Big, blue and fabulously fancy, the Hope Diamond is the most famous gem in the world. The 45.52-carat stone, on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has everything going for it. The Hope is the largest deep-blue diamond in existence. It is steeped in mystery, with a lore as dark as its color. What’s more, scientific study of the stone in recent years has added to the Hope’s mystery and made it as much a legend with gemologists as it is with the jewelry-buying public.
For instance, the Hope is the only diamond of its kind to phosphoresce red—for reasons unknown. The stone’s gemological prestige has been further heightened by the fact that it is an exceedingly rare Type IIb stone. Diamonds are classified either Type I or II, and within each category either a or b. The overwhelmingly majority of diamonds are Type Ia. Of those exceeding few stones that are Type II, that is, nitrogen-free, most are a. Only a handful are Type IIb, a designation reserved for stones that are blue grayish-blue, one of them the Hope.
But to merely call the Hope Diamond blue doesn’t do full justice to its color. Experts rhapsodize its indigo hue, and extol its red, green, purple and black highlights. However, says Susanne Steinem, Patch, author of Blue Mystery: The Story of the Hope Diamond, the gem’s color is intensified by its blue-velvet museum display setting. “When unmounted, and viewed in daylight, it appears more of a sky-blue color,” she says.
A Rich and Colorful History
The Hope’s history, prior to its purchase by its namesake, Henry Philip Hope, for roughly $90,000 in 1830, is as speculative as it is spectacular. To Patch, the Hope Diamond legend rests on an unproven 19th century theory—whose chief early advocate was London gem merchant Edwin W. Streeter—that the Hope was the largest of three stones cut from a famed parent stone, the French Blue, after it was stolen from the treasury of France in 1792.
If the theory is true, the Hope’s origin is a magnificent 112.25-carat blue diamond found in the Golconda mines of India in the 1640s. The stone attracted the attention of Frenchman Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the greatest gem dealer of his day, who acquired it on one of his Indian journeys. Tavernier sold the stone for 220,000 livres (about $45,000) in 1668 to Louis XIV, king of France, who, later unhappy with its irregular shape and lack of brilliance, ordered it recut by the court lapidary in 1673. When finished, the stone weighed 67.125 carats, over 45 carats less, and was triangular shaped. It became known as the Blue Diamond of the Crown, the prize of the French Crown Jewels.
Sometime during the reign of Louis XIV, the dark stone started to take on associations with dark forces. Supposedly one of Louis’ mistresses, Madame de Montespan, fell out of favor with the king and was banished from the court after she wore it. Patch suggests a cause other than a diamond curse for the ruler’s disaffection: Madame’s implication in some poisoning scandals.
Yet Hope legend lovers cling to that story as a precursor of the bad luck future wearers would have. Two kings later, when Louis XVI and his famous wife Marie Antoinette were guillotined, the Hope curse is said to have been in full gear. In any case, it is at this time that the fabled stone ended its career as the French blue. When the French Revolution broke out in 1792, the Blue Diamond was stolen along with many other Crown Jewels. It was never again seen in the form in which it disappeared. Instead, it is believed to have been cleaved into three stones, the largest of which, a 45.52-carat cushion, surfaced in London in the early 1800s.
In 1830, a London jeweler Daniel Eliason sold this cushion to Lord Henry Philip Hope, a British banker (whose company helped finance the Louisiana Purchase) and gem collector. Henceforth it is known as the Hope Diamond.
The diamond passed on to Hope’s nephew and then, in 1887, to the nephew’s grandson, Lord Francis Hope, a gambler and black sheep of the family. As luck (or the curse) would have it, Lord Hope squandered his fortune and was forced to live off the earnings of his American wife, May Yohe, an actress. To meet the expenses of his extravagant lifestyle, Hope tried for years to get permission to sell the gem but was prevented from doing so by his family. In 1901, a year after his wife ran off with an American sea captain and left poor Hope penniless, he finally sold the diamond for a never-disclosed sum. However, the new owner, New York diamond dealer Simon Frankel, declared its value to U.S. Customs at $141,032, then paid a 10% duty on the sum. It took Frankel seven years to finally sell the stone, in Paris, to a collector named Habib. A year later Habib sold it to two French diamond dealers, Auroc and Rosano.
The Hope in America
In 1911, Pierre Cartier obtained the stone, reset it, and sold it to Evalyn Walsh McLean, of Washington, D.C., wife of the owner of The Washington Post. The price: just under $180,000, payable in monthly installments.
McLean was both fascinated by and fearful of the diamond’s reputed dark past and reportedly had the stone blessed by a priest. Proud of her acquisition, she talked up its legends that if they were worth as Washington cocktail parties. That, if you believe in curses, was asking for trouble. Sure enough, McLean’s first son was killed at the age of 9 in an auto crash. Her husband became so infatuated with another woman that he became inebriate alcoholic and eventually died in a mental hospital. Last, her daughter committed suicide at age 25.
McLean died in 1947. The Hope then passed to New York diamond dealer Harry Winston, who purchased McLean’s jewelry from the estate for $1 million. Winston kept the diamond for 10 years, using it to raise money for worthy causes by displaying it at benefits. In 1958, Winston donated the stone to the Smithsonian.
Since its donation to the Smithsonian, the Hope Diamond has become the most famous gem in the world. Given such stature, it is hardly surprising that the stone has finally begun to arouse a bit of critical backlash. After more than 300 years of nearly unanimous acclaim, the Hope now has many detractors who find it fancy to a fault—and accuse it of being too steely, inky or dark. But the stone’s admirers, still the majority among experts, would no doubt agree with fancy-color diamond specialist Alan Bronstein, Aurora Gems, New York, who praises the stone for being “every bit as beautiful as its reputation leads one to expect.”
Please note: this profile was originally published in 1988 in Modern Jeweler’s ‘Gem Profiles: The First 60’, written by David Federman with photographs by Tino Hammid.
The Hope Diamond was photographed in cooperation with John White, curator, Smithsonian Institution, Department of Mineral Sciences, Washington, D.C.
