Congratulations to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their royal engagement

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry's future wife
by Genevieve, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC-BY-2.0)


Just last week we were talking about the 70th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. But now there’s even more royal marriage news to celebrate. As you've probably heard by now, Prince Harry (his royal title is actually Prince Henry of Wales) and Meghan Markle are officially engaged.

Markle is joining the highly select group of American women who have married into foreign royal families. Outside of Hallmark movies, where an American girl falling in love with a prince and becoming a princess is an oft-repeated and popular plot device, it rarely happens.

There have been less than a dozen American women who’ve married royalty. American actress Grace Kelly, who married Prince Rainer of Monaco in 1956, and Queen Noor of Jordan, born Lisa Najeeb Halaby, who married King Hussein of Jordan in 1978, are two famous examples. Town and Country Magazine profiles 11 American women who married into royalty in this article


Grace Kelly in an undated MGM publicity photo

And, of course, Britons are not likely to forget Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American socialite who caught the eye of Edward, Prince of Wales, and for whom he abdicated his throne in 1937 after being crowned King Edward VIII of England. The relationship between Wallis and Edward precipitated a constitutional crisis.


Wallis Simpson in 1936


Meghan Markle is also an American, and she's been divorced, too, but that’s where any similarities between her and Wallis Simpson end.

Unlike Wallis, Meghan was divorced long over before she met her prince.

And far from being the social climber Simpson was, Markle has had a professional career as an actor and model (she’s probably best-known in this country for her role as Rachel Zane in the USA Network show Suits).

She’s also been involved in charitable and humanitarian work around the world. In 2016 she was a global ambassador for World Vision Canada, traveling to Rwanda to support the Clean Water Campaign. She's also involved in other international issues, serving as an ambassador for the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. 

Finally, in contrast to Wallis and Edward, Harry and Meghan’s wedding won’t have any consequences that could affect the royal succession. For one thing, Harry isn't the reigning monarch, as Edward was. The Prince is currently fifth in line to be king, and after his brother's third child is born this spring, Harry will drop back to 6th position, making it highly unlikely that either he or his children would ever inherit the throne.

Readers of this blog may be interested to know that there's a Regency-era parallel to this marriage between an American and a Briton at the highest level of society, but the social leader in question was the son of an American president who would one day be a U.S. president, too, and it was his wife who was English. 

When Louisa Catherine Johnson, an English girl of 19, met John Quincy Adams in London in 1794 and fell in love, she was destined to become not only his wife but also the first First Lady born outside of the United States. (There have been only two to date – Louisa and our current First Lady, Melania Trump, who was born in Yugoslavia, which is now known as Slovenia.)

Louisa Adams by Gibert Stuart, circa 1821-26


Louisa had an American father and an English mother, but despite her paternal American roots, her husband's political enemies faulted her for being English. She came with Adams to America in 1801, and thereafter she divided her time between the Adams family seat in Quincy, Massachusetts, a home in Boston and a place in Washington, D.C. Her grandson Henry Adams said of his English-American grandmother that the fact that she was never fully accepted in Boston society was her “cross in life.”

Markle has announced that she will retire from acting (I imagine being a royal is a full-time job) and my guess is that she’ll immerse myself into the charitable work that Harry and the rest of royals do as a matter of course.

An announcement from Clarence House, the home of Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, said that Harry and Meghan's wedding will take place next spring. The announcement also said that additional wedding details will be revealed “in due course.” However, it’s already been reported by the BBC News that the wedding will be in May in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and that afterward the newly-weds will live in Harry’s current residence, Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace.

According to British online news source The Telegraph, it’s traditional for male members of the royal family to get a title on their wedding day (for Prince Philip it was the Duke of Edinburgh; for William it was the Duke of Cambridge) and it’s likely Harry will be given the currently vacant title of Duke of Sussex. If that does indeed happen, Meghan will become the Duchess of Sussex.  


I’d like to join millions of others in sending the newly-engaged couple my congratulations and good wishes. And I like to think that Diana, too, if she were here would be just as happy as her son is about his upcoming nuptials.

