The Hope Diamond, one of the most beautiful, coveted gemstones in the world, is rumored
to come with a terrible curse. Where did this legend start? Is there any truth, or are stories
of the diamond's misfortune as artificially inflated as the diamond market itself?
Today, we're taking a closer look at the facets of the infamous blue jewel and investigating
the Curse of the Hope Diamond.
In the 17th century, an enormous blue diamond, over 60 carats bigger than the Hope Diamond
is today, was discovered in a mine in India. In 1631, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a French
merchant specializing in gemstones, made his first trip to India. Though the specifics
are unclear, he eventually got his hands on the legendary diamond, at the time known as
the Tavernier Blue.
One of the legends says that the diamond was once part of a statue of a Hindu goddess,
embedded in her head, before it was stolen. Some versions of the story say Tavernier himself
stole it, while others claim someone else stole it before selling it to Tavernier. Either
way, it is this initial theft that is said to have brought a curse onto the stone and
anyone who owned it. However he got his hands on it, Tavernier took the stone back to France
and sold it to King Louis XIV, where it became the first recorded blue diamond in Europe.
Five years later, King Louis had the diamond cut down to 67 ⅛ carats, and wore it on
a ribbon around his neck. It was given the new moniker, "French Blue." As for the curse,
it supposedly began to manifest with Tavernier himself, kicking off a series of unfortunate
events that would befall anyone who owned or wore the diamond. It should be noted that
many of these events are unsubstantiated, coming from sensationalist writings that neglected
to cite their sources. But, listed back to back, they do paint a compelling picture of
a cursed gem.
First, there was Tavernier, who was supposedly stricken with a terrible fever after getting
hold of the gem. Then, as the story goes, on his final trip to India, he was viciously
torn apart by a pack of wolves or wild dogs. Next, there was King Louis XIV, the first
to recut the gem. He died of gangrene, and all his legitimate children died in their
youth except for one. Nicholas Fouquet, who worked for King Louis and guarded the French
crown jewels, was said to have worn the diamond on one special occasion.
Soon after, he lost the favor of the king, was banished from France, and then had his
sentence changed to life in prison. He spent 15 years locked up in the fortress of Pignerol.
The diamond wasn't through with French royalty yet. It passed to Louis XVI, where it was
worn by him and supposedly Marie Antoinette as well. As for their fates, well...we all
know what happened there. They lost their heads to the guillotine in the French Revolution.
Marie-Louise, Princess de Lamballe, a friend of Marie Antoinette's, was also said to have
worn the diamond at one time. She was met with a particularly gruesome fate, killed
by a mob who hit her with a hammer, decapitated, disemboweled her, and impaled her head on
a pike.
The jewel disappeared for a time, stolen during the French Revolution. It resurfaced in the
hands of Wilhelm Fals. Wilhelm's son, Hendrik, murdered him and stole the stone, before killing
himself.
Next to own the stone was Francis Beaulieu, who sold the stone and then died. George IV
bought the recut stone next, then died in terrible debt. Other owners included Simon
Montharides, who bought and sold the diamond before driving over a cliff along with his
wife and child, and Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who lost the Ottoman Empire in an army revolt.
Murder, suicide, imprisonment, torture, death, and despair followed the diamond from person
to person throughout the years.
So, why is it called the Hope diamond when it seems to be connected to so much hopelessness?
Well, it actually got its name from Henry Philip Hope, one of the heirs to the banking
firm Hope & Co, who owned the blue gemstone before his death in 1839. In his will, he
left the diamond to the oldest one of his nephews, Henry Thomas Hope. The diamond remained
in the family after Henry Thomas's death, when it passed to his widow, then to her grandson,
Lord Francis Hope. Francis Hope had enormous debts due to his spending and gambling habits
and asked permission to sell the diamond in 1898. The request was denied and was denied
again in 1899. In 1901, he was given permission to sell the diamond.
In 1910, the Hope diamond was purchased by one of the biggest names in jewelry, Pierre
Cartier, grandson of Louis-Francois Cartier. It was a risky investment, a jewel so large
and expensive that a failure to sell it could seriously damage both the family business
and the family name. There were those who believed the gem's curse extended to jewelry
dealers hoping to sell it, and papers in 1908 published the warning, "There are those who
say they will never regain their old position of supremacy in their trade as long as the
Hope Diamond remains in their ownership.” They, in this case, referred to diamond dealers.
