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    Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin
    Unavailable
    Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin
    Unavailable
    Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin
    Ebook428 pages6 hours

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

    By Susan Nagel

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 19, 2010
    ISBN9780062029249
    Unavailable
    Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin
    Author

    Susan Nagel

    Susan Nagel is the author of Mistress of the Elgin Marbles and a critically acclaimed book on the novels of Jean Giraudoux. She has written for the stage, screen, and scholarly journals. She is a professor of humanities at Marymount Manhattan College and lives in New York City.

    Read more from Susan Nagel

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    Reviews for Mistress of the Elgin Marbles

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Mary Nesbit was the richest heiress in Scotland when she married Lord Elgin at age 21. He, in turn, had just been posted as ambassador to Istanbul – a highly sensitive diplomatic position during the Napoleonic wars. His beautiful young wife charmed the Ottomans, becoming the first European woman to visit the Sultan’s harem, and the first to actually see the Sultan in audience (although she had to do that disguised as a boy). Her husband, in addition to his diplomatic duties, was an antiquary, and in his spare time sent agents around the area to pick up old stuff that looked interesting. This included the marble frieze decorating the Parthenon. Mary was invaluable here as well, she was the one who actually organized the collection, packing, and shipment of the Elgin Marbles – in the last effort, she charmed a succession of Royal Navy captains who agreed to transport the marbles back to England on their warships, despite a specific prohibition against private cargo by Lord Nelson.
      With the Peace of Amiens, Lord and Lady Elgin headed back to England overland, four children in tow, and going by way of France. They were there when war broke out again, and Lord Elgin was interned as a valuable hostage. This is where their life started to fall apart. Lady Elgin stayed in Paris and worked “behind the scenes” to get Elgin released; given her past history of success in areas like this, it was certainly a good idea. Lord Elgin, confined in a series of varyingly hospitable French prisons, wanted his wife by his side – despite her pregnancy. Each began to have suspicions of the other – and in Lord Elgin’s case, those suspicions may have been justified, as Mary was supported in her endeavors by Robert Ferguson, an Englishman who had exiled himself to Paris because of his political views. When the Elgin’s finally got back to England, Mary’s final pregnancy was so difficult that she demanded a separate accommodation from Lord Elgin; Elgin, in turn, began opening Mary’s letters and found an exchange of incriminating correspondence between her and Ferguson (also now back in England, and a Member of Parliament). The divorce proceedings were the scandal of the day, with the prosecution at one point calling a former servant who said he had once seen Lady Elgin and Robert Ferguson sitting together and Lady Elgin’s petticoats were around her waist. Thankfully, modern politicians are never guilty of such offenses to morality.
      At any rate, the divorce went through, Mary lost custody of her children but married Robert, and Lord Elgin found a more complaisant second wife and sired eight more children. Author Susan Nagle, although more sympathetic to Mary, is relatively even-handed; it was obviously not fun for Elgin to be in a French prison, especially with the French continuously trying to plant evidence incriminating him as a spy, and while Mary did work with various French diplomats for her husband’s release, she also obviously enjoyed the social life of Paris; thus this is not a feminist diatribe against the inequalities of 19th century English divorce laws. Although everybody’s heard of the Elgin Marbles, I never realized that Lady Elgin was a lot more involved in their acquisition than Lord Elgin, so it was informative. I was also amused to find that the mineral fergusonite, a well-known constituent of several rare-earth ores, is named after Robert Ferguson, who was apparently an accomplished amateur geologist when not attending parliament or Mary. The book does taper off a little abruptly; Mary Nisbet Ferguson lived to her seventies, but her post-Elgin life only occupies one short chapter; I suppose it wasn’t as interesting as her first thirty years, at least in the Chinese sense of “interesting”,br>There's an interesting connection to modern pseudoscience. Mary kept a copious diary in which she detailed, among other things, the various medical ailments and remedies of her family. The Elgins dosed themselves, and were dosed by doctors, with so much mercury that Lord Elgin’s nose fell off. (One of the suggestions made at the divorce trial was that this was due to syphilis and not mercury poisoning, but neither Lord Elgin, Mary, or any of the children displayed any other evidence of syphilis, and chronic heavy mercury use does apparently cause various kinds of skin ulcers. Elgin’s nose was amputated to prevent a particularly unpleasant ulcer from spreading). Mary’s letters to home from Paris are full of admonitions to her nannies to make sure her children took their mercury – mixed with honey or sugar to make it more palatable. And as a result, did the Elgin family develop all the horrible things that happen to you when you look at a fluorescent lamp sideways or get vaccinated? Not as far as I can tell, other than the Lord’s unfortunate nose; none of the family seems to be any more mentally deranged than the rest of the British nobility of the time.
