Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  Sophia also spent her time seeing more of Pauline and her brother Frederick. He now lived at Blo Norton Hall, a sixteenth-century moated house near Thetford. His new home brought the family much-needed joy. It seemed to exist in a bubble, just like Freddie himself, untouched by time, politics or reality. The handsome, timbered house was filled with his collection of Jacobean art and old reclaimed stained glass split the light into rainbows on the heavy wooden furniture. Freddie pottered around the vast gardens and planted his groves with trees. Electricity and the telephone were banished from the main house, but the prince relented for the sake of his sisters, furnishing two of the nearby coachhouses with all modern amenities for their comfort. Sophia found herself idling away for weeks there, and such was the peace at Blo Norton that even Catherine could be lured from Germany for long visits.

  Dependable, conservative and much loved by all his friends, time and circumstances changed, but Freddie never seemed to. The past had never haunted him and the prince rarely bore anyone ill will. Unlike his little sister, he never caused the Palace a headache and even went on hunting parties with King George V. Not a whiff of scandal had ever given his influential friends cause to abandon him and dukes and earls, as well as the local inhabitants, loved him. Freddie loved them back, giving generously of his time and money. He donated large sums to establish a museum in Thetford,32 which he filled with relics of British history and with family memorabilia. He wanted everyone to enjoy his treasures.

  With none of the airs and graces of his siblings, Freddie had become part of the fabric of local life. He was a stalwart of the local choir, godfather to many children, and was regularly seen bustling about his business in the village of Blo Norton. Freddie was particularly precious to Sophia because he alone had never judged her. Even though her politics had been an anathema to his Primrose League sensibilities, he had loved her without condition or criticism. His door had always been open.

  In the summer of 1926, Britain was gripped by a general strike during which more than 1.5 million workers stopped work for ten days in a dispute over miners’ pay. Chaos and rage gripped the nation as strikers closed pits and protested at the threat to their livelihoods. The government wished to reduce miners’ pay by thirteen per cent while at the same time increasing their shifts. Bus and train drivers downed tools in sympathy and as a result the transport network was crippled along with the pits. Gas and electricity supplies were at risk as workers marched out of their plants too. The nation was convulsed by panic.

  Up and down the country, police and strikers were clashing violently while volunteers who attempted to keep the system moving often found themselves beaten up as ‘blacklegs’. The government in response deployed tanks on civilian streets and even sent a warship to Newcastle, where strikers had tipped the iconic train, the Flying Scotsman, off its tracks. The state of his beloved country would have caused Freddie great misery; however he was, by this time, too ill to care.

  Freddie’s health had been fragile for months, a fact he had hidden from friends and family. The prince attended all his usual meetings and kept up with all his commitments despite the toll it was taking on him physically. In mid-May, he finally heeded his doctor’s advice and took to his bed. The rest seemed to do him little good, and he was finally forced to ask for help. When his sisters found out about his illness, they each dropped what they were doing and rushed to be with him. Sophia was first by his side as Bamba had to make the long voyage back from India, and Catherine from Germany. Even Pauline put aside her feelings about Bamba and came to sit by Freddie’s bed. The only sister who was missing was Irene.

  On Thursday 12 August, with his sisters around him, Freddie suffered a massive heart attack.33 The newspapers reported that the ‘Last Prince of Lahore’ was on his deathbed.34 Letters and telegrams poured in, offering help and hopes of a swift recovery. Even King George V sent a telegram to Norfolk enquiring after Freddie’s health.35 For three long days the sisters did their best to make him comfortable,36 but on a sunny Sunday afternoon at 2.30, with the light streaming through the old and draughty windows, Freddie died. At fifty-eight, he had outlived his father by three years.

