Mistress of the Elgin Marbles Read online

  MISTRESS

  of the

  ELGIN MARBLES

  SUSAN NAGEL

  For Hadley,

  my only and beloved child

  CONTENTS

  Chronology

  Family Tree

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 Launched from a Safe Harbor

  Chapter 2 New Horizons

  Chapter 3 The Newlyweds Set Sail

  Chapter 4 A Battle of Beauties

  Chapter 5 Letters: A Lifeline

  Chapter 6 Constantinople: “Ambassadress Poll” Makes Waves

  Chapter 7 Motherhood: Mary’s North Star

  Chapter 8 Captain of Her Ship

  Chapter 9 Favorable Winds

  Chapter 10 The Stronger Vessel

  Chapter 11 Scuttled

  Chapter 12 Awash in Antiquities

  Chapter 13 The Acropolis: Caution to the Wind

  Chapter 14 Sailing, Sailing

  Chapter 15 The Calm Before the Storm

  Chapter 16 Shanghaied

  Chapter 17 In Irons

  Chapter 18 Rudderless

  Chapter 19 At Sea

  Chapter 20 Drowning in Debt

  Chapter 21 Breakwater

  Chapter 22 Shipwrecked

  Chapter 23 Rescued

  Chapter 24 A Beacon

  Chapter 25 Starboard Home

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Notes

  CHRONOLOGY

  1707 Scotland unites with England

  1715 Jacobite Rebellion

  1720 South Sea Bubble bursts

  1732 Society of the Dilettanti promoting interest in ancient Greece is founded

  1745 Jacobite Rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie 1754 England solidifies control over India

  1756 Seven Years War begins

  1757 William Blake born

  1759 Robert Burns born

  1760 George III becomes king; Tristram Shandy by Sterne; Josiah Wedgwood opens pottery factory in Staffordshire

  1762 Contrat Social by Rousseau; The Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett

  1763 Treaty of Paris ends Seven Years War

  1765 Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks by Winckelmann translated into English

  1766 Thomas, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine born on July 20

  1767 Townshend Act introduces tax on tea in American colonies

  1769 James Watt invents and patents the steam engine; Robert Ferguson born on September 8

  1770 Wordsworth born

  1771 Sir Walter Scott born

  1772 Coleridge born

  1773 Boston Tea Party

  1774 Werther by Goethe

  1775 Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; Jane Austen, Joseph Turner born

  1776 American Declaration of Independence; Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith; Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon

  1777 William Nisbet of Dirleton marries Mary Manners, granddaughter of 2nd Duke of Rutland

  1778 Mary Nisbet of Dirleton born on April 18

  1783 Fox-North coalition; Pitt the Younger’s first ministry

  1786 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns

  1787 U.S. Constitution signed; Thoughts on the Education of Daughters by Wollstonecraft

  1788 King George III incapacitated; Byron born

  1789 Storming of the Bastille in Paris on July 14; King George III recovers; Songs of Innocence by Blake

  1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France by Burke

  1791 Rights of Man by Thomas Paine; Life of Johnson by Boswell

  1793 Execution of the royal family in France; war between France and Britain; Scottish Treason Trials

  1794 Robespierre executed; establishment of the Directorate in France; violent revolutions in Holland and Poland; The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine; Songs of Experience by Blake

  1795 Keats born; Charles, Count von Schall-Riaucour, born on October 27

  1796 Napoleon conquers Italy

  1797 Bank of England suspends payments; Henry Robert Ferguson born on May 2

  1798 Irish Rebellion; Nelson triumphant in Battle of Abukir

  1799 French Directorate falls: Napoleon made first consul; Mary Nisbet of Dirleton marries Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine and they depart for Turkey

  1800 England enacts Union with Ireland; Battles of Alexandria and Marengo; George Constantine, Lord Bruce, born in Turkey on April 5

  1801 Thomas Jefferson inaugurated third president of the United States; Pitt the Younger resigns as prime minister of England; Lady Mary Bruce born on August 31

