“Diamonds are my faithful friends,” said the extravagant American millionaire Evelyn McLean, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” said the legendary Marilyn Monroe. Diamonds are the silent kings of a sparkling world … dazzling, perfect, proud.
Let's put aside the gloomy Middle Ages for a while and follow the cheerful and reckless heroes of Boussinard … no, not in search of hidden diamonds, but only for one, but very insidious stone.
This stone has been on everyone's lips since its appearance in the fabric of history. It cannot be surpassed either in hardness, or in the beauty of the play of light on the edges, or in its high price and demand in the market. If other gems appear and disappear on the jewelry scene, then vain fashion has no power over him - he was loved, loved, and will be loved, probably forever.
He looks great next to any stone, he was set in both gold and steel - it seems that our hero is simply not able to get lost against any background. After all, its purpose is to be the first and the most-most-most, yesterday, today and always. You, of course, already guessed what this is about? You can endlessly talk about famous diamonds - so many of them have left their mark in history, but the history of each unique diamond is a story of conspiracies, murders and betrayals, bloody massacres and fraud. The treasure hunters did not spare themselves or others - they killed them for the sake of stones, they were taken out of the eyes of sacred idols, sometimes hidden in the bloody wounds of their own bodies, stolen, sold and resold. How many lives, how many broken destinies were laid for the possession of this or that sparkling miracle.
However, the most unlucky and powerful stone in the world is considered the famous blue "Hope Diamond" - The Hope Diamond.
More than five hundred years ago, it was discovered by Indian miners, presumably in the Kollur mine, in Golokonda. Then he weighed about 112 carats - more than twice as much as now. The stone was presented as a gift to the temple and served as the third eye for the statue of the goddess Sita. 100 years have passed.
In the 1642s, the French traveler Jacques Tavernier bought it, and most likely simply stole it from a sacred temple in India. The priests of the temple cursed the thief, and since then everyone who touched the stone or wore it pursued failures and troubles for the rest of their lives. So, in fact, the history of the stone begins. A story full of grief and failure, exorbitant vanity, blood and death …
Meanwhile, the diamond arrived in Europe and in 1669 was sold to the "sun king" Louis XIV. It should be noted that how, where and how much Tavernier acquired this particular stone, he certainly preferred to remain silent.
Promotional video:
In 1679, Louis XIV decided to change the cut to increase its brilliance: the previous cut was aimed, first of all, at keeping the stone as large as possible, which was very popular with the Indian Maharajas, while refractive qualities and symmetry were more appreciated in Europe. Seur Pitu did a brilliant job, although he left only 67 carats of the stone (even later they gave it a traditional rectangular shape). The Sun King shook Versailles with this jewel. Louis was very proud of the stone and nicknamed it "The Blue Diamond of the Crown" and often wore it on a long ribbon around his neck. In those days, the diamond had not yet received its present name. With the light hand of the French monarch, all of Versailles began to call the jewel "The Crown Diamond".
It is curious that the Marquise de Montespan, Louis' wife, also sometimes wore a diamond, but (thanks to the curse?) Soon lost the king's affection, in any case the stone had already shown its character.
The Sun King - the very love of life and the embodiment of health, while dancing, injured his leg (a mere trifle) and died on September 1, 1715 in terrible agony from gangrene. At that moment, when he spoke his last words: "I am leaving, France remains," the stone was on him. At the age of 84, Tavernier died in Russia, the cause of his death was not entirely natural - he was torn apart by dogs. Ah, the stone … the stone continued its bloody path across Europe.
The blue "Diamond of the Crown" was inherited by the great-grandson and successor of the Sun King, Louis XV, who ordered a luxurious but unusually graceful frame (now known as the "Golden Fleece") to be made for him. Louis XVI, who inherited the stone, naturally wished such a magnificent diamond to adorn the swan neck of his wife, Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette loved the blue diamond. We all know what a tragic fate befell this royal couple. Queen Marie Antoinette, wearing the Blue Diamond of the Crown, ended her days on the guillotine during the French Revolution. At the same time, the Duchess Lambal was also torn to pieces by an angry crowd, to whom the poor queen gave to vilify the diamond.
