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The last ruling Maharajah of Jaipur bought Saint Hill
in the 1950s. The
western Indian desert Kingdom
of Jaipur is in Rajasthan. I have been there and it’s
a beautiful place but it has mosquitoes the size of
wasps.
When the Maharajah was born the Raj was at its
apogee. Five hundred and sixty two princely families,
loyal to the British monarch, ruled in feudal splendor
an area bigger than Europe. Sawai Man Singh II,
Jai to his loved ones, had 65 siblings and three wives
but it was wife number three who was the love of his
life. With wife number three he shared Saint Hill.
Gayatri Devi, pictured to the right, known as Ayesha,
was born in London in 1919, a little princess and
daughter of the handsome old Etonian the Maharajah
of Cooch Behar in Bengal and his beautiful Maharini
Indira, socialite and friend of Queen Mary, Noel
Coward and Douglas Fairbanks. Indira was a
reckless gambler who might be seen at a casino
in Le Touquet or London letting her lucky talisman,
a live tiny tortoise, crawl across the gaming table: its
back laden with three strips of emeralds, diamonds
and rubies. Her affairs were so numerous she was
dubbed "the Maharani of Couche Partout" (
every
bed
). She used the pet name Ayesha for her
daughter after the heroine of Rider Haggard’s
She.
Ayesha was educated in Calcutta, at a Swiss
finishing school and at the London School of
Secretaries.
Clark Gable described her as one of
the most beautiful women he had ever met and she
was
listed by American Vogue as one of the ten
most beautiful women in the world. She spoke
with
an upper class crisp English accent although the
Washington Post once said that with her throaty
voice she sounded like an Indian Tallulah Bankhead.
The dashing old Harrovian and polo-playing
Maharaja proposed to her in the back of a Bentley
driving around Hyde Park. She was 17: he was 25.
Their diamond-studded wedding in 1940 was
described as the most expensive in the world by
the
Guinness Book of Records.
Lord Mountbatten,
India's last Viceroy, said he could not think of a "more
striking and attractive couple than Jai and Ayesha
when they married". The couple lived the gilded life
of the Maharaja's court buying Saint Hill in the 1950s
when their sons were at Harrow. After Independence,
Jai was appointed Indian Ambassador to Spain
bringing home black Spanish marble columns that he
installed in the entrance hall at Saint Hill.
A photograph from 1961 shows them with the Queen
and the Duke of Edinburgh after an elephant-back
tiger shoot. Ayesha slept in an ivory bed, with a
14-skin leopard rug. They joined the jet set, partying
with the Kennedys and everybody who was anybody.
But it all came to a sudden end in 1970 when the
Maharaja died in a polo accident in Cirencester.
Ayesha became known as the Rajmata or Queen
Mother of Jaipur and her step-son “Bubbles” became
Maharaja in title only.
Ayesha grew more stately as the years passed,
an international celebrity and brand ambassador
for Rajasthan tourism. Taking up politics she stood
against the Indian government with its meddling
democracy and was once imprisoned on tax charges
by her arch enemy Indira Ghandi. In her fascinating
memoir she writes about her five months locked up
listening to the BBC World Service and playing
badminton with prostitutes and pick-pockets.
The Queen Mother of Jaipur
spent up to six months
of every year in the UK during the last decades of
her life. She continued to mix with European royalty,
often being photographed with prince Charles
because of their joint interest in Polo - Ayesha always
presented the Cooch Behar Cup at the Cowdray
Polo Club in Sussex. She was in London during her
final illness, but insisted on being flown back to
Jaipur where she died in 2009, aged 90.
Saint Hill seems to attract rather extraordinary people
and certainly the last man to live here was really
quite extraordinary. In the impressive library at the
manor you can see the 560 published works of
L. Ron Hubbard. The acclaimed American author and
founder of Scientology and Dianetics is recognized
by the
Guinness Book of Records
as the most
translated and published author in the world.
Mr. Hubbard’s office has been kept as it was in the
1960s with in and out trays, a rank of differently
coloured telephones and a telex machine.
When City & Village Tours began in 1988 quite
a few coach operators still used telex messaging.
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