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

Who were Princesses Irene and Pauline, the forgotten Duleep Singh sisters? Why did Queen Victoria shun them? Why did Irene choose to leave her fortune to Dr Barnado's, sparking a vicious legal battle? And why has the fate of Paulina remained a mystery to historians for decades? In the final episode of this series, William and Anita explore the darkest chapter of the Duleep Singh family saga: the forgotten lives of Princesses Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Bruno Di Castri Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:09Speaker 02

  Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnnam.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  And me, William Dalrymple.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  This is the final episode, Willie, of our four-part series on the Duleep Singh sisters. And I think before we start, we should say it does involve suicide, it involves severe mental illness and it involves young women. So if this is very difficult for anyone listening, just take care. And if you are in the UK or Ireland and you're listening to this and it triggers something, I'll just tell you, the Samaritans are available and they are free to call from anywhere in the UK and Ireland. And I'm sure if you're listening in the United States, Australia, wherever you are in the world, there are help lines available.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  It is a genuinely sad story. It's a fascinating story. And what I love about this series of yours, Anita, is how every one of these stories is quite different. And this story really is as much about class as about race, isn't it? I mean, there are a whole set of disabilities in the 19th century associated with race, but this slaps on an extra level of difficulty for the women we're going to be talking about. So introduce us to us. Who are we meeting today?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  And can I just say, I'm so glad you said that because, you know, each sister, different story, could be a different lifetime, you know, that's sort of not even intersecting, but they do. So the sisters that we have been sort of circling in previous episodes, the ones I've been dropping their names every so often and saying, we'll come back to them, we'll come back to them, we're coming back to them now. It's Princess Pauline Duleep Singh and Princess Ada Irene Beryl Duleep Singh.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  There is the story in one name, the whole thing.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  So just encapsulated in that, these are names not of the royal court, they're not of India, they're not even of the lineage of Duleep Singh.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  No Gindans, no Victorias, no Alexandrinas, but Beryl.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  They're working class names and they are the daughters. The reason they are working class names is because they are the daughters of, yes, Maharaja Duleep Singh, but also So his second wife Ada Wetherall. Now, do you remember we were talking about Ada and what she did for a living? And why this was actually just abhorrent to Queen Victoria that he'd settled instead of, you know, with Bamber, who she really liked, with this woman. Just remind everyone what she did because I think they might have forgotten.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  So there was the question whether she was a chambermaid, a working class chambermaid, or whether she was actually a prostitute. And you, after reading the papers, more to the side of her being a prostitute.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Actually, I wouldn't say that. I would say this is what went on in the hotel that she worked in. I mean, she could very well have been.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  You said she worked at a knocking shop was the phrase you used last time.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  She worked at a knocking shop, but she could have been a chambermaid at the knocking shop. But whatever it is, that's where she caught the eye of Maharaja Dilip Singh. And so, you know, when he does that whole fleeing back to take his own kingdom back and abandons, jettisons his family, which is just the worst thing in the world, sort of ends up, you know, Bamber ends up drinking herself to death as a result. He takes off and settles with Ada. He drags Ada, and we'll get to this, but he drags Ada as his companion in revolution or treason, whatever way you want to put it.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  So give us, give us a sketch of Ada. How much do we know about it? Do we have any writings from her? Are there any letters surviving from her? We have a photograph, don't we?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  We have photographs, yeah. So just take a look at the photograph that I sent you, which ironically, I think you also had Irene, Pauline, and Safaya, who is the only sister who gives the second family the time of day, the only one who recognizes that they are blood. So, I mean, Ada.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  She's a very English looking face. In the picture that I have in front of me, she's wearing a sort of boater.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  She's well dressed. She's not a beauty.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  And she looks quite tough. She's, you wouldn't fall out with Ada.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  And this story will only make sense because you've already met the other three. Safaya, the one who fought Catherine, the one who loved Bamber, the one who went home. All these three sisters that we've talked about in previous episodes, they had, if not the love of the British establishment, they got money from the British establishment. They had an allowance which was set up from the East India Company.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  The background to this in general is that the British would overlook brown skin if it had a tiara or a coronet attached to it. And throughout the period of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, the British would admit Maharajas to their clubs and to their houses in a way that they would not admit people without a title. And these were the mores of the times. And Duleep Singh was brown, but he was a Maharaja and therefore he was admitted to court and he was Queen Victoria's favourite. The people we're going to admit to this story today, Ada and her children did not have that safety net and did not have that sort of colour breaking sort of magic quality.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  They weren't the right kind of people. They, I mean, they simply weren't the right kind of people. But, you know, in addition to that, there was nobody fighting their corner because Duleep Singh, at the time that he has these two little girls, is an enemy of the state. He is a traitor. You see cartoons of him in magazines like Punch, for example, which, you know, lampoon him horrifyingly. He's dancing with a Russian bear like a fool, you know, sort of dressed up a little bit like Malvolio, Shakespeare's ridiculous.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Which from a British perspective is not unfair, as he was dancing with the Russian bear and was trying to provoke insurrection and evasion.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I mean, the issue is this, the Russian bear is not dancing back. I mean, it's such a hopeless case, you know, Duleep Singh's campaign is so awful. But you've got Pauline and Irene, who are not part of the settlement of the official family. And Queen Victoria despised the idea that, you know, her once favourite was hanging around with somebody of such low class.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  So what do we have from, I mean, we can imagine exactly what Queen Victoria thought about this. She'd be horrified because again, you know, it was fine to be an Indian Maharaja. It was absolutely not okay to go around knocking shops marrying chambermaids from that perspective. But do we actually have any written remarks by her saying, cut them off forward, something like that?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  No, nothing, nothing like that, not directly from her, but from people who worked in and around her. I mean, there's a man called Ponsonby who's. Who's very much her senior courtier. And there are letters that go keeping an eye on Doolip Singh and expressing just how unamused anybody in court is about this latest chapter in Doolip's life. Now, remember, Doolip had been unfaithful throughout his marriage. These are, you know, usually sort of low key affairs, indiscretions. They remain in the shadows. There are some really interesting things. I went through some of the birth records around Elvedon. And there's a, there's a girl called Kate Singh, who's born in a nearby Norfolk parish of Swaffham

