← Empire: World History
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- [00:01]
William Durrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:17]
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- [00:50]
Anita Arnand
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:52]
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- [01:17]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [01:26]
William Durrymple
You could say that again.
- [01:27]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [01:36]
Anita Arnand
Now we party. This is incredible.
- [01:40]
Narrator/Advertiser
Wow.
- [01:40]
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I am clearing the rest of the day.
- [01:42]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [01:53]
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- [03:07]
Anita Arnand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me
- [03:08]
William Durrymple
Anita Arnand and me William Duranpool. So we are now on part two of this Extraordinary story of this world that Anita discovered and pioneered with her wonderful book on Sophia, published a decade ago. And now we have this exhibition in London bringing this story to a much wider audience. There are plaques on houses, there are first day covers and it's very exciting to see how this whole field has developed since Anita wrote this great book. So last time we discussed the focus of Anita's book, Sophia Dulip Singh. This extraordinary story of a woman who was at the heart of the monarchy but also at the heart of the suffragette movement, which many would have thought was a contradiction in terms. But today we have an equally extraordinary story. Her sister Catherine. And she spends most of her adult life hundreds of miles from England in a German town called Kassel in Prussia, with her intimate companion who happened to be her childhood governess.
- [04:11]
Anita Arnand
And honestly, it's one of the regrets of my life that although I wrote about Catherine, I knew that there was more and that she deserved her own book. Never quite got round to doing it.
- [04:21]
William Durrymple
Not too late, Anita. I would read it.
- [04:23]
Anita Arnand
Thanks, Willi. It really is in this whole Duleep Singh family history, this is one of the most tender relationships that I came across and it is a love between two women. Now, whether it's sexual or not, we don't know because there are no polaroids from the time. But we do know that these are two women who follow each other around the world and who never let go of each other's hands and not even world war gets in their way. So this is the story that we're going to tell. Catherine comes from the same stock, the same tragic background that we discussed about Sophia, but she goes in a completely different direction, which takes her into Hitler's
- [05:04]
William Durrymple
Germany, because in 1933, when Hitler comes to power, Germany begins its slide into Nazism, into racialized law, into war. And Catherine doesn't leave, she carries on in Prussia. She's in Castle right through this. A brown woman cohabiting with another woman, Indian princess, the sister of an army officer living in the Third Reich.
- [05:26]
Anita Arnand
I mean, let's go back to her story. She's older than Sophia. She's born in 1871 in Belgravia. She is, if you look at photographs of the three girls when they came out as debutantes, Sophia and her sisters were presented together before Queen Victoria. You will see Bamber, who's in the foreground, dark skinned, fierce eyed, not smiling at all, doesn't look very particularly happy to be there. Sophia, the youngest, the most anglicised. And you have Catherine in the middle, sort of standing above and she is, I think, the most beautiful. She's got sort of the swan neck. She has this stillness about her face, sort of an enigmatic kind of smile about her. I do think they look a little like meringues, the three of them.
- [06:12]
William Durrymple
But yes, that's the style of the time. The meringues were very much on show.
- [06:16]
Anita Arnand
But you just imagine sort of that brown skin against that white meringue. Age, it's, it's quite something. Anyway, these children all develop very distinct personalities from a very young age. And you have sort of reports about them. They are constantly being spied on and reports are constantly being sent back. And we have them other sort of
- [06:34]
William Durrymple
spies or governors or they have guardians.
- [06:37]
Anita Arnand
Lord Henneker is one of the guardians who looks after the children after both parents have died. And he is sort of the rubber stamping role in their lives. Whatever money is needed, he rubber stamps it. And he gets constant reports as well. And he talks about how once they've been removed from their malign family's influence, these are his words. They are very much improved in every way and are nice, presentable young ladies. Catherine is a very pretty child. The eldest Bamber is nice looking. I have great hopes that the management of them poor neglected children will turn out well. Catherine and Sophia were always considered the prettier of the three and that's because they were light skinned.
- [07:20]
William Durrymple
Even in modern India, that's still very much the prejudice anyway. Yes. After Catherine and Sophia's mother dies in 1887 and her father effectively abandons the family and disappears off to dissolute life, ending up in a Paris hotel in a very tragic way, a small army of tutors are brought in to educate and probably, in the words of the time, probably to civilize the children. A drill sergeant from the local army camp who marches up and down and teach them deportment, rather like the von Trapps, a tutor who teaches them how to curtsy. And then, and this is the crucial addition to the family, a governess from Kassel in Hesse, Germany. Lina, is it Schaeffer Schaeffer or Schaeffer Schaefer?
