by Susan Nagel
On the eleventh of March, their first wedding anniversary and just four months after their arrival in Turkey, Mary confided to her mother:
I am rather annoy’d about our expenses, for they are enormous; we must knock off some, and we know not what. We have sixty people to feed every day, independent of the company at our own table, that we have almost constantly. We shall go into the country as soon as I am able, and then I shall get rid of as many people as I can.
The British government paid almost none of these expenses, and the staff was often not paid until the term was over, when Elgin would submit his expenses for approval. Mary often dug into her own accounts to keep them from getting stranded. It was Mary Nisbet whose money kept the embassy afloat while Elgin made grand and extravagant public gestures to other ambassadors and his host government. Elgin himself borrowed heavily to build the Mentor, and as it was of indispensable use to the Royal Navy, he thought surely the government would defray the costs of its own militia. He frequently arranged for supplies for the army that had to be financed. The British government was not forthcoming, and that was a stunning blow.
Much as she adored luxury, Mary displayed a hardheaded practicality about her gifts, often sending trinkets home to be appraised and sold. She was in frequent contact with her favorite jewelers, Rundell & Bridge, asking them to mount stones, sell medals, and send unusual pieces for her to offer as gifts. As early as 1799, without even knowing the entire scenario of her husband’s financial quagmire, Mary tried to control their budget.
I have written to Rundell & Bridge to tell them I have endeavored to dispose of the ornament for the Head & Arms but I have not succeeded which I am sorry for. I did not let Elgin buy it because it was too dear … I hope it will not make Bridge uncomfortable my sending it back … I should have been happy to have taken it but really that thing would have been extravagant, & I am turned Economist!
She had a sensible attitude toward money and understood the value of things. Waiting for her parents’ arrival in Constantinople, she wrote a note to her father congratulating him: “The General says you are certain of coming, and that my Father has let his grass at £8 an acre!” To her mother-in-law she wrote:
The Sublime Porte sent me a very ugly … Egrette, saying at the same time I was to have so much money with it. Upon this I said I would rather order a Necklace from London; they immediately sent me the whole Sum & begged I would do what I pleased with it—now my idea was that it was best for me to take ye Cash in the meantime, and then on my return to England I may do what I like with it.—Elgin you may be sure was against this as he is always clear for my having any fine thing; but you see I am become prudent!
She was also generous to those in need, exhibiting a kind heart and Christian attitude toward her money when she took “a poor little English girl into the house; she is a soldier’s daughter. Her mother died a few months ago, and her Father died last week; she is 14 years old, and works very neatly. I make her work, milk my cow, and feed the poultry.”
The Dowager Lady Elgin understood the enormous expense involved in her son’s accepting his great role as a public servant—having to feed and shelter any number of British staff, servants, and military visitors; she had asked the Prince of Wales to forward some money to the young Elgins on behalf of the British people. In early 1801, Mary wrote her mother-in-law stating that she would wait for the prince’s answer before she dug into her own capital. When the king sent the young couple a paltry £100, Mary thanked her mother-in-law and said she would use the money to tip her staff, especially the female employees, who were not receiving as many extra gratuities around town as the men were.
It didn’t take Mary long to realize that the Crown and Parliament expected young Lady Elgin, an heiress, to “pony up” for king and country. Mary was a bit less prepared to be the embassy’s pocketbook than was her own father, who had been in politics and understood its ways. The usual procedure for an embassy was that its ambassador would receive a certain salary, and then further expenditures—if legitimate and approved—would be reimbursed upon completion of the ambassador’s term. Mr. Nisbet, as the rich father-in-law of a poor son-in-law in service to His Majesty, accepted the fact that he was expected to fund certain expenses until the time—whenever that would be—when Elgin would be called back to England. Mrs. Nisbet, thrilled at the opportunity for her daughter to serve the Empire, also viewed such expenditures as a necessary evil.