France lost its treasure in 1772. The revolutionaries confiscated the royal jewels and put them in a furniture warehouse for public viewing, but the protection of the exposition was so poor that the gang of thieves of the notorious Parisian thief Paul Miette easily stole the diamond. The leader gave transparent diamonds to the accomplices, thought they were more valuable. Painted stones, including blue, remained with him. The gang was soon caught, but they did not have the "Diamond of the Crown". Then Miette went to prison - there he was overtaken by a curse: a couple of days later he was stabbed to death by inmates. But the blue stone was not found.
The stone disappeared, perhaps the diamond migrated to the court of the Spanish monarch - in Goya's painting, painted in 1799 (a portrait of the Spanish royal family), among the jewels of Queen Marie Louise, a large blue stone is clearly visible, and only decades later it appeared at the famous Amsterdam jeweler Wilhelm Fals, he re-cut the diamond to hide its true origins. The "harmful" stone has lost a lot of weight (44.5 carats), but it has become even more beautiful and, most importantly, has not lost its magic power.
Wilhelm Fals was robbed and killed by his own son, Heinrich Fals (who committed suicide in 1830). Then the diamond passed to François Bouleu, a diamond merchant who soon died in poverty.
Be that as it may, but a beautiful blue diamond in the first quarter of the 19th century appears in London. King George IV of England bought the diamond, not even suspecting that this purchase would break his life. Soon enough, George IV was mired in debt and died suddenly. The stone was sold at an auction.
Its next owner was in 1839 Henry Philip Hope, a well-known London banker and collector of jewelry. Thanks to its new owner, the diamond gets a name that is firmly entrenched in it - Blue Hope (Blue Hope), which is somewhat ironic, given the firmly entrenched notoriety for the stone. Be that as it may, but from that moment the diamond is known as "Hope" all over the world to this day. Sir Henry did not escape the fate of his predecessors, the owners of the Blue Hope. His only child died, and the stone passed into the possession of his nephew, Henry Thomas Hope, who had an unhappy marriage that was followed by a complete financial ruin. He had a daughter, and after the death of the owner in 1862, the Hope diamond belonged to a widow who passed it on to her grandson, Henry Francias Hope. Francias was head over heels into debt due to the fact that he played a lot and was very wasteful. To pay off his debts, he wanted to sell the stone, but the executor of his grandmother's last will for four years did not allow him to do this, even after an appeal. However, in 1901, Blue Hope was allowed to be sold only after an appeal to the House of Lords.
For $ 148,000, the stone was bought by Simon Frenkel, a New York jeweler who brought the diamond to the United States. His "Nadezhda" lay in the safe for six years. He was forced to sell it due to financial difficulties.
The stone was acquired by Jacques Collet, who lost his mind and committed suicide. The next owner of the stone was Prince Ivan Kanitovsky, who bought the stone for the dancer of the famous Parisian Variety Theater Laurence Ladue. Less than a month later, out of jealousy, the prince shot the dancer right on stage. It is significant that it was on that evening that a cursed blue stone was pinned on Lawrence's chest. A couple of days later, Kanitovsky himself was also shot dead right on the street next to the theater.
The next owner was the Greek jewelry merchant Simon Moncharide, who lost control and fell into the abyss by car, killing himself, his wife and child. The "Hope" went to a Persian merchant named Habib Bei, but he did not own it for long, since he drowned in the wreck of a French steamer in 1909. In the same year, the diamond was transferred to the Turkish sultan Abd al-Hamid for $ 400,000, who decided to pamper his wife. Very little time passed, and the Sultan's wife was killed. The Turkish ruler himself lost his throne (the emergence of the extremist organization Young Turks, which completed the collapse of the empire), and after a while, he died, forgotten by everyone, in terrible poverty.
In 1909, a jeweler named Rosenau bought the stone, which was later sold to Pierre Cartier, one of the owners of the most famous Parisian jewelry company.
The last owner of this amazing and fatal diamond was the extravagant American Evelyn McLean, daughter of the gold miner Tom Walsh. In 1910, Evelyn went to Paris. In Paris, Evelyn McLean, then a 24-year-old American, tried to have a lot of fun. She spared no effort or money, but all the entertainment quickly became boring - I wanted something unusual, exciting.
It was then that Pierre Cartier appeared. The famous jeweler scattered a mountain of jewelry in front of bored Evelyn:
- They will bring you happiness, madam!
The beauty millionaire just shrugged her shoulders:
- I have piles of them. And life is getting more and more boring. It was not for nothing that a gypsy once said: “I am the opposite.” For me, only those jewelry that brought misfortune to others will become happy. So I'm looking for a diamond with a pretty curse!