- [08:05]
Anita Arnand
No, the umlaut says Schaeffer. Yeah. And Lina is, you know, a kindly woman. She's described as being very kind, very gentle. She becomes a favorite with the children. And they are children, you know, when she comes into their lives.
- [08:20]
William Durrymple
Is it because Queen Victoria is also German and there's all these German relations.
- [08:24]
Anita Arnand
Clever observation. Because Queen Victoria believed that German governess were the best because they had the discipline and these girls My goodness. Needed some discipline in her view. There were reports that before she appointed guardians and Lena was sort of taken on board, that these girls were running feral in the streets and so somebody had to come in and take them in control. And this is even at a time when, you know, their mother, who I mentioned in the last episode was an alcoholic, had no care of them at all because she was not even able to care for herself.
- [08:56]
William Durrymple
This is very von Trapp, as you say. This is very much sort of Sound of Music territory. Governesses turning up to teach them to learn German, poetry and possibly sing.
- [09:06]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the hills are alive with the sound of Lena. She's 12 years older than Catherine, she's fluent in English, she's meant to teach the girls German, she's meant to keep an eye on them. But almost from the beginning, Catherine, who is about 16 when Lena arrives, is completely drawn to her Olympic. You know, she really relies on her now, you know, you can understand why somebody wants a maternal. When one is absent and you've gone through so much trauma. So I think definitely at that time, you know, this is just a stable, kind, maternal woman in her Life. So she's 17 when she goes up to Somerville College, which is a college in Oxford, the only one to take
- [09:45]
William Durrymple
in women, where Indira Gandhi later went.
- [09:47]
Anita Arnand
Exactly. And to read French and German. Now, look, this is what is unusual. When she is at Oxford, does this girl need a governess anymore? There are other children in the family who are younger who could probably have done with a governess, but Lena goes too, and she sort of stays in Somerville with Catherine and Bamber, who is already there. Tell us a little more about Somerville College, because apart from Indira Gandhi, it's, you know, there's some interesting history here.
- [10:14]
William Durrymple
Somerville at this point is pretty new. It's founded in 1879. Women aren't allowed to graduate yet from Oxford. They can study and they can sit exams, be told what mark they would have got if they were men. But they're not formally given degrees, which seems incredibly sort of dog in the making attitude from Oxford. And Catherine and Bamber both go.
- [10:35]
Anita Arnand
Mm, they do.
- [10:37]
William Durrymple
Why does Sophia not go?
- [10:38]
Anita Arnand
Well, Sophia's too young, first of all, because, remember, she's younger. But also there are letters which say it would be better to separate the older sisters from the younger because while they're in the care of their guardians, this family called the Oliphants, there are lots of reports being sent back by Arthur Oliphant, who is looking after them, that say These two older ones speak very disloyally about the Queen and about the country. Sophia, she's delightful. She's really quiet. She hardly speaks. She barely looks you in the eye. She's great. We love Sophia.
- [11:11]
William Durrymple
She's into Pomeranian dogs. Always a thing that appeals to British.
- [11:14]
Anita Arnand
She wouldn't say boo to a goose. She's kind of pliable. But those two not. And so that is why, you know, Queen Victoria didn't really care for university education for women, but signs off on the fact that, yeah, send them away. Send them far, far away. So Lina just stays. She never leaves. Now, it's important to be careful. And, you know, we don't want to stamp modern categories, but my reading of their situation, having sort of spent over a decade with these girls, is that what Kindles at Somerville, and which will go on for the next 40 years, is a relationship, a loving relationship. Don't know if it's sexual or not. Goodness knows, if you're not in the room, you don't know. But they love each other. Sophia's word for them is intimate. And we know, you know, she's a great prude about sex, huge prude. So any hint of impropriety would make her uncomfortable. But Bamber and Sophia never, ever question the fact that Catherine and Lina come in a package, that this is something that is so close that even the sisters, who are tremendously close, would not try to get in the middle of it. And Lina, who is all about Catherine, nothing really very much to do with Bamberg or Sophia's life. It is Catherine, Catherine, Catherine and Catherine, and that is reciprocated between them.
- [12:33]
William Durrymple
It's really interesting territory, this, the world. I grew up. I grew up in a rather Edwardian Scottish seaside town, and there were lots of old spinsters cohabiting without raising any eyebrows at all. And who knows what their relationship was. Do we have letters or anything that are unquestionably romantic between the two?
