The Maharani of Kapurthala

What was it like to be crossing the Pacific on the President Monroe back in 1954. Not that great apparently. Fanny Holt Ames occupied herself with leaning gin rummy, cheesy shipboard special events, and reporting on her fellow passengers. The best of the events was a "gymkhana" whose athletic events included the inevitable hands-free orange passing. The gossip included the story of Mrs. Baynes who had been so consistently late for dinner at the Captain's table that they took her chair away. After the poor lady stood around for awhile the Captain finally signaled for her chair. "Oo-la-la!!!" according to Fanny. We also learn that "little Mrs. McLeod" had a heart attack after a performance of a shipboard revue and that the President Monroe featured way too many westerns in its movie archive.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the crossing was Fanny's reading material "the Maharani of Kapurthala's autobiography "The Story of an Indian Princess." The Maharani was still alive in 1954 dying in 1962 at age 72, but believe it or not fifty years later there is a website in her honor that is definitely worth a look because its completely over the top and an absolute hoot. The biography mentioned in the website is not the one Fanny was reading. We apparently have Penelope Cruz to thank for this unusual website because back in 2006 she was scheduled to star in a movie about the Maharani. A Spanish actor playing an Indian Princess? Well, not exactly. The creation of the British Empire opened the way for anglophile Indian princes to travel the world. In 1906 the Maharaja Sir Jagatjit Singh Bahadur of Kapurthala was in Spain for the marriage of the King of Spain (a spectacular affair that ended with a bombing by anarchists). While hanging out in a cafe the 34 year old Maharaja fell in lust for the 16 year old flamenco dancer Anita Delgado and courted her as a possible wife (its hard to tell from wikipedia whether he was marrying sequentially or whether she was going to be current wife #4). Anita resisted his advances for awhile, but finally succumbed and married the dog in 1908 after he paid for her education in France. The French education must have featured an advanced degree since they were married in January and she produced a son in April. The Maharaja was fabulously wealthy and apparently lacking in self-esteem since he seems to have lived to collect titles and honors from around the world like the Grand Cross of the Order of Menelik II of Ethiopia, the Grand Cordon of the Order of Glory of Tunisia, and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Cross of Honour and Merit of Cuba, to name a very few. The Maharaja showered his wife with spectacular jewels, but Anita was not content. She became involved in extramarital affairs including one with the Maharaja's son by another wife, and the couple finally separated. She returned to Paris with their son. The book Fanny was reading was a translation of Anita's Impresiones de mis viajes a las Indias. The movie project is on hold because the Maharaja's family object that some of the events in the script never occurred. One wonders if Fanny borrowed the scandalous book from the Ames Free Library.