  The prince’s funeral was everything the Maharajah’s was not. There was genuine and heartfelt grief at Freddie’s passing. Behind St Andrew’s church in Blo Norton, Sophia, Bamba, Catherine and Pauline stood in a close huddle by the far western wall of the cemetery. They watched in silence as well-wishers thronged to the graveside. At Duleep Singh’s funeral, the aristocracy had sent flowers and proxies; for Freddie, dukes, duchesses and lords attended in person, including the Duke of Grafton, Lord Dawson of Penn, Lord Henniker and the Countess of Albemarle.37 Floral tributes overran the little church from groups as diverse as London’s Carlton Club to the famers from the local villages.

  He had never once set foot in India, but as the last male lineal descendant of Ranjit Singh, the legacy of the Sikh kingdom was buried with Frederick Duleep Singh that day. The grave was made up of 400-year-old bricks which he himself had bought from old demolished houses just for the occasion of his burial.38 Even in death, Freddie seemed reluctant to let the modern world touch him. To the sound of the hymn ‘The Strife is Over’, earth was piled high upon his grave.

  At the time of Freddie’s funeral, Irene Duleep Singh, who had been conspicuous by her absence, was convinced she was losing her mind. In the view of many of those closest to her, she had been teetering on the edge for many years. Prone to serious mood swings all her life, the end of her marriage to the Frenchman Pierre Villemant, after only a few years, seemed to have tipped her into mania. Three years before, she had suffered a similar crisis, gripped by anxiety attacks and relentless depression. Then, Irene had admitted herself to a nursing home where doctors diagnosed her with ‘neurasthenia’,39 a condition which, according to the celebrated psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, was the result of unfulfilled sexual stimulation or ‘non-completed coitus’.40 The cure for neurasthenia was commonly electroshock therapy.

  ‘Cured’, Irene moved back to her Parisian apartment on the Avenue Hoche. It was an elegant and expensive street and for a while Irene seemed happy enough. She took up painting, saw friends and dined out; however the return to France was secretly gnawing away at her. Estranged from her family yet close to all the places which reminded her of her miserable childhood, she began to lose touch with reality. After barely a year, Irene climbed to the top of her building and threw herself from the window.41 The fall broke her body, but she failed to kill herself. The story of the suicidal Indian princess appeared in French newspapers and the subsequent attention did little to calm Irene’s nerves. In great physical and mental torment she withdrew from the world entirely, and lived like a recluse. Not even her sister Pauline could break through.

  Less than two months after Freddie’s funeral, Sophia received a devastating telegram from France. On 8 October 1926, a fisherman had dragged a woman’s body out of the waters off the Riviera. She was wearing expensive clothes and was believed to be in her mid-thirties. Irene had left a note on a nearby rock, explaining who she was, and what she had done.42 In the hours before she walked into the water, Irene had also written to her lawyer and friend Lancelot Smith. Her letter to him contained a more detailed account of what led her to take such irrevocable action: ‘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 . . . I have 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

  Somehow The Times got hold of the letter and soon everyone came to know of Irene’s agony. In the same letter, Irene had asked Lancelot to change the terms of her will. She wanted to leave all that she possessed (an estate worth around £30,000) to Dr Barnardo’s Home for Poor and Unwanted Children. The message to her family was clear. She had been unloved and unwanted too.


  Irene, who had never had children, achieved a healthy settlement after the end of her marriage. Her sister had been the beneficiary of the estate until Irene changed her mind on the last day of her life. Pauline immediately contested the new will, insisting that her suicidal sister was clearly of unsound mind when she decided to give all her money to charity. Dr Barnardo’s vowed to fight back.

