EVERYONE pronounces it Hope. But at the Bank Mees and Hope, it sounds like HOpuh. Because the Hope banking family lived in Holland in Nederhorst den Berg, in Heemstede, on Keizersgracht and on Korte Voorhout. A lot fancier than their Scottish ancestors.
Jan Hope and Barbara van der Hoeven’s son bought a diamond the size of a walnut and unbelievably blue. When it passed from private hands to the museum in Washington, DC where you can see it, the seller simply mailed it in a nondescript box with brown wrapping paper and $2.44 postage. He stamped it “Fragile”, as a ruse, because a potential thief would know that diamonds don’t break. It’s insured for $250 million.
No, it wasn’t aboard the Titanic, around the neck of Rose DeWitt Bukater, the fictional young lady with ancestry from Dordrecht. But it did look good on her, though.