• 9:11Speaker 02

  in eighteen seventy six, that's the same year as Sophia.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  That's very Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple of you, isn't it?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  No, it's how, it's how I roll as a journalist. That's what you want to know. It's like, you know, where these people are. Well, I mean, I haven't got DNA, darling. So, but you know, it's Kate Singh. How many of those were there to the pound in Norfolk in eighteen seventy six?

• 9:33Speaker 03

  In the parishes immediately around Elvedon.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Of Swaffham. And now Kate Singh grew up to be a parlour maid. And when I looked at sort of the census records, what is unique and uniquely irritating about the Ada situation is that he marries her and he marries her at a time where Queen Victoria is quite convinced he has gone mad. And she does write about that, that he's lost his senses.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  We should, we should say here that the mores of the times, however we look at it today, is that it's more or less fine to have affairs with chambermaids.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Or legitimate children.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  And Edwardian gentlemen, inverted commas, would do that sort of thing. It was not okay to marry them. That was the class betrayal. And, and so what he's doing is he's acting like a foreigner in this case. No Englishman would marry the chambermaid from that class at that time. That's the, that's the code that is being broken.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, yeah, and it's one of many codes that Doolip is, is breaking. So after, you know, sitting in Aiden and sweating it out, he joins Ada in Paris. From Paris, they go to Moscow because Doolip has it. In his mind, he just has to turn up and the Tsar will call on him and the Tsar will say, brother, let's get the Brits. This is the great game. You are a king. You are an important piece on the board. Tsar never calls him. He sits in Moscow for a full year in this rather dilapidated boarding house. It's called the Bolshoi. And a year later, Boxing Day, eighteen eighty seven, Ada gives birth to a daughter, Pauline,

