Hope Diamond - Evalyn Walsh Mclean

Evalyn Walsh Mclean & The Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is the largest and most perfect
blue diamond in existence, yet it is its varied history
that captures the interest of a young, rich heiress.
Evalyn Walsh Mclean was the heiress to the
Washington Post. She lived a flamboyant lifestyle,
with a taste for jewelry-expensive jewelry.

In 1911, Pierre Cartier met with Evalyn and her
husband Ned at the Hotel Bristol in Paris carrying a
curious little package with a wax seal. Previously,
Cartier had sold to Mrs. Mclean a ninety five carat
white diamond – The Star of The East- for $120,000.
Since Evalyn Mclean had previously told Pierre Cartier
that objects usually considered bad luck turned to
good luck for her. Cartier made sure to mention the
Hope Diamond‘s negative history to her. Though she
is very interested with the long and varied history of
the Hope Diamond, she didn’t like the setting, she
didn’t buy it.

Cartier visited the Mcleans a few months later, having
reset the Hope Diamond into a new mounting, he
offered Evalyn to keep it for a few days. Cartier
hoped that she would grow attached to it, and she
did. She put it on her dresser and she looked and
looked at it, until she put it around her neck and
hooked her life to its destiny for good or evil. The deal
closes at $180,000. For the young and impetuous
heiress, the Hope Diamond’s fascinating past is the
hot selling point.

Evalyn wore the diamond all the time. The diamond
was the way Evalyn Walsh portrayed herself to the
world. Though Mrs. Mclean wore the Hope Diamond
as a good luck charm, others saw the curse strike her
too. At the age of nine, her first-born son, Vinson,
died in a car accident. Her daughter dies of an
overdose of sleeping pills at the age of twenty five. In
addition to all this, Evalyn’s husband Ned, was
declared insane and confined to a mental hospital
until his death in 1941. Their family newspaper, the
Washington Post goes bankrupt and Evalyn was
forced to sell off her properties.

Though Evalyn Mclean had wanted her jewelry to go
to her grandchildren when they were older, her
jewelries were put on sale two years after her death
in 1949 to settle debts from her estate.

In 1949, New York jeweler Harry Winston purchases
Evalyn’s entire collection, including the Hope
Diamond, the ninety-four carat Star of The East
diamond, the fifteen carat Star of The South diamond,
a nine carat green diamond and a three carat
diamond which is now called the Mclean Diamond.

For the next ten years, the Hope Diamond was on a
goodwill tour around the United States to raise
money for charities. In 1958, Harry Winston donates
the gem to the Smithsonian Institution and almost
immediately the great Blue Diamond became its
premier attraction. Today, the diamond revolves
sedately behind three inches of bullet proof glass in
the new Harry Winston Room in the museum’s Hall of
Geology, Gems and minerals.