Koh-i-Noor

by William Dalrymple

  Far away in England, Victoria rejoiced at the salvation of the maharaja’s soul. From the time of his exile, she had keenly awaited updates on Duleep’s progress. These she read with great care and growing interest. The more she learned about him, the more fascinated she became. The maharaja was also curious about the queen across the water. When he turned fifteen, he asked his guardians if he might ever be able to visit England. Despite receiving ample discouragement from her ministers, who felt such favour might go to the maharaja’s head, Victoria enthusiastically granted permission. Duleep packed his belongings and made the long voyage with his guardians, the Logins, by his side.

  11

  Queen Victoria’s ‘Loyal Subject’

  From the moment he set foot in her court, Duleep became Victoria’s favourite. Her praise for him was frequent and enthusiastic: ‘He is extremely handsome and speaks English perfectly, and has a pretty, graceful and dignified manner. He was beautifully dressed and covered with diamonds … I always feel so much for these poor deposed Indian Princes …’1

  In the bustling life of the English court, the maharaja enjoyed the status of a senior aristocrat. Behind the closed doors of the palace, he soon became a member of Victoria’s family. Though Dalhousie and others counselled the queen against showing him too much favour, she ignored them, showering the maharaja with lavish presents of jewellery, cameos of herself and even a thoroughbred horse. The two spent hours sketching each other at Buckingham Palace and at Osborne House, her Isle of Wight sanctuary, and Victoria was deeply touched by the kindness Duleep showed her children, particularly her youngest son, Prince Leopold.

  Leopold was a haemophiliac and frequently suffered from fits and poor health. Though his own brothers gave little concession to his frailty, Duleep would invariably scoop up the child and put him on his shoulders, ensuring that he never felt left out of their games. Prince Albert also grew genuinely fond of the maharaja and designed a coat of arms for him to use in England. It comprised a lion standing beneath a coronet surmounted by a five-pointed star. Albert even chose the motto: Prodesse quam conspici, meaning ‘to do good rather than be conspicuous’. As one of the only brown faces at court, however, Duleep would only ever be conspicuous, and as time went by he grew to crave the attention.

  On 10 July 1854, Duleep was standing on a specially constructed stage set up in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace, trying very hard not to move. Queen Victoria had asked the celebrated court painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter to capture Duleep’s likeness for her on canvas. She intended to display it at Osborne House. In silk pyjamas, a heavy gold-embroidered shirt and fine jewellery, Duleep looked every inch a king. On his feet he wore embroidered slippers which curled at the toe, and on his head he sported a turban dripping with emeralds. At his throat hung an ivory miniature of Victoria, set in diamonds, and another was pinned by his heart, out of sight. As Queen Victoria recorded in her journal, ‘Winterhalter was in ecstasies at the beauty and nobility of the young Maharajah.’2

  There was, however, one item conspicuously absent from all Duleep’s finery. The amulet that had been strapped to his bicep as a child was missing. The loss of the Koh-i-Noor had always hurt him deeply and it was also preying on Queen Victoria’s mind. While Winterhalter tinkered at his easel, Queen Victoria beckoned Lady Login to follow her into a corner of the drawing room; she wished to talk in private. Lena Login recorded the conversation in her diaries: ‘She had not yet worn it [the Koh-i-Noor] in public, and, as she herself remarked, had a delicacy about doing so in the Maharajah’s presence. “Tell me, Lady Login, does the Maharajah ever mention the Koh-i-Noor? Does he seem to regret it, and would he like to see it again?”’3

  Victoria ordered Lady Login to find out before the next sitting, though Lena already knew exactly how he felt:

  There was no other subject that so filled the thoughts and conversation of the Maharajah, his relatives and dependants as the forsaken diamond. For the confiscation of the jewel which to the Oriental is the symbol of sovereignty of India, rankled in his mind even more than the loss of his kingdom, and I dreaded what sentiments he might give vent to were the subject once re-opened!4