The Prince in 2017 in Toronto at the Invictus Games,
taken by E.J. Hersom, CC-BY-2.0

All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Additional sources for this post include:

The First Ladies (Seventh Edition) by Margaret Brown Klapthor, White House Historical Association, Washington, D.C., c. 1994


Friday Follies: the much-married Henry VIII

King Henry VIII, painted by
Hans Holbein the Younger, 1536


Earlier this week I wrote a post about the 70th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Theirs is the longest royal marriage in British history.

The closest second to the Queen’s union with Prince Philip is the royal marriage of George III and his Queen Consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Their marriage, which started out as a dynastic necessity for the 22-year-old newly crowned George in 1761, was to all appearances a happy one, lasting over 57 years and producing 15 children. 

And one of those children, George, the eldest, became Prince Regent and had a whole era named after him. In fact, good old Prinny and his Regency are the main focus of this blog, so I guess I should be grateful to George III and Queen Charlotte!

A portrait, circa 1771, of Queen Charlotte with her brothers and a few
of her children. I'm fairly sure the little boy in red is George, 
the future Prince Regent and King George IV.


However, you really can’t discuss British royal marriages without mentioning the most-married English monarch of them all, King Henry VIII. He wed so many women that British schoolchildren often use this mnemonic device to keep the wives (and their fates) straight: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” (Although technically the rhyme would be more historically accurate if you substitute the word "annulled" for "divorced.")

The lyrics of this song, set to the music of ABBA’s  “Money, Money, Money”  explains what happened to all of Henry's women:




But for me, and no doubt millions of other Baby Boomers, the subject of Henry the VIII and his wives invariably resurrects another song, performed by Herman’s Hermits, titled “I'm Henry the 8th I Am.” (It’s important for the purposes of this song to pronounce “Henry” with three syllables, as in "Hen-er-y"- and of course, pronouncing the "H" is optional, especially if you're Cockney.)

As a child growing up in California, I thought the song was about King Henry. But when I paid closer attention to the lyrics it became clear that the song is about a Cockney gent named Henry who married a woman (the widow next door) who had seven previous husbands, all named Henry – making him Henry the Eighth, naturally.  

When Herman’s Hermits released their hit in the mid-1960s, it quickly became the fastest-selling song in history, up to that point in time, at least. The pop song was actually a revival of an earlier tune, written in 1910 by Harry Champion, a British music hall performer. You can hear a rare recording of the original song here

But once you hear Peter Noone of the Hermits sing it, you won’t be able to get the tune out of your head. I should know; it’s been lurking in mine for decades.  If you don’t believe me, have a listen:






Now it'll be forever with you, too! 

Happy Anniversary to the Queen and Her Prince


A radiant Princess Elizabeth on her wedding day,
with her groom Philip Mountbatten. 


This week marks the 70th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. They’ve joined a rarefied group of human beings who've been married to each other for seven decades. Their Platinum Jubilee represents a remarkable achievement and one that’s unmatched in the history of the British monarchy.

The royal pair married on November 20, 1947, in the first “wedding of the century.” (Almost 34 years later their son, Prince Charles, would wed Lady Diana Spencer in a ceremony that was also dubbed “the wedding of the century.”) World War II had just ended, and Elizabeth and her sister Margaret used rationing coupons to buy the fabric for the bride’s pretty wedding gown.

That was a lifetime ago, before most of the world’s current population was even born. Since those two tied the knot in Westminster Abbey, astronauts have landed on the moon, the United States expanded by two states, and the use of personal computers and cell phones (both devices unheard of in 1947) has spread to every corner of the world. 

And that’s just a tiny sample of the events and accomplishments the world has witnessed over the past 70 years, along with (unfortunately) more wars, global environmental and economic stress, and anxiety over international and domestic terrorism, no matter where you live.  

In the face of such change and turmoil, it’s comforting and even astonishing to see such a solid and enduring union in Buckingham Palace. Only one royal couple has even come close to the Queen and Philip’s marital record, and that was a marriage that took place 186 years before the Queen's 1947 ceremony (more on that subject in this week's Friday Follies).

Prinny, the Prince Regent, had one of the most dismal marital records; his marriage to Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 barely lasted long enough for the two of them to conceive one child. The birth of their daughter Charlotte was followed by many bitter years of recrimination and separation until Caroline died in 1821.