- [12:55]
Anita Arnand
We don't have letters between them, unfortunately. And that is because of, I think, largely the war. Whatever ephemera was between them was lost at that time. I haven't seen them. If they do surface and, you know, stuff keeps surfacing about these sisters, it would be amazing.
- [13:11]
William Durrymple
And if Sophia, who was prudish, doesn't see any hint of impropriety, is that evidence on the other side or not?
- [13:19]
Anita Arnand
I would say, on the contrary, she wouldn't talk about it if they were.
- [13:23]
William Durrymple
And what's the legal situation at this point? Because obviously you've got lots of very draconian Laws against male gay relationships. Oscar Wilde, indeed. My great grandfather had to leave the country for very similar reasons, ended up living in Italy at exactly this time. But presumably, I'd imagine there was not similar laws for women, because it would not have even entered the minds of people of this generation.
- [13:46]
Anita Arnand
You're right. So lesbian relationships are not criminalised in England at this point. Male homosexuality totally is. So Oscar Wilde mentioned in 1895, he receives a sentence of two years hard labour. The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, a beautiful piece of poetry by Oscar Wilde, which I can quote boringly from, is written about that experience. But for women, there's no equivalence in law. You know, the Victorian legal minds just simply couldn't get itself around the fact that women would do such a thing.
- [14:12]
Attio Advertiser
I love that.
- [14:13]
William Durrymple
This is brilliant.
- [14:14]
Anita Arnand
It's important to also, you know, say that this is an aspect of queer history for women, full stop. You know, that sometimes you have to read between the lines because it was so dangerous or so completely invisible to people around. And, you know, unless you have the Polaroids or, as you say, sort of the. You have to surmise. And there is, I think, just an overwhelming mountain of evidence that these two loved each other.
- [14:39]
William Durrymple
They were inseparable.
- [14:41]
Anita Arnand
Have you seen the picture I sent you? She hated her time at Somerville. She couldn't wait to leave. She's a serious, quiet student, you know,
- [14:50]
William Durrymple
she's doing fine and she's studying German and French.
- [14:53]
Anita Arnand
And Arthur Olliphan says, I feel sure the Queen will like to hear of Princess Catherine Duleep Singh having taken honours third class at the close of her Oxford career. Princess Bamber, the elder of the two, has not been successful, I am sorry to say, because Bamber, you know, doesn't want to be there either, but she's not even gonna try. So she's just been sent into Somerville exile and is just sort of simmering away with her hockey stick. Whereas Catherine, you know, actually does some work, as you said. Neither gets a degree because Oxford won't award one to a woman until 1920. Catherine and Bamber are a whole generation before that change takes place. But Catherine does leave with an education that very few women of her generation have.
- [15:33]
William Durrymple
And then they go off on holiday. They go off on the grand tour with Lena.
- [15:36]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, the grand tour is a thing that we learn about in school here in Britain, I think. It's a European thing, isn't it, where posh, royal, aristocratic people go off to discover Europe and they spend months at a time traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean, and that's Precisely what Catherine and Lina do.
- [15:56]
William Durrymple
The idea is it's a wider education rather than just learning about painting and history. There is this idea that you go and discover the world and you go to the seedier parts of Italy and you. And you discover all that life has to offer in inverte compass. And that is very much part of the package.
- [16:11]
Anita Arnand
And Lina is delighted to be the one taking Catherine. And Sophia joins for part of the tour. You know, they go to Holland, they go to Germany, they go to Italy, Greece, Egypt. And, you know, we've got some surviving fragments from the housekeeper, Margaret Mays, who's just really kind of unimpressed by the whole thing. She wants to go home. It's, you know, Germany flat and boring. Flat boring. You know, like all of Lena's, you know, sort of passion and pleasure about showing the very best of her country, like Margaret May's, like, yeah, can we go home now? Italy is wonderful and sort of opens their eyes and transforms Sophia in many ways even more than Catherine. And then Egypt, where, you know, they stand in front of the Sphinx and they think of their mother.
- [16:56]
William Durrymple
Yes, they have a family connection, don't they?
- [16:57]
Anita Arnand
Absolutely. Bamber, born in Alexandria. So both India and Egypt meant a lot to these girls because of the family connection with a mother that they really barely knew because life was so very hard when she was alive. Anyway, this trip, honestly, Willi, is the beginning of Catherine's life because she's seen Germany now through Lina's eyes. And very quietly, you know, the secretive one has resolved from that point that that is where she wants to live. She's going to live in Germany now. This is like just sort of from left field. There are no family connections in Germany. There is nothing tying this family to Germany. The world is big. Italy is a lovely place. They loved Italy. But she chooses Germany and she chooses to go and set up home with Lina. She's a young woman, she's a lot younger than her governess.
