The American nurse who became maharani of Indore

Indore was a quiet little city in the Raj days. But on March 28, 1939, its young king gave it a surprise. His highness, the Maharajadhiraj Raj Rajeshwar Sawai Shree Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, told an assembly of his nobles, officials and subjects that he had remarried.

Yeshwant’s wife Sanyogita had fallen ill in Honolulu and died in Switzerland two years earlier, leaving behind their only child, princess Usha. So, Yeshwant’s marriage should have been joyful news, but there was more than one hitch in it.

For one, he had married an American woman. An ordinary American woman who had been his nurse at a Los Angeles hospital a year earlier.

Now, Yeshwant wasn’t the first Indore royal to marry a foreigner. Ten years earlier his father Tukoji had done the same. But Tukoji had already given up the crown to Yeshwant before tying the knot with his American bride, Nancy Ann Miller. And Nancy had at least made a show of converting to Hinduism. Her marriage to Tukoji had been solemnised the Hindu way in the presence of his subjects.

But Yeshwant had married away from home. He said he had married in Europe, but the truth was his marriage to Marguerite Lawler Branyen had taken place at Taxco city in Mexico six months earlier – in September 1938.

Why wasn’t he being truthful? What did he have to hide?

The truth was that Marguerite had been married before. Her double surname was a giveaway, but the Indore state’s publicity office insisted Branyen was her maiden name. She had been Ms Branyen before her marriage to Yeshwant, it said. And that was a lie. Her name was Marguerite Lawler. She had been a stewardess on the Union Pacific Railroad before she did a nursing course and married John Paul Branyen, a jeweller.

Marguerite was working at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles when Yeshwant suffered a severe attack of asthma and was admitted there in 1938. Marguerite nursed him to health and won his heart in the bargain. It was enough for him to describe her as “the lady I love from the heart”.

When he announced his marriage in March 1939 Yeshwant said he had married Marguerite for mental peace. In his own words: “Without mental peace I cannot properly discharge my duties as ruler.”

So Yeshwant left the hospital with love in his heart, and Marguerite on his arm. He hired her to be princess Usha’s nurse and they travelled together to Europe and India. Reports said she used to call him ‘Junior’, and the Oxford-educated maharaja of Indore was cool with that.

But the British government was not cool about Marguerite’s status. They weren’t sure whether she was legally divorced, and to avoid a scandal they refused to address her as Her Highness. At first, they even opposed her presence at official functions.

But Yeshwant and Marguerite got along well enough. Unlike Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala and Nina Grosup, whose wide age gap led to tragedy, Yeshwant and Marguerite were the same age. She arrived in Indore and forgot her American working class life for a while.

There was not a quiet moment in their life. There were daily parties, and they seldom went to bed before 2am. The day started at noon with breakfast at 2pm, followed by more parties and games. Yeshwant, who was known as ‘Indore Sport’, was an avid hunter and bridge player. He once boasted about shooting 154 tigers. Marguerite also notched up 30 tigers, 8 panthers and 1 bear in the three years she spent in India

But eventually, this aimless life got on her nerves. By some accounts the strain in their married life arose from her inability to produce an heir. Whatever the cause, Marguerite flew back to the US in 1942, never to return.

In California, she lived in a mansion that Yeshwant had built at Laguna Beach just before the second World War started. It was more fortress than home, and it was said he had built it as a shelter against the war for his family. The house had thick walls, windows barred with iron grilles, double doors and burglar alarms. It’s a heritage property now.

Yeshwant stayed on in India for about a year, during which he managed to lose his heart to another American married woman named Euphemia Watts Crane, also known as Fay Stevenson. Her husband Frank Arthur Crane worked as an American aviation employee in India. But Yeshwant was smitten and decided to marry Euphemia. However, he could not do that without divorcing Marguerite, so he flew to Nevada in May 1943.

Why Nevada? To obtain the infamous Reno divorce, of course. In Reno, Nevada, getting a divorce was as easy as ordering fries. All you needed was proof of residence in the state, and that was easy too. A six weeks’ stay in Nevada made you a bona fide resident for the purpose of divorce. Special resorts called dude ranches provided accommodation for this purpose, and Yeshwant stayed at the Palomino Ranch.

He checked in on May 23 and had to kill time till July 4 when his six weeks got over. The Detroit Evening Times of July 11, 1943 said Yeshwant rode around on a horse wearing Levis jeans and a chef’s cap but no shirt. He carried a fishing rod with him all the time and often fished catfish in the ranch’s private lake.

The 4th of July was a Sunday in 1943 so the Monday after was a national holiday. Poor Yeshwant had to wait two extra days to file his divorce suit. He alleged extreme cruelty by Marguerite and became a free man in the morning of July 6.

