When Evalyn Walsh McLean first saw the Hope Diamond in 1910, the newly married Washington socialite was dazzled by the stone’s color, size and story, but she didn’t like the setting. Several months later, the famous jeweler Pierre Cartier brought the re-set diamond to America. After a weekend loan, Evalyn agreed to purchase the gem, and the deal was completed in 1912.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Washington Post society columnist Sarah Booth Conroy described the young Miss Walsh as brazen and beautiful. She had moved from Leadville, Colorado to the nation’s capital after her father’s gold business made the family rich.
The relocation thrust her into the bustle of high society, complete with its elaborate fashions, extravagant parties and seemingly bottomless bank accounts. By the time Evalyn was sent to France for finishing school, she had already cultivated expensive tastes in clothing and jewelry. At first, her father’s fortune did little to dissuade her indulgent tendencies, but after two years of high living in Paris, Thomas Walsh’s patience and credit began to wear thin. He summoned his daughter home.
Once back in the states, Evalyn continued to cause her parents problems. A fly-by-night wedding to Edward Beale McLean no doubt compounded their grief. She and the Washington Post heir took an epic three-month honeymoon after they eloped. Armed with her father’s credit, Evalyn continued her prodigal ways. It was on a trip to Paris in 1910 that Evalyn visited jeweler Pierre Cartier and first laid eyes on the Hope Diamond.
Evalyn was enchanted by Cartier’s stories about the massive blue stone’s mystifying past: how it was stolen from a Hindu statue and brought calamity to previous owners, including Marie Antoinette. But it wasn’t the legendary curse that discouraged her from acquiring it. Rather, it was the stone’s setting.
Cartier was known as an adept salesman as well as a master craftsman. It’s no real surprise that in 1911, Cartier visited Evalyn in Washington, D.C. armed with a redesigned setting. When he left the nation’s capital, Evalyn was convinced she had to own the Hope Diamond.
The Hope added sparkle to an already glamorous life, but was soon overshadowed by the tragedy that ultimately befell Evalyn. Her husband, the man who once inspired her to elope and travel the world, left her. He died alone in a sanatorium. Two of her children too perished, a son a victim of an auto accident, her daughter a suicide. In the end, the Hope was about the most remarkable thing she had left.
Evalyn was a woman persistent in her optimism. She was determined to make the gem a good luck charm for herself and others. Faced with an unforgiving fate, she chose to celebrate her own best intentions and the jewel’s potential to symbolize true hope by loaning out the diamond to other women during the Great Depression.
Evalyn was not without her eccentricities. Photos from the National Museum of Natural History show Evalyn wearing the stone while rocking a friend’s baby. The stone was not just reserved for special occasions. Reportedly, she would wear the Hope while gardening and use it as a collar for her dog. Before a major surgery, her physician pleaded with her to take off the necklace, but she refused.
Though some of Evalyn’s quirks are of questionable authenticity, a gem of such power as the Hope was certainly a talisman. Whether it betokened evil or held it at bay—or neither— remains unknown, but to Evalyn it may well have served as a reminder of everything she had lost.
After her passing in 1947, Harry Winston bought the Hope Diamond along with the rest of her extraordinary jewels, and a new chapter in the Hope story began. Find out more about Harry Winston.