A miniature of the future Prince Regent
and King George IV in 1792 


You could argue that even King Henry VIII, with his many wives, divorces and wifely beheadings, enjoyed more periods (though brief) of marital harmony than our Prince Regent.

But they are a few factors, besides its longevity, that sets the union of Elizabeth and Philip apart from those of their royal predecessors.

One is that it was clearly a love match – the 13-year-old princess was apparently smitten by her handsome cousin when she first met him, and over the following years she couldn’t get her future husband out of her mind. That sort of attraction isn't common among royal couples, especially for monarchs of the past who married for dynastic reasons.

And what I think is even more important, it looks as though the Queen and her Prince Consort have forged a good, working partnership over their many years together, and that they still enjoy each other’s company. I know she probably has more important things to do, but I’d be interested in any book the Queen cared to write offering advice to newlyweds on the secrets of a long-lasting, happy marriage.

On the balcony of Buckingham Palace in June 2012
(Photo by Carfax 2, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)


Unfortunately, the four children of Prince Philip and the Queen haven’t followed in their parents’ footsteps. Here’s a quick run-down of their marriages and divorces:

Charles, Prince of Wales. His fairy-tale marriage to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 produced two sons but ended in a spectacular divorce in 1996, followed by the tragic death of his ex-wife a year later. Charles rebounded by marrying his long-time mistress Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, and their union is at 12 years and counting.

Anne, Princess Royal. She divorced her first husband Mark Phillips, with whom she had a son and daughter, in 1992 after almost 20 years of marriage. She remarried the same year, to Timothy Laurence. That union seems to be hitting its stride – they will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary next month.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York. He also had a highly-publicized marriage, in 1986 to Sarah Ferguson. That marriage, which produced two daughters, didn’t quite make it to the 10-year mark, though Andrew and his ex-wife appear to have remained on good terms following their split.

Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. The Queen’s youngest seems to be learning from his siblings' marital missteps and is still married to the lovely Sophie, whom he wed in 1999. Their marriage appears to be a happy one, and they also have a son and a daughter.

So, if you’re keeping score, from their four children Elizabeth and Philip got eight grandchildren but also a few former sons-and daughters-in-law to keep track of. They’ve also been blessed with four great-grandchildren, including little Prince George and Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, and there's another Cambridge baby on the way.

Clearly, the legacy of the Queen's long marriage is the family it’s produced. Like all married couples, Elizabeth and Philip have had their marital ups and downs, no doubt complicated by being under the steady gaze of the public eye. (If you’re interested in a fictionalized account of the love lives of Elizabeth and her sister Margaret, catch the popular Netflix series, The Crown, which will air its second season on December 8.) 

So, here’s toast to Elizabeth and Philip! And as a further tribute I've attached a video clip of their wedding ceremony, held 70 years ago this week:





Images from Wikimedia Commons

Friday Follies: Happy "Brits-giving"!

"The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris 
I suppose that technically the pilgrims depicted here were
 still British citizens! 


Next week here in the States we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving, a holiday I’ve always considered to be uniquely American, like the Fourth of July.

But apparently I was wrong. Because next Thursday some British citizens will be sitting down to a meal much like the one their Americans cousins will be enjoying, only they’ll call it ”Brits-giving.”

According to The Independent, a British online newspaper, Thanksgiving is now being adopted by the Brits – 1 in 6 British citizens, this news source reports, now celebrate this holiday. 

It's kind of ironic if you think about it, since Thanksgiving commemorates the departure from the British Isles of a bunch of British subjects in 1620. One of the first group of immigrants to America, the pilgrims who boarded the Mayflower were willing to undertake a perilous sea voyage just to escape religious persecution in England.

"The Landing of the Pilgrims" by Henry A. Bacon (1877)

For the Brits to celebrate this exodus is almost as odd as if people in the UK decided to start celebrating our Independence Day with traditional parades, barbecues and fireworks.

But who doesn’t love a good meal with family and friends? And isn’t it a good idea for all of us to take the opportunity once a year to formally express our gratitude for the good things in our lives?




