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Eastern and Western styles and she wore saris with European-style blouses and petticoats. The Cooch Behar jewels sparkled around her neck and on her fingers. The Maharani was the daughter of the nineteenth-century Bengali reformist Keshub Chander Sen, who had established the Brahmo Samaj, a liberal branch of Hinduism that believed in women’s emancipation. Sen had been one of the first Hindus to cross the seas in 1870, had preached at the Unitarian Church in Bristol and had been invited to lunch with Queen Victoria at Osborne, where he was served a specially prepared vegetarian meal. Sunity had been brought up in a liberal tradition and was the embodiment of the accomplished Victorian woman: well-educated, proficient in embroidery, music and art. She was later to become the first Indian woman to write in English when her memoir, Autobiography of an Indian Princess , was published in London in 1921. Her husband Nripendra had also written in English and his Thirty Seven Years of Big Game was published in 1909.
    Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, the Maharajah of Baroda, arrived a few months later – with his wife Chimnabai. Baroda in western India, in modern-day Gujarat, was a wealthy state and the Gaekwads were a fierce and proud Maratha clan. The presence of a Maharajah of a twenty-one gun salute state added significant prestige to the Jubilee celebrations and the British had been keen to host him. The Gaekwads were as traditional as the CoochBehars were westernised. Though Sayaji Rao was well versed in English and spoke four languages, including Urdu, Marathi and Gujarati, he preferred to retain his traditional Indian clothes and customs. He wore heavily brocaded tunics, angarakha s, stitched in the western Indian cities of Ahmedabad or Surat, both famed for their textile centres. He was rarely without his trademark three-string pearls. On his head was the small cap-like turban favoured by the Maratha rulers. The enigmatic Chimnabai, an accomplished veena player, was as comfortable in the kitchen as she was hunting tigers and was an active campaigner for women’s emancipation. The family treasures included the exquisite Pearl Carpet, a silk and deer-skin carpet embellished with over 2 million pearls and studded with diamonds, emeralds and rubies with four solid gold weights in the corners. Sayaji Rao’s elephant famously had a howdah cast in solid, jewel-encrusted gold. It needed twenty-four men to lift the howdah onto the elephant’s back. At the end of the day, the elephant was given a pint of sherry.
    Also boarding the steamers for England were the portly, architecture-loving Maharajah of Indore, Shivaji Rao Holkar, a state in the Central Provinces with a nineteen gun salute, and the Maharajah of Bharatpore, Jaswant Singh, a seventeen gun salute state in western India, famous for its bird sanctuary. The states with eleven gun salutes were represented by the Maharajah Bhagwatsinghji Sagramsinhji, the Thakur of Gondal, who had studied medicine at Edinburgh and was much respected by the British press; the Thakore of Limri, Jaswantsinghji Fatehsinghji, with his smartly clipped beard and turban; and the Thakore of Morvi, Lukhdirji Bahadur, who sported a neat moustache and layered turban in the Rajasthani style. The handsome young Rao of Kutch and the Nawab of Junagadh were also amongst the assembled Royalty. All the Maharajahs arrived in style with their retinue of secretaries, servants and cooks. Some brought their cows with them, others their horses. The British found them sensational.
    Lord Cross and Dufferin waited anxiously as the entourage of Princes and nobility travelled across the seas to England. Pertab Singh caused a slight panic when he managed to lose his jewels on the Tasmania and divers had to be sent in to look for them. A relieved Lord Cross later telegraphed Dufferin: ‘Foreign office have just sent word that Pertab Singh’s jewels have been recovered.’ 3 All was well again for the Jubilee party.
    Apart from the