  1802 Peace of Amiens with France (March); Napoleon named first consul for life; establishment of the Edinburgh Review; Lady Matilda Harriet Bruce born on September 23

  1803 War resumes (May)

  1804 The Honorable William Hamilton Bruce born on March 5

  1805 Battles of Trafalgar and Austerlitz; death of Lord William Hamilton Bruce on April 13; first performance of Beethoven’s Eroica

  1806 Grenville elected prime minister; Lady Lucy Bruce born on January 20

  1807 Abolition of slave trade; Grenville resigns over Catholic issue; trial of Robert Ferguson for adultery with the Countess of Elgin in London; Lord Elgin obtains Act of Parliament to dissolve his marriage

  1808 Napoleon names himself king of Spain; trial for adultery against the Countess of Elgin and Robert Ferguson in Edinburgh

  1809 Tennyson born

  1810 Lady of the Lake by Scott

  1811 The Regency; Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

  1812 Napoleon invades Russia; U.S. declares war on Britain; British prime minister Spencer Perceval assassinated, Lord Liverpool begins fifteen-year leadership; The Curse of Minerva by Byron published to denounce Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine; Charles Dickens born

  1813 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

  1814 Abdication of Napoleon; British forces burn Washington, D.C.; Stephenson builds first steam-powered locomotive; Scott’s Waverley

  1815 Napoleon leaves Elba (the hundred days); Waterloo

  1816 Elgin Marbles sold to the British government; Rossini’s The Barber of Seville

  1817 Princess Charlotte dies

  1818 Prado Museum in Madrid founded; Don Juan by Byron

  1819 Mary Ann Evans, “George Eliot,” born; The Bride of Lammermoor by Scott

  1820 King George III dies; King George IV accedes; trial of Queen Caroline

  1821 Napoleon dies; Queen Caroline dies; Greek War of Liberation begins; Mary and Lord Bruce reunite on February 5

  1823 Monroe Doctrine closes American continent to European powers

  1824 Lord Byron dies in Greek war; John Quincy Adams elected president of the United States

  1825 First passenger-carrying railroad begins service in England

  1830 George IV dies; King William IV begins reign; Earl Grey becomes prime minister as Whigs return to power for eleven years

  1831 Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame

  1832 The Reform Act passes, changing voting laws in Britain

  1834 Lord Melbourne named prime minister; Poor Law Amendment Act establishes workhouses and decrees mothers of illegitimate children solely responsible for their care

  1835 Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor based on Scott’s novel

  1837 Victoria becomes queen of Great Britain; Samuel F. B. Morse demonstrates the telegraph

  1838 Dickens’s
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby; National Gallery opens in London

  1839 Custody of Infants Act permitting women living apart from their husbands to apply for custody of children under seven; Opium Wars with China begin

  1840 Death of Lord Bruce on December 1; death of Robert Ferguson on December 3

  1841 Death in Paris of Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, on November 14; Tory Sir Robert Peel elected prime minister of Britain

  1842 Mines Act passed forbidding use of children and women in mines

  1843 Dickens’s A Christmas Carol

  1846 Repeal of the Corn Laws; Lord Russell begins six-year Whig leadership

  1847 Ten Hours Factory Act; Bronte sisters publish Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

  1848 Queens College for Women founded in London; California gold rush

  1849 Bedford College for Women founded

  1850 Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese; Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”

  1851 Underwater telegraph cable laid between Dover, England, and Calais, France

  1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Toms Cabin, 300,000 copies sell first year

  1854 Britain and France declare war on Russia: the Crimean War begins

  1855 The London Times publishes a speech by Napoleon III telegraphed to them by Reuter’s man in Paris; death of Mary Hamilton Nisbet Ferguson, onetime Countess of Elgin, on July 9; Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