• 11:12Speaker 02

  in that same sort of dilapidated boarding house.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Just to clarify the chronology here, is it your theory, working theory, that he's met Ada long before he goes off to Aiden and that she then joins him?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  She joins him, yes, a hundred percent. It's a segue that is clear.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Where do they meet?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Paris, first of all, as I said, you know, once he leaves Aiden, 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, you know, 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 this whole reason Dilup 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, he's just going to be called upon.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  It is becoming completely clear to him that the Tsar does not value him at all. You know, he's not this great piece in the great game at all.

• 12:28Speaker 03

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

• 12:38Speaker 02

  He has sent letters. He's sent cart to visit. He has made it known that he is here and he is waiting. There is a very, very good book by a man called Christie 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 Duleep, who sort of pick his pockets, who make sure he's completely destitute while he's in Moscow. And his dwindling funds are just disappearing. You know, there's an Irish connection. It's also, 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 Christie doesn't say it explicitly, that Ada might have been a spy too, for the British.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  For the British?

• 13:21Speaker 02

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

• 13:26Speaker 03

  What's your, what gives you that impression? Because it's an important detail.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  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, Duleep 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, is the name given to her. Now, 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,

• 14:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  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, they've had a small civil ceremony in April eighteen eighty nine?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, because while Bamber is, is alive, which she is when Pauline is born, they can't get married. And also, I don't know, he probably was that bothered about getting married. But once Bamber 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.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  And the world that he's living in, yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  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 it's 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.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  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 this chambermaid now that things are not working out. He sticks with her.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Well, he sticks with her, but I would suggest maybe not out of love, but that, you know, there's nothing else for him. You know, 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, you know, that kind of court dress coming out, none of that.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  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 or?

• 16:31Speaker 02

  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 just do a little more of a contrast, if you don't mind, between these lines, because you've got 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 and Pauline and Irene are eventually baptized in a colonial hotel chapel in Algiers in the winter of eighteen ninety two.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  How are they suddenly in Algiers?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. This is, 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 happened.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Now, this is of Of course, the beginnings, and we're going to be dealing with this in a, 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's thinking of, 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. Could we imagine Duleep Singh ending up as a Pierre Noir in Algeria though?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  No, no, because this is not a man who knows how to start again. You know, 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. I mean, you ask about the relationship between Ada and Maharaja Duleep Singh. Well, we don't, we don't know that 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 Paratton, who London spies

• 18:23Speaker 02

  conclude, because we've seen the documentation, she must be a Russian agent sent by a czar. And they only know that because they're following him, so they know about Paratton.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  And is this from, from British intelligence records?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  British intelligence records, British intelligence records. So, you know, so London spies thought that, you know, Paratton was some, this, this kind of Russian agent who's just keeping an eye, even though the czar doesn't want anything to do with her. But they're keeping an eye on Paratton, keeping an eye on him. So you can see this is a really sort of weird existence, which is also sad because this marriage seems to have fallen apart. Ada, her two daughters, Madame Paratton, they're living now in an expensive villa at a place called Le Viscinette, but Duleep is paying for it. And Duleep himself is, is paying for himself to stay in this Paris hotel suite, which is sort of a downgraded suite to what he's used to. And he's dying. So what will happen in the Hotel de la Trômes?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  It's just two minutes walk from the Champs-Elysees. It looks glamorous from the outside, inside though, you know, it was faded. It was described as having this sort of musty smell of neglect at the time. He was only fifty five 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, you know, he saw 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. He dies completely alone on the floor, crumpled up.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  But the hotel is still there and it's now slightly posher. It's now a tart, tart five star.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  It is indeed. It's a much nicer place than it was at the time. So, so Duleep dies, and just to give a date to this, eighteen ninety-three, October eighteen ninety-three. 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, but they are always referred to, and I think this is really interesting, as 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 Viceroy's private secretary, writes about them really coldly, and this is how every piece of documentation about these girls.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  The five girls, Bamber, Catherine, Soph, and two of the second family will receive about twenty-two thousand pounds 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.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Where's the money from? Has she got, is it the India Office or Duleep has left or something or what?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  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, you know, a fraction of what was the Sikh kingdom. And, and the amount is always something that irks Duleep. Because he says, I was a child, you made me sign this. I didn't realise how little you're basically, you're letting my children sink in this world. What are you giving us? This is nothing. This is not what you said you were doing.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  And so that, you know, leads to the resentment before he dies. The one interesting thing does happen. Is that after Dillip Singh dies, there are two members of the family who extend a hand to Pauline and Irene. And they are, I arguably say, you know, the most altruistic and the people I probably most like to spend time with, and that is Sophia and Freddie, Frederick, you know, the one, your favourite.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  The antiquarian.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  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 Blown 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, you know. 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

