The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 14 February 2005

Mary and Alexandra: Cartier's Counter & The Perfect Bust

While it’s nice to see modern royal women stepping out from time to time in a beautiful tiara, bejeweled Family Order and parure of important jewels, it’s abundantly clear that the good old days of truly embellished and decorative royal women are forever gone. I realize it may not be considered politically correct to say this, but I long for the time when royal women were covered from head to toe in the world’s greatest jewels. In particular, the era of those two grand queen consorts of Britain’s Imperial age, Mary and Alexandra.

Not only did these two women exemplify the ideal appearance of a queen, it’s impossible to read any history of Queen Elizabeth II’s royal jewel collection without recognizing that it owes much of its current splendor to them. Of course, this in no way undermines the contributions of other historical British queens and queen consorts. To be sure, when Queen Victoria died in 1901, she left to the Crown both historically important jewels that had belonged to previous British monarchs and consorts and valuable newer pieces, including three of my personal favorites – the dazzling 161 carat diamond collet necklace and matching earrings she had made in 1858 and the King George IV State Diadem (worn by Queen Alexandra in photo at right) that she had permanently set with diamonds and pearls in 1838. (Queen Victoria wore each of these three pieces, by the way, in the famous 1859 Winterhalter painting, which can be seen at http://www.abcgallery.com/W/
winterhalter/winterhalter9.html).

But Queen Victoria’s beliefs about jewelry were far different from those of Alexandra and Mary. Although she amassed a sizeable collection of jewels during her long reign and never completely shied away from wearing her best or most beloved jewels – especially her many rings, her tiny crown, and her plethora of sentimental trinkets – she became increasingly of the opinion after Prince Albert's death that excessive displays of wealth were not only distasteful, but could also inspire dangerous anti-monarchy sentiments among the masses. Quite famously, Victoria refused to wear a crown to the Thanksgiving Service in honor of her Golden Jubilee in 1887. Despite the best efforts of Alexandra – then Princess of Wales – to convince Victoria that the public expected and wanted to see her in a crown, the Queen stubbornly stuck to her guns and wore a bonnet instead.

Of course, Queen Victoria’s constant efforts to convince Alexandra and Mary to avoid flamboyant displays of jewels appear to have been equally fruitless, and both women came to be renowned in their own time for their striking and resplendent appearance. Many contemporary accounts of Alexandra and Mary have been preserved for history, but my personal favorites are clear. In The Queen’s Jewels, Leslie Field cites Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. as saying that Queen Alexandra “was known to possess the world’s most perfect shoulders and bosom for the display of jewels.” Painter Philip de Laszlo echoed that sentiment when he said that “she had very well constructed shoulders and bust.” To meld the two men’s statements, Queen Alexandra perhaps had the perfect bust for the display of jewels. As for Queen Mary, one of the best anecdotes I’ve ever heard about her (and there are many) is that the royal yacht’s salty sailors gave her ample and heavily bejeweled bust the nickname “Cartier’s Counter.”

Truly, for all their differences in personality and appearance, Alexandra and Mary were kindred spirits in the pursuit of glittering perfection. While it’s likely that their shared love of amassing and displaying beautiful jewels was at least partially due to the growth of the British Empire – not to mention the resulting influx of fabulous jewels from the far reaches of the Empire – and the desire to exemplify the power of that Empire through conscientious displays of its vast wealth, I think that another, more subtle, commonality fed both women’s passion. Royal though they were, Alexandra and Mary were both from relatively modest backgrounds – about as modest, in fact, as royalty can be – and were born as fairly insignificant princesses.

Although at the time of her 1863 marriage to the Prince of Wales, Alexandra’s father, Prince Christian, was heir to the Danish throne, her parents had previously been considered only minor royalty and she had lived her first 18 years in modest privilege and little luxury. Despite Prince Christian’s decent pedigree – he was a great-grandson of Frederik V of Denmark and a great-great-grandson of George II of Great Britain – his proximity to the throne had less to do with his own claim than with the political unsuitability of stronger claimants and the infertility of his predecessor. As a minor prince, he had no estates of his own and no great income. Even after he became heir to the throne in 1852, his personal wealth increased little and, as Georgina Battiscombe described in her 1969 biography of Queen Alexandra, the Prince, his wife and their six children “had to struggle hard to make ends meet.” As for the kingdom Prince Christian would one day inherit, Battiscombe described it as “a small country which seemed to have drifted out of the main stream of European history. Denmark was a long way away and few people knew or cared very much about what went on there.” 

