The history of the so-called Hope Diamond begins in the 17th century. Then the French jeweler and merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier brought it from India to France.
It is believed to have been mined from the famous mines of Golconda, India. It was roughly triangular in shape, only roughly cut, and weighed 112 carats. There is no exact information on how Tavernier acquired the stone. According to some, he bought it, and according to others, it was stolen from an Indian temple, where, according to legend, was the third eye in the statue of the goddess of death and destruction, Kali.
The second version feeds precisely the legend of the curse that the diamond carries. Tavernier sold the stone to King Louis XIV in 1668. A little later he lost all his estates and left for India again. But death overtook him at the age of 84 in Moscow.
A French royal jeweler polished the stone in 1673, but left “only” 67 carats of it. It was set in gold fittings and attached to a ribbon which the king wore on official ceremonies. For over a century, the diamond appeared on the necks of French kings and queens – from Louis XIV to Louis XVI.
Then came the French Revolution, and in August 1792, months before the execution of Louis XVI and almost a year before the guillotining of his wife Marie Antoinette (who often wore the blue diamond), the royal jewels were confiscated and handed over to the revolutionary government. But on September 17 of that year, the entire collection was stolen and the diamond disappeared.
The story continues! The stone reappeared around the middle of the 19th century in the description of the collection of the British Henry Philip Hope, but it now weighed only 45.2 carats.
Until 1901 the already named Hope diamond remains in the family collection.
Here the ominous events that accompany it continue – Henry Hope dies of a mysterious illness, the banker’s heir goes bankrupt and, in order to pay off his debts, sells it, supposedly, to a Turkish collector who died in a sea storm. However, the diamond survived and appeared in Turkey, where in 1905 or 1906. the Evelyn family and Edward McLean see him in the palace of the Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
The Sultan paid $450,000 for it and gave it to his beloved wife Subaya. However, she arranged a palace intrigue against the Sultan and was executed. Abdul sensed that something else was being prepared against him and therefore illegally exported the diamond to France to be sold. But in the meantime he was dethroned and the money went to the new government. Thus the Hope Diamond ended up in the hands of Pierre Cartier.
In Paris, he meets Evelyn McLean again, who was the daughter of the owner of the Washington Post newspaper.
The rich American woman is captivated by the sight and counts for the diamond 187,000 USD. dollar. Buying it, Evelyn McLean takes the stone to a Catholic church to have the curse removed from it.
The subsequent events, however, speak rather of the lack of effect of the priesthood, because her rich husband got drunk more and more, Evelyn’s mother-in-law died of a recent and very unusual course of pneumonia, her father-in-law suggested that Evelyn divorce his son and get married for him, but that didn’t happen. And after his death it turned out that he had disinherited his descendant. Evelyn’s first-born son, named after her brother Vincent, who died in an accident, was hit by a car. He returned home apparently unharmed, with no fractures or pain, but died during the night from internal bleeding. Later, the McLeans divorced, and Evelyn’s daughter committed suicide with sleeping pills.
After the death of Evelyn McLean, in 1949. the Hope diamond sold for $176,000. dollar to jeweler Harry Winston, who donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
When the donation was announced, many letters arrived from Americans worried about the future fate of the diamond’s new owner, the United States.
Today they call the “Hope” diamond the most expensive small object in the world and estimate its value at 200 million. US dollars, i.e. almost 5 million US dollars per 1 carat of it.
#story #mystery #Hope #Diamond