- [17:47]
William Durrymple
What are their ages now? So 20 and 32, is that right?
- [17:51]
Anita Arnand
Something like that. So, Castle, tell us about Cassel, because that will become the centre of Catherine's world.
- [17:57]
William Durrymple
Well, it's in Prussia and it sits in a valley surrounded by hills, lovely beech forests. One of those handsome, slightly chocolate boxy, prosperous, slightly sleepy German university towns that were very popular in this interwar period. And lots of British travellers go there and are enchanted by it in a way that, you know, it isn't really part of a tourist itineraries anymore. It's also interesting, the place where brothers Grimm, I think, collected a lot of their fairy tales and they have folktales, so it's beautiful.
- [18:26]
Anita Arnand
And they're living, you know, this chocolate box existence, which nobody can yank Catherine back from. There are letters that we do have between, Sophia in particular, saying, are you coming back? Can you come back? Are you gonna come back? And she never does. She just stays there. And in fact, what she says is, why don't you leave that horrid place, Faraday, that awful place? She hates it because both she and Bamba think that it is enemy territory. Because, do you remember in the Sophia episode, I said that Grace and Veva apartments were handed out to heroes of the Raj, you know, those who had taken a stand.
- [19:04]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Yeah.
- [19:04]
Anita Arnand
Just imagine it for Bamba and Catherine. They're wandering around with their brown skin, knowing that the people here, who are
- [19:11]
William Durrymple
rewarded, surrounded by what they might regard as war criminals.
- [19:15]
Anita Arnand
War criminals, right, Exactly. I mean, Sophia doesn't or doesn't want to see this and stay is because, you know, she has this need. I mean, I guess, you know, she needs. She doesn't have a Lena.
- [19:26]
William Durrymple
It's not a bad spot to live. I mean, lovely to live in. That's Hampton Court.
- [19:30]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, gorgeous. But Lina is the one that is the centre of Catherine's world, whereas for Sophia, it is what she has known, which is Faraday House, Queen Victoria and London Life.
- [19:44]
William Durrymple
Do we have a picture of their life together? What are Lena and her getting up to all day?
- [19:47]
Anita Arnand
So, yes, we have lovely letters from Catherine trying to tempt Sophia out because she's really worried that Sophia sometimes had an eating disorder from time to time, saying, you know, you just really have to come. Come and let Lena cook for you. Lena restores everything. Just come and we'll look after you. Pierre is so delightful here. She says, yeah, excellent. Ms. S's German food is too good for any words. But, you know, she's sort of watching from afar. When Sophia starts kicking up all hell as a suffragette, she's sort of like slightly bemused, but she is supportive because she starts sending money, she starts financially supporting the less militant suffragettes and she starts sort of sending money to Millicent Fawcett, saying, actually, yes, absolutely, women's rights matter to her as well. Now, one may wonder if that's something to do with the fact that she has this intimate relationship, as Sophia called it, with a woman that is not even noticed and could be criminalised at some point in time. So that is where they stay. And then Willi, first of all, breaks out.
- [20:51]
William Durrymple
She's on the wrong side of the line as far as Britain's concerned. So how do they negotiate that?
- [20:56]
Anita Arnand
Well, how do they negotiate it? I mean, poorly, one might say, because she's a British citizen, she's refusing to leave Lina and refusing to leave Germany. Lina wouldn't be able to leave Germany even if she wanted to, because she's an enemy alien. So Catherine decides, even though she has every right to come back to England, that she's not going to do it. And there are lots of reports that suggest that Sophia is beside herself and wants to get her out. Sir James Dunlop Smith is a big wig at the India Office in London and Sophia is bombarding him with letters saying, can we just get her out? But, you know, Catherine doesn't want to go. Princess Sophia says, you know, Dunlop Smith is just called to ask if anything can be done for her sister, Princess Catherine. When last heard, she was in Wilhelmshoen Castle, Prussia, she was living with a German lady. And he also writes an intimate friend. And her sister is not at all clear whether she wishes to leave Germany. Well, she didn't want to leave Germany and that is where she stays. And Catherine writes to Sophia because, you know, it's really hard to get letters across. And bear in mind that Victor has signed up to join and fight in the war. I mean, he's actually sort of too fat and grand to do anything useful, but he's part of the yeomanry. But Catherine's letter to Sophia is intercepted. It's a secret letter. It is. So if it's awful having no news of you, I'm perfectly all right here. You must not be anxious in any way. It's just the same as in times of peace. Perfect order everywhere, no sort of restrictions. For me, There have been no murders or disturbances by Germans in Germany, and the destruction of property in their enemy countries has simply been just punishment of civilians who've taken part in war. I implore. And then she does a little star symbol because she's trying to be cryptic to have nothing to do with this unjust war against Germany. From your loving sister, Catherine. Now, that star symbol represents Victor, so, you know, just tell them not to fight. She's basically suborning treason, is what she's doing, because of this love that she has, not only for Lina but her country.
