According to unfounded accounts, The Curse of Hope Diamond dates back to its Indian heritage. The original form of the Hope Diamond, part of an even bigger blue diamond, was said to have been stolen from the eye of a sculpted statue of the Indian goddess-idol, Sita.. The Hindu Priests were incensed and placed a curse on whoever owned the diamond. The Curse of the Hope Diamond foretells:
"Bad luck and death not only for the owner of the diamond but for all who touched it.”
However, much like the "curse of Tutankhamen", this general type of "legend" was the invention of Western authors during the Victorian era, and the specific legends about the Hope Diamond's "cursed origin" were invented in the early 20th century to add mystique to the stone and increase its sales appeal.
The legend does not state who stole the diamond but it was definitely acquired by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier who first took the diamond from India to Europe.
The first known predecessor to the Hope Diamond was the Tavernier Blue diamond, a crudely cut triangular shaped diamond of 115 carats named for the French merchant-traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier who brought it to Europe. He sold several large diamonds to Louis XIV in 1669; while this blue diamond is shown among these, Tavernier makes no direct statements about when and where he obtained it. What can be said with certainty is that Tavernier obtained the blue diamond during one of his five voyages to India between the years 1640 and 1667.
Early in the year 1669, Tavernier sold this blue diamond along with approximately one thousand other diamonds to King Louis XIV of France for the equivalent of 147 kilograms of pure gold (current equivalent gold price of $5,440,000)
In 1678, Louis XIV commissioned the court jeweler to recut the Tavernier Blue, resulting in a 67 carat diamond, but later English-speaking historians have simply called it the French Blue. The king then had the diamond set in a pin.
In 1749, King Louis XV had the French Blue set into a more elaborate jeweled pendant for the Order of the Golden Fleece, but this fell into disuse after his death. Marie Antoinette is commonly noted as a victim of the diamond's "curse", but she never wore the Golden Fleece pendant, which was reserved only for the use of the king. During the reign of her husband, King Louis XVI, she used many of the French Crown Jewels for her own personal adornment by having the individual gems placed into new settings and combinations, but the French Blue remained in its pendant.
In September 1792, while Louis XVI and his family were confined in the Palais des Tuileries during the early stages of the French Revolution, a group of thieves broke into the Garde-Meuble (Royal Storehouse) and stole most of the Crown Jewels. While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared from history.
A blue diamond with the same shape, size, and color as the Hope Diamond was recorded in the possession of the London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason in September 1812, the earliest point when the history of the Hope Diamond can be definitively fixed. It is often pointed out that this date was almost exactly 20 years after the theft of the French Blue, just as the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.
In 1839, the Hope Diamond appeared in a published catalog of the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope, of a prominent Anglo-Dutch banking family. The Parisian jewel merchant Simon Rosenau bought the Hope Diamond for 400,000 francs and resold it in 1910 to Pierre Cartier for 550,000 francs.
Pierre Cartier first offered the Hope Diamond to U.S. socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1910. Evalyn Walsh McLean (Born August 1, 1886, in Leadville, Colorado – Died April 26, 1947 in Washington, D.C.) was an American mining heiress and socialite, who was the only daughter of Thomas Walsh, an Irish immigrant miner and prospector turned multimillionaire, and his wife, Carrie Bell Reed, a former schoolteacher. In 1908, she married Edward Beale McLean, the heir to the Washington Post and Cincinnati Enquirer publishing fortune.
Evalyn initially rejected the diamond because of the Hope family's old fashion setting, but she found the diamond much more appealing when Cartier reset it in a more modern style and told elaborate stories about its supposed "cursed" origins. The new setting was the current platinum framework (displayed in the Smithsonian) surrounded by a row of sixteen alternating old mine- cut and pear-shaped diamonds. Eventually, McLean bought the new necklace and afterwards wore it at every social occasion she organized:
On January 28, 1911, in a deal made in the offices of the Washington Post, McLean purchased the Hope Diamond for US$180,000 from Pierre Cartier of Cartier Jewelers on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The bad luck the diamond was supposed to bring to any owner was not evident for eight years until the first of the four children born to the McLeans died. While crossing Wisconsin Ave. in front of the suburban Washington, D.C. home of his parents, nine-year-old Vinson Walsh McLean (born December 18, 1909) was struck by a car and killed on May 18, 1919.
Ned and Evalyn had four children: Vinson Walsh McLean, Edward Beale McLean Jr, John Roll McLean II, and Emily Washington McLean. The legend of the Hope Diamond curse grew as her first son was killed in a car accident, her husband Ned ran off with another woman and eventually died in a sanitarium, their family newspaper the Washington Post went bankrupt, and eventually her daughter, Emily Washington McLean, died young. Still, Evalyn never believed that the curse had anything to do with her misfortunes.
On October 9, 1941, their then 19-year-old daughter, Evalyn Washington McLean (November 16, 1921 - September 20, 1946), married a man 37 years older than herself and became the fifth wife of 57-year-old Senator Robert R. Reynolds of Asheville, North Carolina. This was her choice, however, as she said that she was attracted to older men.
Her husband, Robert Rice Reynolds (1884-1963) was a famous United States Senator, who had been asked to run for President of the United States in 1944, but declined. He was also the namesake of the Reynolds Mountain community north of Asheville, and the builder of the playhouse tower built for his daughter, Mamie, which is still visible on the top of Reynolds Mountain.
The one great tragedy that befell Evalyn Walsh McLean was the death of her only daughter, Emily Washington "Evie" McLean (who had changed her name to the same name as her mother). Emily had had an argument with her husband, Senator Reynolds, and after he had left the house, she locked herself in a closet with her dog and took a lethal overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. Hours later, after a maid heard the dog barking, the door was broken down, Emily was found unconscious, and could not be revived. Emily left a daughter, less than four years old, Mamie, who was not present at the time. A coroner's inquest determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
Evalyn and Robert Reynolds had a daughter, Mamie Spears Reynolds, who married Italian racecar driver Luigi Chinetti, Jr. in 1963 but divorced in 1965. Mamie now lives in Florida and has a son.
Senator Reynolds was born June 18, 1884 in Asheville and Died Feb 13, 1963 in Asheville and is buried in Riverside Cemetery.
The McLeans' frivolous spending accelerated during their marriage and their inability to understand the basics of money management resulted in their virtual bankruptcy towards the end of their lives. Together, the couple wasted two family fortunes worth millions (billions in current cash value) by splurging on such exotic (some considered wasteful) things such as a million-dollar birthday party for their dog, who was allowed to wear the Hope Diamond on his day of honor.
Even then, when Evalyn Walsh McLean died on April 26, 1947, she still had more than one million dollars in jewels including the Hope Diamond on her bed, as well as valuable properties in Washington, DC, including the mansion at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue, her mansion in Denver, plus many of the mining claims her father had staked in Southwestern Colorado. Evalyn Walsh McLean died at 60 of pneumonia and was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington D.C., in the Walsh family tomb.
When she died in 1947, Evalyn willed the Hope diamond to her grandchildren (including Mamie), but against her dying wishes, her jewelry was put up for sale. The trustees of her estate had gained permission to sell her jewels to settle her debts, and in 1949 they were sold to New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.
So if it hadn’t been for McLean debt at the end of Evalyn’s life, the Hope Diamond would have been handed down to Asheville’s own Mamie Reynolds. Thus ends the story behind the Asheville connection to the most famous American diamond of the Smithsonian collection.