Similarly, the future Queen Mary was born a mere “Her Serene Highness” and her family lived as close to penury as royalty could at the time. Born HSH Princess May of Teck in 1867, she was the daughter of HRH Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a granddaughter of George III nicknamed “Fat Mary,” and HSH Prince Francis of Teck, a minor German prince who was the product of a notorious morganatic marriage. Princess May’s early life was plagued by the curse of parents who spent too much and made too little. The outrageously expensive tastes of the Duke and Duchess of Teck, as Princess May’s parents were known, kept the family in almost constant debt and proved increasingly embarrassing and frustrating to the royal family, particularly to the Duchess’s first cousin, Queen Victoria. By the time May was 16, her mother’s family and Queen Victoria decided that enough was enough. In exchange for payment of all their debts, the Teck's had to give up their Kensington Palace apartments, close up their home, White Lodge, and live abroad under strict financial circumstances. Princess May, her three brothers and her parents went to live in Florence, but not before facing the humiliation of publicly auctioning off their Kensington Palace furniture (although the Duchess refused to sell her jewelry).

It’s not surprising then that when Princess Alexandra of Denmark arrived on English soil in March 1863 to marry the Prince of Wales, no jewelry was immediately apparent, although her home-made bonnet was thought to be quite pretty. (The beautiful painting depicting Alexandra's landing at Gravesend can be seen at http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/ViewLargeImage.cfm?ID=BHC1257.) And, like her mother-in-law, Princess May prior to her marriage had only a very modest collection of jewels. Given their similarly modest histories, it would seem logical to suggest that both women found enormous satisfaction in their new, elevated positions and resulting wealth and spent a lifetime enjoying and indulging in its glittering privileges to the fullest.

Certainly, they were both given a running start even before they were actually married. Suzy Menkes’ The Royal Jewels gives an excellent account of the treasures acquired by Alexandra and Mary in the days running up to their weddings. Such descriptions are especially important in the case of Alexandra, since many of those jewels were either later put into different settings or are rarely seen in public today. One of my favorites is the parure given to Alexandra by the Prince of Wales as a wedding gift and worn by the Princess on her wedding day. Made by the Crown Jewellers Garrard, it consisted of a diamond and pearl coronet (seen at left) and matching necklace, brooch and earrings. The brooch would later become a favorite piece of Queen Mary, the necklace of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the earrings of the present Queen. Like Alexandra’s wedding parure, many of the jewels given to the two women as wedding gifts are still in the present Queen’s collection today, although precious few of them are seen in public.

Fortunately, another of my favorites – Queen Mary’s “Girls of Great Britain & Ireland Tiara” (seen at right) – is still worn today. Not surprisingly, the stunning Garrard tiara was also one of Princess May’s favorite wedding gifts. Described by Leslie Field as “a diamond festoon-and-scroll design surmounted by nine large oriental pearls on diamond spikes and set on a bandeau base of alternate round and lozenge collets between two plain bands of diamonds” the tiara has been worn frequently by the present Queen, although the pearls are replaced with diamonds – a change made by Queen Mary before 1920.

In addition to foreshadowing the splendor that was to come in later years, both pictures of the young brides in their favorite wedding tiaras also display a wonderful element of many great jewels – adaptability. Quite a few of the jewels owned by Alexandra and Mary were convertible in some way. In the picture of Mary on the right, her bottom necklace – another wedding gift – also doubled as a tiara. In the above picture of Alexandra, her necklace could be taken apart and worn as different pieces of jewelry.

But as good as the wedding gifts undoubtedly were, they weren’t always to the individual taste and preferences of their respective owners, a circumstance that would soon inspire both women to adapt their own unique styles and create their own special pieces of jewelry. For both women, the impetus for creating a new piece of jewelry was often sentimental. In Alexandra’s case, one of her best ideas was to request that a tiara be made for her in the Russian Kokoshnik style. Alexandra’s sister, Empress Marie of Russia, was another great collector of jewels and had one just like it. The resulting tiara (seen left) was given to Alexandra on her silver wedding anniversary in 1888 and has been a royal favorite ever since. (The bottom necklace in the photo of Alexandra at left also shows the necklace that was part of the wedding parure given to her by the Prince of Wales.)

Mary’s great creation was the tiara that is known as the Cambridge Lover’s Knot Tiara (seen in the photos of both Mary and Diana at right), but is perhaps best known as one of the tiaras worn by Diana, Princess of Wales, during her marriage. Mary had this beautiful tiara made in 1914 as a copy of the tiara given to her grandmother, Princess Augusta of Hesse, just before her marriage to the first Duke of Cambridge in 1818. The photo of Queen Mary shows the tiara in its original condition with pearl “spikes” at the top level, which Mary had removed around 1935, leaving the tiara in the condition it was when Diana wore it.

