The Persians possessed the jewel until 1889, when a Teheran mob slew the Russian ambassador, the thirty-four-year-old playwright Griboyedov. As a sign of their regret, the Persian royal house sent the Shah Diamond to Russia, where it has remained.
The Great Table
Another stone that Tavernier was the only European to look upon is the Great Table Diamond, sometimes called the White Tavernier. This 242-carat stone is described by the French traveler: “When at Golconda in 1642, I was shown this stone, and it is the largest diamond I have ever seen in India in the hands of merchants. The owner allowed me to make a model of it in lead, which I sent to Surat to two of my friends, telling them of its beauty and the price, namely, 500,000 rupees. I received an order from them, that if it was clean and of fine water, I should offer 400,000 rupees; but it was impossible to purchase it at that price.” The asking price was about $280,000, for want of which the Great Table has totally disappeared.
The table cut—which was virtually discontinued after 1520, when the rose cut grew popular—sliced the gem into a flat slab, sometimes so thin that the diamond was used as a “portrait stone,” set over a miniature painting.
The Blue Tavernier
One diamond that Tavernier brought back from his travels was a blue diamond, roughly heart-shaped, of 112 carats. He sold it in 1668 to Louis XIV of France. It was recut as a slightly pointed drop, being reduced in the process to 68 carats. Louis XV set the diamond in his Order of the Golden Fleece. It was also worn by Louis XVI but was among the treasures of the royal house that disappeared at the beginning of the French Revolution in the great crown jewel robbery. Of these, only the Regent and the Sancy were recovered.
The fate of the Blue Tavernier is in doubt. One story runs that the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece were smuggled to England, where later this diamond was recut. A one-carat blue diamond, last heard of in London, is supposed to have come from the tip. A second stone is a blue drop diamond that came into the possession of the Duke of Brunswick. The third and largest cut is the Hope Diamond.
The Hope
Without any guarantee of this past history, Henry Thomas Hope in 1836 bought a superb blue diamond of 44 carats. Blue diamonds are exceedingly rare; the nearest in weight to the Hope Diamond are the Brunswick diamond, mentioned just above, of almost 14 carats, and a 35-carat stone, the Wittlesbach, exhibited in London in 1930.
The Hope Diamond was willed by Lady Hope, in 1887, to her daughter’s son on condition that he adopt the family name. He became Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope. In 1894 he married the American actress May Yohe who wore the diamond when she sang in the music halls. It is said to have been part of the “stage jewelry” listed among her belongings when her trunks were held for a lodging debt, but it was returned to the Hope family.