- [22:50]
William Durrymple
And this, as we'll see later, this letter is noted, isn't it?
- [22:53]
Anita Arnand
Absolutely noted and held very much against Catherine.
- [22:56]
William Durrymple
This is a period of censorship and all letters coming in and out of Germany are going to be opened by the Authorities. And we know that they read this and put it in a file.
- [23:04]
Anita Arnand
They did. And they also put their assessment in that same file on Catherine, saying that she was decidedly pro German in her sentiments, but not a serious threat. So just leave her to rot in Germany, that's it. And they sort of kept a closer eye on the sister in Hampton Court, who is right under their nose. So she stays there. She stays throughout the naval blockade of German ports.
- [23:25]
William Durrymple
Interesting that she doesn't get interned or anything like that, that the Germans are just happy to let her carry on in her village with her friend.
- [23:31]
Anita Arnand
Women are invisible. And she wasn't deemed a threat in Germany. She's very pro German. Why would they round her up? She's very much onside. And she stays during the blockade, she stays while German civil, you know, the Turnip Winter, the Germans refer to it as this period of great hardship where hundreds of thousands have died of malnutrition and disease.
- [23:52]
William Durrymple
Deck Reuben Winter, the Turnip Winter.
- [23:55]
Anita Arnand
But finally, because she starts getting very sick, Sophia manages to win the day and gets her out.
- [24:01]
William Durrymple
There is a finite number of turnips that we can all eat in a year.
- [24:04]
Anita Arnand
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a really sad story. Catherine's starving by 1918, Lena is seriously ill. So Sophia just moves heaven and earth to get her out. And as she gets her out through a really circuitous way on Armistice Day itself, the Dutch embassy in Berlin gets this urgent request to create a passport for the Duleep Singh princess. And Catherine gets out. They're so surveilled. They're just girls. Right. But the letters are from the most senior members of government. So Edwin Montague, the Secretary of State of India.
- [24:36]
William Durrymple
Edwin Montagu is one of the more liberal figures in a cabinet not known for its advanced racial views. I think it's fair to. And he's very keen on Indian independence and he's very anti Zionist, in contrast to his cousin Herbert Samuels, who was the first British governor of Mandate Palestine.
- [24:51]
Anita Arnand
And he gets a lot of flack just for being Jewish. They dub him Edwin Montiju. On the opposition benches, it's an awful amount of barracking. But when he hears that Sophia is trying to get her sister back, he writes, I hardly think we're in a position to make difficulties. Quite early in the war, we intercepted a foolish pro German letter from Princess Catherine, but so far as I know, nothing has been heard of her since. It may be hoped she has found occasion to modify her views. In any case, there seems to be no sufficient evidence for Treating her as an enemy. So you know, that's the level of consideration that is going on. And so she's allowed back. Sophia nurses her back to health. But the moment the borders open, what does she do? She runs straight back to Lina. Absolutely.
- [25:37]
William Durrymple
Lena's still there, Lena's. They're separated at this point.
- [25:40]
Anita Arnand
Lena can't get out. She's a German, how can she get out? So she's just there. So Catherine goes straight back to her. And throughout the 1920s, throughout the Weimar years, that is where she stays. They describe themselves. Catherine writes to Sophia saying we are just happy little church mice. We're wandering around and having the most wonderful time.
- [26:01]
William Durrymple
This is the world of Babylon, Berlin, which is one of my favorite ever TV shows. You watched it, the Weimar years in Germany, all the amazing things going on, including all sorts of relationships between same sexes and so on. We just don't associate with 20s and
- [26:16]
Anita Arnand
30s Germany cabaret and things like that. It's that sort of period that we're talking about. So she stays and she's happy and she's living with Lena and they are having a marvellous time and they are, you know, they're just domestic bliss in this beautiful place. And then we know what happens in the 1930s.
