper. Too odd for words.’39
Wherever the sisters went, they sti
rred great feelings of Sikh pride; cries of ‘Bolo Son Nihal!’, the Sikh exultation of triumph, rang in the air. Both women learned to answer with the traditional response ‘Sat Sri Akal!’ (‘God is the ultimate truth!’) to the delight of the crowds, some of whom wept with emotion. In the princely state of Ferozepur the welcome was overwhelming: ‘When we came out we were pelted with flowers and crowds had collected and lots of women came and touched our feet. This we were not at all prepared for, when we were away and into our carriage, we were still being pelted with flowers. Ah these dear people. What a memory they have. Why should they care for us?’40
By April 1907, Sophia had spent six months in India and had witnessed firsthand the growing political turbulence in India. The push for Indian self-determination had seduced her. She felt tremendous loyalty to Bamba too. Nevertheless she had a yearning to go home to England and to find a meaningful existence for herself. Sophia had also decided that although Bamba was spending her time with some dangerous nationalists, and was certainly the subject of surveillance, her life was not in any immediate danger and there was no plot to poison her. Somehow it was not enough to be subsumed in Bamba’s own battles; Sophia needed to find ones of her own to fight.
The fear of plague pushed Bamba to reluctantly accept her sister’s decision to leave. They seemed now to be surrounded by death as the disease took its toll. As Sophia wrote in her diary, the terror was visceral: ‘Lahore is full of plague, in fact the whole of Punjab is full of it. It is too awful for words, in fact it is the worst form there has been in the last 10 years. Everyone is dying of it.’41 Questions were raised in the House of Commons about the scale of the disaster. The Secretary of State for India, John Morley, confirmed that in April, some 314,000 people had died in Punjab alone.42
On the night of 3 April, Sophia found she could not sleep. There was more to her insomnia than the intense heat of the night, or Bamba’s fears that she had already been infected. Sophia had a very important duty to perform in the morning and her head was filled with it. For the first time since she had arrived in India, Sophia was going to visit the tomb of her grandfather. It was odd that she had not made such a pilgrimage before; perhaps she was afraid of what feelings the visit would provoke. Whenever she could, Sophia had tried to avoid emotionally difficult situations; her early life had taught her that such pain could be unbearable.
Rising early the next morning, Sophia left The Palms quietly by herself. She returned home later, having visited the flower market, her arms filled with roses to lay on her grandfather’s tomb. In her absence, Bamba had decided that she did not have the plague after all and was dressed and ready to leave. The grand mausoleum stood in the heart of old Lahore, and had been built on the spot where the Maharajah had been cremated, and where Sophia’s grandmother as a young woman had refused to commit sati. Surrounded by flat and dusty parkland, Ranjit Singh’s tomb rose up and greeted the early sun’s rays, catching the light on its broad white dome and gilded cupolas. The building reflected the old King’s rule, and was a meld of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh architecture. The domes and clean white stone spoke of Mughal influence, the ornate golden balustrade had the mark of Sikh ostentation and the front entrance had Hindu deities carved in vivid red sandstone. Sophia passed beneath the round belly of Ganesh, the Hindus’ elephant-headed god, and removed her sandals at the entrance.
Stepping on cool smooth stone, she left the heat and dust behind her and entered the cavernous quiet of the Samadhi or mausoleum. Small convex mirrors set in white cement reflected her face a thousand times over, as she looked up at the ceiling. In silence she climbed the stairs to the main vault, where it took a while for her pupils to adjust. There before her, in the centre of the silence, stood the urn containing her grandfather’s ashes. Even giants of history could be reduced to such containers – no bigger than a lady’s handbag. The urn had been carved from marble to look like a lotus flower and was surrounded by thirteen smaller, plainer stone flowers. Each of these held the remains of those who had burned themselves alive on Ranjit’s pyre: four wives, seven servant girls and two pigeons (which had inadvertently flown into the high flames). What Sophia felt when she stood before her grandfather’s grave she did not share, even with her diary, save to say: ‘I am glad to have seen the tomb at last. I was determined I would do that before leaving but had wished to do it when I first came.’43
Days before she was due to depart Lahore, Sophia awoke one morning to hear a carriage rattling its way towards the house. Looking out of her bathroom window she saw crates wobbling precariously on the back of a cart with the letters ‘PDS’ writ large on them. It could mean only one thing: Pauline Duleep Singh. The arrival of her half-sister would turn life upside down for the short time Sophia and Bamba had left together.
