The legendary Victor Dhanapala: was priceless Burmese gem root of his fortune?

by ECB Wijeyasinghe

One of the sights of London has disappeared with the death of Charles Victor Dhanapala, perhaps the best-known Ceylonese in international art and literary circles.He has been called the glamour boy of the Eastern world. But he was more than that. He was a legend. The other famous Dhanapala, the journalist, once described him as a combination of Krishnamurti, Arabindo Ghose and Meher Baba. I should add to this permutation the names of Sai Baba, the Gaekwar of Baroda and Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid. The picture would then be fairly complete.

He lived like a Middle Eastern potentate who had just stepped out of the pages of the Arabian Nights and established a community of females who ate out of his hands. To return the compliment, he ate out of theirs. Both ways the food was delicious and it provided nourishment for the body as well as the soul.

The remarkable thing about this extraordinary man was that though he was surrounded night and day by a bevy of beautiful and brainy women, the breath of scandal never touched him. For one thing, there was no coquetry in the community. In the luxury of his wall-to-wall carpeted London flat one came across some of the bluest bloods in England and India. There they sat at the feet of the Master, listening patiently as if he were the last word on every conceivable subject.

HYPNOSIS

Victor Dhanapala acted in loco parentis to all these bewildered beauties who implored his help and sought his sanctum like helpless orphans. The magic of Mesmer was trifling compared to the hypnotic influence he wielded on them. In a crowd that cried out for a Mother Superior he was like a Father Abbot, hearing their confessions and giving them absolution from their peccadilloes provided they stayed put in his sanctuary.

For the fact of the matter is that his Mongolian cast of features gave him some claim to behave like an Eastern divinity that shaped their ends though they came from the four corners of the globe. Like many another architect of his own fate, Victor Dhanapala was of mixes descent. His father was a prosperous Sinhalese photographer named Charles William de Silva who had a studio in Maradana But his mother was a pretty Burmese lady with wealthy relatives in Rangoon and Moulmein.

When William first set eyes on her he was instantly attracted by her charming ways. Later, when he heard of her affluent connections, William was supposed to have said that she was more beautiful than the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. In order to get a better perspective of this beauty from Burma, William married her and Victor, this Child of Destiny was one of the results of the union.

Incidentally, when Victor’s lively sister met her cousin, my old friend, Austin de Silva a Lake House connection was also established. Austin and his wife were a quiet, domesticated, even religious couple. Victor and his sister were, therefore poles apart in their approach to life. I must add that Austin de Silva who died some months ago was one of the most conscientious journalists that ever held sub-editor’s blue pencil either in the “Observer” or the “Daily News”. He also edited a glossy magazine called “World Buddhism” which had a wide circulation and earned him a reputation for thoroughness outside our borders.

A man of abstemious habits Austin was often the only sober person at the tail end of a cocktail party. In many ways he reminded me of Capt. Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”. He brought up his five sturdy sons strictly according to the ‘pancha sila’ code. As a result, not one of them became a journalist. Austin’s wife Dow Lambart and her brother Victor, however had one thing in common. Both of them could turn out the most exotic Burmese dishes at short notice and make a dinner date with them a memorable event.

I saw Victor Dhanapala for the first time about 30 years ago in the Sundae Tea Room in the company of Herbert Hulugalle and D. B. Dhanapala, and heard with bated breath the Master reducing to silence almost everybody round him. The confrontation between the two Dhanapalas was very amusing especially as Hulugalle acted as a sort of catalytic agent. The funny thing about the episode was that while both of them were making wise-cracks about each other’s surnames, neither of them was born a Dhanapala. In fact both of them were de Silvan (no kin) and chose the cognomen Dhanapala as a lucky passport to immortality.

No restaurant could possibly match the fare that was served up at Victor Dhanapala’s luxurious London flat. Nobody ever refused the Master’s invitations to dinner. They were more or less, command performances. Foreign visitors who were treated to the purple mangosteens from Kalutara and the scarlet rambutans from Malwana were given special tuition in the art of tackling these tricky fruits.

Mangoes were easier. Victor it is said, used to describe them as the food of the gods. Therefore there were always plenty of them on his table, in and out of season. Ask those who have enjoyed his hospitality whether they have experienced anything like it before and the answer will be a resounding ‘no’. Ask Sir John Kotelawala, Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, Herbert Hulugalle or any other celebrity who has dined and wined in the stately homes in Europe whether they had been entertained so lavishly anywhere else and they will reply in superlatives about Victor that border on Oriental hyperbole.

SECRET

After the sumptuous meal would come the talk which might be interrupted by a telephone call from Noel Coward, or even Bernard Shaw if he were in town. Other blithe spirits might intervene on the phone, but the important thing is that they were not imaginary characters but genuine callers who yearned to eat once again at his mirrored table or to sip exotic liqueurs out of tiny cut-glass vessels.

Nobody has yet probed the secret of Dhanapala’s enormous wealth. There were rumours that a wealthy aunt in Burma had left him a priceless gem which he converted into cash in Hatton Garden. Otherwise it is difficult to believe that by the ordinary processes, so much money could have been made so fast. The gem, provided a simple answer to the complex riddle of this Modern Sphinx.

How females of the intellectual calibre and social standing of Elizabeth Sellars, Betty Frames, Jeanne Hardwicke and Kamila Tyabji came under his spell is another phenomenon for which no explanation can be given.

Look at the quality of these girls: Elizabeth Sellars was one of the highest paid stars of the London stage. Betty Frames had a big share in Thomas, Cook and Sons plus a tourist agency of her own.Jeanne Hardwicke was a niece of Sir Cedric Hardwicke and a rising stage and screen star. Kamila Tyabji, a granddaughter of the first Muslim to be made a High Court Judge in India, was a brilliant lawyer whose triumphs in the Privy Council created a sensation in London.

Of such stuff were the disciples made. What could then be said of the Master, always immaculately dressed who has passed into the shadows after nearly half a century of fabulous living. Let the soft music with which he welcomed his guests be amplified for once to give body to the words of Thomas Mordaunt who wrote as if he had Victor Dhanapala in mind: Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, Throughout the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life, Is worth an age without a name.

(Excerpted from The Good Among The Best first published in 1978)