Mistress of the Elgin Marbles
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.