The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Jewel History: Married to a Viscount (1894)

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Virginia Coventry, Viscountess Deerhurst [1]
“Married to a Viscount”
(originally appeared in the Washington Post, 11 Mar 1894)
The marriage of Miss Virginia Bonynge [2], daughter of the California millionaire, Charles W. Bonynge [3], to Viscount Deerhurst [4], took place in the Church of All Saints, Kensington, at 2:30 PM today. The weather was perfect. Large crowds of men and women were attracted to the vicinity of the church to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom and study the magnificent costumes of the bridal party.
The church was well filled with guests, among whom were the Princess Christian [5], Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, the Countess of Arran, the Countess of Cairns, the Earl and Countess of Cadogan, the Earl and Countess of Essex, the Earl and Countess of Craven, Lord and Lady Burton, Mrs. Bradley Martin, Gen. and Mrs. Byron, and many others.
The wedding gifts were numerous, costly, and magnificent. The gift of Prince Duleep Singh [6] was a diamond bracelet with enamel links, and that of Prince F. Duleep Singh a diamond pin and a pearl brooch. The Earl of Coventry gave a service of silver plate and a pearl necklace, and a pearl and diamond bracelet were presented by the Earl and Countess of Coventry. Mr. Bonynge, the father of the bride, gave his daughter a diamond tiara, a diamond bracelet, a silver tea and coffee service, and a check for a large sum of money. Besides the presents mentioned, the bride received many others, all of which were of great value and exquisite design.
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Image published in 1904 Lady’s Realm, a monthly women’s magazine; see the issue here.
2. Lady Deerhurst (1866-1948) was born Virginia Lee Daniel, the daughter of William Daniel and Rhoda Stephens. Her parents divorced, and her mother married Charles William Bonynge in 1869. She used her stepfather’s surname after the marriage. Prior to her marriage to Lord Deerhurst, Virginia was apparently briefly engaged to the Hon. Ronald Greville (whose eventual wife, Margaret, left a fortune’s worth of jewelry to the Queen Mother on her death).
3. Charles William Bonynge (1838-1913) was born in Ireland, but made his fortune during the gold mining boom in California. He was involved in a rivalry with John Mackay, the husband of one of Boucheron’s best customers.
4. George William Coventry, Viscount Deerhurst (1865-1927) was the eldest son of the 9th Earl of Coventry and Lady Blanche Craven. He died three years before his father, so his elder son, George, became the 10th earl.
5. Princess Helena, the fifth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; according to a 1903 issue of the San Francisco Call, she was Lady Deerhurst’s close friend and sponsor in society.
6. Prince Victor Duleep Singh, son of the Maharaja of Lahore, was married to Lord Deerhurst’s sister, Lady Anne Coventry. “Prince F. Duleep Singh” is his younger brother, often called “Prince Freddy.”

Victoria Melita’s Sapphires

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Victoria Melita of Edinburgh as Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, ca. 1909 [1]

Another week, another look into Ducky’s jewel vaults! Today, we’re gazing upon one of the suites of jewelry that she inherited from her mother, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, Duchess of Edinburgh (and later Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha): her imperial sapphire parure.

The sapphire and diamond set was a present to Maria Alexandrovna on her wedding in 1874. Her groom was Prince Alfred, the second son of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. The pair married at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, surrounded by her Romanov relatives. Along with a ruby tiara and a diamond fringe, Tsar Alexander II gave his daughter a parure of diamonds and sapphires. The set included the tiara, a necklace, and a stomacher that could be broken into two brooches.

Victoria Melita [2]

The sapphires were designed with Maria’s future role in mind. The blue gems were set in diamond elements that included floral motifs symbolizing her new home: roses (for England), thistles (for Scotland), and shamrocks (for Ireland). In her write-up on the jewels, Ursula states that the sapphires had an even longer royal history than the set itself; they were inherited by the tsar from his mother, Alexandra Feodorovna (who was born Princess Charlotte of Prussia).