So, if this November finds you in London and you're looking for a restaurant that serves an old-fashioned American Thanksgiving meal, with roast turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, take heart -  Visit London has got you covered. 

And if you’re British and you’ve never struggled to stuff and roast a 20-lb turkey, and especially if you’re not sure what to serve with your bird, The Spruce will help you out with a British Thanksgiving dinner menu.

No matter where you celebrate your Thanksgiving holiday this year, here’s a lovely song by Mary Chapin Carpenter, with music and images that are sure to get you in the mood:


So Happy Thanksgiving, or Brits-giving, or whatever you celebrate. (Canadians, I know you already had your Thanksgiving celebration last month.) When I consider what I'm thankful for this year, my blog readers will be at the top of the list!



Images from Wikimedia Commons

"There's Death in the Pot": Frederick Accum and food additives


Frederick Accum, an engraving by James Thomson
for European Magazine, 1820


Ever wonder what’s actually in the food you buy at the store? Do you scour food labels, straining to understand what ingredients like maltodextrin, diglycerides, carrageenan, thiamine mononitrate, or soy lecithin could possibly be?

It would take a chemist to sort out what's in the food we eat, and a chemist is exactly what Frederick Accum was. He was also one of the first people to recognize the need for regulations and standards when it came to additives in food processing.

Friedrich Christian Accum was born in Germany in 1769. He came from a family of soap-makers, and the family business gave him the opportunity to get an education and train as an apothecary, a professional much like a modern-day pharmacist.

In 1793 Accum emigrated to England to work with George Brande and his firm, who were apothecaries to the ailing King George III. In his new home, he Anglicized his first name to "Frederick," got married and started a family. By 1800 he’d established himself as a scientist and an entrepreneur, writing textbooks, teaching classes and giving public lectures. He also sold chemistry-related supplies and apparatuses and offered chemical analysis services.

"Chemical Lectures," by Thomas Rowlandson, early 1800s.
Critics agree the lecturer is probably Accum.

A scientist of wide-ranging interests, Accum also wrote well in the language of his adopted country. He researched the science behind gas lighting, and his book on this new technology, A Practical Treatise on Gas Light, was ground-breaking when it was published in 1815.

By 1820, though, Accum had turned his attention to food. He studied and wrote about the science involved in cooking, baking, and especially brewing. During this time, the population of Britain, especially in its cities, was rapidly growing. To meet the increasing demand, food was beginning to be processed and distributed by industry, using factories, instead of by farmers contacting consumers directly. 

Manufacturers soon learned that certain chemicals could make processed food look more appealing and boost profits, so they were trying out all sorts of untested additives. These spurious ingredients were added to improve the weight, taste or appearance of food.

Accum was one of the first to analyze these new food additives. He also found that there were very few checks on food manufacturers. Through chemical analysis, Accum discovered that much of the food being produced contained a variety of additives, some of them potentially lethal.

For example, Accum found that bakers were adding alum (aluminum potassium sulfate) to flour, red lead to Gloucester cheese to give it a nice color, and toxic salts derived from copper and lead to give candy brilliant hues.

Other adulterations Accum discovered included “wine” that was really just spoiled cider with additional color, dried blackthorn leaves being passed off as tea, and sulphuric acid added to vinegar to give it an added “zing.”





But it was his revelations about beer, a beverage that was widely consumed and a source of nutrition, that garnered the most attention. Accum’s chemical analysis showed that London brewers were doctoring their brews with iron sulfate, known as green vitriol, and aluminum potassium sulfate to give their beers a good head of foam, as well as Cocculus indicus, a poisonous extract, to give it a characteristic bitter taste.

Perhaps even more unforgivably, Accum’s studies showed that the beer that reached the public was somehow watered down – the alcohol content that registered 7.25 percent in the factory was really only 4.5 percent by the time the consumer got it.

Accum’s 1820 book, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, was a Regency best-seller, all copies sold within a month. Sales were undoubtedly boosted by the sensational cover illustration, which featured a fly trapped by a spider in a web, writhing snakes, and a skull and crossbones, topped off by a quotation from Bible [2 Kings 4:40]:  “There is death in the pot.”