• 23:01Speaker 02

  of Sophia and Freddie, and the position that their sort of affection has given them, is being recognised, at least in society papers, because they're scandalous. You know, they may not be sort of venerated in the way that Sophia ever was in the press as their daughters of a Maharaja, but they are glamorous.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  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?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they call her, they call her Princess Pauline. And, you know, it's, 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.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Nonetheless, that's, the cover of Country Life is, is a kind of marker at the time for, for society, and, and there she is on it.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  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, the description of her on Country Life. She's attractive. She's a very attractive woman.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Unlike her, her, her sisters. Uh, she could pass very easily in a Norfolk village if she was wandering around with Freddie. Uh, for someone from Norfolk.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  And she's a, she's beautiful, you know, she, she's got that sort of classic Edwardian look, a very, you know, um, fashionable haircut. She looks, 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, the bridge, the ambassador to that. So when Sophia is out seeing Bamber in Lahore, she says, you know, Pauline, come out and meet us, come and learn about your father, come and learn about your history. And Pauline goes out in nineteen oh seven. Bamber is completely against it. She does not want her to come.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  We don't, we are not surprised that Bamber gives her the, the curled shoulder. Bamber's that kind of woman, yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Well, it's also, 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. Cause when she turns up, she turns up with these three, and these are the, the, from Sophia in her diary, three huge boxes and several small, she says. I bought enough for ten years, she's bought enough for twenty. Um, which is, you know, just, this is a sort of, again, you know, she's playful, but critical as well.

• 25:47Speaker 02

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

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Do we know that? Does Sophia say that?

• 26:08Speaker 02

  We know that. Sophia says that in her diaries, you know, so not only, you know, what kind of woman her mother was, uh, but that, you know, 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. You know, 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, you know, silly nineteen year old who is not making an effort. But also, you know, why would she? She's in a hostile environment. Bamber's being just awful to her.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  So, look, when she sort of realises that, um, you know, 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. But, you know, when she realises it just doesn't fit her, you know, her skin doesn't feel right with these people. She marries, she, in nineteen fourteen, just before the war, she meets and falls in love with a young army officer called John Shirley Archibald Torry, second lieutenant, rifle brigade.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Do we know much about his background?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  We know that he was killed at the Battle of Luce in just a year after them a marriage, just one year, nineteen fifteen.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  But we don't know what class he's from. I mean, has she made the class jump? Now she's on Country Life and so on.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  He's up on middle class. He's not, 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, you know, Luce was one of the most horrific engagements in, in the war for the British. And it's because of the use of poison gas. You know, they released chlorine from cylinders, the Germans did. The wind blew it back into the British trenches.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  It's a catastrophe.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Though, I mean, they lost like something like sixty thousand men in four days, William. And, you know, this is one man who was caught up in it, Pauline's husband. So, you know, she's married at twenty five, she's a widow at twenty seven. 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. Bamber, willing the British to lose from India. And then you have Ada and her daughters.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Ada does something, you know, altruistic, which