  1857 Matrimonial Causes Act facilitating divorce in England; Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

  1859 Darwin’s Origin of Species; Eliot’s Adam Bede

  1882 Married Women’s Property Law

  INTRODUCTION

  Two hundred years ago, the two most powerful emperors on earth—Napoleon Bonaparte and Ottoman sultan Selim III—along with Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Sicily (Queen Marie Antoinette’s favorite sister) and British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, were all burning with curiosity to meet the young Mary, Countess of Elgin. Mary was three years younger than Jane Austen and could have been the prototype for any number of Austen’s literary heroines; her pedigree, femininity, and fortune were impeccable. Mary, however, was far more than just a beautifully wrapped package, and she proved to be far more daring, complicated, and fascinating than any of Austen’s characters. She was regal and yet self-deprecatingly funny, acquisitive but also philanthropic, demure but quite assertive. This young woman relished making waves and, in fact, caused a significant historical tsunami.

  Every year, some five million people visit the British Museum (and another eight million visit its Web site) to see the collection known as the Elgin marbles. For two hundred years, the alleged plunder of the marbles alternatively known as the Parthenon marbles or the Elgin collection, depending on which side of the fence you happen to stand, has caused intense and emotional international debate. Sometimes called the greatest cultural property dispute of all time, the contention revolves around the well-documented removal of incomparable historic sculptures from Athens to Great Britain. The Greek government would like the statues back; the British government argues that they received them fairly, paid for them, and saved them from disintegration.

  While the Earl of Elgin and his team of artists have shouldered the blame for purportedly despoiling the Parthenon, the improbable truth is that it was his twenty-one-year-old bride, Mary, who financed the project. In addition, it was Mary who cajoled a ship captain to carry the monumentally cumbersome pieces back to England on a British naval vessel and to boldly disobey a direct order from Admiral Nelson, who wanted every one of his ships ready for battle and not engaged in dangerous cargo transport. There is also ample evidence to suggest that among the reasons Selim III, known as Selim the Conqueror, granted permission to denude the Parthenon was that the devastatingly charismatic and glamorous young Lady Elgin had in fact conquered his affections.

  In 1799, when Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, arrived in Constantinople as Great Britain’s newly appointed ambassador extraordinaire, England’s navy had just crushed Napoleon’s forces in Egypt. To demonstrate their gratitude, the Turks regaled Elgin and his captivating bride with unprecedented fanfare and pageantry.

  Ironically, the Turks themselves had been aggressive invaders, having been in control of Greece for over three hundred years. The Ottomans had no regard and less consideration for Hellenic culture. Europeans, on the other hand, were seized with a fever for the ancient world, especially classical Greece. Philosophers and artists of the day romanticized the early democracy of Athens and valued her art for its harmony and expression of beauty as a mirror to a refined age.

  Various Napoleonic wars had heightened the competition to chronicle and even steal artifacts before they were destroyed. When Elgin arrived in Asia Minor, he dispatched a contingent of artists to the Acropolis and other significant sites to copy and make molds of the antiquities for artists and museums back home. There, his team of artists discovered a prolapsed and derelict beauty. One only had to look in the fields to find that entire slabs had toppled, tumbled, and lay crumbled all about.

  Elgin had no notion to remove any relics nor did his team have instruction to do so. On the other hand, French agents had been carting home great pieces of sculpture for twenty years, first for King Louis XVI and then for First Citizen Napoleon as well as many noblemen. Napoleon’s persistent invasions of Ottoman territory infuriated the sultan. He accordingly confiscated the French Embassy overlooking the Bosporus Strait, imprisoned the entire staff, and gave the palace to Lord Elgin. After a second British victory in Egypt, Selim III gave Elgin written carte blanche to extract reliefs from the facade of the Parthenon, an act of gratitude—and revenge. Lord Elgin was a lucky archaeologist who was in the right place at the right time.

  Elgin’s own records show his careful intent not to destroy any antiquities that were still intact, and as the Parthenon was basically a wreck, he firmly believed that he was rescuing the sacred stones from ruin. His team of artists and architects studied, shaved, rigged, lowered, and hauled the massive wonders away from the site.