Nobody loves a whistle-blower. Although sales were great, the book aroused the ire of food manufacturers and put a target on Accum’s back. He was arrested and charged with defacing books in the library of the Royal Institution (a pre-eminent London research and education center) and even though the case was eventually dismissed, Accum was publicly humiliated. He left England in 1821 and spent the rest of his life in Germany.

"There is death in the pot"- the ominous cover
of  Accum's Treatise, adorned with snakes
crawling up the borders and a spider in the center
.


When Accum left England, the question of adulterated food conveniently went away, at least for a while. It briefly resurfaced when Parliament passed the Adulteration Act in 1860, but that act had no teeth and was pretty much unenforced.

It took the passage of two more acts, The Adulteration of Food Act in 1872 and the Sale of Food and Drugs Act in 1875 for processed food to regulated in Britain.

You could say that on this side of the pond, the Pure Food Act passed by Congress in 1906 owes a debt to the work of Frederick Accum, as well as the formation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

So whether you buy a loaf of bread, open a box of candy or enjoy a glass of beer or wine this holiday season, you might want to propose a toast to Frederick Accum, one of the first scientists who cared about the health of people who ate processed food and tried to do something about it.


"Hip, hip, hurra!" Peder Severin Kroyer, 1888

Images courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

Sources for this post include:

 “Friedrich Christian Accum,” a chapter written by Rachel Laudan in Culinary Biographies: A Dictionary of the World's Great Historic Chefs, Cookbook Authors and Collectors, Farmers, Gourmets, Home Economists, Nutritionists, Restaurateurs, Philosophers, Physicians, Scientists, Writers, and Others Who Influenced the Way We Eat Today, edited by Alice Arndt, Yes Press Inc., Houston, Texas, 2006 








Friday Follies: Dr. Livingstone, I presume?


Livingstone and Stanley meet in a 1940 image
of a drawing, one of a series of lantern slides for the
Church of Scotland Foreign Missions Committee


On this day, November 10, in 1871, ace reporter Henry Morton Stanley made it to the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Africa and finally found the quarry his editor at New York Herald newspaper had sent him in search of nearly a year earlier: Dr. David Livingstone. 

The famous "medical missionary" and intrepid explorer had been missing from the public eye since 1864 when he'd started off on an expedition into Central Africa to search for the source of the Nile River. Curiosity around the world as to the fate of the Dr. Livingstone had reached a fever pitch, prompting the editor's decision to send Stanley, an explorer in his own right, to the sub-continent.

According to Stanley's own account (which may have been altered for better effect after the event), the reporter ended his quest with this greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Born in Scotland during the Regency on March 19, 1813, Livingstone trained as both a medical doctor and a Scottish Christian Congregationalist minister. As a missionary, he became a Victorian hero known as much for his African explorations as for his attempts to convert the natives to Christianity.

Photo of David Livingstone by Thomas Annan, 1864


He only ever converted one native African to the Christian religion, and that conversion didn’t last. Neither did he achieve his life’s goal of finding the source of the Nile River. But he accomplished other things before he died of malaria and dysentery in 1873 in what is now Zambia.

Here are a few facts about Livingstone, his family, and, of course, Stanley: 

    ·       Livingstone was an ardent foe of the African slave trade and worked to end it.

    ·        Explorer of the African interior, Livingstone mapped most of the Zambezi River and is credited with paving the way for British colonial rule in Africa.

    ·        He was the first European to view the magnificent waterfall in central Africa, naming it Victoria Falls to honor his queen.

    ·        His wife Mary was the daughter of a famous Scottish missionary, Robert Moffat. Mary bore her husband six children and accompanied him on his expeditions until she died of malaria in 1862 in Mozambique.

    ·        The explorer’s eldest son Robert found his way to America during the Civil War and went into the Union Army, under a false name and with a few years added to his age. Most likely Robert was either paid or coerced into the army, or pressed into service while homeless and living nearly destitute at the Sailor’s Home in Boston. (It was a common practice during the Civil War for wealthy men to get substitutes, sometimes by shady means, to go into the army for them.) In any case, Livingstone’s son was wounded in action and died in a North Carolina Confederate prisoner of war camp at age 18 in 1864.

