SOCIETY ROMANCE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 13

SOCIETY ROMANCE

STORY OF ELSIE FORREST As the cables of a few days ago related, Indian society has been stirred over the action at law brought by the Maharanee of Tikari against the Rajah for maintenance, and the counter-action on his part for the return of the family jewels, which are said to be of immense value and irreplacable (writes “H.P.” in the “Dominion.”) This little stir up in the household of Tikari has more than a passing interest for New' Zealanders, as the lady in the case was here on many occasions, and has friends in many parts which she made on those visits.

The Maharanee, whose maiden name was'Elsie Forrest Thompson, was born and educated in Sydney, but at an early age developed a taste for the stage, and, assuming the name of Elsie Forrest, made her first appearance in vaudeville when she was only seventeen years of age, having at that time noth, ing much to brag about in the way of talent. But she had looks! Elsie Forrest wms one of the prettiest girls of her day. At a time when it was the fashion for “show girls” to be extremely well developed specimens of the sex she stood out with her slim, svelte figure, pretty straight features, and her wonderful violet eyes, the type exactly that ar© required for the theatre in this age of transcendent flapperdom. Miss Forrest first appeared in New r Zealand with Lee and Rial’s World’s Entertainers in 1902, when she doubled up with one Nelston, as Nelston and Forrest, purveying song, dance, and patter, one of the minnows among the big fish, who included Charles Sweet (“I’m a Burglar”) Kelly and Ashby, and other top-hole vaudeville people, Succeeding that tour the pair returned to play a season on the P. R. Dix circuit, a management which was established in the old Theatre Royal in Wellington for many years. A little later she married a performer named Stillwell whom, if I remember right, was an American, who used to call himself the King of Handkerchief Manipulators, or some such title, and with him she made a tour of South Africa. When they returned to Sydney, they were not living together, and then, on the wife’s petition, the Stillwells were divorced Miss Forrest was next heard of as a member of the company headed by Eugene Sandow, the German strong man, when that company visited the East after his Australian and New Zealand tour. The Orient had always appealed strongly to Miss Forrest. To her it seemed to suggest everything that was satisfying in romance, and she was for ever quoting the lyrics of Omar Khayyam, so that this visit to the land of the Moguls, eagerly anticipated, was potent with possibilities. A few months later Miss Forrest returned to Sydney and stayed some little time with her mother, who resided in Roslyn Gardens, overlooking Rushcutter’s Bay. But that was only for a little while. Soon she heard the East a’ callin’, and returned to the burning strand of the hymnists, when fate loomed up in the person of the young Rajah of Tikari, a potentate of high standing who had graduated at Oxford, and to whom London and the Occident were an open book. This is stated so as to remove any doubt as to the woman having beguiled a poor innocent native. Nothing of the sort. -

In 1913 the Maharanee paid a visit to Sydney to see her relatives. On this occasion she came, not to stay in the quiet of Roslyn Gardens, but to hold high court at the Hotel Australia. Surrounded by all the glittering opulence of the East, and waited upon hand and foot by her retinue of Indian servants, she simply set the city alight with curiosity and envy. The Maharanee was the big lion of the season, and everyone wished to entertain the little girl who had been Elsie Thompson, of Darlinghurst. Her jewels were described as magnificient, and particularly ravishing were the worldfamous Tikari emeralds.

Her High and Mightiness returned to India in due course, and next year the -war broke out, and like the good soldier ho was, the Rajah went forth to fight for England. Things grew dull in Tikari during the war-time, so the Maharanee decided one day to pay a visit to the soul of the Empire, and Her Gracious Goodness was next heard of appearing at the Palladium Music Hall, London, at a good round salary, which she gracionsly handed over to the Red Cross funds. What happened subsequently is not very clear from this distance, but as late as Christmas, 1921, the Maharanee appeared as the principal girl in a. London pantomime. Now ensues the application for support an her part, and the claim for the upturn of the Tikari jewels on the part of the Rajah.