Today, over fifty years later, now that prejudice against mixed marriage has weakened, these attitudes seem strangely narrow and exaggerated, but then it made for a fraught and trying situation, which in a way was relieved when the wedding took place and became an accomplished fact. But although my father remained cordial and composed at the Registry Office and the Siamese Legation afterwards, I can still remember his lonely figure as he wandered away on his own to hide his feelings.
Katya and Hin were not among the family and few close friends who were present, and Chula explains in one of his books that ‘My Mother did not come over from Paris due to the tenseness of the political situation as we expected war to be declared at any moment.’
But I wondered then and still do whether this was quite true, or whether it may have been a kind of jealousy that kept Katya from the marriage of her only son? Not so much the traditional animosity of the mother-in-law against the usurping daughter-in-law, but perhaps Katya, now plain Mrs. Stone, may have been unwilling to witness Lisba become Princess Chula, as she had become Mom Katerin so long ago.
After a brief honeymoon in the West Country, Lisba and Chula returned to the London flat and, in October, taking advantage of the still prevailing though uneasy peace, together with Bira, Ceril and Abhas, they sailed to Siam – for the last time as it happened – for they returned in March 1939 and in June that same year the country’s name was changed to Thailand.
After the false promise of the Munich Agreement, the outbreak of war on 3rd September 1939 brought customary life to a standstill while people considered how to meet the occasion: what if anything could continue as before and what was irreparably changed and would never be the same again. As Thailand had declared her neutrality, Chula at first thought of returning to Bangkok, but sailings were so difficult, and even when arranged, liable to postponement or cancellation, that after packing and unpacking three or four times, he decided to stay in England.
He advised his mother, now living at her country property, Le Mesle, to take advantage of her American citizenship and depart with Hin to the States. But Katya and Hin, with blind faith in the ‘impregnable’ Maginot Line, at first refused to move. However, to Chula’s great dismay and surprise, Thailand was invaded by the Japanese in 1941, swiftly capitulated and, worse still, declared war on Britain and the United States. Feeling that this untoward event put him in a most delicate position, Chula came to the conclusion that his best move would be to retire from London and live quietly and unobtrusively away from the capital for the duration. Lisba and I were therefore despatched to Cornwall to search for a suitable furnished house. After some adventures and many misadventures inspecting numbers of dirty, dilapidated places, inhabited by people of repellent habits to judge by the broken furniture and grimy kitchens, or vast dank mansions unheated but for rickety oilstoves, we began to despair and face the unenviable prospect of conveying to Chula that our mission had failed.
Hunting through our pile of glowing descriptions of properties which we had found eminently ‘undesirable’, we spotted ‘Lynham Farm, Rock, a charming modernised farmhouse, small, well-established garden and tennis-court, overlooking a beautiful estuary’. We drove off with no confidence in the description but, as we crossed the threshold, we felt at once we had come home. It was quite delightfuclass="underline" low-ceilinged, thick-walled, furnished with great taste, fresh chintzes and pale unemphatic wall paper and paint; it was also roomy enough to contain a considerable household.
Eventually after all business details had been settled, a cavalcade left London consisting of Chula and Lisba, Bira and Ceril, Shura Rahm (who had been an active member of the motor racing ‘equipe’), Chula’s Thai clerk Bian; a manservant, a cook, two racing-cars, two dogs and a remarkable bird, a Malaysian Grackle, black with a white waistcoat, who would puff out his chest and bow in stately fashion like a tail-coated butler.
The arrival of a Royal Highness with such an entourage caused no little stir in the village and, for weeks after they had settled in, the local house agents with the delightful and euphonious name of Button, Menhennit & Mutton, displayed a small hand-written notice in their window reading: ‘Lynham Farm, let to HRH Prince Chula of Thailand by us.’
As Chula still remained convinced that Katya would be better off in America during the war, he and Lisba managed to reach Le Mesle the day before his mother’s birthday, which was 10th May. Early next morning, his argument that she should leave was powerfully reinforced by the ground beneath their feet shaking with heavy gunfire – a grim warning that the ‘phoney war’ was over and the German invasion had begun. The fall of Sedan on 14th May finally clinched the matter, and eventually Katya and Hin, accompanied by Poum, reached the States via Spain and Portugal.
Katya’s letters to her son from Portland, Oregon, are uniformly dull, unenlivened by any personal touches, and might well have been written by anyone of the ‘dreary middle-class people’ amongst whom she found herself until the conflict ended. They abound in domestic detaiclass="underline" a row with the man next door about alterations to their garage; disparagement of American food; scandalously high prices. Concern over Hin’s health and relief when the doctor pronounces he is not going blind and, on another occasion, that a feared heart-attack was only bad indigestion. One hopes eagerly for some word of Poum – what did he make of Portland, Oregon? What did Portland, Oregon, make of him? But we only hear that he has been fitted with new spectacles! ‘People here feel I’m different from them, from a different rank of society’. ‘I don’t really like their houses though they all have much more money to spend than we have’. ‘There is always much work to do in the house but none offered to come to my help.’
Meanwhile at Lynham it was not long before the household was in running order, a fairly strict order so that it resembled nothing so much as a miniature court ruled by a generally benevolent autocrat. For although Chula had quite accepted his role as a private individual, he never really forgot that he came from a long line of kings and princes, and that his clear decisive mind and talent for organisation inherited from his admired father, might have been employed in a wider sphere.
He had inherited his family’s penchant for rising about noon and staying up late and sometimes, after the guest or guests had begun to droop and wilt as dawn chilled and infiltrated the convivial gathering, his mind remained alert, eager to hunt a subject through all the coverts of argument to a final conclusion he found satisfactory. He was extremely industrious and devoted himself for a set period every day to his literary projects: not only historical works in Thai, but a volume of reminiscences – Brought up in England – and several books on motor-racing in English.
Work finished for the day, he expected to be amused not only by his immediate entourage, but by the many visitors who came to stay or were entertained to a meal. These included characters as diverse as ex-Queen Rambai of Thailand, a widow now that her husband ex-King Prajadhipokhad died in 1941; Noel Coward who came to dinner, the recently widowed Duchess of Kent, who came to tea with her two children, Jack Buchanan the musical comedy star and, not only many of Chula and Lisba’s friends and relations, but also those of Bira and Ceril.