    ·         A native of Wales, Stanley also went to America and fought in the Civil War, volunteering for the Confederate 6th Arkansas Regiment, where he fought at the Battle of Shiloh. After capture and imprisonment, Stanley changed sides and fought for the Union with the 1st Illinois Artillery. After the war, he became a journalist and in 1885 a U.S. citizen. But by the end of the century, he'd returned to England, reverted to being a British citizen, was knighted by Queen Victoria and elected to Parliament, all before his death in 1904.

    ·         The prestigious and exclusive Royal Geographical Society of London awarded Livingstone a gold medal and made him a made a Fellow of the Society.

    ·         After his death, Livingstone’s remains were laboriously hauled across Africa and sent by sea back to England, where they were interred in Westminster Abbey.

    ·         His most famous quote is: "I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward."


    Victoria Falls, located in Livingstone, Zambia


Livingstone is honored with memorials around the world. There are plaques, statues, schools, streets and towns bearing his name in Africa, Scotland, London, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and even in Antarctica.

In 2002, a BBC nationwide television poll revealed that Livingstone is regarded as one of the hundred most influential people in British history, despite the fact that he's been dead almost 150 years.
  
In the 20th century, Livingstone’s life inspired two very different popular movies. One is a serious flick made in 1939, Stanley and Livingstone with Spencer Tracy acting as Stanley:



The other is a slapstick comedy with Abbot and Costello, 1949’s Africa Screams:




And Livingstone’s famous encounter with Stanley was referenced in a bouncy song by ABBA in 1974 ("What About Livingstone?") and also in a song by The Moody Blues ("Dr. Livingstone, I Presume") in 1968.  

Here's a clip of "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume":





The songs, the movies, and the books that have been written about the missionary doctor and the reporter who went in search of him are all proof that Stanley and Livingstone's encounter, whether or not the famous words were actually uttered, has a firm place not just in history but also in the popular imagination. 




Images by IMDB and Wikimedia Commons

Sources for this post include:

Regency controversy: The Elgin Marbles

The Acropolis 

Today’s subject is marbles. No, not the kind I used to bring to school in a drawstring pouch and play with at recess. Rather, the kind that adorned the ancient Acropolis, the citadel in Athens, Greece, since roughly 400 years BCE, and which have been the subject of bitter debate for two centuries.

Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin,
 painted circa 1788 by Anton Graff


It all started in November of 1798, when Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, a diplomat and a patron of the arts, was appointed as an ambassador to the Sultan of Turkey in the Ottoman Empire, of which Greece was then a part. 

Elgin visited the Acropolis and became concerned about the deteriorating condition of the old buildings there. Many had been damaged during the war between Venice and the Ottomans over a hundred years earlier. Especially hard hit were the marble statues and sculptures adorning the Parthenon, the “jewel of the Acropolis.”

Elgin was told by local Turks that some of the crumbling bits and pieces that fell off the damaged structures were being burned to extract lime and used for new construction. By some accounts over 40 percent of the original marbles had been ground into dust. Elgin was appalled.

Originally, the Scottish noble had intended only to document the existing sculptures, and then, later, to use artists to make castings so that the sculptures could be recreated. But Elgin apparently became convinced that the best thing he could do to protect the priceless artifacts of the Acropolis was to remove as much of them as possible and ship the pieces back to Britain.

One of the Elgin marbles - a marble panel (metope) from the
Parthenon showing a centaur fighting a warrior

In 1801 Elgin began the process of removing material from the site. He obtained a couple of firmans or official decrees from the Ottoman central government that he believed allowed him to excavate at the Acropolis, and his crew went to work, crating statues and hacking pieces off the pediments.

Elgin oversaw the excavation and removal of about half of the remaining sculptures of the Parthenon from 1801 to 1812. He justified his actions by saying that if he hadn’t taken the treasures they would have been destroyed by the Turks.

In all, Elgin took 21 statues from the Parthenon, including a large section of the magnificent Parthenon Frieze. His acquisitions also included statuary from other parts of the Acropolis.

Borrowing from an old schoolyard phrase, you could say that Lord Elgin picked up his marbles and went home. 