Ada had been negotiating the terms of Pauline’s visit to India for some months. Bamba had only relented after being pressured by both Sophia and Frederick. The manner of her half-sister’s arrival was to typify her stay. Pauline had taken the wrong boat, arrived at the wrong time, and, taking matters into her own hands, then turned up at the house without warning. Sophia watched with slight amusement as her two wilful sisters sized one another up: ‘Pauline was looking very well . . . she had a bath and washed and had remained in her dressing gown almost all day . . . she had brought 3 huge boxes and several small . . . I brought enough for 10 years and she has brought enough for 20!!’44
Although it had been a chaotic beginning, Sophia was delighted by Pauline’s arrival. She felt it was high time Bamba learned to love her half-sisters, just as she had been loved. All seemed well at first: ‘B seems favourably impressed with her in every way which is a very good thing. She even thinks her pretty which I couldn’t say I quite do, though I think she has a nice face and expressions and a very pretty mouth and chin and is pretty when she is excited and laughing.’45 For Bamba, however, the novelty wore off remarkably quickly. It became clear that Pauline was not the easiest of people: ‘She has eaten nothing all day poor child. She does not appreciate either Indian or English food, it is to be hoped she will soon.’46
Food was not the only thing that Pauline complained about. Hardly anything was good enough and her fussiness coupled with her constant exhaustion began to grate on Bamba’s nerves. Sophia’s twenty-year-old half-sister was always too tired or too hot to venture from the house. She refused Sophia and Bamba’s offers to see Lahore’s attractions; nor did she wish to be introduced to their friends, preferring to play cards with Pir-ji, or ball games with the servants. Pauline even managed to irritate the usually sanguine Sophia on the very day that should have been one of her happiest in Lahore.
Bamba had written to Lajpat Rai explaining that Sophia was leaving for London soon and had asked him to come one last time to meet her. He had accepted the invitation immediately. Sophia was touched: ‘I was rather glad as I wanted to see him to say goodbye. He came alright and we had tea and sat some time and talked.’47 In the end they did not have much time together as this, unfortunately, was also the day that Pauline decided that she wanted to go out and see Lahore: ‘P was such a fidget as she wanted to go out shopping and we did not . . . So she got quite rude and eventually I took her to play tennis cricket, then left her and came back for a few minutes but he soon went . . . He is perhaps going to bring a son of his to England this year . . . I shall hope to have him at Hampton Court.’48 Her conservative neighbours at the palace would never get the chance to be appalled by her choice of house guest, however. When Sophia said goodbye to Lajpat Rai on that frustrating afternoon, it would be the last time they would see each other.
Although her ship home was not due to set sail until 6 May, Sophia left Lahore on 13 April. The journey to Bombay usually took a week, but Sophia had promised to show Pauline some of India and so planned a number of excursions on the way. She had wanted Bamba to come too, but her sister excused herself, saying that she needed to be at home for some unexpected visitors. Their parting was never going to be easy.
; Sophia had barely been away for a day when Bamba had a change of heart. At Rawalpindi, some 200 miles away from Lahore, Sophia found an urgent wire waiting for her. Bamba would be travelling all night on the Bombay Mail, and would be with her the next morning. (Sophia commented wryly in her diary that she was surprised her sister had made the train on time.49) When Bamba finally arrived, she walked into a furious row. Pauline had been disparaging about India and Sophia could not tolerate it: ‘She said we lived like savages out here. She could not eat the food of course. I was not going to stand that so I said to B she better send her back at once. I said I would not speak to her again. Nor did I for the rest of the day.’50 Bamba found herself in the unlikely role of peacemaker.
After reconciling, the three women spent the next weeks together slowly edging their way to Bombay and the start of Sophia’s journey home. Bamba found it easier to talk about the plague than about her little sister’s imminent departure: ‘B had seen in the paper that the Bishop of Lahore has said a prayer for the plague to end and has said all the missionaries are to say prayers for it. Which shows how very bad it must be, and probably the English are themselves getting frightened about it.’51 Sophia entertained Pauline in her hotel room for hours with endless games of cribbage while Bamba excused herself and stayed in her bedroom, claiming to have a headache. Despite the underlying tensions, the next eighteen days were a blur of sightseeing and shopping and it was only on her last night in Bombay on 6 May that Sophia could bring herself to acknowledge her own emotions: ‘So this was goodbye to poor India. Shall I ever see her again. I doubt it!! And I leave her with many regrets, especially do I loathe leaving B behind.’52