  Though the affair was distasteful, most people understood why Pauline was taking the charity to court. Nobody however could understand why Bamba decided to contest the will too. Claiming to be the true beneficiary of Irene’s estate, she did so with such venom that for the first time in her life, Sophia was forced to distance herself from her sister in shame. In an effort to nullify both her wills, Bamba set out to annihilate Irene’s character. If she could prevent Pauline getting her hands on the money, Bamba believed the India Office would split the funds among all of Duleep Singh’s surviving heirs equally. Sophia and Catherine quickly ruled themselves out of her suit,44 leaving Bamba to fight on her own and for herself. She hired one of the most feared barristers in London to tear her dead sister’s reputation apart. Sir Ellis Hume-Williams was a King’s Counsel, a baronet and a Conservative politician and he tried to convince the court that Irene had been insane for years. Citing epileptic fits which dated back as far as 1915, he revealed Irene’s private medical records. Before the judge and reporters he showed that the princess had suffered from delusions since her youth. She had believed herself to be the mother of two babies who had been taken away and hidden by enemies. Sometimes, Irene believed that black blood ran in her veins,45 and would scratch to get it out. She believed she might be turning into a wild animal, and thrashed on the ground attempting to knock out her evil spirits.46 When in the throes of her worst manias, she had starved herself, torn out her fingernails and pulled out her hair. The press devoured every sordid detail, dragging the Duleep Singh family before the public gaze again. It was all too much for Sophia, who stayed away from court and refused to give evidence. Bamba, alone at the back of the court, was watched only by Pauline, whose hatred knew no bounds.

  After hearing days of vicious testimony and rebuttal, Mr Justice Hill pronounced in favour of Princess Pauline. Not only would she get all of Irene’s money, but Bamba would have to pay her court costs on top of those she had incurred for herself.47 The sum, around £3,600, would never be paid, despite Pauline’s repeated attempts to recover the money.48 She never spoke to Bamba again except through her solicitor, and her relationship with Sophia suffered too as a result of the court case. With Freddie gone, there were no neutral places for them to meet any more and an unbridgeable gulf opened up between the half-sisters. The only occasion when Pauline and Sophia would spend any length of time together again was at Ada’s funeral some years later. Neither Catherine nor Bamba would attend. Pauline gave up on her family. She also found herself cutting all ties to England and moved to France. She was never to be heard from again.

  * In South Africa, people of Indian origin were obliged to carry identity documents at all times.

  21

  A Solemn Promise

  Though the 1920s were marked by sadness and loss for Sophia, there were flashes of joy. The brightest came in February 1928 when ‘The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Bill’ began to make its way through Parliament. Ten years earlier, on 6 February 1918, the first major piece of voting reform had received Royal Assent. It gave women over thirty the parliamentary vote, as long as they were householders. The wives of householders could also cast their ballots, as could those paying rent of not less than £5 per year and university graduates.

  The celebrations then had been muted, with suffragette leaders acknowledging that despite their best efforts, only middle-class women would benefit from the change. Years of post-war Depression had pushed the matter to the bottom of all political party agendas, but in 1928, the question of equal suffrage was once again brought before the Houses of Parliament. The legislation being proposed would at last give Sophia and her friends what they had always wanted: equality with men before the ballot box. Even before the bill had passed its second reading there was a real feeling of optimism among the old suffragettes. The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Bill 1928 might actually make it this time.

  During the two months of debate that followed the bill’s introduction, speeches in both houses were often passionate and raw. Some MPs and members of the House of Lords remained bitterly opposed to the idea of parity; however it was clear that the majority were behind the bill. The Earl of Lytton summed up the feelings of many when he stood before the House of Lords during the second reading on 22 May 1928 and said:

  In listening to the debate that has taken place yesterday and to-day, my mind went back to those days before the War when this subject was so acutely controversial, and to the women who fought the battle for their rights in those far-off and difficult days, some of whom did not live to see the fruits of their labours. I feel that by passing this Bill to-day we are, as it were, placing a wreath on the tomb of those early champions. At least we shall, by passing the Bill, be placing a crown of victory and a seal of finality upon their efforts.1

  The matter was a particularly charged one for the earl, for it had been his own sister who had carved her ‘V’ for the vote into her flesh nineteen years before.