Expenses for the Elgins were so far above their allotment that they were constantly petitioning for funds and salary increases. Mary’s bankers, the Coutts, regularly dispensed money. The Dowager Lady Elgin and Lord Elgin were compulsive about retaining the best and most expensive doctors, and although Mary agreed with proper medical care, she thought their obsession was excessive: “I scolded poor Tommy most dreadfully I think I completely alarmed him with the rattle I gave him upon Economy!!! What said I Tommy a Guinea a day for a pulse feeler! Shame! Shame! After I had vented my spleen upon your trembling Tommy,” Mary reluctantly made the best of what agreements Elgin had already made. He knew that Mary was a woman of honor, and he counted on her to make good when he overspent.
Before Elgin left for Turkey, Parliament made it clear to Elgin that his archaeological program was to be privately funded. The Nisbets at first viewed Elgin’s artistic interest as a frivolous hobby, and they, too, made it clear to him that in that arena he was financially on his own. With hopes of eventually being reimbursed by the government for government expenditures, Mary’s parents did not mind opening their checkbooks for the good of their country, but they slammed shut their pocketbooks for his cultural project. In May 1801, however, they did a volte-face when, on their voyage home, they received the ancient gymnasiarch’s throne. This chair was of such historical import that the Nisbets were awed, and as with Elgin when he received his inscription, their passion was ignited for acquisition. They then began to urge their daughter to collect as much memorabilia as she possibly could. The Nisbets began to enjoy the idea of competing with such collectors as the Duke of Arundel, King Louis, the pope, and Napoleon and proceeded to fund their son-in-law to a degree they all could not have foreseen. Elgin’s original plan to pay his artists totaled about £600 per year. When the project ballooned into one of excavation, so did the costs.
Elgin perceived his wife’s inheritance as limitless and paid no attention to the consequences of his spending. It wasn’t until years later, when his expenditures were, in fact, finally tallied, that he learned the full extent of his debt. Instead of the nominal amount expected, his undertaking cost him around £40,000, a truly staggering sum. The salvage operation of the Mentor alone cost over £5,000. He admitted later, “All the money I had drawn upon public account, the whole proceeds of my patrimonial estate, my wife’s fortune, and every private fund at my disposal had been absorbed; and a debt was awaiting me of about £27,000 accumulated during my foreign life.”
Mary, on the other hand, was acutely aware of their dwindling accounts, and she urged him to restrain his shopping impulses. When they were detained in France, Mary wrote to Mrs. Nisbet, “I wish E. would think a little more about money” and “Of all things on earth, I most wish to clear off all debts.” Elgin, on the other hand, perceived their stay as an antique-buying opportunity, as the revolution had caused tremendous hardship for the nobility. Through an agent called Quinton Crawford, he bought vases, furniture, and trinkets. He bought cases of French wine and purchased some fifty-four old master paintings.
When Mary returned to London, she found things in a worse state than she could have imagined. She consulted Coutts once again to find a way to pay Elgin’s French debts. Unless he could buy cheaply and sell in London at a profit, as with the much desired furniture made by Charles Boulle, she warned, “for Heaven’s Sake buy nothing in the world more…. You know I am sure my dear Elgin I like pretty things as much as any body…. Only think of all the stock being gone … there are Bills owing here to the amount of three thousand
pounds & the people are always asking of their money & indeed it looks disgraceful not to pay them.” She did, however, give him permission to pick up her almond paste from the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré perfumer Houbigant, when he once again arrived in Paris, and she herself had bought some articles for Madame de Talleyrand, who had given her a shopping list.