  Despite her fears, Lady Login dutifully brought up the subject while out riding with Duleep in Richmond Park a few days later. How would he feel if he saw the Koh-i-Noor again? ‘I would give a good deal to hold it again in my own hand! I was but a child, an infant, when forced to surrender it by treaty; but now that I am a man, I should like to have it in my power to place it myself in Her Majesty’s hand!’5

  This was exactly the answer Victoria would have wanted to hear. But was it true? The next day, while Duleep posed for the German artist at the palace once more, a pantomime of sorts was enacted. Lena Login watched as an emissary from the Tower of London, escorted by yeoman warders, entered the drawing room. He carried a small casket in his hands, which the queen opened delicately. She showed the open box to Albert and together they walked over to where Duleep stood on the dais. Looking up at him, she called: ‘Maharajah, I have something to show you!’ Duleep Singh stepped down and moved towards her, not knowing what to expect. She took the jewel from its box and dropped it into his outstretched hand, asking him ‘if he thought it improved, and if he would have recognised it again?’6

  The maharaja walked towards the window, and held the diamond to the sunlight. It was so much smaller than he remembered. It was the wrong shape. It felt so much lighter in his hand. However, it was still the Koh-i-Noor, and the very touch of it transported him: ‘for all his air of polite interest and curiosity,’ wrote Lena Login, ‘there was a passion of repressed emotion in his face … evident, I think, to Her Majesty, who watched him with sympathy not unmixed with anxiety …’

  Time seemed to slow, as the awkwardness in the room grew. ‘At last, as if summoning up his resolution after a profound struggle and with a deep sigh he raised his eyes from the jewel …’ I was prepared for almost anything,’ recalled Lena Login, ‘even to seeing him, in a sudden fit of madness, fling the precious talisman out of the open window by which he stood! [My own and] the other spectators’ nerves were equally on edge – [as] he moved deliberately to where her Majesty was standing …’ Bowing before her, Duleep gently put the gem into Queen Victoria’s hand. ‘It is to me, Ma’am, the greatest pleasure thus to have the opportunity, as a loyal subject, of myself tendering to my Sovereign – the Koh-i-Noor!!’7 The maharaja had presented to the queen something that no longer belonged to him. Neither Duleep, nor any of his family, would ever come so close to the diamond again.

  12

  The Jewel and the Crown

  Though the handover ceremony in the drawing room at Buckingham Palace was more an act of performance than permission, the maharaja had set Victoria free. The manner in which it had been taken from him, coupled with her genuine fondness for the maharaja, had been enough to prevent her from wearing her most fabulous jewel. After Duleep’s handover, she took to wearing the Koh-i-Noor frequently and conspicuously. One of the jewel’s earliest and most spectacular outings took place just over a year later. In 1855, Queen Victoria announced plans to travel to France for a state visit. This was momentous news, for not only would this be the first state visit to France by a British sovereign in more than 400 years, it would also cement an historic alliance between France and Britain in the Crimean War.

  The French had never had an easy relationship with monarchy. They had gone through a cycle of removing and reinstating their kings with a frequency that alarmed other sovereigns of Europe. In 1792, Louis XVI of the House of Bourbon was not merely dethroned, he was decapitated. A series of bloody purges followed, and as the people took power, France’s First Republic was born. The country remained without a monarch until Napoleon Bonaparte morphed from military dictator to emperor in 1804. His reign lasted only eleven years, and was ended by the decisive British victory under the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was exiled to the damp and windswept island of St Helena in the Sou
th Atlantic in 1815, where he died miserably of stomach cancer in 1821.

  After 1814, three more kings ruled France until 1848, when the Second Republic was established. In 1852, however, France lurched from republicanism to monarchy again, declaring Bonaparte’s nephew, Napoleon III, the new emperor. Unlike his predecessor, this Napoleon was an anglophile and was keen on an alliance with Queen Victoria. To prove his friendly intentions, Napoleon III entreated Victoria to visit him in Paris. To make his invitation impossible to resist, the emperor decided to throw a grand ball in her honour at the Palace of Versailles. It was to be an event so opulent that even the Bourbons would have approved.