• 28:37Speaker 02

  From the little we know of her is not really, doesn't come naturally to her. She volunteers for the French Red Cross at Limoges and she's part of the ambulance corps, we know this.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  This is not an automatic move for someone who's been hanging out in Monte Carlo casinos?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  No, no, but she, she, she does it. And, you know, she tends to soldiers at Verdun, which is, as everyone who, who knows this period in history, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war. And then she returns afterwards.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  That shows some character.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  It a hundred percent does, you know, so it's from, from being this chambermaid to a suspected spy, living with a Russian agent, then to becoming, you know, somebody.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Up this house, two rival agents living together in Paris suburb.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's wonderful. And if only we knew more. I mean, if only there were more records on who said what to whom and, and when. Ada does then return to London in 1919 because, you know, after experiencing what she's experienced, where she never wants to see, ever wants to see France again. And she has run up debts, her lifestyle and her time with Madame Paratton and her time at the casino tables of Monte Carlo, debts of over, we know, seventeen thousand pounds. 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,

• 30:03Speaker 02

  at least to join the rest of the family, Freddie steps in with some material help.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Freddie sounds lovely. Always trusted Auntie Querid, I say. A nice north for Auntie Querid, just the man you need in a tight spot.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  So Freddie is a darling, actually. He sort of gives her money. Sometimes he gives her money anonymously. And we sort of subsequently find out from records that he was sending money her way. And eventually, it's actually Ada's 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.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Does that correspondence survive?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  It survives. Yeah, because the India 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.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  And they do that?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  And the India office, they give it to her. They give it to her. And that's what she does.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Like the hat shop. So she starts up at a knocking shop, she goes to the casinos.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  As who knows what, may well have been a chambermaid, I don't know.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Then she's a verdaun as a nurse and now she's a milliner.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  And also not, you know, not, not so close to her daughters, you know, it's a, you get the sense, if not, you know, the concrete proof, but just the tidal movements of these daughters, that they are, they're 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.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  You know, she, she visits with Sophia, but she really doesn't have a home of her own. And, and by the 1920s, she's drifted back to Paris, you know, trying to be a, a free Parisian, but quietly running out of money.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  And, and French is kind of her first language now.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  It is, yeah. Shall we, 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?

• 32:11Speaker 03

  This tragic story. More after the break.

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• 34:07Speaker 03

  Welcome back. We've seen what happens to Ada, Duleep 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?

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Irene, Irene, the more fragile of the two children, you know, largely sort of left in neglect by everybody who should have cared with her. Well, not surprising. And if you know anything about psychology, you know, 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, 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. 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 Whalerie.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  It's a gorgeous image, yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, I mean, they are society photographers. They don't bother with just anybody's marriage.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  So then she's got some money.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Well, her husband, To be, has some money.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  I mean, she's she's dressed up in a proper bridal outfit here with a long train. She's got sort of fluffy, not tiara, what do you call it, those ostrich feathered hats.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  It's a fascinator.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  It's a fascinator.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Fascinator.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  It's a fascinator.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  And she's looking pretty fascinating in her fascinator, standing on a on some steps all set to get married.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  This should be her happily ever after, Willie, and it clearly isn't because we know, you 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 don't, 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-all diagnoses for somebody who is just burnt out, depressed and anxious. You know, there wasn't another name for all of that. So severe depression and anxiety.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  So my grandfather had that and he was subjected to electric shocks at this period.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  So was Irene.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  So was Irene. So she was, that was the cure back then, electroshock therapy. And Freud was saying it was at the time, this is, this is what the thinking was, that it was the result of unfulfilled sexual stimulation or non-completed coitus that causes.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Very Freud.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  We have learnt a lot since then. So after this rather brutal treatment, and I don't know how your grandfather was after the electroshock therapy.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  And it scarred him for life, actually.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Well, you know, Irene moves back to an apartment that she has in Paris on the Avenue Hoch. It's an elegant, expensive street. 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. You know, we know that she dines out, but.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  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, you know, she was born in Paris, it wasn't a good time. Her father dies in Paris, Mahaja Dillip 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, this is not a good place. And it is in Paris that she starts losing touch with reality. So, no amount

