06/10/2026
Portrait of Mrs Hermione Montagu
100 OBJECTS FROM THE CHAPSLEE COLLECTION
Hermione (Poppy) Montagu (1892-1985) was one of the last, legendary British residents of Simla. She was born in India and (as with most children of the Raj) was sent to England for her education. When she returned to India in 1922, Sir Arthur and Lady Ker (her aunt) invited her to come live with them at Chapslee.
She stayed in ‘The Pink Room’ along with a varied collection of exotic birds which she kept in the verandah outside. When Chapslee was sold in 1938 she moved to her own cottage ‘Northwood’ at Bharari, Simla.
While friends and family packed up their lives and were swept back to Britain with the receding tide of Empire, Hermione Montagu famously refused to leave, insisting India was the only home she had ever known.
Her eccentric, isolated life in post-independence Shimla with an extraordinary menagerie of dogs, cats, geese and a much beloved African grey ‘Jacko’ is featured in many writings on colonial India, including ‘Freedom at Midnight’ by Dominique Lapierre, ‘The British in India: a Social History of the Raj’ by David Gilmour and several BBC documentaries.
Paul Scott’s Booker prize winning novel ‘Staying On’ (somewhat an epilogue to the Raj Quartet series) is broadly based on the bittersweet experiences of Mrs Montagu and many others like her who chose to remain and make their life here amidst the sweeping changes of post colonial India. Hermione Montagu continued to live at ‘Northwood’ until her demise at the age of 93. She had outlived the Raj by almost 40 years.
Chandrajit Singh Pronoti Singh