- [26:34]
William Durrymple
Hitler becomes Chancellor in 1933 and within 12 months effectively dictator and everything goes to hell. In a handcart he takes a the title Fuhrer. In 1934, Nuremberg laws strip Gem Jews of their citizenship. In 1935, brownshirt violence in the streets. But none of this is yet in Kassel which is still sort of half timbered cottages and cuckoo clock houses sitting there with Beerhofs and all the rest of it in Prussia.
- [27:00]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, but it's getting closer. So you know, by the year 1938, you know, things are really heating up. You've just had the Anschluss in March that time when the German troops crossed into Austria.
- [27:11]
William Durrymple
My mother and grandmother were in Austria at the time of the Anschluss and my grandmother did several journeys back and forth smuggling Jewish Austrians out of the country in the boot of her Rolls Royce.
- [27:23]
Anita Arnand
Hold that thought, it may be pertinent in a little while. So the Nazis are pushing and pushing into the Sudetenland throughout the summer is busy stoking those grievances of ethnic Germans and Czechoslovakia is pushing Europe to the brink of war. He gets to Munich by September and it is getting closer and you've got this sort of 66 year old Indian princess and her German partner. Aryan German in her 70s, beloved of the local community. But Lena is Catherine's shield, you know, as long as she's around.
- [27:57]
William Durrymple
Oh, this wonderful picture. I've just seen the picture you sent. Absolutely wonderful.
- [28:01]
Anita Arnand
Isn't it? Gorgeous.
- [28:02]
William Durrymple
There's quite an age difference between them. Lena's looking now quite grandmotherly with sort of furs over her thick winter coat. And Catherine's looking thoroughly Punjabi with a little sort of teapot hat on her head.
- [28:15]
Anita Arnand
A teapot had those little sort of Punjabi cheeks that we all get eventually. Yeah, the little pouch cheeks. But you know, look, look how happy they look. Look how comfortable they look.
- [28:23]
William Durrymple
They do, don't they?
- [28:24]
Anita Arnand
Let's leave them just for a moment of happiness because they won't be able to be happy for very much longer. Join us after.
- [28:37]
Wise Advertiser
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- [30:35]
William Durrymple
Welcome back to Empire. Now we left this happy couple, Catherine and Lena Shaffer in 1938 in Localized A pair of eccentric spinsters. Germany now sliding into open Nazi. This is where there is some new research. An element of this story we knew nothing about until recently. The fact that Catherine is quietly helping Jewish families escape.
- [31:03]
Anita Arnand
When I was talking to Sophia's goddaughter, she told me that she had a distinct memory, she was a little girl, of she called them the dirty people arriving at Hampton Court. And she describes people who'd come off the coal barges had been smuggled into the night into Faraday House and that where they were washed, cleaned, fed and then sent on their way. And I said, well, who are they? That's a really weird memory. And she said, well, I think they were Jews that were being helped out of Germany by Catherine and then sent to Sophia. And I thought, well, this is amazing.
- [31:33]
William Durrymple
His sisters running their own sort of Schindler escape network Underground railroad.
- [31:38]
Anita Arnand
Exactly right. Thank goodness. A historian called Peter Bunce, who is fabulous dileepsing archivist, has gone through much research and he has been following, you know, sort of chasing down the story of what he calls the Indian Schindler. So, you know, we should say Schindler saved 1200 lives. Peter gave an interview to Deutsche Welle not so long ago saying, you know, saving one life or saving 10 lives is still saving. You're saving somebody who's not your color, not your religion, not your ethnic background, but you're doing it based on humanity. What was she doing? So she was acting as a guarantor. British refugee policy in the 1930s is misunderstood. You know, it wasn't an open door policy, it wasn't even remotely generous.
- [32:20]
William Durrymple
And a lot of the same people who are encouraging emigration to Palestine are absolutely raising the barriers to stop Jewish families escape into Britain with great heartlessness.