• 37:54Speaker 02

  of the, the painting, or the reading, or, you know, there's a, there's a music scorebook from her childhood that she was trying to learn in Paris. You know, 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. 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, any kind of idea that she is happily married with, with Villemore, that just goes

• 38:39Speaker 02

  out the window because Villemore 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, 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.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  1925, she's throwing herself out of a window, but hasn't died. 1926, Freddy, 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.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  He's, 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 fifty five, remember, you know, so he he dies, he just keels over and dies. I mean, what what Freddie's death means is that, you know, that one person who's trying to, particularly since we're talking about Irene and Pauline, who was trying to be that father figure, you know, who tries to get them, you know, to come to Blown Norton, his home in Norfolk. You know, he puts he puts adjoining coach houses in for, you know, so that his sisters can can come and go as they please and feel like they have a a safe place. You know, when he dies, all the gloves come off and Bamber, who is the one who, you know, has been perhaps biting her tongue a little bit.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  She basically comes out swinging. She hates them. All right. 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 they'll get together at St Andrews Church in Blown 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?

• 40:49Speaker 02

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

• 41:08Speaker 03

  And this is, this is now turning into, I mean, you're 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 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.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, I should probably say that, you know, 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, Savia 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.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  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. I've been staying a week at Monte Carlo,

• 42:53Speaker 02

  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."

• 43:03Speaker 03

  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 Colehatch House in Penn. Um, and Irene, at thirty six years old, the daft daughter of the last Maharaja of the Punjab, has nowhere. She's literally homeless. And that's what she writes in her letter.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  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, in some way, thinks of as part of her disease, part of her sadness. You know, this, this, 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.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  They're not good at marriages, this family.

• 44:04Speaker 02

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

• 44:26Speaker 03

  She left, you, you, you found a will, didn't you, Anita, which, which you, you show, uh, has rather more in it than one might have expected for someone who's, who's, who says she's, she's homeless. She left thirty thousand pounds, which is a fair amount of money in the nineteen thirties. And so while she's homeless, she's not destitute.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  No, she's not. I think it's completely fair. And also, you know, there's a material settlement from Villamore as well, you know, so.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Who was an aristocrat and, and had money.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  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, he still puts aside money to look after her. But she was homeless in spirit. You know, I say, I say that, and you know, that, 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. Bernardo's, which is a children's charity, you know, so, so the message can't be clearer. She, at the end, wanted to leave everything that she owned, around this thirty thousand

• 45:38Speaker 02

  that you're talking about, to Dr. Bernardo'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.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  And because of this, because of this changed will at the very end, we have this terrible postscript where Bamber shows herself at her very worst.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Bamber 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, she, her final hours, you know, Dr. Bernardo, it goes into the courts and Dr. Bernardo's fights back. And then out of absolutely nowhere, Bamber decides to intervene. She hires one of the most feared King's councils in the country. He's a baronet, he's a Conservative MP, his name is Sir Ellis Hugh Williams, he is a 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, you know, things

• 46:50Speaker 02

  like black blood ran in her veins and she would scratch to get it out, you know, they that.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  This is what he says, this is Ellis Hugh Williams.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, that 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, it he talked about her skin conditions, of, 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.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  It's a complete train crash, this.