Both Alexandra and Mary also had the incredible good fortune of being the recipients of some of the best precious gems the British Empire ever produced. For Alexandra, many of these jewels had been personal gifts to the Prince of Wales during his royal tour of India in 1876, and were reportedly reset to better suit the Princess. On the other hand, both women were the beneficiary of a far more public Empirical gift – the Cullinan diamond. Discovered in South Africa in 1905, the 3025 carat rough diamond eventually made its way to Britain and was presented to King Edward VII in November 1907. As a single stone, the diamond was far too big to put to any real use, so it was cut into nine major stones (known famously as the “chips”) and more than 100 “minor” stones. The two largest stones were given to the Crown and were initially designed as a brooch (seen at left pinned to Queen Mary’s Garter sash) to be worn by Queen Alexandra at the Opening of Parliament. Today, both stones are part of the British Crown Jewels, with the 530.20 carat Cullinan I, or Greater Star of Africa, set in the Royal Sceptre and the 317.40 carat Cullinan II set in the Imperial State Crown.

King Edward purchased the sixth “chip” – an 11.5 carat stone – as a gift for Queen Alexandra, and the remaining stones were purchased by the South African Government. In 1910, the High Commissioner of South Africa presented Queen Mary with 102 of them. The two largest of these, the 92-carat pear shaped Cullinan III and 62-carat square cut Cullinan IV, were set into one extremely large brooch. This spectacular piece of jewelry and all the other stones that were eventually set into various other amazing pieces of jewelry were considered Queen Mary’s personal property.

For all of the two queens’ similarities and shared good fortune in attaining fabulous jewels, there is little doubt that they were as different in other ways as they were in their personalities and appearance. To begin with, Alexandra was an innovator and trend-setter while Mary developed her style early on and stuck with it most of her life. When Alexandra became Princess of Wales, the popular style of jewelry was still heavy, slightly gothic and, certainly at Queen Victoria’s Court, geared toward mourning dress. Alexandra appears to have decided early on that this was not the style for her and did not demure from resetting jewels that were not to her personal style. What she managed to create for herself was a delicate and ethereal style – surprisingly so, in fact, since she always managed to wear more jewelry than seemed humanly possible – that set the fashion for the later Victorian and Edwardian eras. In Queen Mary’s case, although it is apparent that she started out by emulating Alexandra’s style, she did ultimately create a unique style of her own that nonetheless seemed eternally parked in the Age of Empire.

Another difference between the two women can be seen in their approach to decorating themselves in private. As shimmering and ethereal as Alexandra was in public, she was equally understated in private. It was almost as if, out of the public eye, she reverted to her former days as a naturally beautiful woman who neither required nor owned any other decoration. Some of the best pictures of Alexandra are the ones taken of her in private situations where she was simply dressed, with nothing more than a few pieces of basic jewelry – perhaps a necklace with a cross pendant, an elegant string of pearls, or her favorite serpent bracelet (one such portrait can be found at http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=ss&sText=Alexandra&LinkID=mp00072&rNo=2&role=sit). It’s an image that contrasts sharply with the picture Leslie Field paints of Queen Mary in The Queen’s Jewels, “Queen Mary wore a tiara and evening gown every night for dinner, even if she and the King were dining alone.”

I don’t know which image I find more endearing, that of a lovely and modestly bejeweled Queen Alexandra holding either a small dog or a grandchild or that of a glittering and formidable Queen Mary sipping soup in a vast dining room with only her husband to admire her.

Until next week, 

- Tori Van Orden Martínez 

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Postscript:

Like most people interested in the history of the British monarchy, I know that the contributions of both Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary go far beyond what they added to the royal jewel collection. That said, this particular column primarily serves to reflect my personal favorites among their jewels and my interest in understanding their personalities through their choices and styles. Similarly, I readily concede that this brief article has only scratched the surface of these particular contributions. I leave the more thorough and comprehensive “biography of royal jewels” to authors like Leslie Field and Suzy Menkes, and highly recommend both Menkes’ The Royal Jewels and Field’s The Queen’s Jewels to anyone who would like to learn more.

I've also written several other columns in the past about royal jewels, including: The Case of the Disappearing Jewels, Queen Kleptomaniac?, and Hey Lady, Can You Spare a Crown?.

All photos courtesy of Dánjel and can be found on his wonderful royal jewels site, Royalty Danjel, at http://groups.msn.com/RoyaltyDanjel/homew.msnw.