Why did Evelyn say that then? I thought Cartier would quickly untie. But the famous jeweler grinned and handed the beauty a blue velvet box. Evelyn opened it and gasped … The stone was bought for a fabulous sum for those times - 187 thousand dollars (for comparison, the construction of the Titanic from dry dock to the last napkin cost White Star about 7 million dollars, Hope - 1 / 37 of the cost of the ship), but what can you do if you really want to?
The first thing that the new owner of the stone did was to take it to the Catholic cathedral to remove the curse from it. Apparently, the manipulation of the Catholic priest had no effect on the cruel nature of the stone from the Indian temple. The young woman wore the diamond without taking it off. His next victim was his beloved mother-in-law - a fierce opponent of the Hope acquisition, who insisted that his daughter-in-law return the diamond to the jeweler. The mother-in-law dies. Grieving about his wife, the father-in-law, who was over 60, suddenly suggested that Evelyn divorce his son and marry him: then after his death she will inherit the entire fortune. Edward - this spender and drunkard - he still will not bequeathed anything. Evelyn refused, citing the fact that she was "somehow married." Soon the father-in-law followed his wife,and McLean Jr. received none of his seven million dollars.
If you consider all this to be the tricks of a ruthless diamond, then you must admit that something was sheer trifles compared to what happened next. The McLeans had their first child, who was named Vinson in memory of the deceased brother Evelyn. On a quiet street in Palm Beach, Florida, at the very gates of the estate, a four-year-old kid was hit by a car moving at a speed of … seven miles per hour. The boy got up and walked home on his own. Nothing was broken, nothing hurt. And in the evening the baby died of internal hemorrhage. Evelyn tried to sell the diamond, but due to the enormous value of the stone, it was almost impossible. Evelyn McLean has repeatedly tried to get rid of the ill-fated stone, but the blue diamond mystically returned to her. Evelyn, threw it wherever it hit, the servant often found a stone in the most incredible places - in a jar of salt,behind the bed or in a flower pot. She hung a diamond around her dog's neck and let that dog go for a walk. Perhaps she hoped that the stone would not return, disappear, disappear? But the devil's diamond always came back. Moreover, only in the hands of Evelyn did he light up with a mysterious attractive light, in the hands of others it did not even shine.
With unbeatable stubbornness, Evelyn continued to don the Hope every morning, but that diamond dedication only brought Evelyn punches. Her husband left her, leaving for a young fashion model, the marriage ended in divorce, and later her husband died in a psychiatric hospital. The Washington Post newspaper concern had to be sold for debts. Of the past millions, only jewels remained, led by Blue Hope. The final blow for Mrs. McLean was the death of her only daughter at the age of twenty-five from an overdose of sleeping pills. Never recovering from the death of her daughter, she died in 1947. And her granddaughter, Evelyn McLean, died at the age of twenty-five, in 1967. Coincidence?
After her death, all the jewelry went under the hammer in 1949 to pay off Evelyn's debts. "Hope" was bought by New York jeweler Harry Winston, who gave it to display or to wear at several charity events.
In 1958, Winstonon donated the diamond to the Smithsonian Institution, as he had long thought about creating a national gem collection. With this gift, he also wanted to inspire others, to give stones to the institute. But here, too, the stone fought with people: the man who was carrying the stone to the museum broke his leg in a car accident, then injured his head in another accident, did not die, but his house soon burned to the ground, and his wife and dog died in the fire.
From November 10, 1958 to the present day, the Blue Hope Diamond is on display as part of the National Collection of Minerals and Gems at the National Museum of Natural History in the United States. When it became known about the transfer of the stone, letters were poured into the institute. Their authors demanded that the stone be disposed of, as it could harm its new owner, which became … the United States. The requirement was disregarded.
… The blue diamond rotates slowly on a round base of brown marble. Unique security measures have been taken to protect it. At the first touch to the stand, on which the stand is attached, the Blue Hope immediately falls into one of the special storage facilities rotating under it.
But scientists have the opportunity to explore the diamond. And then its unprecedented property was revealed: if a stone is irradiated with ultraviolet rays, it will glow for several minutes like a red-hot coal … Or like a witch's eye.
Its current owner turns out to be the American people. Whether the curse is acting on him now is difficult to say … Apparently, now, when the stone does not have a specific owner, the power hidden in it is dormant …
