Cartier's Hope, page 1
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For Jillian S. and Sarah V.
Your enthusiasm, encouragement, help, creativity, and friendship mean the world to me.
“My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
—JANE AUSTEN
HOPE DIAMOND COMING HERE
THE FAMOUS BLUE STONE BOUGHT BY A NEW YORKER—PRICE SAID TO BE $250,000
LONDON, Nov. 13—The report that the famous Hope blue diamond is going to New York is correct. It is in the possession of a member of a New York firm now on his way to America from London. The heirloom was sold by order of the Master in Chancery.
It was said that the price paid for the diamond was $250,000.
If the Hope diamond has been sold for $250,000, as reported, it has proved even more valuable than has hitherto been supposed, as the outside estimate placed on it was $25,000. The gem belonged to Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope, who was only allowed to sell it after a long legal fight.
It was not the size of the stone which gives it its value, but the fact that it is the only very large blue diamond known. It weighs 44¼ karats, while the next largest blue diamond, the Brunswick stone, weighs only 10¾ karats.
In 1688 Tavernier, the famous French traveler, returned to Paris, bearing twenty-five diamonds, which were all purchased by Louis XIV. A great blue diamond, weighing 112½ karats, was the chief of these gems. The process of cutting reduced its weight to 67⅛ karats. At the time of the French Revolution the diamond disappeared, but in 1830 the diamond now known as the Hope stone appeared in the possession of a certain Daniel Ellison. He sold it for £13,000 to Henry Thomas Hope, the London banker.
It is now regarded as certain that the Hope stone and the Brunswick gem were once a single diamond, and that this diamond was the long lost Tavernier stone.
PARIS JEWELER TO OPEN HERE
Intends to Bring French Workmen and Fill Orders Locally.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times
Paris, April 3—(By telegraph to Clifden, Ireland; thence by wireless.)—The Rue de la Paix is being moved to Fifth Avenue. Louis Cartier, the well-known jeweler in the Rue de la Paix, is to open a branch establishment in Fifth Avenue next Fall. I learned this week that he will not only have a shop there, but that he intends taking over several French workmen, so that all his work done for America will be done in America. It will not be necessary to send anything from Paris after the first outlay, which will involve several hundred thousand dollars. Pierre Cartier, one of his sons, is to have charge of the New York shop, together with Jules Glaenzer, an American, who has been with the firm for some time.
Many of the most famous pieces of jewelry in the possession of the crowned heads of Europe, leaders of the American smart set, and celebrated actresses came from Cartier’s. The enamel work of the firm is especially fine.
CHAPTER 1
New York City
February 3, 1911
Diamonds, scientists say, are the world’s hardest material. And yet, like a heart, a diamond can break. When I was a reporter covering a story about the Hope Diamond, my research taught me that often a gem cutter will study a major stone for months, deciding where to strike, as cleaving is a precise and risky effort. If the jeweler misjudges, he can destroy the stone.
As a woman, I’ve learned the same thing. A single mistake can destroy a relationship.
Standing here in the cold, staring at the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, I try to pretend that I’m not really crying. That what look like tears are simply snowflakes melting on my cheeks.
But that’s just another lie. And I promised myself that I was done with lies. Untruths, whether by omission or commission, are how I got here—a place I never wanted to be and from which I am trying to escape.
For weeks and weeks, my sadness has felt oddly comforting. A proof of love. A reminder that even if I have lost that love, I did have it once. And now the time has come to fight for it. But am I willing to risk what is left of my pride? Willing to risk another failure even if there’s little—if any—chance of winning that love back?
My father once said, The fight is all. But so far, this fight has laid me bare, stripped me of all pretense, and broken my heart.
The snow is falling harder now, dressing the marble woman in the fountain in a gown of white. As more snow catches in my eyelashes and hair and lands on my face, melting and mixing with the tears, I wonder if my father was right.
This spot on Fifth Avenue between Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Streets has been the epicenter of my city and so many moments in my life. To my right is Central Park, all dusted with white on this early evening—the living, breathing forest that has always been my refuge. To my left, across the avenue and down a block, is my father’s department store on Fifty-seventh Street, designed by my uncle and right in the heart of New York City’s newest fashionable uptown shopping district.
If I look downtown a bit farther and west, if I crane my neck just a little, I can see the rooftop gables of the building that houses Pierre Cartier’s jewelry shop.
But back to the fountain. In 1890, my father brought me to its installation ceremony. I was twelve years old. My sister was sick with a sore throat, so I was alone with him. My father spent a lot of time with me and always talked to me like an adult. He shared information about all the subjects he found interesting. The way fashions changed, how clothes and shoes and fabrics and jewelry were designed and made. How desire fueled commerce. What made someone want to buy something they didn’t need.
He was a great reader, especially of history. Ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, the Renaissance, and seventeenth-century France were some of his favorite periods. And as we stood with the crowd that night with the fireworks bursting overhead, he told me the story of the woman whose form graced the fountain. Elpis, a symbol of hope.