But nevertheless, he saw the risk as worth it, and only a few months after Cartier opened
its New York branch, the company purchased the diamond for 500,000 francs (the equivalent
of around 2.2 million dollars today).
Once Cartier had purchased the diamond, there was the matter of finding the perfect client
to buy it, someone with the combination of outrageous funds and a fiendish penchant for
jewels, and Pierre Cartier had just the person in mind.
Evalyn Walsh McLean, an American heiress with family money made in gold mines, married Ned
McLean of the Washington Post family in 1908. They quickly established a reputation for
reckless spending, and Evalyn in particular was known for an obsession with fine jewelry.
Evalyn once said of her love for jewelry, "It is no use to anyone to chide me for loving
jewels. I cannot help it if I have a passion for them. They make me feel comfortable, and
even happy. The truth is, when I neglect to wear jewels, astute members of my family call
in doctors because it is a sign I’m becoming ill.”
So, when Evalyn and her husband were in the French capital, Pierre arranged to meet with
them, hoping to entice Evalyn with his new, risky acquisition. He placed a package, sealed
with wax, in front of the couple, and walked them through the gemstone's lurid history,
from the French court, to British royals, to the Turkish sultan. However, the sales
pitch failed, and they did not purchase the stone. Cartier refused to give up, though,
shipping the gem to America and setting it in a frame of smaller diamonds. Evalyn was
intrigued but still uncertain. Cartier advised her to hold onto it for a few days, then see
how she felt. Though she didn't know it yet, the diamond officially had its grip on her.
As she went to bed that night, she could not get the diamond out of her mind. "For hours,
that jewel stared at me, and at some time during the night I began to really want the
thing. Then I put the chain around my neck and hooked my life to its destiny for good
or evil.”
The very next day, the McLeans agreed to buy the diamond for the contemporary equivalent
of 5 million dollars. But the sale wasn't completed so easily. Evalyn delayed payment
for two months, at one point even attempting to send the gemstone back, before a lawsuit
from Cartier forced her hand. She agreed to buy the diamond, but only if she could take
it to church for a blessing. She didn't exactly believe in the curse, but after May Yohe,
a previous wearer of the diamond, warned her about it in a 1911 newspaper article, the
notion of a cursed jewel got under her skin.
The diamond was laid on a velvet cushion in the church of Russel Monseigneur. Just as
it was about to be blessed, there was supposedly a sudden crack of thunder and a flash of lightning,
as if the heavens themselves were warning against it. But Evalyn was already in too
deep, and she concluded the sale in early 1912. Though the sale was a boon for Cartier's
reputation, it was a financial loss after all the legal fees. However, the gossip columns
ran wild with the story of the sale, the McLean family's involvement, and the mysterious curse,
and Cartier became a New York household name.
As for Evalyn Walsh McLean, she began wearing the diamond frequently. In February of 1912,
she wore the gem in public for the first time at a reception at the Walsh mansion. She doted
on the gem, wearing it in portraits and social events. She would sometimes let her Great
Dane dog wear the diamond, and though she never let her friends touch it, she would
play games at her parties where she would hide the diamond in the garden and have her
friends search for it like the world's most expensive Easter Egg hunt.
Evalyn wrote about the diamond's curse in her memoir, “Do I believe a lot of silly
superstitions, legends of the diamond? I must confess I know better and yet, knowing better,
I believe. By that I mean I never let my friends or children touch it. Call it a foolish woman’s
fetish if you like; after you have said so without contradiction, let me say that I have
come to feel—not think—that I have developed a sort of immunity to its evil. What tragedies
have befallen me might have occurred had I never seen or touched the diamond. I have
sense enough to know that fortune tellers gain fame as prophets by habitually predicting
probabilities. My observations have persuaded me that tragedies, for anyone who lives, are
not escapable.”
She spoke of tragedies in that entry, and her life was sadly filled with plenty of them.