The parure was passed from Maria Alexandrovna to her second daughter, Victoria Melita. As we’ve discussed before, Ducky was unlucky in love; her first marriage to Ernst of Hesse was a bust, and her second wedding, to her cousin, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, was controversial. But she managed to hold on to the sapphires through both weddings. She was photographed in the complete parure in 1909, after she became Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna of Russia, but before she and the rest of the surviving Romanovs were forced to flee the country. In her biographical sketch of Ducky, Meriel Buchanan [3] describes the grand duchess wearing the sapphires during the Blessing of the Waters of the Neva ceremony in 1911: “the Grand Duchess Cyril looked magnificent, her train of cornflower-blue velvet lined with silver, a tiara of sapphires and diamonds blazing on her head, her blue eyes alight with happiness” [4].

Sadly, like so many jewels with Romanov connections, the whereabouts of this sapphire sparkler today are unknown. We know what happened to the necklace and the stomacher; Ducky sold them to Cartier in Paris after the Russian Revolution. (The sale probably happened around the same time she sold her Greek key kokoshnik to the Romanian royal family.) As for the tiara, who knows? I have a feeling it most likely met the same fate as Ducky’s other jewels. Times were tough for deposed royals, and nearly all of the surviving Romanovs sold off their gems to finance their post-imperial lives. I think it’s a safe bet that this piece was sold and likely broken up, joining so many other Russian tiaras in the mists of history [5].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of an image in the public domain; source here.
2. Cropped version of an image in the public domain; source here.
3. Muriel was the daughter of Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador to Russia.
4. You can read the full biography here.
5. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in November 2013.

Saturday Sparkler: The Ruby Olive Wreath Tiara

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Olga of the Hellenes wears the olive wreath tiara [1]

Through all of their trials and tribulations (and assassinations and exiles, etc., etc.), the Greeks really have done a remarkable job of keeping their hands on (or, rather, getting their hands back on) their tiaras. Today’s sparkler, the Ruby Olive Wreath Tiara, is an example of an heirloom piece that has been reunited with the former royal family and remains with them today.

The olive wreath’s first royal wearer was Queen Olga, who was born a Russian grand duchess and became queen at the tender age of 16. The rubies in the tiara and the rest of the parure, which some think may have been sourced from her native Russia, are pigeon’s blood rubies, which sometimes look pinky-purple in certain lights. Apparently Olga’s husband, King George I of the Hellenes, purchased the rubies and had them set in the parure for his wife. When Olga died in 1926, she left the rubies to her son, Prince Nicholas. His wife, Elena Vladimirovna of Russia (AKA the woman who sold the Vladimir tiara to Queen Mary), wore the ruby set in a portrait. They also loaned the tiara to their daughter, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, who wore it to the State Opening of Parliament in October 1937.

Olga of Yugoslavia [2]

Nicholas’s daughter, Princess Olga of Yugoslavia, was the next lucky person to own the tiara; she inherited the sparkler from her father in 1938. She wore the ruby parure in a portrait; she also, unfortunately, wore it during a visit to Berlin in 1939. Olga had several other tiaras, from both her own family and from the family of her husband, and this tiara apparently wasn’t one that she wore very often. The war years were not particularly kind to the Yugoslavian royals, who were exiled, and the tiara was sold.

But this was a good tiara sale, because the buyer of the tiara was none other than King Paul of Greece, Olga’s cousin. His wife, Queen Friederike, put the olive wreath tiara to good use during her husband’s reign, and after his death, she passed it along to the new queen, Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie brought the tiara with her when the monarchy was deposed for a final time, and she still wears the tiara and the rest of the ruby parure regularly today, along with many other pieces from the Greek royal collection [3].

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Detail of Jakobides’s Portrait of Queen Olga of Greece (1915); source here.
2. Cropped version of a photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
3. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in April 2013.