If only Elgin had taken marbles like these
 there wouldn't have bene any fuss

Except that they weren't really his marbles, although he seemed to think he had permission to cart them off.

In retrospect, and no matter what reasons Elgin had, taking the marbles seems like a remarkably a high-handed move on his part.  

By some estimates, the Scottish diplomat took at least 253 pieces of marbles, along with coins and vases, in two different shipments. (The first load of cargo he sent home was shipwrecked, never making it past the waters of Cythera, an island off of the coast of Greece. Divers found most of the sunken marbles, but there are probably still pieces lying on the bottom of the Ionian Sea.)

Elgin paid all the costs himself, to the tune of about £70,000. Adjusted for inflation and time, that would be equivalent to at least £4 million or $5 million in today's currency.*

Elgin's first wife Mary, whom he divorced in England
and Scotland in 1807 & 1808 for adultery.
 But that's another story.

Elgin had intended to display the sculptures he acquired at his estate in Scotland, but his plans changed when he decided to divorce his wife and found he needed to settle debts. In 1816 he sold his statuary to the British government, charging the government much less than he’d paid out. He wanted £50,000 but the government only wanted to pay him £30,000. After some haggling, Elgin accepted £35,000 for his marbles.

Perhaps out of a sense of patriotism, Elgin actually turned down higher offers for his prizes, including one from Napoleon. Parliament debated not only how much they’d pay Elgin, but also the legality of what he’d done. In the end, Parliament exonerated Elgin for his actions before taking ownership of the Greek sculptures. 

Elgin’s marbles have stirred controversy ever since they made landfall on the British Isles. One of the most vocal critics of Elgin's actions was Lord Byron, a passionate supporter of Greek independence who considered the Scottish lord's removal of the marbles an act of vandalism. 

Lord Byron, dressed in an Albanian national costume


Byron referred to Elgin's marbles in two of his poems, The Curse of Minerva (where he satirically blames the shipwreck of the first shipment on a curse) and also in one of his most famous works, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, published between 1812 and 1818.

In the latter poem Byron writes:

Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.


The Elgin Marbles at the British Museum in 1819


Once they acquired the marbles, the British government put them into the British Museum, where they’ve been on display ever since. But in 1832, when Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, Greek officials asked for the sculptures to be restored to their original site.

The British government refused.

In 2015 a lawsuit the Greek government wanted to launch against the British Museum was dropped, which has been interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that there's no legal case for returning the marbles. Yet Greece still wants the sculptures and other artifacts taken from the Acropolis back and placed in an Athens museum, and the Greeks will no doubt continue to work towards that goal.

Despite popular polls indicating that a majority of the British people support restoring the sculptures to Greece, the official answer is still no. It's hard to say after all this time if the British government still believes it can take better care of the priceless art treasures or it all boils down to a belief in "finders keepers."

U.S. officers discover stolen art stashed by the Nazis
in an Altaussee, Austria, salt mine, Dec. 31, 1944

Some have compared Elgin’s taking the marbles out of Greece as akin to other “spoils of war” situations, such as the organized looting of priceless European art treasures done by the Nazis during World War II, and also the more impromptu looting some American soldiers did when they came across works of art while serving in Europe during the war.

Today there are many efforts from organizations such as the Monuments Men and others to return stolen or displaced cultural art treasures to their rightful owners, whether that’s a government or an individual. But controversy still surrounds the question of who should get to keep the so-called Elgin Marbles.


For a discussion that explains both sides of this debate, here’s a short video by the National Geographic Society:



*Currency conversions made using a calculator at MeasuringWorth.com

Images courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

Sources for this post include:
  • "How the Parthenon Lost its Marbles," National Geographic History Magazine
  • "Spoils of War Returned," Prologue Magazine, a publication of the US National Archives, Fall 2002
  • “Lord Byron and the Elgin marbles,” blog by Professor Panos Karagiorgo 
  • “Greece knows there is no legal right to the Elgin Marbles - that’s why it won’t sue the UK,” by Dominic Selwood, The Telegraph, May 14, 2015
  • "Returning the Spoils of World War II, Taken by Americans," by Tom Mashberg,  NYTimes.com , May 5, 2015

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