Most of Elgin’s stock had been sold to pay off loans that had been called in. What remained of his portfolio contained investments worth only £600. In addition, Mr. Dundas juggled one loan to pay another. Elgin had borrowed money not only from his own brother but also £2,000 from Lady Robert, “which annoys me,” Mary admitted. There were only two remaining avenues of income, and Mary thought these were both, at best, precarious. One was reimbursement from the British government, and the hope for a full pension in gratitude for her husband’s fine services. She pointed out to her mother that the government had, in fact, offered full pensions in other cases. She also began, unfortunately for her children, an aggressive program of selling off jewels, medals, porphyry, furs, horses, and whatever gifts from the Turks she could dispose of. Still, neither one of these sources would solve their problem for the long term.
Mary was disgusted that Elgin had even alienated his closest advisers—his own father-in-law, Mr. Nisbet, Mr. Oswald of Dunnikier, and his attorney, Mr. Dundas—when he refused to take their expert advice concerning Broomhall. Mary saw this as a terrible tactical error, and she, therefore, assumed the role of go-between attempting to smooth all the feathers Elgin had ruffled. “Write kindly to Oswald, he is really your friend,” she advised him. “Now Elgin if you recollect, you provoked both my Father & Mr. Oswald.” Mr. Nisbet was “piqued,” furious with his son-in-law for representing that his annual income was some £7,000 when he had come to Archerfield to propose marriage to Mary. This, of course, was an omission of his liabilities and was therefore a gross overstatement. Mary, too, acknowledged a fault in his character: “Elgin I have been often told & indeed it is true, you quickly make friends but you as quickly let them down.” Rumors had spread around London, and the Nisbets had heard them as far off as Malta on their return home, that Elgin had involved himself in some underhanded trading. While she defended her husband to everyone, she privately accused him of keeping secrets from her. The ever disgruntled Smith brothers had led people to believe that in the course of transporting food to the British militia on his ship, the Mentor, Elgin had engaged in profiteering, when the exact opposite was true. The cash records painstakingly detailed the quantities of grain going to feed England’s soldiers at war and all payments and costs involved in the transactions. To the general public, Mary dismissed the Smiths’ charges as jealous nonsense and appeared to brush the charges aside as insignificant; privately, however, she confided to her husband that she was suffering from the daily trial of having to face the ugly innuendos without him and she once again faulted him for sending her home alone. She was willing to face any scandal, she told him, as long as they were together.
In the winter of 1805-6, for the first time in history, a newly appointed lord mayor of London was going to be a Scot. All of the Scottish nobility and English royals were to attend grand inauguration festivities. The unsinkable Countess of Elgin planned to valiantly put her best foot forward despite her personal difficulties and attend the events wearing all her diamonds: “You have no idea of any thing more beautiful than my Diamonds, I intend to make a grand shew and one of my Paris gowns, I put one on the other night, you would be astonished the immense admiration it met with.” Her husband, who wanted her sequestered quietly in her father’s house and out of the social limelight, felt threatened by the power of her charisma. She chose to believe that he was not threatened but was merely convinced that a woman could not do the job of a man. As she had proved him wrong in the past, she understood her own capabilities were limitless, and she boldly seized the reins: “I have no doubt but that with proper management we may do well & handsomely. I have one or two plans in my head, for I am always ploding.”
Elgin had plans of his own, and in December 1804 he had written to his aide William Hamilton instructing him to find a spectacular town house in London that would display the collection of marbles. Elgin informed Hamilton that money was no object because his wife would pay for the house out of her own account. Hamilton made discreet enquiries and suggested Buckingham House, later the core of Buckingham Palace. When the topic was reintroduced to Mary, as she had already dug into her own capital to bail out her husband’s often grandiose plans, she sidestepped the issue and the matter was dropped. As the marbles began arriving in London, a home had to be found, and Elgin insisted that no ordinary, simple place would do. Through the Dowager Lady Elgin’s connections he was able to display the marbles for a while at the enormous and imposing Gloucester House on Green Park, today the home of the Hard Rock Café. Mary sincerely understood, and even admired, Elgin’s passion to preserve the treasures, but when import duties began to mount, she asked him the practical question “Where is the money to come from?” Elgin dismissed Mary’s concern, assuming that the question was rhetorical. He expected his financial needs to be met by the heiress he had married. She begged him:
Oh my dear Elgin, if you would let me manage matters as I wish, I really think bad as every thing has turned out, I could bring things into some degree of order—you know not what I am capable of when I take things in hand—but then you must give me unlimited powers till I have got all in order & above all things you must buy not another article—Elgin take my advice, listen to me, if you know what I have done since I have been home, and how much I have gone through and suffered from vexation and I may almost say despair, in finding everything in such a desperate state.