- [32:32]
Anita Arnand
So, I mean, at that time, the government would only admit Jewish refugees from Germany if there was a British citizen, and preferably a British citizen of note, who would sign a paper saying this person would not become a burden on the state. I will house them, I will feed them, I will pay for them. And without a signature, the visa is refused. So, you know, this is entirely, entirely dependent on private generosity. No sponsor, no entry. And Catherine, with her British passport and her royal title, buys an empty manor house in Buckinghamshire remotely, although she really doesn't want to ever go back to Buckinghamshire, doesn't want to leave Germany there's no way she wants to leave. She will provide for all. And it is Peter who's really found the first family that she saves. And their story is really lovely. It's extraordinary. It begins in a doctor's waiting room in Kassel in 1938. Catherine's just sitting there. Another woman sitting there chatting. And the woman is Ilse Hornstein. Her husband's a Jewish lawyer. He's a decorated First World War veteran. He's just been arrested by the Gestapo and he's been sent to Arena. Awful. SS camp called Sachsenhausen. And their plight looks desperate. You know, by the late 30s, tens of thousands of political prisoners, Jewish men, are rounded up and they're being kept in the most horrific conditions.
- [33:54]
William Durrymple
And Ilse has two young children, doesn't she? Klaus, George and Ursula. And she doesn't know if her husband's alive. He's last seen heading into this camp with the ss, not looking good. And she has no idea how to get out. And in a doctor's waiting room in Kassandra, she finds herself sitting next to an Indian princess, as one does. And Catherine just offers immediately, according to the family, she will be the guarantor to get them into the uk. She will sponsor their British visas. They can stay at her house in Buckinghamshire. A perfect stranger to a Jewish family she's known for 10 minutes. That speaks very, very well of her. Presumably also this could go wrong with the Nazi authorities who she's living among.
- [34:32]
Anita Arnand
Well, I mean, really. I mean, it's something of a red flag for the Nazis. Wilhelm gets out of Sachsenhausen, partly because the camp is overcrowded and they're releasing prisoners on condition that they get out of Germany immediately. So he leaves with absolutely nothing. Ilse and the children leave. They are carried on Catherine's largesse. Sophia collects them. I guess they might be the coal people that her goddaughter remembers. And then they are put up in this place in Buckinghamshire where they are allowed to live. And they're not the only ones, because Catherine acts as a guarantor for at least six other people that we know about. There's Wilhelm Meyersch, a physician, his partner Marielleuz Wolf, the violinist, Alexander Polinarov. Now, I know about him because Drovner remembered him playing in the drawing room of Hampton Court.
- [35:24]
William Durrymple
Polinarov, who's this that's remembering?
- [35:26]
Anita Arnand
So this is a woman I interviewed for the book who was a living link with Sophia, which just tells you how recent all this stuff, Women fighting for the vote actually is, you know, so she remembers growing up in Faraday House. And as a young girl, in the evening, this wonderful violinist called Polnarioff is playing for the family. And there's another family, there's the Reich family, there's the Gertmans. And Peter Bunce, like I said, is leading the investigation on this. And he's done really well, but he thinks there's a much longer list than this. And actually there's a lovely thing that Peter talks about that in 2002, after reading a local newspaper article, somebody turned up in his office, office and said, my mother and my uncles and my grandparents were saved by Princess Catherine in Germany. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be alive today. A spine tingling moment. This carries on. Catherine playing savior at this time. But then something happens to her and she herself needs to be saved. Okay, because Lina dies. So it's just weeks before Kristallnacht, August 1938.
- [36:31]
William Durrymple
So when things are getting really hairy, race riots in the streets, it is
- [36:35]
Anita Arnand
proper sort of fiery torches in the street. And her neighbours, Catherine's neighbours, say to her, you've got to go, you've got to get out of here. There's no one here to defend you now. Lena's not here to defend you. We can't protect you. You are brown. Get out, get out, get out. She's 67 years old. She's left alone for the first time in 50 years. And you'd think that her reaction would be, I need to go, there's nothing here for me. Lina's buried in Castle, so she doesn't want to go. And you know, we do have the account from a neighbour of hers, a doctor called Fritz Ratig. He's constantly worried about her. He keeps begging her to leave. But she doesn't want to leave Lina. Lina's in the ground, she doesn't want to leave Lina. Good sense prevails. And you know, this foreign born woman in an unconventional relationship, friends with Jewish families, who's been smuggling Jews out of the country, gets out. And she arrives in England via Switzerland in November 1938 and goes to Faraday House, the place she hates most in the world, in Hampton Court. She can't stand it. She moans and groans about Sophia's constant smoking and her numerous dogs. The whole place stinks.
- [37:47]
William Durrymple
Do they have an edgy relationship?
- [37:49]
Anita Arnand
They have a lovely relationship. These sisters love each other.
- [37:53]
William Durrymple
Cause those letters are very loving. But she doesn't like the dogs, doesn't like the cigarettes.