In May of 1919, seven years after they purchased the diamond, Ned and Evalyn's elder son was
killed when he ran into the street and was struck by a passing car. They experienced
strife outside of their personal lives as well when Ned McLean became involved with
the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which his friend Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior,
was caught accepting bribes from oil tycoons in exchange for permitting them to drill on
reserve lands.
The tumultuous times didn't end there, either. Ned and Evalyn both struggled with substance
abuse issues, and addictions to both alcohol and drugs. Ned had an affair, leading Evalyn
to end the marriage in 1930. Ned's behavior became more and more erratic and reckless,
culminating in him selling The Washington Post to trustees, going bankrupt, and being
declared insane in court. He died penniless in Sheppard Pratt, a Maryland psychiatric
hospital, in 1941. In spite of people attributing Evalyn's misfortune to the Hope diamond, she
continued to wear it until the darkest days of the Great Depression forced her to pawn
it in order to make a mortgage payment. This separation was only temporary, and she soon
returned to reclaim the diamond, stuffing it into her dress and heading uptown to meet
some friends.
In the autumn of 1946, Evalyn's daughter was found dead in her bedroom at Evayn's home
in Washington. In April of 1947, Evalyn died of pneumonia at the age of 60, and she and
the Hope Diamond were parted for good.
When the Hope diamond went on sale again in 1949, it was purchased by famous New York
jeweler Harry Winston. In 1958, Winston donated the diamond to the Smithsonian Institute as
part of a new gem collection. On November 10, 1958, the Hope diamond was mailed in a
plain brown box and arrived at the Smithsonian. The employees of the Smithsonian were thrilled,
but others were less enthusiastic.
Newspapers at the time ran stories suggesting that the acquisition of a cursed stone by
a federal institution would bring misfortune to the country. This panic was only bolstered
by stories that James Todd, the man who delivered the Hope diamond to the museum, was a victim
of the curse as well. Within a year of delivering the stone, Todd was involved in two different
car accidents, which left him with a crushed leg and a head wound. Also, in the same year,
his wife died of a heart attack, his dog was strangled on his leash, and his home was partially
destroyed by a fire. The Washington Post reached out to Todd to ask if he believed the diamond
was responsible for his bad fortune, and he responded: "I don’t believe any of that
stuff. Perhaps I’m actually having good luck. Thank God all four children were outside
instead of in those rooms.” Todd added a thought. “If the hex is supposed to affect
the owners, then the public should be having the bad luck.”
But in spite of naysayers and persistent rumors of the curse, the diamond was placed on display
at the National Museum of Natural History, where it remains to this day as part of the
National Gem and Mineral Collection.
Though it is arguably the most famous, the Hope Diamond is not the only glittering gem
with a reputation for bringing misfortune to those who own it. The Sancy, a pale yellow
diamond once owned by royalty, was named for one of its owners, Nicolas de Harlay, Seigneur
de Sancy. Before his ownership, three of its owners, Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold,
England's King Charles I, and France's Louis XVI, died horribly after the stone came into
their possession.
In the 1600s, when Sancy's servant was transporting the diamond to its next owner, King James
I, he was attacked by a group of robbers. Afraid to let the diamond fall into their
hands, he swallowed the stone to protect it. Unfortunately, that didn't protect him, and
he was murdered. The intact diamond was later discovered inside of his corpse's stomach.
The diamond has disappeared and reappeared time and time again through the centuries.
King James I did get his hands on it but wound up selling it to the French royal family.
During the French Revolution, it was stolen, reappearing in the possession of a Russian
Prince before vanishing again.
In 1906, William Waldorf Astor purchased it as a wedding gift for Lady Astor, who wore
it in a tiara. In 1978, the Sancy was sold to the Louvre for 1 million dollars, and it
remains there...for now. That isn't a threat to commit an elaborate diamond heist, don't
worry. But given the jewel's contentious history, who knows when it will disappear and reappear
next?
Another infamously cursed diamond is the Black Orlov, also called the Eye of Brahma Diamond.
