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It was then that a small item in an eveninger attracted one’s attention and in Sherlock Holmes fashion a search began for Bapsybano Pavry, Dowager Marchioness of Winchester. Her death later reminded one of a meeting with her in the 1960s. That was in Delhi before her visit to Iran to meet the Shah for permission to allow worship at the old fire-temples in that country. The Marchioness was still pretty and hardly looked her age though born in 1902. Her marriage to the Marques of Winchester in 1952 came as a surprise because he was 89. There had been many more suitors for her hand and, as one wag said, the Shah would have made a better match, even though he was much younger.

When one comes to think of it, the marriage could have been an ideal union for a woman who had ancestral links with Iran. But the moot point is: Would she have given him an heir, the main worry of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which made him divorce Queen Soraya when even a visit to the shrine of Sheikh Salim Chishti did not make their wish come true? The Shah failed where Akbar the Great succeeded in getting a son centuries earlier.

The Marchioness was a well-known figure in Europe in 1982 when she was presented at the British court. Her love for the aristocracy was an open secret. Her own upbringing was no less glamorous. Daughter of the Parsi Head Priest of Bombay, the Most Rev Khurshedji Pavry, she had the best that life could give in pre-independence India, and did her M.A. from California University.

Why Bapsy delayed her marriage until 1952 is not known but it is logical to conclude that she rejected many offers until she met William Montagu Paulet, who succeeded his elder brother after the latter’s death in the Boer War in 1899. Why he married her is a mystery because the Marques was already friendly with the mother of lan Flemming, the creator of James Bond, although he had known Bapsy since 1929.

The marriage was a disaster as it was never consummated; he lived the rest of his life (till 1962) away from her, dying at Mont Carlo in his 100th year. Earlier Eve Fleming and the Marchioness had been involved in litigation, the latter accusing her of ‘seducing her husband.’

The Marchioness did have a sense of history. During the meeting with her in Delhi, one was struck by the fact that she could rattle off the names of historical personages and their doings as though they were next-door neighbours. Her best days were behind her but she still thought that she could twirl the world round her little finger. Otherwise she was a charming lady inspiring both awe and reverence.

But the aristocracy in Britain did not take kindly to her and always treated her with disdain.

Her constant companion was her brother, Dr Jal Pavry, but after his death in 1985, Bapsy left England and passed her last years in India. The marquisate had meanwhile passed into the hands of Richard Charles Paulet, her husband’s cousin. Had Bapsy’s marriage been successful and had she borne a son we might have had a Marques with Indian blood. But that is wishful thinking.

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