Chula, summoned home from school, had no premonition of what had happened until he arrived at Paruskavan, when seeing that the servants assembled in the hall all wore black mourning armbands and black pasin skirts, he guessed at once that his grandmother had died.
Later when his father returned from Phya Thai, his son, until then numbed with shock, ran to meet him at the top of the stairs, where Chakrabongse holding him close, broke into bitter weeping. Chula’s tears were also now released and it is touching to imagine them, locked in each other’s arms, racked with sobs, comforting one another. ‘The first and only time I ever saw my father cry.’
The elaborate funeral ceremonies, beginning with the bathing of the body before it was lifted into the ornate royal urn, proceeded according to time honoured ritual, the urn being carried in procession to the Dusit Maha Prasad Hall of the Grand Palace, reserved solely for the Coronation and lying-in-state of Sovereigns. There, surrounded by her regalia and beneath the seven white umbrellas, symbolising her Queenly rank, the urn would rest for seven months, during which time, a weekly memorial service was attended by the King, Royal Family and various dignitaries. Then in June 1920, the urn borne in the huge golden funeral coach, was cremated in the specially constructed royal crematorium on the Pramane ground in front of the Grand Palace.
Prince Chakrabongse seated on a palanquin during the funeral procession of Queen Saowabha.
The royal urn and meru of Queen Saowabha 1919.
Although she had virtually withdrawn from the world since Chulalongkorn died in 1910, the death of this lively, volatile and dictatorial, lady removed the focal point of existence from her sons, grandson and relations, as she had exerted a power akin to that of a revered image in a temple, always to be found and bowed down to in the same place.
In addition to the prolonged strain of the funeral rites, other tensions made themselves felt among the royal mourners. For as well as relations being at a low ebb between the King and Chakrabongse, there were also rumours of plots against the King, whose unpopularity had been growing.
Together with three other generals, Chakrabongse, at this time, had become president of a committee established to work on a scheme for retiring a number of inefficient senior officers. Even before the committee had published its findings he had received an anonymous letter stating that as his loyalty to the King was unquestioned, he himself was to be removed before the King was also put out of the way. The letter obligingly named the officer entrusted with poisoning him.
Convinced that this letter was an angry response to his retirement scheme, Chakrabongse boldly sent a copy of it to the officer in question with his compliments! However, despite this stylish gesture, the atmosphere of hatred and suspicion engendered by such sinister threats, his profound grief at his mother’s death, combined with his usual load of work and responsibilities, began to overwhelm him. Eventually he was driven to request leave from the King to take an extended holiday.
This being granted, he set about organising a leisurely trip by boat to Singapore, to be followed by a return train journey up the Malay Peninsular to end in the peace of familiar surroundings at Hua Hin. With respite from his arduous life in sight, he dealt with a lighter heart with his remaining commitments and engagements before he departed. One of these was a military dinner in honour of a visiting British General at the Ministry of Defence, an elegant colonial style building just opposite the Grand Palace. Not only Chakrabongse, but the three other Generals concerned with him in the officers’ retirement plan were present. The evening seems to have been routine and unmemorable, although later it would be recalled that there was a brief failure of electricity, which plunged the room in darkness for a few minutes.
On 4th June, Chakrabongse and his aide-de-camp, Chavalit and his son, set out for Singapore on the Katong, owned by the Straits Steamship Company. Despite torrential rain, the little party was in holiday mood, and Chakrabongse, in particular, although he got a soaking walking from his car to the ship, stood about chatting cheerfully to relations and friends who had come to see him off.
However, by the next afternoon, he had developed a feverish cold and decided to stay in his bunk. Chula was much perturbed, for his father had a soldierly disregard for physical ills, and the boy feared he must be really unwell to retire in this way. Unfortunately, Chavalit, in her heedless manner, did not share his concern. Only seventeen, and extremely immature, she repeatedly urged Chakrabongse to get up and come on deck, saying the fresh air would do him good. This he eventually did on the day before the ship reached Singapore, though by then he had a painful cough. No one could gainsay him, however, certainly not his anxious son. Not only was he unaccustomed to giving in to illness, but, as the lover of a young girl twenty years his junior, was probably determined to appear strong and youthful in her eyes.
Even so, when they reached their hotel in Singapore on 8th June, he felt so exhausted that he sent Chula and Chavalit for a drive around the town, saying that he hoped to feel better by lunch time. When they returned he felt, if anything, worse and kept to his bed. It so happened that a millionaire Chinese merchant, a resident of Singapore who knew Chakrabongse through business dealings in Bangkok, called to see him. Finding him so unwell, he instantly proposed that he and his party would be more comfortable at his house, whence they gratefully removed.
An English doctor was summoned, who diagnosed Spanish influenza. This was a particularly virulent form of the complaint that swept the world after the First World War, and was responsible for many deaths. Unfortunately it was complicated by double pneumonia in Chakrabongse’s case. On hearing this, the aide-de-camp, now thoroughly alarmed, sent telegrams to the King and Ministry of War while poor Chakrabongse, only 37, dictated a farewell letter to his brother Vajiravudh and a new will, both of which he managed to sign, albeit barely legibly. Having thus tacitly recognised his serious condition, he appeared relieved and joked and laughed almost naturally, but by the following day he was completely delirious.
On 13th June, his unhappy son was awakened early and led to his dying father’s bedside. He later described the scene with words that convey in stark simplicity the anguish he felt:
‘I was then twelve years old. I helped to join his hands together in prayer and tried to make him repeat the name of the Buddha, which I had been taught was the best thing one could do at the approach of death. He was able to do so, but would occasionally relapse into delirious mutterings. He was thirsty but could only take water in small spoonfuls. He fought magnificently. Then he could no longer drink even a spoonful of water. At 1.50 pm he died. As the English doctor bent down to close his eyes, I think I must have aged about ten years. After making the profoundest obeisance to my father’s corpse, I then left the room and asked the aide-de-camp to send a cable to my mother.
‘More vividly than when my grandmother died, I realised that the life I had known or expected to have, was quite at an end, and henceforth I would stand completely alone.’
That same evening Prince Prajadhipok, Chakrabongse’s youngest brother, arrived with his wife Princess Rambai Barni and the long drawn-out tragic return to Siam was set in motion. Along a road lined with British troops, on a Royal Garrison Artillery gun carriage, the coffin, covered with the Siamese flag and accompanied by a full military band, wound its way slowly to the railway station while the guns at Canning Fort fired a thirty-seven gun salute - one salute for each year of Chakrabongse’s life.