  Victoria arrived in Paris on 18 August 1855 to an enthusiastic reception, and made a grand entrance at the ball a week later. Around 1,200 guests had been invited, representing the cream of European aristocracy, art and music. Four separate orchestras had been positioned at each corner of the spectacular gardens, one of them conducted by the celebrated Austrian composer Johann Strauss. Musicians’ stands had been concealed in the shrubs and ‘harmony seemed to proceed from invisible instruments through a bower of dahlias, roses, and other flowers’.1

  If the gardens were enchanting, the inside of the palace was nothing short of magical. A vast array of chandeliers and candelabras had been positioned to reflect in the 357 mirrors of Versailles’ famous Galerie des Glaces: ‘Thousands of lustres and torches, reflected in mirrors, threw streams of light upon the rich garments of the guests, covered in gold and ornamented with diamonds.’2

  Victoria’s sartorial choices usually failed to impress the stylish Parisian elite, but on the night of the great ball on 25 August she outshone them all. In a billowing white satin gown, designed by Prince Albert, Victoria swept in to gasps of appreciation. Though the delicate golden flowers embroidered on her skirts and the vividly contrasting blue sash across her shoulder were much admired, it was the ‘diadem’ or crown upon her head that eclipsed all else. The work of Garrard, the diadem’s gold and silver trellis of interweaving flowers was inlaid with hundreds of small pearls and almost 3,000 small diamonds. They caught the candle flames in a myriad of tiny sparkles, but were themselves rendered dull by what lay in the cross pattée at the front of the crown.3 Sitting above Victoria’s brow, the legendary Koh-i-Noor gleamed like a third eye.

  The crown had been crafted a full twelve months before the maharaja had made the token gesture of personally handing over the diamond to Queen Victoria, implying that she had been determined to keep and wear the Koh-i-Noor, despite her guilt over the manner in which the gem had been taken, and no matter what the response of Duleep might have been.

  Garrard’s invoice for the crown revealed not only the cost but also the intricate craftsmanship that had gone into its manufacture:

  Setting a brilliant royal tiara consisting of four Maltese crosses and four Fleurs de Lis with a jointed circlet of two rows of diamonds enclosing large diamonds and small crosses. The large crosses and Fleurs de Lis arranged to be removed at pleasure from the circlet by double springs and sockets and have also movable jointed stems and hooks to form a brooch when required.4

  Both the crown and the brooch were designed exclusively to show off the newly cut Koh-i-Noor to its best advantage. The ‘springs and sockets’ referred to ingeniously engineered clasps, strong enough to hold the Koh-i-Noor securely, yet clever enough to release it when the queen wished to transfer the diamond to her brooch. According to the Garrard paperwork, there were ‘2203 brilliant-cut’ and ‘662 rose-cut’ diamonds in the crown, augmenting the Koh-i-Noor. The price and origin of these tiny stones were not itemised, suggesting that the palace had supplied them, or had prised them from existing crown jewels. Duleep Singh’s Mountain of Light had found its new home in one of the most beautiful crowns in all Europe.

  Notwithstanding the weight and value of the treasure on her head, Queen Victoria waltzed with Emperor Napoleon III in Versailles till the early hours of the morning.

  Six years later, at the end of 1861, such tragedy struck Queen Victoria that Paris seemed like a distant dream. At the age of just forty-two, Prince Albert contracted typhoid and, after weeks of suffering, died in the Blue Room of Windsor Castle with his inconsolable wife and five of his nine children at his side. With his death, Queen Victoria lost not only a consort, but also her lover and her best friend. Without Albert, all colour seemed to drain from her life. She shut herself away from the world and wrapped herself tightly in despair. Servants were instructed to put away all her exquisite gowns and jewels, because she could not imagine ever wearing them again. Instead, Victoria put on a simple black dress trimmed with white crepe, and on her forty-two-year-old head, she wore a widow’s cap. She would dress this way until the day she died.