  Suddenly all caveats were swept away. The years of sacrifice, courage, law-breaking and sheer bloody-mindedness by the suffragettes were about to be rewarded, but neither of the people who had fought so hard over the issue would live to witness the occasion. Both Emmeline Pankhurst and her nemesis Herbert Henry Asquith died in 1928, weeks before the law received Royal Assent on 2 July.*

  Having suffered a series of strokes, Asquith had become severely paralysed towards the end of his life. Confined to his wheelchair, the former prime minister lived out his last days quietly at his country home in Berkshire. There he mourned the loss of his eldest son, who had been killed at the battle of the Somme in 1916. Compared to most other former prime ministers, Asquith was practically a pauper by the end. Economic depression and loss of income had bitten deep into his finances, and the lavish lifestyle he and Margot had once enjoyed began to catch up with them. Before he died, on 15 February, Asquith’s last wish had been that his funeral should not be a public affair. With his family and a few close friends gathered about the grave in a quiet parish church in Oxfordshire’s Sutton Courtenay, one would hardly have thought that a former head of state, social reformer, and the scourge of the suffragettes, was being laid to rest. Emmeline Pankhurst’s passing would be marked in much grander fashion.

  In October 1919, Emmeline decided to leave Britain and travel once more in North America. Accompanied by her faithful nurse, Catherine Pine, she intended to take to the lucrative lecture circuit. Her message was no longer restricted to female empowerment. Emmeline had become terrified of the new world order, and blamed ‘Bolshevism’ for all post-war woes. Bitterly estranged from her daughter Sylvia, who had thrown in her lot with the communists, Emmeline took any opportunity to condemn the Russian Revolution. At the same time she praised British imperialism, something that confused and hurt Sophia in equal measure.

  Although Emmeline had thought she might see out the end of her life in Canada, where ‘there seems to be more equality between men and women than in any other country I know’, in 1925, the long winters and expense eventually forced her to move back home. In England, she continued to praise the British Empire with increasing enthusiasm: ‘Some talk about the Empire and Imperialism as if it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of an empire like ours . . . great in territory, great in potential wealth . . . If we can only realise and use that potential wealth we can destroy thereby poverty, we can remove and destroy ignorance.’2

  A year later, Emmeline was selected as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party. She explained to incredulous friends that life
experience had moved her from the left to the right of the political spectrum. The same experience had almost destroyed her physically. Thin and fragile, Emmeline was given to bouts of crippling fatigue and caught almost every infection. News that her daughter Sylvia had given birth to a child ‘out of wedlock’, in April 1928, further weakened her. Regarded as a ‘modern’ woman, Emmeline was in many ways a social conservative long before she was a political one. She wept inconsolably for days from grief and disgust, hating Sylvia’s disregard for marital convention. Her daughter had brought disgrace on the family as far as Emmeline was concerned, and she refused to have anything to do with her new grandson.

  The WSPU leader’s health deteriorated quickly after that. In just six weeks she needed round-the-clock care. Christabel moved her mother to a nursing home in Hampstead where doctors took good care of her. Nevertheless, bedbound and anxious, Emmeline begged her daughter to find the doctor who had nursed her back to health after her most debilitating hunger strikes. Christabel did not approve of Dr Chetham Strode’s aggressive stomach-pumping treatments, but relented under duress, moving Emmeline to another nursing home in Wimpole Street, to be closer to the new doctor. Finding it hard to breathe, her mother lost the ability to speak. Days later, on 14 June, Emmeline Pankhurst died with Christabel by her side. She was one month away from her seventieth birthday. The cause of death was noted as septicaemia due to influenza.

  News of the death reverberated round the world, and obituaries filled foreign papers as well as the British press. Her funeral attracted suffragettes from all over. Women in white dresses, with WSPU sashes, prison badges and other medals of honour, marched behind her coffin in silence. The pallbearers were all women and stalwarts of the WSPU. The Daily Mail described the procession as ‘like a dead general in the midst of a mourning army’.3 More than a thousand women followed the funeral cortege to Brompton Cemetery, where they laid their leader to rest.