Recently we revisited Blickling Hall in Norfolk and were reminded that one of the rooms there displays a huge tapestry of Peter the Great at the battle of Poltava.
The tapestry was a gift from Catherine the Great to John Hobart, the second Earl of Buckinghamshire (1723 -1793), whose portrait by Thomas Gainsborough (before 1784) hangs in the same room, along with that of his second wife. According to my friend, Hugh Belsey, unusually the paintings have hung in the same position since they were returned to Blickling, after being exhibited at Gainsborough’s gallery at Schomburg House in Picadilly.
The earl was given the tapestry when he was serving as British Ambassador to Saint Petersburg between 1762 and 1765. Although Hobart’s mission to effect a diplomatic alliance with Russia was a failure, the gifts he brought home at the end of his tenure made it clear that he made a positive impression on the Empress.
The earl arrived in Saint Petersburg only a few months after Catherine had seized the throne following the assassination of her husband Peter the Third. She very much liked Hobart, who was a handsome man, and in addition to the tapestry gave him a handful of emeralds when he returned home to England. There were rumours of a romantic affair between the Empress and the diplomat, but to my mind this is unlikely since Catherine was at the time still closely attached to her husband’s presumed assassin, Count Grigory Orlov.
Catherine often rewarded diplomats with jewelry. In 1770 she presented a later envoy, Lord Cathcart, with a magnificent Diamond aigrette (a jewel encrusted headpiece in the shape of a feather). Cathcart sold this for a large sum on his return to London.
Hobart however hung onto his emeralds which were later made up into a diamond and emerald necklace. This became a family heirloom. Remounted several times, the jewels were seen at the coronation of Elizabeth the Second of England worn by the wife of the Marquis of Lothian, a descendant of Hobart’s. Eventually sold in the second half of the 20th Century, the emeralds are now thought to be in a collection in Japan.
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The Lothian Necklace