This 67.5-carat black diamond is rumored to have once served as the eye of a 19th-century
Hindu statue of the deity Brahma. When the eye was stolen from the statue, the legend
goes, the thief was murdered, and the curse began. After decades in obscurity, the diamond
resurfaced when the jewelry dealer J.W. Paris purchased it in 1932. One of the diamond's
owners, Princess Nadia Orlov, fell to her death. Strangely, another one of the diamond's
owners died the same way. Charles F. Wilson purchased the Black Orlov in 1950 and had
it recut. The diamond was spotted again at a Christie's auction in 2006, where it hopefully
sold to an owner with better luck.
One of the most well-known cursed diamonds is also one of the crown jewels of England,
resting in a place of prominence on the Imperial Crown. The koh-i-noor was once the property
of a series of maharajahs, each holding power for only a short while. The stone first earned
its reputation while it was in the hands of Shah Jahan, the Mughal ruler who built the
Taj Mahal. The 186-carat diamond was placed into his throne, but shortly after, he was
overthrown by his own son, and thrown into prison.
One century later, it received its name from Nadir Sjah, a Persian commander who conquered
the region and obtained the diamond, giving it a title that translates to "mountain of
light." Another century later, British colonization brought the diamond into the British Empire.
In 1911, it was set in the Imperial Crown. This is thought to have been a deliberate
choice intended to circumvent the diamond's curse, said to only be fatal to men who wear
it.
In the 18th century, an Indian slave supposedly discovered the Regent diamond, and decided
to smuggle it away inside a wound in his leg. An English commodore promised to help him
get the diamond out of India, but instead betrayed the man, killing him and taking the
stone for himself. It made its way to the French Regent Philippe II of Orleans, for
whom the diamond is named. It disappeared during the Revolution but reappeared in quite
a notable place: on Napoleon I's sword. But it didn't bring him good fortune, and after
losing the Battle of Waterloo, he was exiled to a small island where he lived until his
death at age 51.
The Koh-i-noor isn't the only diamond with specifications built into its curse. Legend
has it that the Moon of Baroda diamond can bring misfortune to its owner, but only after
crossing the sea or ocean. The striking yellow diamond was first discovered around 500 years
ago in India, where it was held by the Gaekwads of Baroda, a royal dynasty who ruled over
much of the western part of India for centuries. In the mid-1700s, it was owned by Empress
Marie Therese of Austria for a brief time before her death. After she died, it was returned
to its original owners, and many whispered that her death was caused by the cursed diamond
crossing the sea to Europe.
In 1953, the Moon of Baroda was purchased by Meyer Rosenbaum of Meyer Jewelry Company.
He placed the diamond on a leather cord and offered it as a gift to none other than Marilyn
Monroe for her to wear while filming "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." She made the diamond and
herself famous, but she also faced a great deal of strife in her personal and professional
life. This could of course just be due to the wild ups and downs of fame and the fickle
nature of stardom, but some choose to attribute at least some of her struggles to the diamond's
curse.
It seems like almost every famous diamond comes with some kind of curse attached, if
the stories are to be believed. But when it comes to the curse of the Hope Diamond, it
turns out that there may not actually be a curse at all. Smithsonian Museum Curator Jeffrey
Post has debunked several of the stories often used as evidence of the curse. John Baptiste
Tavernier, for example, was not in fact ripped apart by a pack of dogs in India. In fact,
he made a fortune selling diamonds to French royalty, then moved to Russia, where he died
at the ripe old age of 84.
As for Marie Antoinette, she likely never wore the diamond herself. It was placed in
a piece only worn by the King and only on special ceremonial occasions. So, if there's
so little evidence for the curse, where did it come from? Most likely, rumors were spread
by Cartier in order to boost the profile of his acquisition. It makes for a compelling
story, one that has caused strangers to write dozens of letters to the Smithsonian over
the years, attributing anything and everything that goes wrong in the United States to the
nation's ownership of the Hope Diamond. Whether or not you believe in curses, it's impossible
to deny the impact that the Hope Diamond and its supposed curse have had on the world.
Once a story has taken on a life of its own, it can be very difficult to stop it from spreading,
growing, and changing. It becomes an independent entity, one that can outlive anyone responsible
for starting or spreading it in the first place. Just like the dazzling blue jewel itself,
the legend of the Hope Diamond's curse will likely last for centuries to come. Diamonds
are forever, and so are stories.