The photo shows Captain Gervase Portal in the uniform of the 2nd Lancers on his wedding day in 1927, with his wife, Iris Butler, sister of Rab Butler and acclaimed author and biographer. He was born on 18 Jan 1890, aged 38 at the time of his marriage to Iris who was 22. Since 1926 he had been ADC to her father, the Governor of the Central Provinces of India. He reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the early 1930s and was appointed commandant of the Governor’s Bodyguard in Bombay where Iris immersed herself in welfare work among the young soldiers’ families, which did not go down well with the other officers’ wives.
Gervase was posted to Hyderabad where he served as Comptroller of the Household of the younger son of the Nizam. Iris became fascinated by the fabulous wealth of the Nizam and was taken by her friend Princess Niloufer, wife of the Nizam’s younger son, to the basement of the Palace. There she saw rows of lorries, neglected, and with flat tyres. On looking under the tarpaulins she saw that they were all full of precious stones and gold coins. This was the Nizam’s proposed way of getting some of his wealth out of the country in the event of a revolution, but he had lost interest in the plan. Iris spent time as a nurse in Ranchi on the border with Burma but left India in 1943. Gervase remained there until 1946. They settled in Norfolk and he died on 3 December 1961.