An offer was extended to Mary, while Elgin was still in France, to dispose of their extensive marble collection, and she shrewdly placed the ball back in the opposition’s court, revealing a total canniness for negotiation with the toughest politicians whose own skills were considered fierce: “This very day I have had proposals from Govt. about the Antiquities, I desire them to make their offer, that it is impossible for me to fix any sum—I shall see what is said, it is always well to have that in ones power.”
As she herself admitted, she had no idea of their worth, so before she would consent to selling the marbles to the British government, she wanted to estimate their cost. She consulted two very knowledgeable men whose opinions she valued, Robert Ferguson and Sir Joseph Banks.
Mary knew that Elgin would be relieved to learn that Robert Ferguson had, indeed, arrived in London to welcome her and come to her rescue, orchestrating the quiet sale of horses and pictures. Elgin vacillated in his confidence in Mary, but he had every confidence in Robert Ferguson’s abilities to negotiate fair prices for his livestock and objets; he placed so much trust in Ferguson that he even appointed Robert guardian of the children in his absence. Robert, true to his word, introduced Mary to his mentor and friend, Sir Joseph Banks, and she deemed the elderly Banks kindhearted. Banks, internationally famous for accompanying Cook on his first voyage to Australia, had generated much excitement when he returned from his journey bringing back thousands of species of flora that were new and exotic to European scientists and agriculturalists. He had proved influential with Napoleon in the past on Ferguson’s behalf, and Ferguson and Mary, who wisely befriended Lady Banks, persuaded Banks to now wage a letter-writing campaign to Napoleon and Talleyrand on Elgin’s behalf. “Ferguson is a great friend of Sir J.B. [Joseph Banks] the plan will now immediately be settled.” Sir Joseph also took his colleagues to view some of the Elgins’ collection of antique drawings, which were deemed lovely. Mary, interested in an appraisal of the Greek marble collection, sought the opinions of these experts as to the value of the collection.
Ferguson was thrown into an unenviable position. Mindful of his great friendship with Elgin, he was, unfortunately for him, still in love with Lady Elgin, and he had a very hard time fighting his feelings for her. Referring to her as “*” in hi
s diaries, he visited her often at her 60 Baker Street address and not at gatherings at the Nisbets’ house, where most other people saw her. He came daily on the pretense of discussing her finances, her children, and his efforts to get Elgin home. Their meetings were most often late in the evening after the children had gone to bed. When he arrived in London, Mary was in the final stages of her fifth pregnancy and was extremely uncomfortable, often changing into loose-fitting robes from her constricting party attire. In this informal and intimate setting, the two remained alone until the early hours of the morning. Mary would let him out before dawn while the servants were still asleep.
Chapter 21
BREAKWATER
Elgin I will never have any more Bratts I cannot bear this suffering—and this time I have been much worse than ever—my mother entreats no more babies. I would upon my word if I had my choice rather die,” Mary wrote her husband on New Year’s Day, 1806. On January 18, she continued:
My Elgin I never suffered so much in all my life—any thing on earth would I do for you, but I solemly declare you I cannot cannot undergo this suffering again: life is a burthen to me at this rate—Elgin say you will harken to my prayer, this is the fifth time I have suffered, I am worn out & would rather shut myself up in a nunnery for life—my life is in your hands—you must decide my fate— … I will live where you like and never see a Soul, but this agony I will not encounter.