• 47:37Speaker 02

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

• 47:50Speaker 03

  This whole rottweiler.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Oh, it's just awful. So, you know, they never speak to each other again. Pauline disappeared. Years after this terrible experience with her family. And the only other time that Pauline will see Sophia is at Ada's funeral in nineteen thirty. Neither Bamber 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, and I didn't put the 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 Buns, who I've mentioned, the historian, who has sort of spent years tracking the Dilip Singh story.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  He's been, he's been following this trail ever since, hasn't he?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  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.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  You should go, should read and buy Anita's book. And then you should go and see Peter Buns' exhibition because they're both extraordinary.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Well, that's very kind of you. And I just, I, my, for me, the trail kind of stopped after the funeral. Maybe I just, you know, stopped looking perhaps. But in the nineteen fifties, when Patiala, there's a Patiala University historian called Ganda Singh. He actually interviewed Bamber in La Hall for his book, Mahatma Dilip Singh and His Correspondence. And he asked Bamber, whatever became of, because nobody knew what happened to your half-sister Pauline. And she says, I don't know, and just kind of barked at him, you know, didn't know, didn't care. And there were really lots of lurid theories, you know, that she might have 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,

• 49:35Speaker 02

  that she was part of the resistance, that she simply disappeared in wartime France. 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 Torry.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  The guy killed in the Battle of Lus, yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Exactly that, you know, and, and this relative had been researching his own family tree and had come across this French record, a burial of a woman, date nineteen forty-one in the southwest of France. So this is a place in the foothill of the Pyrenees at a place called Saint Aitor. De Trespuis, and it's high above the town. And and Peter did spend months pursuing this and he recovered Pauline's French death certificate.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Well done, Peter. Brilliant work.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  And recovered her last will and testament. Yeah, I know, really, I mean, excellent, excellent work. Um, and all it said, you know, the document that he recovered, just a 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 nineteen thirties. And in those days, it could be a death sentence, no antibiotics, you know, the no, nowhere for them.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Not a nice death at all.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  No, I mean, you would put in quarantine units in these sanatoriums and, you know, sometimes then the only other way to go is is the graveyard. Um, she did not tell her sisters that she was dying. You know, she couldn't tell Sophia, she couldn't tell anybody. And so she died at this sanatorium on the tenth of April nineteen forty one at the age of fifty three and was buried by the authorities in a cemetery where no family was present, no mourners were present, no word was sent.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  Like her dad.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Sad, sad, sad, sad.

• 51:13Speaker 03

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

• 51:29Speaker 02

  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.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  Freddie married? No.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Single.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  He has a very close relationship with a local priest. Yeah, I mean, he's he's sort of a, you know, happy being a collector and and he goes on, he goes on sort of trips with this, um, you know, this, this local vicar. Uh, and they seem to be sort of, you know, having a just a nice life, you know, sort of fumbling about. So but he's an avowed bachelor, he never gets married. Victor, you know, we mentioned in one of the previous episodes, dies fairly young, is buried in in Monte Carlo, never has children. Sophia sort of, you know, has some kind of purpose to her life, even at the end. Uh, Catherine has love, loses love. But then also has a mission when she's, you know, as as it has been put, you know, the Indian Schindler. And then you've got these two, Pauline and Irene, who's sort of just.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  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 the 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, you know, to deal with the complexity even of Duleep himself, because he's, he's not a hero in this story, you know, when he's, when he's older, he's not a hero.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  And although these are now mascots for the Sikh community in Britain and people, you know, there are blue plaques and, and, and there was a massive party for the, for the exhibition opening and all that sort of thing.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  None of these girls, I get the impression, nor Freddie particularly, embraced their Sikh, they're, they're Christians.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  They were Christians. I mean, they, they were Christians. Their father converted to Christianity. Their mother was a devout Christian. He did, but you know, by that time he's estranged from his children. He's, he's, he's doing it because it's, well, look, there's one school of thought that says he, he converts back because he really truly believes and, and he was duped while in the care of, you know, a Scottish foster father and mother to give up his Sikh identity. But there is another that suggests actually, you know, converting back will again make him beloved by his old, you know, 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. So.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  But they were the children, the Christians. They were all Christians when they died.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  And when you go to Elverdon, it is in a Christian graveyard that...

• 54:43Speaker 02

  It is at 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.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  You've really cheered us up today, Anita.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arne.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  Goodbye from me, William Durumpur.