- [37:57]
Anita Arnand
She loves her sisters, she absolutely adores Sapphire. But she cannot the pups and cigs, you know, it's the pups and cigs that are just driving her up the wall. So she then goes to this house in Pen in Buckinghamshire, Colehatch house, which
- [38:11]
William Durrymple
she's never been to before. She's bought blind, was this sort of
- [38:15]
Anita Arnand
way station for the Jewish families that she was rescuing. And then she sets about decorating it in a modern European style. Very much reminiscent of castle, you know, ornamental garden, orchard. It's all of the things that she and Lina have. And, you know, for a while she's happy. She even tempts. During the Blitz, Sophia refuses to leave London, even though there are bombs falling around Hampton Court. She's sort of smoking furiously out the window, going, I'm not going anywhere. And Catherine just says, would you please? I cannot lose somebody else. So she does very miserably go to Buckinghamshire in a little house that Catherine arranges, which is across the road from Coalhatch, so they don't have to have the stumbling block of the dogs and the cigarettes.
- [39:00]
William Durrymple
And the dogs come.
- [39:01]
Anita Arnand
Or the Pomeranians, of course, the dogs come to. And Sophia also takes in sort of evacuees and, you know, she's doing her own bit of, you know, saving the world. You've got happiness for a while, beautiful happiness. Catherine feels useful, you know, as well as sort of making this house beautiful. She is constantly sending letters, writing to MPs, trying to arrange passage for other German Jews who need to get out.
- [39:26]
William Durrymple
And also, I think she is busy sorting out the business of Germans who've been interned in Britain.
- [39:33]
Anita Arnand
Really good point, because that's another bit of history that people don't really think about. If you were German, even if you were a recently arrived German Jew, an anti Nazi and had been imprisoned for such, you would be rounded up and you would be put in an internment camp. In fact, I did a documentary about an unknown. It's sort of the equivalent of a Guantanamo Bay. Isle of Wight had an enormous amount of internal Germans. So what you had there, you know, you had sort of German Nazi sympathisers corralled with Jews who'd escaped Nazi Germany. It was so mad. But there was no other way. You know, they didn't know who was a spy and who wasn't a spy. And some of these people were taken to Australia and dumped in the middle of the Australian outback. It's a fabulous story and I will ask our wonderful producer to put the link to the documentary if it's still around, because it opened my eyes. I'm really Proud of it. Catherine does this. Sophia is living her life. And Catherine then dies on the 8th of November, 1942. She's never got over the death of Lena and she's exhausted by all her efforts of fighting the state, either the German state or the British state. And it just takes its toll. And it's Sophia who finds her. I found her lying on the floor on her back. It evidently happened when she was getting up. The doctor said it was quite painless and instantaneous and nothing could have been done. A lot of blood on the heart. You can imagine an awful shock. Shock to me. It completely stunned and stupefied me. Says so so far. I couldn't shake myself into ordinary things. And she's cremated. And one wonderful aspect of this is all she wanted was to go back to Lena, just take my remains back to Lena Bamba, who's like sort of the. The Rottweiler, who we're going to meet in the next episode, who's like sort of custodian. They're all mine. My sisters are mine. She even she understood there was this decency of returning Catherine to the woman that she loved, to Lena Shaffer.
- [41:26]
William Durrymple
It's a very nice, touching note. I desire that a quarter of my ashes be buried as near as possible to the coffin of my friend, Fraulein Lina Schaeffer.
- [41:36]
Anita Arnand
Eventually, it does happen when they're able to travel the rest. So Bamba's normally the custodian of grief at this time when her sisters die. And she's the one who arranges everything, even though she may not have proved she did it. And there is a beautiful moment. It's just lovely. And in Castle, the only memory that we have is that she's near Lina. That's it. So it's, you know, that's the end of a rather beautiful love story, I think. And next time we're going to meet a much more difficult sister.
- [42:07]
William Durrymple
We're going to meet Princess Bamba, Punjabi Sharni.
- [42:09]
Anita Arnand
Oh, imperious, impossible, magnificent Bamba, who looked at England as just the enemy territory. Hated it all the way through, like her father. We'll go back to Lahore and we'll try and take it back. It's another doozy of a story. If you want to listen and you don't want to wait, you can get early access to all episodes of this miniseries. Just join our club. Go to the link provided. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand, and goodbye
- [42:39]
William Durrymple
from me, me, William Durrymple.
- [42:47]
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