“The first woman created by Zeus, Pandora,” he said, “had a jar—I believe it was a jar, not a box—that contained all the wonders of the world: life, renewal, love, generosity, wisdom, and empathy. Warned not to open the jar by Zeus, Pandora did her best to obey but ultimately gave in to temptation.” Here he stopped to give me a stern look to warn me about little girls who did not obey their fathers. “When she opened the jar, all the elements flew out. Beauty is limited, our health breaks down, our love fades. And we die. But it turned out that one thing remained in the jar after all—the one thing left to all of us when we face the tragedies in our lives. A tiny creature named Elpis, also known as hope. She stayed in Pandora’s jar so that she could revisit us after all our miseries. So that we can hope that the hard times will get better, hope that grief will soften, hope that terrors will quell.”
As I remember this moment, my heart aches. How much love can you lose and still have hope that you will ever find love again? And if you do find it, how can you know that it will last for any time at all?
My father had tried to teach me that love, no matter how short-lived, was worth fighting for. Worth savoring. He always spoke of it with a wistfulness I never quite understood. For years, I wondered where his sadness came from. A successful businessman, father, and husband, he didn’t seem to have had any tragedy in his life.
But that was a feeling. Not a fact. I am a reporter; I know how important the facts are. And when I discovered the facts of my father’s past, they changed my life.
One of those facts was that my father had, indeed, endured a terrible tragedy a few weeks before he died. Another fact was that he had tried to hide it from me, as well as from my sister and my mother. Yet another fact was that in Paris in 1909, C. H. Rosenau sold a forty-five-carat blue diamond to Pierre Cartier, grandson of the French jeweler who had founded the world-renowned maison. It is another fact that in January 1911, Evalyn Walsh McLean and her husband purchased that same stone from Cartier.
Between those facts is a tale rich with revenge, robberies, myths, curses, psychics, lost fortunes, outright lies, murder, and heartache. And just a few months ago, it became my job as an investigative journalist to look at all the different facets of the story of the diamond originally known as the French Blue—but now known as the Hope—for a weekly magazine called the Gotham Gazette.
During the course of my probing, questioning, and reporting, I learned many things about history, power, jewelers, society, wealth, passion, greed, and love.
I started out the investigation, ironically, feeling quite hopeless myself, having lived a life that was dark and dreary. It’s been a long and circuitous route to come to the end of the investigation. But therein lies my tale. A story that will come to its conclusion one way or another tonight and will very possibly change the direction the rest of my life will take.
My father told me to hold on to love even when the world around me tried to snatch it away. And I have. I’ve held tightly to its promise all these long months. I’ve imagined it wrapped up in some of the navy velvet my father’s emporium sells on the second floor. Tied with a magenta ribbon from the notions department.
And tonight I will find out if I can unwrap it or if I will need to walk into the park across the street and find a soft patch of ground in which to bury it once and for all.
Like my father, I wouldn’t give up what I’ve had for anything. But oh, how I hope that I’ll find it again. When you fall in love, you aren’t smart. You don’t weigh the logic of your actions. You don’t look at the man to whom you are giving your heart with the cold precision of a diamond cutter examining that rough stone. At least, I didn’t. And so the man I’d given my heart to turned out to be a thief.
CHAPTER 2
New York City
October 1910
How many lovers does it take to turn a woman into a whore?
According to my mother, only one, if he turns out to be married and your affair becomes fodder for gossip in her social circle.
And how many sensational news stories exposing crime and punishment, fear and neglect and horror, does a reporter need to publish before she becomes a pariah in her own home?
According to my mother, also only one, if the story threatens to expose secrets of those close to your family.
My mother always judged me and was disdainful of my work. She only begrudgingly accepted it because my alter ego, undercover reporter Vee Swann, was a family secret. My father and my cousin Stephen had helped me come up with the pseudonym, and we were all careful to protect it.
While my sister, Violet, known by all as Letty, judged me, too, she also admired me for my career. Because of this, we got along fairly well despite being such opposites.
It was my sister—though unwittingly, of course—who in the end helped me plot how I would avenge our father’s death, by asking me to lunch on a Wednesday in the beginning of October. While our lunching was not so rare an occurrence in the past, we had gotten out of the habit since she’d had her third child eighteen months before.
I was two years older than Letty. Everything about us, from our looks to our personalities and style, was different. She was elegant, with a grace that made heads turn. She had a charming sense of humor and that ability some people have to make you feel that every word you are saying matters intensely. She dressed impeccably in the brightest jewel tones. Her hair, twisted in a perfect blond knot, never escaped into unruly curls as my rust-colored locks did. Letty would enter a room on her husband Jack’s arm, and all eyes would focus on her. I, on the other hand, drew a different kind of attention. It was curiosity, not admiration. If Letty was light and gossamer, I was dark and damask. If she was laughter and love, I was questions and fury. But we were both very stubborn, so sometimes we argued.
