on July 13, 2020, 10:33 pm, in reply to "Re: How did Queen Victoria’s emerald parure come to be owned by Duke of Fife?"
The Royal Watcher blog has an interesting article
https://royalwatcherblog.com/2017/03/14/connaught-fringe-tiara/
on the Connaught Fringe tiara which had belonged to the Duchess of Kent and which Queen Victoria gave to the Duchess of Connaught and which would eventually pass via her daughter-in-law to the Fife family.
Of course, if Arthur, Duke of Connaught got the Turkish necklace, the Fringe tiara AND the emerald parure, his share of his mother’s jewels would have been quite remarkable and just leaves me wondering yet again what about his siblings?
One thing I certainly think which undermines the Connaught inheritance theory is the Duchess of Connaught never seems to have been photographed wearing Queen Victoria’s emerald parure. We know as at 1896 her jewellery collection was not extensive as she borrowed items from Queen Victoria to attend the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II so as not to appear outshone by other royals ladies - so if her husband had inherited a grand parure closely associated with Queen Victoria, it seems illogical she wouldn’t have worn it to major royal events, such as the Coronations of 1902 or 1911, when historically British royal women tended to go all out and wore their finest jewels.
However that has to be balanced of course by the fact that only a handful of photographs exist of the Duchess (she could have worn it umpteen times and just never photographed in it) and I believe certainly by the late 1900’s/1910’s, her health began to fail, so the opportunity for her to wear it may have been limited.
After the Duchess’s premature death and assuming the Connaughts were the owners, it may have been that the Duke did not allow his daughter-in-law Alexandra, Duchess of Fife to wear it, although as the Royal watcher blog highlights Alexandra did wear the Connaught Fringe tiara.
I am not so sure I can agree that Queen Victoria wouldn’t have gifted the parure to Arthur, Duke of Connaught. We know for example she left many of her jewels to Princess Beatrice including her Sunray Fringe tiara, arguably the tiara most associated with her in the last 3 decades of her life. The emerald tiara in contrast seemed to be banished to the vaults from the 1860s onwards (other than briefly worn by one of her Hessian granddaughters) as it seems Victoria stopped wearing coloured stones after her husband’s death. Moreover whoever did inherit it, never really seemed to wear or allow others to wear the parure (regularly at least) until the 1960s, so just maybe the parure was not viewed as impressively then as it does now?
The ultimate question though is why the parure just wasn’t worn for decades? If it was in the private collection of Edward VII/Queen Alexandra/George V – they may have disliked it or simply not considered it to be of particular historical value – we have here the precedent of Queen Victoria’s sapphire coronet – which despite Queen Mary’s alleged passion to keep (or to get back, dependant on the gossip you read) everything even to the smallest trinket associated with the Royal Family and add it the Royal Collection, seemingly allowed a tiara belonging to Queen Victoria no less to go to her daughter, knowing it would end up outside the Royal Family. Could the same have happened with Victoria’s emerald parure, except perhaps here the scenario would have been in 1925, with the division of Queen Alexandra’s jewels.
I was reading recently about Queen Alexandra’s circlet which is now worn (very badly I must say) by Queen Sonja of Norway - no criticism of the Queen personally but her re-design of the tiara cramming the three Maltese crosses together is horrid and I wish she would revert back to the way Queen Maud originally wore it).
Anyway I was reading on Trond’s blog about the circlet - his source is Queen Alexandra’s great-granddaughter Princess Astrid of Norway, which as sources go is probably as good as it gets and it got me thinking to Queen Alexandra’s jewels and how they were split up.
The circlet is an impressive piece of jewellery, it was Alexandra’s personal property and although two major diamonds were removed from it when Maud inherited it, it was likely to be very valuable in my view and most likely included valuable, good quality diamonds. Maud also got her mother’s Turquoise parure and a pair of Queen Victoria’s earrings.
Princess Louise, the Princess Royal’s younger daughter was photographed at the 1937 wearing Queen Alexandra’s amethysts but they are not nearly as valuable as a diamond coronet associated with Queen Alexandra! I am not aware of any other items that Princess Louise received from her mother, which is odd. Maud got two tiaras, we know Victoria got the Rundell, can we really believe that Louise got just a parure of amethysts? Both her sisters got tiaras crammed with diamonds and historical provenance! Is it possible that Louise’s other share of her mother’s estate was made up of a historical parure belonging to Queen Victoria!?! She died just 6 years after her mother, so maybe she did not have the opportunity to wear it?
Anyway apologies for this rambling but it is an interesting topic!
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I have been thinking about this all afternoon.
Somehow I doubt if Queen Victoria would have left the emerald parure to the Duke of Connaught, even though we know that he was a favoured son. He (or his wife) received other, known jewels, such as the Turkish necklace and the Aga Khan tiara. These were major jewels.
Queen Victoria's son, and principal heir, Edward VII is another candidate. So too, is Queen Alexandra. We know that Queen Victoria left her the small diamond crown as a personal jewel. So, it is possible that the emerald parure was left to Queen Alexandra personally, and then went to her daughter, Louise the first Duchess of Fife, as Janet has already suggested.
Do we have any evidence for when this parure was first seen worn by any other royal lady? (After the photograph of it being worn by Princess Alice's daughter, Princess Louis of Battenberg??)
I would have to look at various cuttings from newspapers I have but, at this point of time, I think that the first reference I have to this parure after Queen Victoria is of the Duchess of Fife in the early 1950s.
I would like to add another couple of possibilities to Janet's suggestions.
1 Could the parure have been left to Queen Victoria's daughter, Louise, Duchess of Argyll? And then to another member of the family?
2. Could the parure have been left (by an older relative) to Princess Victoria of Wales, and then by her to the line of the Dukes of Fife?
I admit that I don't have any convincing evidence. Unless we can find some photographic evidence or detailed written description in the press, I doubt if the issue can be resolved unless someone gives the press detailed information.
The suggestions which Janet has raised are enormously interesting. We know that the parure was eventually in the collection of the Dukes of Fife, but how did they inherit?/
Thank you Janet for raising a really interesting question, and clearly outlining the interesting possibilities of how this parure might have been transmitted in the family. Hopefully, in time to come, we might have some answers.
In the meantime, I find all of Janet's suggestions provide me with thoughts to ponder.
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