Unlike contemporary banks, usually some sort of “MegaCorp”, important banks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were often privately owned and based on the fortunes of their principals. As a consequence the loans they made were not matters of public policy; and they could remain quite secretive about their business, unless their probity came into question. One such banking firm was that of “Hope & Company; though founded in Amsterdam in 1726, the kaleidoscopic politics engendered by the French Revolution had led the firm to move its “home office” to London before 1800. The move didn’t harm it. In fact, its prominence was such that when, in 1803, the United States purchased Louisiana from France, both nations agreed that it was the bank to handle the financial particulars of the deal. By 1812, however, Hope & Company was in trouble; troubled enough for Henry Philip Hope, the firm’s principal owner to start looking for a buyer.
Ultimately, a deal was made to sell Hope’s bank to Barings Bank (Established in London in 1763, bankrupted by a rogue trader in 1995), and Hope’s money problems were over. By curious coincidence, however, in the midst of Hope’s money problems, and only two days after the French statute of limitations put crimes committed in 1792 beyond the reach of the law, London Jeweler John Francillon wrote a “laboratory report” on a 45.5 carat blue diamond that was clearly the Hope. The gem’s owner was unnamed, so the name on the report was that of London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason, recognized as a middleman. Significantly, Eliason never explained his client’s motive for making the diamond a matter of public record. No sale of the diamond appears to have transpired thereafter; so the Hope disappeared from view until H. P. Hope’s death in 1839. Then, in the settlement of his estate, it passed into the hands of one of his nephews; and it has remained, more or less, “on public view” ever since.
Little was made of the diamond’s origin, however, until it was given to the Smithsonian. There it was subjected not only to the gazes of the public but to the scientific scrutiny of the museum’s staff and diamond professionals; and a question began to nag at them. “Was it a recut of the French Blue, stolen from the ‘Royal Storehouse’ in 1792?” Dogged by conflicting historic data, the question went unanswered for decades until a startling find was made in 2007 at Paris’ Natural History museum. It is a cast lead model, the shape and dimensions of which led the Gemological Institute of America’s scientists to believe it to have been cast from the French Blue. Using a combination of computer modeling and their own hard won diamond lore, they established that the Hope would fit within the contours of their putative French Blue. As the French Blue has never been recovered, nor has there ever been any report of a blue diamond larger, they were led to the conclusion that the Hope is almost surely a recut of the French Blue. This, of course leads to the questions of when and why it had been recut; and the lead model provides us with some interesting clues.
In the 1850s the cast had been donated to the Museum by the Archard Family, prominent Parisian jewelers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Though the first Archard would have been a mere apprentice in 1792, when the French Blue was stolen, we know that by 1817 Mr. Archard counted Henry Philip Hope among his clients. All else is conjecture. Had the blue diamond brought them together? If so, when? The date of Francillon’s report makes it clear that the diamond had been recut before it was submitted to him in 1812. If Archard had made the cast of the French Blue, is it possible that he had been involved in the original theft? It is self evident that the recut was intended to hide the gem’s origin; but why, in the words of master diamond cutter Maarten de Witte, was it “a real hack job? Was the poor quality of the recut the result of amateurism on the part of the thieves or was it the result of Hope’s haste in readying the gem for a possible sale? If it was Hope’s haste, was he fearful that the French statute of limitations didn’t apply to the stolen French Blue, or was he afraid that the window of opportunity offered by the amnesty might soon be closed? In any event, what role was played by Daniel Eliason, who was not only a gem dealer but Hope’s diamond purchasing agent as well? Had he obtained the diamond for Hope and if so, what role, if any, was played by Archard? However the questions may be asked, the most likely answers always come back to Hope. A wealthy and reclusive diamond collector, at the time he was one of the few men in Europe who could have, and might have, bought the stolen French Blue; and Archard’s cast makes Hope’s responsibility for the recut a real possibility
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