I draw your attention to use of the expression “diamond diadem” In Queen Victoria’s Journals online, and suggest caution.
I do believe that the expression might not refer to the Diamond Diadem, pages 22-27 in Roberts.
Following is some of what I posted in 2009 -
Queen Victoria's Regal Circlet is constantly referred to as a diamond diadem in her Journals, but it is the Regal Circlet that is meant and not the "current" Diamond Diadem 1820 (or State or George IV), I believe. I have always wondered if Princess Beatrice altered terminology for her mother's jewels, when editing the Journals, but we have no way of resolving that question. So we really cannot be certain what Queen Victoria herself called any of them.
I was alerted to the following when researching the QV Regal Circlet over the years.
Queen Victoria visited Emperor Napoleon III in France in 1855 and - I believe - wore her Regal Circlet with the alternate elements for the Koh-i-nûr (which include the elements now forming the wedding tiara of the Countess of Wessex) to the ball at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris on 23 August 1855.
A segment from the online Journal [Vol 40 p137] states -
“ for the great Ball at the Hôtel de Ville, to which from 7 & 9,000 people had been invited, I wore a white dress embroidered with gold, & my big diamond diadem with the Koh-i-noor in it. It was much admired by the Emperor & by everybody; he asked if the dress were English & I said no, - that it had been made, on purpose, in Paris. “
In Travels with Queen Victoria by HRH The Duchess of York [as she then was] and Benita Stoney, there is a watercolour by Arthur Diets, for that event, showing the entrance to the Galerie des Glaces, Hôtel de Ville, Paris. Very hard to see but -
on May 25, 2012, 6:28 am
