24 December 2003

The dying man, the maharajah and a cache of priceless jewels

Eric Ellis in Bombay

ERIC FOY NISSEN settles into an armchair in his cluttered Bombay flat and considers his dilemma; one that a Merchant or Ivory might craft into a sumptuous film about colonial derring-do, frontiersmanship and family intrigues in 19th-century India.

It revolves around one of the world's most stunning collections of Indian jewellery held in private hands; impossibly gorgeous diamond rings set in solid gold, diamond earrings studded with emeralds, ruby-and-pearl necklaces that would have graced the necks of maharanis. The centrepiece is a woman's crescent shaped pendant, fashioned from a pair of lion's claws, adorned with turquoises and clad in beaten gold depicting the Tree of Life.

"These pieces are impossible to replicate today. They are, quite literally, priceless," says Mr Nissen, whose quandary is how best to preserve this estate.

Childless, unmarried and one of the last colonial-era Europeans living in India, Mr Nissen, 72, is not in the best of health, and Bombay's polluted air is not helping this 26-year veteran of the British Council's mission in India's thrusting commercial capital.

The fate of the jewels "is something that I give daily consideration to", he says, but selling them is out of the question. They are part of his family's history.

In 1857, 20-year-old Georg Christian Kastrup Nissen, Foy's great-grandfather, left the impoverished village of Simmerbolle, on the Danish island of Langeland, seeking his fortune in England. He headed for Liverpool, where he was shanghaied by a ship's agent and put to work as a deckhand on a vessel bound for Bombay.

In March, 1859, he arrived in an alien India, then under direct rule by the British Crown after the Indian Mutiny of the previous year that effectively ended the reign of the East India Company.

British Bombay was a cliquish place, and although Georg was European he was excluded from the pukka Raj establishment. He made his way north to what is now Gujarat, where he became a mercenary; a lieutenant in the private army of Khanderao Gaekwad, the Maharajah of Baroda, then a quasi-independent princely state.

Over the next decade he built his military career in the maharajah's service. He anglicised himself, sending for an English wife, Sarah Davis, starting a family (eldest son Ferdinand eventually commanded the maharajah's army) and using only English in the family home.

The maharajah was impressed by Georg's loyalty and promoted him to colonel. In 1869, at a magnificent ball at Baroda's Makapura Palace, his services to the Gaekwad crown were honoured when Khanderao showered him and his wife with jewels for military services rendered.

Fast forward to 1967, and the Bombay deathbed of Foy's civil servant father, Eric.

As he lay dying, Eric directed his son to an old shoebox of family papers, pledging him to its safekeeping. The box contained an intriguing document, a dusty will set down in 1888 at a solicitor's office in Kingston-upon-Thames by Georg, with instructions that it be executed only by the first of his male heirs.

According to the shoebox papers, part of the estate was held in a safe deposit box at a Kingston bank.

"My father knew nothing about the will. The box was under my grandmother's bed for years, which was a no-go area for all of us," Mr Nissen recalled.

He set about tracking down the estate. "At the very least I had to prove that the estate was still in existence, as it was legally bound to be," he said.

A succession of pleas to the Surrey solicitors and bank went either unanswered, or were evaded. "They at first denied it had been held there, then they admitted their archives showed they did once have it but no longer."

For several years Mr Nissen's correspondence with officials in India, Denmark and Britain produced only denials, false hopes and red herrings.Unbeknown to Mr Nissen, the mystery box had been sent to the tiny Danish town of Hjorring in the early 1960s, well before he began his quest. "The custodial British bank had shifted the jewellery to Denmark by mistake without determining the identity of an extant rightful heir," he said.

"As I later found out, the jewellery bequest had been reported in the local press when it was erroneously handed over to a much-loved and respected spinster in Hjorring, who had no claim nor aspiration. Her unlikely windfall apparently caused quite a sensation in Jutland."

In mid-December 1968, a century after that sumptuous ball in Baroda, Mr Nissen finally set eyes on the jewels. He had travelled overland from India by car to England and then to Hjorring for an unveiling of the deposit box. It was a big day for the tiny Danish town, with Mr Nissen the guest of honour at a solemn ceremony attended by fascinated local worthies.

"It was quite a remarkable sight. I had an idea of what they were but to see them like this was almost overwhelming," he said.

But it was to take another 15 years of international legal toing and froing before Mr Nissen, by now legally proven to be Georg's male heir, was able physically to take possession of his inheritance. He gave some of the estate to a handful of far-flung relatives, but put the bulk of the jewels in safekeeping.

Mr Nissen's inheritance did not come without conditions. It came with a hand-written letter from Georg, his swashbuckling great-grandfather, that insists the Gaekwad jewels should never leave the Nissen family.

Today, after his 35-year quest, Foy Nissen is determined that will never happen again.