  Victoria’s grief did not diminish as the months went by, even preventing her from carrying out mandatory royal duties. While Albert lived, she, like every monarch who preceded her, had been obliged to attend the State Opening of Parliament in Westminster. The event marked the beginning of the parliamentary year in Great Britain, and a number of arcane rituals, performed to this day, took place accompanied by much fanfare. Before her loss, Victoria had participated in the ceremonies and rituals with gusto. On the appointed day, her coach of state, in its distinctive livery of midnight blue, jet black and gold, drawn by four horses, would make its way to Westminster, escorted by the distinctive coats and gold brocade of the Household Cavalry. Marching music kept the horses and soldiers in step, as the procession wound its way through the streets of London, her cheering subjects lining the route. The State Opening was the monarch’s chance to show her respect for parliamentary democracy, and her people’s chance to show their love for their queen.

  After Albert had died, Victoria could not bear to carry out the task. Her ministers warned her that her prolonged absence might leave her people feeling abandoned. It might even make the monarchy obsolete. Victoria ignored their entreaties. After three years of absence, there was widespread speculation that she had been driven mad by grief. It became known that Prince Albert’s rooms were maintained exactly as they had been when he was alive. Servants, it was said, still brought hot water into his dressing room every day, ready for a morning shave that would never happen.

  For five long years Victoria remained in seclusion, and it was not until 1866 that she was shaken out of her depression. When she finally agreed to take her place in Parliament, she let it be known that she was less than happy about it, and imposed a set of non-negotiable conditions. There were to be no trumpet fanfares and no pageantry. There were to be no grand coaches, and no royal robes or crowns of state. The queen would wear her widow’s cap, a long black dress and a veil. She would not deliver the monarch’s speech in person, but merely nod at the lord chancellor, who would read on her behalf.

  When Victoria made her appearance in Parliament, one piece of jewellery stood out against the blackness of her widow’s weeds – the Koh-i-Noor, pinned to the top of her sash, wordlessly conveying a sense of the power and reach of the British monarch. The diamond might once have graced the most formidable potentates in the world, but now it, and most of their dominions, belonged to her.

  Duleep Singh too seemed to be waking from a trance. From the moment he arrived in England, he had believed that Victoria was his friend – more than a friend, a surrogate mother. He had lived for almost seven years as an English aristocrat, invited to all the parties that mattered, and had been befriended by the most powerful men in the realm. However, when he turned twenty-one, Duleep’s thoughts drifted towards his real mother.

  Rani Jindan had been fading away in her de facto Nepalese prison, and the years had taken a terrible toll. Jindan had aged dramatically. She had lost weight, and had been progressively losing her sight. The India Office and palace officials had made every effort to insulate the maharaja from the depressing news of his mother’s decline, yet in 1860 worrying rumours filtered through to him. Perhaps knowing that his new friends would not approve, Duleep attempted
to contact his mother in secret, sending a letter through a trusted servant.

  When they intercepted the letter, the British found themselves facing a quandary. Could they block the son from speaking to his mother? The maharaja was one of Queen Victoria’s favourites. He had committed no crime. Should he suffer because his mother had been a problem so many years before?

  After much diplomatic toing and froing, the British decided that little could be done to stop Duleep re-establishing ties with Jindan. Though they could not prevent it, they might be able to control it. Duleep Singh was given permission to travel to India to meet his mother for the first time since she had been dragged to the tower. With great care, the authorities selected a place as far away from Punjab as possible for the reunion. Spence’s Hotel in Calcutta was one of the finest hotels in the world in the 1860s and it was there that Duleep, flanked by representatives of the Raj, waited for his mother on 16 January 1861.

  According to Punjabi folklore, when the rani was brought in to see him, she said not a word, but instead ran her hands all over her son’s face and body. The last time they had been together, he had been her glittering boy. Now almost blind, she relied on her fingertips to reveal who her son had become, and as she reached up to touch his face, they told her Duleep was a man. It was only when Jindan stroked the hair on Duleep’s head that she let out the howl of grief and rage she had suppressed for so long.

  Jindan railed at her son: though she had known they had taken away his kingdom and his Koh-i-Noor, never could she have believed he would let them take his religion too. When Jindan finally calmed herself, she turned to Duleep’s British escort and declared she would never again be parted from her son. They would have to let her travel back with him to England, the land she had loathed for so long.