FROM STAGE TO THRONE.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XII, Issue 17, 23 September 1909, Page 3

FROM STAGE TO THRONE.

THE SPANISH DANCING Glßfc WHO HAS BECOME MAHARANEE OF KAPURTHALA.

Tho real-life romance of the wedding of his Highness the Maharajah ot Kapurtbaia with Senorita Anita Delgado, formerly a Spanish dancing girl, is one which might well have been taken out of that wonderful Oriental collection, the “Thousand-and-Ono Nights.” Anita Delgado is to-day Maharanee of Kapurthala, one ol the most opulent and important of the British Indian protected States, and wif« or one of the most popular and most Europeanised of all the native Indian princes. Twenty years ago she was a poor girl in the Spanish .city of Malaga. Her father and mother eked out a precarious existence by keeping a little stall at a street corner. They lived in a tumble-down cabin with their two pretty little daughters, Anita and Victoria. Anita and Victoria knew how to dance the joia and the tango, accomplishments which they had learned from perambulating Spanish minstrels. They went on the stag* of a local music hall under the names of the Sisters Camelia. They migrated with their parents to Madrid. and there found fame on th« stage, with many admirers of theii grace and beauty. The marriage of King Alfonso in the Spanish capital was the occasion which brought the fairy prince. Among many sovereign princes there arrived as guest of the State Prince Dbuleep Manek, Maharajah (Or “great sovereign”) of the State of Kapurthala. in Northern India. H» saw the Sisters Camelia dancing, and felt that in the elder, Anita, he had met his fate. The Maharajah made love ardently, and asked the beautiful Spaniard to link her lot with his. Following up his suit, the amorout Indian prince approached the dancer’s father. Delgado, it is said, proud, and jealous of the fame of his beautiful daughter, laid his hand upon the handle of his knife. But the Maharajah explained that his intentions were honourable, presented the father with £6,000 as an earnest of his good faith, and gained the parental consent. Anita accompanied her future husband to„Paris. She was practically uneducated. The Maharajah put her to school, taught her French and music and English, which he speaks fluently, and when the schooling was over he had her taken out to Kapurthala, and there has married her with that pomp which only Indian princes know.