      An interesting book about an interesting person and an interesting time. Let’s say four stars.
    • 4/5
      Mary Nisbet led quite a fascinating life in the late 1700s and 1800s. One of the wealthiest women in Scotland and heir to an even larger fortune, at a young age she married Lord Elgin, aristocratic but debt-ridden diplomat who counted on his wife's money to finance his interest in antiquities. The young couple seemed very much in love in the early years of marriage, but Elgin's frequent travels (both diplomatic and personal) and Mary's frequent pregnancies (which prohibited her from accompanying her husband) later got in the way. Mary did, however, join him in Turkey, Egypt, and Athens, where she thoroughly charmed sultans and pashas. She was the first Eurpoean woman invited to visit the Turkish sultan's seraglio, and she even attended court disguised as a man--with his permission. And indeed, it was Mary's money that paid for most of the expenses of transporting the famous Elgin marbles back to London.The Elgins were travelling during the Napoleonic wars when Mary again became pregnant, this time with their fourth child. She decided to stay in Paris to await the birth, but Elgin continued his travels--in the course of which he was taken hostage by Napoleon's forces and imprisoned in a remote Swiss village. Elgin said repeated demands that Mary join him there, along with demands for luxury items that Mary tried to secure and send. She continued to work at negotiating his release but refused to take on the perilous journey in her pregnant state. Elgin became convinced that she had abandoned him and was enjoying the social whirl of Paris. These quarrels were the beginning of the end of their marriage.Mary gave birth to a second son, William, who was the closest to her of all her children. An early advocate of smallpox vaccinations, she had helped to bring the practice to many of the foreign countries in which Elgin served. Because smallpox vaccinations were not mandatory in France, she decided to nurse William (unusual for noblewomen at the time) rather than risking the use of a wet nurse. Still working to secure her husband's release, Mary was assisted by his good friend, Robert Ferguson, who adored both Mary and her children. Sadly, William died suddenly before his father ever met him; Mary mourned alone, with Ferguson at her side.Elgin's selfishness, anger, and jealousy increased, but once he was released, the couple attempted to save their marriage. Mary became pregnant for a fifth time, and her health was so damaged after the birth that she begged her husband to promist that there would be no more children. Elgin, having lost his second son and needing more than one to secure his titles, refused, and when Mary moved into a separate household, he began divorce proceedings. It didn't help that at about this time, Elgin discovered a letter from Ferguson to his wife that revealed how close they had become (which was VERY close but apparently not yet adulterous). The proceedings scandalized London at the time. Elgin was granted the divorce and sole custody of the children, who were not allowed even to see their mother, but his efforts to gain control over her remaining fortune failed. Still, Mary was, for a time, a social pariah. She married Ferguson and moved north to Scotland, where she lived a relatively happy life, supported by friends and family.Nagel's biography was, for the most part, a fascinating depiction of the life of English aristocrats and diplomats and their wives in both home society and abroad. She includes many excerpts from letters and journals written by those involved, and these add much color to the story. The final four or five chapters sped by with much less detail and at times seemed like a list of dates and events--with the exceptions of Mary's reunions with her son Bruce and her three daughters. Recommended for those interested in the lives of women in this time period.
    • 2/5
      Too much mistress, not enough marbles...
    • 3/5
      This is the history of a charismatic woman, Mary Nisbet, countess of Elgin (1778-1855) who together with her husband the seventh Earl of Elgin played a decisive role in getting the Elgin Marbles to England. The divorce of this couple, fine de fleur from Great Britain's aristocracy, made them the talk of the day. Nagel defense of her heroine, sounds almost hagiographic. Allright, it is not the view of an neutral historian. In feminist eyes however, Mary Nisbet made a choice true to herself, being the only one who could decide about her reproductive rights (not wanting to bear more children after a fifth pregnancy) and the defending of her vast properties, being almost the riches woman in Scotland and well aware of the fact that her husband had a hole in his pocket . A point of view from a woman, which in her day, was unheard of. She paid a huge price, but held her head up high. Choosing the parole "living well is the best revenge". Although the book is full of name dropping and is the author rather brief in explaining mayor issues. I found it a enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      Seldom do I read Biographies and feel so intimately close to the subject as I did with this skilfully researched piece of work. I felt as if I had lived right along with Mary through her travels, adventures, exploits and tragedies. Packed with Romantic locals and historical people. It's an intimate peek into a fascinating life, who was Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin.