Mistress Of The Elgin Marbles

by Nagel, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780060545550
• ISBN10: 0060545550
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

The remarkable Mary Nisbet was the Countess of Elgin in Romantic-era Scotland and the wife of the seventh Earl of Elgin. When Mary accompanied her husband to diplomatic duty in Turkey, she changed history. She helped bring the smallpox vaccine to the Middle East, struck a seemingly impossible deal with Napoleon, and arranged the removal of famous marbles from the Parthenon. But all of her accomplishments would be overshadowed, however, by her scandalous divorce. Drawing from Mary's own letters, scholar Susan Nagel tells Mary's enthralling, inspiring, and suspenseful story in vibrant detail.

Author Biography

Susan Nagel is a professor in the humanities department of Marymount Manhattan College. She lives in New York City

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Chronology	xv
Family Tree	xx
Introduction	1	(6)
Launched from a Safe Harbor	7	(11)
New Horizons	18	(11)
The Newlyweds Set Sail	29	(10)
A Battle of Beauties	39	(6)
Letters: A Lifeline	45	(15)
Constantinople: ``Ambassadress Poll'' Makes Waves	60	(18)
Motherhood: Mary's North Star	78	(12)
Captain of Her Ship	90	(9)
Favorable Winds	99	(8)
The Stronger Vessel	107	(12)
Scuttled	119	(5)
Awash in Antiquities	124	(6)
The Acropolis: Caution to the Wind	130	(13)
Sailing, Sailing	143	(5)
The Calm Before the Storm	148	(4)
Shanghaied	152	(10)
In Irons	162	(9)
Rudderless	171	(11)
At Sea	182	(10)
Drowning in Debt	192	(11)
Breakwater	203	(12)
Shipwrecked	215	(13)
Rescued	228	(10)
A Beacon	238	(13)
Starboard Home	251	(4)
Epilogue	255	(6)
Appendix	261	(14)
Notes	275	(6)
Bibliography	281	(4)
Index	285

Excerpts

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles
A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin

Chapter One

Launched From a Safe Harbor

In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, England and Scotland formallyratified an agreement officially creating the United Kingdom.This uneasy truce, which hoped to end centuries of violence betweenthe two countries, was really established for the economic enrichmentof both parties. Before 1707, Scotland's ancient royal, military, andcommercial alliance with France, stemming from the 1295 AuldAlliance and various royal unions between the Scottish Stuarts and theFrench Bourbons, antagonized the English. The frequent insurrectionsby the Scots -- an ongoing attempt to secure a Stuart on the throne of aunited kingdom -- and the belief by English noblemen that Scotlandwas an inferior stepsibling provided little reason for Englishmen toallocate their resources to Scottish businesses and alliances. With thenew establishment of a legally protected partnership, the tide wouldnow turn, making it more attractive for Scotland and England to settletheir differences. England could now take advantage of Scotland'scheaper labor force and considerable supply of natural raw materials;from the Scottish point of view, once aligned with England, theexpanding English colonial empire would provide tariff-free consumers.

In 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of the deposed Stuart and Catholic king James II, led one final insurgence to place, onceagain, a bona fide Scot on the English throne. Although some Highlandfactions, known as "Jacobites" for their loyalty to King James, supportedthe young pretender to the throne, Prince Charlie was defeated,causing the collapse of the Stuart schism. Despite the fact that theprince's five-month adventure, after he escaped and was supposedlyhiding in the hills with the help of a lass named Flora Macdonald,made for a very romantic legend, his failure unintentionally furtheredthe stabilization of English-Scottish relations for a very practical reason:the British Empire was expanding, and the Scots did not wish tobe left behind.1 In 1754, England cemented its holdings and controlover India, leading the way to immeasurable riches; and in 1763, victoryover France as a result of the Seven Years War netted the United Kingdomvast territorial gains in America, and yet again additional wealth.

Empire empowerment brought another dividend: creativity at home.Inventions by James Watt (the steam engine), Josiah Wedgwood (divisionof labor in factories), Joseph Priestley (early studies of electricity),energized a new class of commerce on the scale of mass production.

The city of Edinburgh, a stunning and dramatic town built high onvolcanic rock, bordered at one end by a gigantic seventh-century castleand at the other by the Crown's Holyrood Palace, became in the eighteenthcentury a stimulating center of modern achievement and progressivethought. Success was evident at the bottom of High Street, theCannongate section of town, beside the newer Holyrood. Cannongatebecame the fashionable hub for prosperous merchants, Scottishbaronets, architects like the Adams family firm, and philosophers likeDavid Hume and Adam Smith. America's preeminent colonial doctor,Benjamin Rush, attended the University of Edinburgh's medical schoolto study the newest ideas and treatments. Perhaps by accident, Edinburghhad become an international city and its inhabitants quite cosmopolitan.Those prosperous Scots who journeyed frequently to Londonalso made the Grand Tour, and some even traveled to the far-flung out-posts of Great Britain's burgeoning empire. In the 1790s, the futureFrench kings Louis XVIII and Charles X both resided at HolyroodPalace for a time after their brother and his family were guillotined.

New thought included debate on the God-given rights of man.Themovement against tyranny resulted in campaigns such as the Societyfor the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the rebellion of the Americancolonies, which helped stir the Whig Party into action against themonarchy in England.

Barely six months after the ink had dried on the American Declarationof Independence a quiet but significant merger took place. On January31, 1777, an illustrious daughter of England, Mary Manners, thetwenty-year-old granddaughter of the 2nd Duke of Rutland, marriedWilliam Nisbet of Dirleton, a Scottish landowner. As the niece of the3rd Duke of Rutland, who, in August 1762, was among less than ahandful of people asked to witness the birth of the Prince of Wales,and first cousin to the then current 4th Duke of Rutland, Mary MannersNisbet traveled in the most rarefied of British aristocratic circles.William Nisbet possessed the distinction of belonging to the small butenviable group of people who controlled the majority of land in Scotland.As the smallest percentage of people to control the largest amountof land in all of Europe, these Scots were richer than most Europeanprinces. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- and some wouldargue it still exists today -- this group of landowners formed its ownclose-knit aristocracy. One year and three months after the Manners-Nisbet wedding, Mary and William Nisbet had a daughter, MaryHamilton Nisbet, born on April 18, 1778. Upon her birth, tiny Marywas immediately, though unofficially, crowned the royal princess of thislanded association as one of the richest heiresses in the new UnitedKingdom of Great Britain. What was unusual about Mary's inheritancewas that it would be passed to her, not to a male heir (under Scottishlaw, a brotherless daughter such as Mary inherited); and most of itwould come to her via a matriarchal chain of ancestors.

Mary grew up in the fairy-tale, bucolic village of Dirleton, approximatelythirty-six square miles of the country's most arable land, situatedeighteen miles east of Edinburgh in the corner of Scotland knownas East Lothian. Her home, called Archerfield, sat in what was once asylvan, medieval, Benedictine sanctuary a few acres from the centuriesoldruins of Dirleton Castle, a reminder of Scotland's violent, bloodyhistory, which was also part of the Nisbet estate. The name Dirletonmeant "ton" (or "town") of "Dirl," or "trembling."

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles
A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin. Copyright © by Susan Nagel. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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