Tea at Trianon: A Stolen String of Pearls

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, November 1, 2025

A Stolen String of Pearls

A portrait of Mrs Harold Nickols wearing a two-string of blush-pink pearls

From Country Life:

De László’s most mysterious pearls are double string blush-pink ones which, in January 1921, were worn for a portrait sitting by Mrs Harold Nickols — the wife of a wealthy English businessman and philanthropist. Born Isabel ‘Bella’ MacConnell in Dublin, in 1878, she wed Harold in July 1908 and lived a lavish lifestyle of couture-filled wardrobes and finely decorated rooms. Her flawless pearls — gifted to her by her husband — included a central gem rumoured to have once been part of the Portuguese crown jewels.
Before they ringed the neck of Bella, the precious pearls had made headlines for their starring role in a jewellery heist. Their original owner was Max Meyer, one of Hatton Garden’s most respected gem dealers, who, in 1913, sent the necklace (then on a single strand and nicknamed the ‘Mona Lisa of necklaces’) to a colleague in Paris, France for appraisal. The jewels were valued at £135,000 (about £20 million in today’s money), but the sale fell through and so they were returned to London by registered post. ‘This was fairly common practice at the time,’ says Vivian Watson, author and third-generation Hatton Garden jeweller. ‘Even the priceless Cullinan diamond was sent to England from South Africa this way, with a security firm acting as a decoy to lure would-be criminals away from the mail.’ (Read more.)