GEM OF ILL OMEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

GEM OF ILL OMEN.

UNLUCKY HOPE DIAMOND. BTEANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY; $ MISf OBTUNES OF OWNERS. WORN BT MARIE ANTOINETTE. The Hope diamond, sinister blae. geia, for centuries has brought dire misfortune upon its possessors, including Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette, of France, Saltan Adbul Hamid of Turkey, and the American "100 Million-Dollar Baby." The court of Eiouis XIV. of France was probably the most brilliant, sophisticated and profligate the world ever has seen. The Grand Monarque, able, sensual, ruthless, drained France, then at the acme of her territorial greatness, to build priceless pakces, to patronise arts, pretty women, and effete pleasures. Great diamonds' were his hobby. Louis had accumulated one of the finest collections on earth—the crown jewels of old France. Bat when Jean Baptisto Tavernier, the foremost globe trotter and seeker after strange places of his day, brought the Hope diamond—it was at yet unnamed—to Paris, the powerful king determined to have the bauble at any cost. Tavernier talked of India, and whether he was responsible for all the tales they afterward told about the sinister effect of wearing the diamond is unknown. The King became the owner of the coveted gem, but one after the other all who wore it fell from favour into disgrace or death. But finally the King died, and th® diamond disappeared. At least nothing more , was heard from it at court. Then, eighteen years later t Boehraer and Basuenge, the royal jewellers, displayed a diamond necklace—with the famous blue

crystal reset on a pendant. Where it had been the jewellers never divulged. But every one known what happened.

Tate of Marie Antoinette. The great Cardinal Rohan, who waa in love with the Queen, Marie Antoinette, gave her the gem. The country was already aflame because of her extravagance and that of the stolid, rather stupid, Louis XVL The costly blue diamond was, perhaps, or so it seemed to the starving Parisians, the climax of waste and cruelty. ~ . . It helped brnjg her and her Bong to the guillotine. The Jacobin Commune seized the gem and impounded' it in the Garde Meuble. But again, in 1782, it mysteriously disappeared. There is a tale that the infamous Marat, no less, took it for himself, but that when he was assassinated in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday the banble was in turn stolen from his effects. The thief sold the diamond to an Indian potentate then in Paris. He dared not take it to India in the same form, so he secretly sent it to the .noted jeweller, William Fals, to be recut. Fals carried out the commission with great skill, reducing the stono from 67|t cairats. But before he could deliver it to the Indian his son, Hendrik, fled with it to London. Suicide of Next Owner*

The unregenerate Hendrik sold the gem to a Frenchman named Francis Buiulien. He then embarked on an orgy which lasted for year*. Finally, his health broken 1 and hi?: money gone, he committed suicide in 1820. Some years later, Daniel Eliason, a dia-

montl dealer, received a mysterious sum-moos-to * house in the slums of I/wtlon. The message was so strangely couched that, accompanied by secret guards, he answered it. But he had nothing to fear. The man who sent for him was Frauds Beaulieu, the Frenchman, and he was on his deathbed. Even then, the delirious Beaulieu hated to surrender the alluring jewel; but in the end he parted with it. for the price of a bmriel, Next day Eliason sold the gaud to the Hopes, noted JBritish bankers, for £20,000. It was thus that the Hope diamond got its nam*, for the Hopes displayed it in .the best of London society, indeed, in society all over the world. For years the gem remained in their possession, coming finally into the hands of Sir Francis Hope, who, soma years ago, married May Yohe, daughter of a Pennsylvania dressmaker, and musical comedy star of the New York Bt&g6« Another Story ot HI Luck. rilfft Louis XIV., Sir Francis decked his wife one night with' the famous blue crystal. She wore it to a ball. And all the world knows what-ensued; how the actre#s-lady ran away with Capt, PutnamBradlee Strong, how her husband met . with financial reverses and was finally forced to part with the Hope diamond, selling it to Simon Frankel for £35,000. In the light of our own times, the dire incidents that have trailed the seemingly accursed gem are even more astonishing. Frankel went nearly bankrupt before he disposed of the jewel. Jacques Colot, the next owner, took his own life. Prince Ivan Kanitovski was killed in the Russian revolution shortly after* selling the diamond. Lorena Laclue, Paris Queen of Beauty, to whom he once loaned it,.waa murdered by her apache sweetheart. Simon Montharides, who bought and later sold the blue jewel to the Neroesque Saltan Abdul Hamid of old Turkey, was. thrown over a precipice with his family and killed. And before the deposed monarch parted with the famed gem, six Turks lost their lives in various attempts to steal or protect it. The "Million-Dollar Baby."

Mrs. Edward Beale McLean,, one of tha richest women in the world, planned th* most sumptuous ball, of the Washington season not 50 long ago. She sent for Pierre Cartier, famous jeweller, of New York sind Paris, In vain ha personally displayed to her the choicest jewels in his possession. At last he produced a groat blue cystfcl, which he had acquired on the Ml of Sultan Abdul Hamid. Mrs. McLean was overjoyed. The McLeans bought the gem for something JiW £23,000. . Shortly afterward a son was born w Mrs. McLean. The boy, Vinson, was famed as the "100-million-dollar baby, because his grandfather Ifift that amount in trust for him. No boy in the won« was ever better guarded. He had private cars, walled-in playgrounds, many nurses, and scores of detectives to keep him from being kidnapped or injured. One day a gate in the wall was lex ajar. Vinson ran past the McLajJ mitwms into the street. _ He was struck by an automobile and killed!