Our Favourite Jewellery Stories - Part 2
Favourite Jewellery Stories From Literature and Film
We so enjoyed delving into the world of royal and celebrity jewels that we wanted to explore jewellery stories for a little bit longer. Here are a few of our favourite jewellery tales from literature and film.
The Lord of the Rings
Fewer authors have devoted as many words or invested as much time to create an imagined land in which jewellery plays such a huge role as JRR Tolkein. From the hoard of dragon gold and the coveted Arkenstone in The Hobbit, to the darkly magical One Ring that lies at the heart of the mission to save Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, precious metal and jewels dominate the narrative in much of Tolkein’s work. You would be forgiven for thinking that he was not a huge fan of jewellery, given its propensity to bring out the very worst in even his strongest and most noble characters, but its role in Middle Earth is more complicated than that.
The One Ring in LotR was created by the evil lord Sauron and it has a negative effect on all who come into contact with it, even those people who have the best of intentions to use its great power for good. Its evil provenance means that it is invested with malevolence and, for good to triumph, it must be destroyed in the fire that created it in the first place. By contrast, all jewellery created by the elves, such as the Elfstone, has the power to protect and help the ‘good’ people who wear it. The clear dichotomy between good and evil in The Lord of the Rings is a whole other blog topic for a different forum, but for the purposes of this article, it is clear that Tolkein wanted to underscore the huge importance of where jewellery came from in his stories. Applying this to the real world and our modern lives, you could argue that nothing good will ever come of conflict diamonds, gemstones mined using child labour or using mining practices that have little or no regard for the natural environment.
The Heart of the Ocean in Titanic - both the truth and the fiction
Anyone who has seen James Cameron’s the epic story of love and tragedy onboard the Titanic will be familiar with the Heart of the Ocean necklace, which was the only thing that Rose wore when Jack was drawing her portrait. The centrepiece of the fictional necklace from the movie was said to be a blue diamond once owned by Louis XVI, so it was probably loosely based on the ill-fated Hope Diamond. Kate Wislet’s character in Titanic is given the necklace by her fiance, Cal, who later frames Jack for its theft (when it becomes clear that Rose prefers Jack to her fiance). When the ship’s authorities return the necklace to Cal, he puts it in his pocket. He then gives his jacket to Rose as the ship is sinking. She discovers the necklace there after she is rescued and holds on to it for many years until, at the end of the film, she throws it into the sea to symbolise her readiness to make peace with the trauma of her past.
Many of you probably already know the storyline to the Titanic movie. What you may not know is that the Heart of the Ocean was a real necklace (though a sapphire one, not a blue diamond one) and it really did travel on The Titanic. Whilst its story is a bit different to the film narrative, it is believed to have inspired James Cameron to make the film.
The real Heart of the Ocean was gifted to Kate Florence Phillips, a 20-year-old girl who worked at a confectioner’s in London and was secretly having an affair with the shop’s owner, Henry Samuel Morley. The pair had decided to travel under assumed names (Mr and Mrs Marshall) and elope to America on the Titanic to begin a new life together. The necklace was a token of Morley’s readiness to leave his wife and commit to his mistress by running away with her.
Much like Jack and Rose in Titanic, Kate and Henry never got their happy ever after, as Morley (who couldn’t swim) drowned when the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland on 15th April 1912. Like Rose in the film, Kate was rescued by a lifeboat. When she was found, she was wearing nothing but a nightgown and the Heart of the Ocean necklace. Kate travelled on to New York, where she was taken in and looked after by a well-meaning couple for a few months but, when they discovered that Kate was pregnant, they asked her to leave. She travelled back to England where she moved in with her grandparents and gave birth to Morley’s daughter in January 1913.
It is understood that the trauma of the Titanic tragedy left Kate with some sort of mental instability and she did not make the best of mothers to her daughter, Ellen Mary, who was largely brought up by her grandparents. Kate did leave the Heart of the Ocean necklace to her daughter when she died, but it was then acquired by an anonymous person in Florida, when Mary Ellen fell on hard times and was forced to sell it.
After the death of this mysterious buyer from Florida, the necklace was donated to the Titanic Museum in Belfast. All Mary Ellen’s own children have been left with are assurances that their family history inspired a 90s film which grossed over $2 billion at the box office and the possibility of visiting Northern Ireland to see the necklace that symbolises their grandparents’ tragic love story.
The Castafiore Emerald
We’ve featured a blockbuster and some classic works of literature, so it seems only fair to give a comic a look-in, especially as Angoulême - the comic book capital of Europe, host to the International Comic Book Festival every January - is the nearest city to Jess’ new home in France. The creator of Tintin (the cartoonist Hergé) is honoured in Angoulême city centre with a giant sculpture of his head.
The Castafiore Emerald was the twenty-first adventure of Tintin and it differs from all its predecessors and all the adventures that were depicted afterwards because everyone stays in a single location and they do not confront any dangerous criminals. The story begins when Tintin and Captain Haddock meet a Romani community camped at a rubbish dump. Upon hearing that the Romani are unable to camp anywhere else, Captain Haddock invites them to come to the grounds of Marlinspike Hall. They are then first in line for blame when Milanese opera singer, Bianca Castafiore, visits Haddock and discovers that her most valuable jewel - an emerald given to her by the Maharajah of Gopal - has gone missing. Suspicion mounts against the Romani community when a pair of gold scissors (also belonging to Bianca Castafiore) are discovered in the possession of Miarka, a little girl from the camp. Tintin believes Miarka protestations of innocence and instead suspects pianist Ivor Wagner, who arrived at Marlinspike with the opera singer. However, his suspicious behaviour turns out to be disguising a gambling habit and not a propensity for being light fingered with expensive gemstones.
Despairing of finding her missing emerald, Bianca leaves for Milan to perform in La Gazza Ladra, an opera about a thieving magpie. This inspires Tintin to look to the natural world for culprit for the jewel theft. He finds the emerald in a birds nest and assumes that the sparkle-obsessed avian burglar must have stolen the scissors too, but dropped them out of the nest, only to be picked up by Miarka.
Whilst all this action takes place, Captain Haddock is struggling to mend a broken step at Marlinspike and a series of slapstick accidents and arguments ensue. This juxtaposition of a non-existent jewel heist (we can hardly blame the magpie for its actions) and the prosaic concerns of being a grown up and trying to organise house maintenance with a stone mason who is never available makes this edition of the Adventures of Tintin so relatable.
We may not all have famous opera singers popping round to stay, but we’ve all lost things, struggled with the admin side of adulting and had silly accidents round the house. The Castafiore Emerald is a great bridge between our favourite jewellery stories from film and literature and those from real life, as birds really have stolen precious jewellery from people and stowed it in their nest for safe keeping.
Find out about our real life jewellery stories that we found funny, touching or inspiring in the final installment of our Favourite Jewellery stories, which will be published very soon.