At the beginning of January 1906, Katya and Chakrabongse were seen off on the first stage of their journey to Constantinople by Ivan and Poum. They were accompanied by Chakrabongse’s aide-de-camp, Suriyavut, and his bride, Elena Nicholaievna, the daughter of the head of the St Petersburg Academy, the latter acting as chaperone for Katya until she should be married a few days later.
Elena Nicholaievna, who married Prince Chakrabongse’s aide-de-camp, Phraya Suriyavut Yotaharn.
For the lovers themselves it must have been an occasion fraught with conflicting emotions. Ivan, as his letters to Katya and Chakrabongse prove, was still deeply troubled as to whether he had acted rightly in entrusting his sister to her princely suitor and to life in a remote and unknown land. Poum, although he stood firmly by his decision to remain in Russia, would certainly have felt the parting from his close companion and friend for the last ten eventful years, especially since Chakrabongse would be returning to their homeland without him. And Chakrabongse, even though he was successfully carrying off the girl he loved so passionately, must surely have feared that his elaborate deception of all the key figures in his life would inevitably end in discovery hard to face and recriminations hard to bear.
For Katya, combined with the tremulous excitement of the elopement, must have been a fear of an unknown and unimaginable life opening in front of her. It is clear from her later letters to her brother and Madame Chrapovitzkaya that she had not realised how homesick she would be, not only far from her country, her friends and relatives, but also the comfort of her religion.
Therefore the nervous chatter, forced laughter, sudden silences and tension common to the most ordinary departures, were intensified, mingling with shamefaced relief as the engine got up steam, doors slammed, handkerchiefs were wept into and finally waved as the great train drew slowly out and on its way. En route for Odessa on the Black Sea, it would stop briefly at Kiev and one can imagine Katya’s feelings as the train pulled out again and, craning from the carriage window to catch a fleeting glimpse of the city she had left only two short years before and might never see again, she pondered the extraordinary twist of fate that had presented her with a destiny so strange and so totally unforeseen.
Their marriage, which was duly celebrated in Constantinople, was not arranged without difficulty as Chakrabongse explained in a letter to Ivan dated only 1906.
‘The marriage took place in the Greek church of St Trinity on Pera Street in the usual way without any special pomp. I went beforehand to see the priest and had a very long talk with him. It was extremely difficult to arrange everything in strict secrecy. Secrecy was necessary as, if my parents heard about it, there would be a huge scandal, as it is unheard of for a Siamese Prince, the son of the only Buddhist monarch in the world, to marry in a Christian church.
I therefore impressed on the priest that he must never talk to anyone about it and that if anyone should ever attempt to obtain information on the subject, he should not disclose any relevant documents or information from the church register, and in the last resort he must say that no such marriage ever took place. This secrecy is most important to me and I would not be able to sleep at night without having made these arrangements, for, as you know, Ivan Ivanovitch, intelligence gathering in the Orient is very well developed!
Now I feel confident that even the most ingenious and clever sleuth would be unable to extract a word about the marriage of the Prince from Siam in Constantinople!’
Here Chakrabongse displays not only remarkable confidence in his own powers of persuasion, but also in the discretion of a priest, who probably suspected that the bridegroom’s conversion to Christianity was merely a matter of temporary expediency. Meanwhile, in a more informal letter to Ivan, Katya wrote from the Hotel Savoy in Cairo on 12th February:
‘Cairo is a dream. The city is beautiful, the weather is fine, it is not too hot but warm and agreeable’
much to be preferred in her opinion to Constantinople which she considered
‘dirty and dull.’
She continued,
‘To-morrow we will go up the Nile to the North for five days and, after one night in Cairo, we will leave for Port Said and then on to Siam. I am frightened and cannot understand why. The worst thing for me is that there is no Orthodox Church in Bangkok. Think of it! It is terrible to lose it forever!
‘This morning I went on my own to a Greek church service which began at eight a.m., but it was rather different from ours and the singing was terrible.’
Undaunted, she went again a few days later with her husband but, unfortunately, they had been misinformed about the time of the service, which had already taken place. However, this disappointment was mitigated when a Chernogorian from the Ukraine spoke to them in Russian. ‘Oh what a joy! It was such a pleasure to hear our native tongue. People mostly speak English here, which of course I cannot understand. I am afraid it will be terribly difficult for me in Siam. Being apart from Russia is harder than I supposed. But I cannot do anything about it now. I had no choice then.
‘Now I must encourage myself’, she continued bravely, ‘with the thought that I am married to a man who loves me and whom I have made happy.’ This last sentence, with its note of feminine resignation and no mention of her own feelings, is sad but not surprising when one considers how closely young girls were guarded in those days and that everything around Katya was utterly strange including the realities of a passionate honeymoon.
Naturally a visit was made to the Sphinx and the pyramids, where Katya would like to have climbed right to the top, but was afraid of dizziness and also she shrank from being lifted by not only one, but three Arab guides, who were waiting to render that service to all visitors.
Many diplomats and agents called on Chakrabongse at their hotel, but Katya stayed in her room while they were received by her husband and one senses a feeling of foreboding:
‘We do not want to announce our marriage as we are afraid it might reach the King, and it would also mean we should have to attend celebrations and balls. This would mean great expense as ladies here are very fashionable and we have no money to spare on buying ball-dresses. Besides we should then have to pay visits to all these ladies, and as they speak only English, I should not understand a word they say.