See also: Lord Elgin
Thomas Bruce known as Lord Elgin (July 20th 1766, London - November 14th 1841, Paris), 7th count Elgin and 11th count of Kincardine, was a diplomat and military British.
He made his studies with Harrow, Westminster, at the university of Saint-Andrew, then with the Sorbonne.
Par of Scotland of 1790 with 1840, it took part little in the political life. It was named Ambassadeur with Vienna at 25 years. He was lieutenant-colonel of his regiment at 29 years. He was Ambassadeur with Brussels in 1791; Ambassador with Berlin in 1793. It is with Berlin that he became the friend of John Tweddell.
He married in 1799 a middle-class rich person: Mary Nisbet of Dirleton.
It was named Ambassadeur with Constantinople in December 1798.
Wishing that its embassy was advantageous in the Art schools with the the United Kingdom, it made remove Acropole by its manager with Athens, Lusieri of 1801 with 1805: 12 statues of the pediments, 156 flagstones of the plank, 15 Métope S, the plank of the temple of Athéna Nike and a Caryatid, before the Turks prohibit all work there. In all, more than 200 cases. Lord Elgin was attacked on this subject, and was shown spoliation. He had to sell the marbles because ruined, but had difficulties to sell them with the British government. The experts of the time, the Company of Dilettanti at the head, refused to allot them to Phidias, and dated them from the period of Hadrian.
He was accompanied at the time of his voyage towards Constantinople by William Richard Hamilton (First Private Secretary), J.P. Morier (Second Private Secretary), the reverend Philip Hunt (Chaplain) and Joseph Dacre Carlyle, an Arab professor of of Cambridge. Elgin recruited the Lusieri painter with Naples. Lusieri, with the assistance of W.R. Hamilton recruited in its turn a Russian painter called “Lord Elgin' S Calmuck”; uneven, Balestra, and a student, Ittar, to measure the monuments, like two mouleurs. All these people were paid by Elgin, the British government refusing to subsidize the archaeological aspect of the voyage, considering that work of Stuart and Revett was amply sufficient. Seul Joseph Dacre Carlyle was paid by the British government because it had the role of seeking manuscripts in the libraries of Greece. Lady Elgin and its children was also present part of the stay in the East. They were for example voyage to Athens in 1802.
Occupied by its embassy with Constantinople, Lord Elgin went only once, with spring-be 1802, Athens to supervise work of its employees. Since Athens, it made a turn of the Peloponnese, but without the children. It passed by the islands of the Égée at the time of its return ticket Constantinople - Athens: Ténédos (at the end of March 1802), Salamine (May 1802), Kéa (June 1802), Tinos, Mykonos, Délos, Rhénée, Paros, Antiparos (July 1802). It explored Délos and Rhénée, as well as the careers of Marbre of Paros and the cave of Antiparos. It seized some Statue S and antiquities, including one furnace bridge coming from Délos.
Work of the members of the team of Elgin was not limited to Athens. Elgin required of them to also work on Salamine and Égine, in Attique, Morée and in the Cyclades.
The Mentor, ship private of Elgin ran in the port of Cythère with 14 elements of the plank of the Parthenon, 4 elements of the plank of the temple of Athéna Nike and some other marbles (of which the Nisbet throne, gift of the parents of Elgin Lady to this one, throne that the Archevêque of Athens had offered to them). W.R. Hamilton does not succeed in reinflating the Mentor, but in 1802 recovered 4 of the 17 cases thanks to sponge fishermen. In 1803, they is 5 out of 13, and in 1804, 8 out of 8. All the drawings carried out by Lusieri were destroyed by the shipwreck.
To London, the marbles were exposed at Lord Elgin. Some thanked it for having made London a news Athens. Others, like the Company of Dilettanti and Richard Payne-Knigth, refused to recognize the hand of Phidias and dated the marbles from the period of Hadrian. Very quickly however, the controversy changed subject. The problem was not any more Phidias or not; but indeed Elgin had it the right or not to make such depredations. Byron the first denounced the " massacre" in The Curse off Minerva. in 1811. In the poem, Athéna was addressait thus with the narrator:
“'Scaped from the devastation off the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends has spoiler worse than both.”
(“We had escaped with the devastations of the Turk and GothElgin was ruined by the high costs of work and transport. It very often tried to sell its marbles with the British government. The important controversies, concerning the not very legitimate property rights of Elgin on the marbles, on quality, the attribution and the dating of those, on the made depredations with Athens to obtain them, delayed ten years the entry of the marbles to the British Museum, which bought them 35.500 Books in 1816.
Your country sends a barbarian worse to us than these deux-là joined together”)
The business of the marbles of the Parthenon at the time agitated the small world of the British travellers present in Greece: Byron, Clarke, Dodwell and well of others excused or criticized Lord Elgin.
Another important polemic opposed Elgin to the Tweddell family which showed Elgin of the flight of part of work of Tweddell and to have made disappear the evidence after papers and collections of the young died British with Athens were entrusted to him.
His wife returned to the the United Kingdom before him. She had an adventure with Robert Ferguson de Raith, one of the members of her continuation. Elgin and it ended up divorcing. Elgin remaria then with very an young woman.
On the way of the return, Elgin was made prisoner by the French. It was released after having promised with Napoleon to remain at his disposal. It was the end of its diplomatic career.
He always refused to enter to the Société of Dilettanti, even when, after the death of R. Payne-Knight, Dilettanti themselves proposed to him.
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