Like our mother, Letty was concerned about her place in society. She adhered to the customs of how one did things and was careful not to push the limits of propriety. It was as if our mother had bottled her values and Letty had drunk them down.
But I didn’t give a fig about propriety or social mores.
So I admonished her that she was old-fashioned, a traitor to our sex for accepting our mother’s generation’s values. And she often had words about my lifestyle. Following my mother’s lead, Letty didn’t approve of my obsession with work and bohemian ways. Yet at the same time, she was excited by my escapades and always begged me to tell her everything I was doing.
Despite herself, Letty knew my heart, as I knew hers. Thus, we gave each other—and our opinions—a wide berth.
I did admire Letty for her charitable work. Indeed, I’d had a hand in her getting involved with it in the first place. When I’d first realized how much she was becoming like my mother and feared she’d turn into just another society matron, I’d taken action. In Silk, Satin and Scandals, the weekly gossip column I penned anonymously for the New York World, I’d written that according to rumors, Letty Garland Briggs had offered to take on the job of fund-raising chair for the Children’s Aid Society and how proud her family was of her. In fact, I reported, Granville Garland, of Garland’s Emporium on Fifth Avenue, was going to match all contributions for the year. I had gotten my father to agree first, of course. He had thoroughly approved of my efforts with a twinkle in his eye. Only my father and my editor, Ronald Nevins, knew I was the voice behind the column. It was a necessary precaution, given that I regularly sourced my material by spying on my family, their friends, and their acquaintances. Mother and Letty wouldn’t have been able to keep their lips sealed about it, nor would they have approved.
I’d started the column after graduating from Radcliffe. In 1900, it had been the only work I could find. I’d known I’d have to start with women’s topics—all female journalists did. But I’d hoped to retire the column once my investigative work took off. By the time Vee Swann had made her mark by way of an exposé on abortion practices, Silk, Satin and Scandals had become so popular that Mr. Nevins begged me to keep writing it, reminding me of the good the column did: it could raise awareness of social ills and charitable efforts under the guise of gossip.
He was right about that. In addition to the Children’s Aid Society, with my column, I’d been able to push my mother, my sister, and all their well-heeled friends and acquaintances into donating their time and money to the New York Foundling Hospital, the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, the Little Mothers’ Aid Association, and more. Thanks to Silk, Satin and Scandals, noticing the world outside the List of 400 had become fashionable.
That Wednesday, Letty met me at noon for some shopping and lunch at the Birdcage, Garland’s fanciful luncheon restaurant. Father’s emporium was full of specialty venues for shoppers, each of them an homage to one of the women in his life. The Birdcage, so named after the dozen watercolor bird images painted by my mother that adorned its walls, served genteel dishes, including all my mother’s favorites: bouillon with cheese straws, curried egg sandwiches, creamed chicken and mushrooms, and Orange Fool, a citrus custard flavored with mint that she adored.
The Library, where shoppers could stop and rest and have tea or cordials while browsing the stacks, had been created with me in mind and sold copies of all my favorite books. There they served a tea called Lady Vera, a special blend Father had imported from Fortnum’s in England. It was a much fruitier version of Earl Grey, with notes of plum, orange, apricot, and peach. I drank it by the potful.
The Jewel Box was my father’s nod to my sister. The furniture was upholstered in her favorite lilac color, and the walls were decorated with fashion illustrations of Letty modeling the au courant and affordable jewelry people flocked to Garland’s to purchase.
My sister had wanted to stop there before we ate.
“I have a gift to buy,” Letty said as we entered the cushioned enclave designed to look like a jewelry case. The lights had been specially designed by Tiffany & Co. to resemble faceted gemstones: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and amethysts. The chairs were all gilded and upholstered with purple velvet-tufted cushions. The pulls on the drawers looked like bracelets, the knobs like brooches.
After inspecting the cases, Letty found something she liked and asked the salesman if she could see it.
“Do you like this?” Letty asked me, holding out her hand and showing off the seed-pearl bracelet with a small garnet clasp in a flower shape.
“It’s lovely, yes.”
And it was. Though the Jewel Box sold mostly trinkets and paste in order to keep prices low for customers, Father made certain never to skimp on quality. He only bought from the best jewelry makers and left the selling of fine gemstones to other New York merchants he knew, like Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Cartier, as well as Van Cleef & Arpels, Marcus & Co., Boucheron, and Buccellati.
The one thing we Garlands all had in common was a true love of beautiful things. From a fine silk robe to satin shoes. From an elegant lynx coat to a semiprecious trinket. From a necklace of perfectly matched Persian turquoise to a Burmese ruby ring to a brooch set with fire opals.
My family teased me that my obsessions didn’t fit with my hardworking girl-reporter reputation. And they didn’t. I was forced to eschew wearing most of my lovely things when I was at the city room or on assignment. A plain dress and wire-rimmed spectacles were as far as Vee Swann would go.