  Controversy was immediate. Contemporaries such as Lord Byron expressed horror that these beautiful treasures had been torn from their homeland. Emperor Napoleon, desperate for the marbles, made Elgin his personal enemy.

  Society in this most Byzantine and complicated city gossiped about another reason for the sultan’s largesse: it was widely acknowledged that the young Countess of Elgin received unparalleled favor from the Turkish grandees. It was true. Selim III was besotted with Mary. At one particular festival, as fireworks blazed across the sky, Mary created her own sparks when she rowed her little boat directly across the sultan’s path. Any other mortal would have been decapitated for such an act, but Mary—“had I known”—in truth, relished the flirtation as Selim ogled her through his spyglass causing all eyes to divert their attention to this sideline sporting event.

  The sultan, his mother—known as the Valida Sultana—the Grand Vizier (prime minister), and the Captain Pasha (military chief) and his family all broke very long-established rules of protocol just to spend time with Mary. She was that delightful.

  She was the only Western woman invited to the Seraglio and Topkapi Palace—”I go to visit … the Grand Seigneur’s Mother which I am to do, and nobody ever did but me”—and she was invited repeatedly. “The jealousy this visit and the treatment I received, has caused here, is quite ridiculous. Edinburgh is a joke to it.” And, “the whole town is up in arms, for on Saturday … the Captain Pasha [came] to visit us—a thing that was never before heard of … why should I mind a little jealousy?” Even the famous Islamic poet Abu Talib Khan joined in the empire’s adoration and wrote a Persian ode to Mary, invoking her “sugar lips” and “smiles divine” that spread “heaven’s shine.” Women at the other embassies resented her—and she loved it.

  Though only in her early twenties, Mary navigated the shark-infested diplomatic waters with finesse, proving to be a gold medalist i
n political swimming. She carried off her role on the international stage with dazzling skill and grace. How did one so young become so masterly? Although she was from the rural hamlet of Dirleton, east of Edinburgh, Mary Nisbet Bruce was not a small-town girl.

  Mary Nisbet was the great-granddaughter of the 2nd Duke of Rutland of the legendary Manners family, who could trace their roots back to the Plantagenet kings of England. At birth, Mary was the richest heiress in Scotland. From her well-born pedestal, Mary Nisbet melted the hearts of two of history’s most infamous tyrants and enemies—Selim III and Napoleon Bonaparte. At Winton, a home in East Lothian belonging to Mary’s descendants, there are two miniatures of the diminutive French general that he personally gave to Mary. These miniatures were the recognized equivalent of Napoleonic love letters.

  We are fortunate that a huge trove of Mary’s own letters and diaries survive; they reveal her innate intelligence, honesty, and humor. She and Elgin had five children in six years, they had all the money in the world through Mary’s inheritance, and they had achieved one of the greatest archaeological coups of all time. When they left Turkey in public triumph and traveled homeward, there was every reason to anticipate a brilliant future together. Mary lived a rich and rewarding life until she died in 1855, at the age of seventy-seven. Destined to live a charmed life, why, then, was she buried in an unmarked grave at Kensal Green in London?

  Through one heartrending choice, Mary transformed her life from one of welcome public attention to one in the unwelcome glare of scandal. She made a mistake and fell in love with another man. Although she was willing to sacrifice her passion to keep her family together, Elgin was not. He thought he could have it all without Mary, but he, too, gambled and lost. If Elgin had played his hand differently, the Elgin marbles would certainly have remained in the Bruce family instead of going to the British government. The Nisbets’ great wealth had secured the marbles for the earl, but without his wife’s continued financial support, he would be forced to sell them. Elgin decided to disentangle himself legally from his adulterous wife, which necessitated both judicial and legislative actions, including an Act of Parliament. He assumed incorrectly that, as in other aristocratic separations, he would quietly receive lavish compensation from Mary’s inheritance; however, to his and everyone else’s surprise, the Nisbet and Manners women closed ranks, waging the toughest divorce battle since Catherine of Aragon v. Henry VIII.