But he wasn’t the only one seeking a divorce that morning. Euphemia also ended her marriage with Frank Arthur Crane in the same court, and 10 hours later they were married and off on their honeymoon in Yeshwant’s car. They had planned to drive from Reno to South California but the car broke down one hour later in Carson City, forcing the newlywed royal couple to spend the night in the honeymoon cottage of a motel. Not quite a drive into the sunset.

It’s funny they had started on a long drive in the middle of petrol rationing due to the world war. Yeshwant had a gas quota for driving in Los Angeles city only. So, two weeks later when he made another trip from Hollywood to Las Vegas, the office of price administration suspended his gas ration for 6 months.

What became of Marguerite after the divorce? Although Yeshwant had accused her of cruelty, he left princess Usha in her care, along with the fortress mansion. Usha and Marguerite had become very fond of each other and Marguerite, although childless, was a good mother.

Marguerite lived in the mansion for some time but felt lonely. She said she wanted to become a part of America again. It wasn’t long before she met Charles Masters, six years younger than her, and a member of the US coast guard. Marguerite fell in love with him and decided to do her bit for her country. She volunteered for the navy’s emergency services training at Hunter College in New York, where she had to be up by 5.45am every day, have breakfast by 6.15, wash her own clothes and live with 10 others in a barracks

She had found the simple life she missed and was enjoying it. But Usha had to be sent back to Indore. Marguerite had brought a picture of Usha with her to Hunter College, and she told the press: “I was lonely, so I knew Usha would be too. But I am going to bring her back after the war.”

That didn’t happen but she married Masters to start the plain ordinary family she had always wanted. “I have never been so happy before,” Marguerite told reporters in 1945, adding: “We just want the same right to privacy and the same right to happiness that is the privilege of every other American couple.”

***

How Indore’s famous stuffed leather toys are made

 

A hundred horses, each one with its forelegs in the air, are sunning on the terrace of Anil’s house. They are well-muscled steeds, and Anil’s year-old son totters towards them gleefully, but he is picked up halfway to them and the danger passes.

The sun is shining brightly after three wet winter days and all hands are busy making up for lost time. Pulp casts of elephants and camels are hanging from the tin shed. A boy is twisting wire into frames for making tigers, another is pressing a mould with paper pulp inside, a woman is pasting leather on to the dried and touched-up casts, and I am witnessing the birth of Indore’s lifelike soft toys.

When the toys are finished, they will be packed and shipped to the metros, and even to Australia and the US. Although a traditional craft, they are not much in demand within Indore city, and are mostly sold at a few shops around the old palace, Rajwada. However, Mhow, just 23km away on NH-3, is a big market with its cosmopolitan mix of servicemen and their families from all over the country.

Toy making is an old craft in Indore, but it changed in one important way a few decades ago. While traditionally the stuffed toys were covered with velvet, the city’s craftsmen now use sheep or goat leather as it imparts a lifelike quality to the animal figures. “The muscle tone shines through leather,” says Anil. It is skin, after all, but why not use the more common buffalo hide?

Anil says three qualities make sheep and goat skins ideal for this work: “They are thinner than other hides, and take the shape of the cast that they are stuck upon.” Secondly, he says, “They absorb colour very nicely, which is essential to make the animals look lifelike.” Finally, though they are expensive, their supply is abundant.

Leather is the only raw material that comes from outside Indore. While it is supplied from Hyderabad, the paper pulp comes from Malwa Mills nearby. In fact, the area around this mill has most of Indore’s 20-odd soft toy factories. The remainder operate from Scheme Number 78, Nehru Nagar and Marimata Crossing. As for the little things like eyes and hooves of animals, these are available in the old markets around Rajwada.

With the raw material in place, how are all those beautiful animal figures crafted? The process seems simple enough, with not a single machine being used. But it requires a high degree of skill, which the craftsmen acquire with years of practice. Be it a horse, tiger, camel, elephant or any other animal, they all start out as a wire frame twisted deftly inside a minute. The same hands then bind straw over this frame to create a rough form upon which paper pulp is moulded.

The first workman completes his job within five minutes, and then another presses paper pulp onto this ‘skeleton’ with a mould. Since the pulp is wet and tender, the figure is left out in the open to dry, for a day. The next day, before the pulp hardens completely, an artist touches up the cast animal by defining its muscles and checks for any serious flaws that might result in rejection later on. All this takes just 15 minutes, and after some more drying the piece is ready to get its skin.


The glue used to stick the skin on to the cast is also special. It is made from tamarind seeds, by first roasting, then powdering them, and finally boiling the powder. Sticking the skin onto the cast requires a lot of skill as several small pieces of leather are stuck and yet the final skin has to appear seamless. The pasting is finished within 20 minutes, and then the pieces are set out to dry in the sun again, for a day

The basic toy is now ready, but to be saleable it needs vital finishing touches, like painting and embellishment. This job is done not in the factories but in the homes of the workmen. Each toy takes a few minutes to finish, but the pieces are returned only after a day, when they are a sight to behold. Especially the horses, which return not only richly painted but also equipped with tiny saddles and reins.

***