STRIKING it rich was the furthest thing from Tom Walsh's mind when he left Clonmel in 1869 for America. At the age of 19, he had a millwright's indenture in his pocket, and joinery work was plentiful in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he fetched up.
But beyond the Rockies there was a stirring in the air, and Tom Walsh headed west, to Golden, Colorado, where the Central Railroad was looking for carpenters to build bridges and viaducts. Out there, men were moving restlessly from place to place, directed by the siren call, or rumour, of bright gold only waiting to be lifted out of the ground.
Tom joined them, and over the years took some $75,000 worth of silver from the earth - around Leadville, Colorado. But it was the call of the yellow metal that still sounded in the recesses of his head. Back he was drawn to the lode country, to Ouray, where he prospected the Imogene Basin, nine miles from the town.
Day after day he tapped and tested, until one night he came home late, crept into his child's bedroom and whispered in her ear: "Daughter, I've struck it rich!"
$3 million in gold
And he had, like few before him. Over the next six years, Tom Walsh extracted gold ore from the Camp Bird mine, as it was called, to the value of $3 million. And when eventually he sold up, he pocketed another $5 million.
Back east in Washington DC he built at 2020 Massachusetts
Avenue a million dollar mansion. A sweeping divided staircase, with marble statuary on the landing, led to the first of several promenade galleries, lined with books luxuriously bound. A canopy of stained glass fragmented into myriad colours the light pouring down.
The cream of Washington society passed though the portals.
Now move ahead 30 years, and consider this. "I want pity from no one, do not want to seem preachy or sorry for myself, but, as any woman, I should like to be understood a little. Unless you have been put to the test, don't be too sure that you would have made a better mark than I have. Yes money was our devil, but it was not money's fault."
By those words did Evalyn Walsh Maclean. Tom's daughter, render the account of her life to the public. His fortune made, Tom Walsh proceeded to spoil his children outrageously.
It showed early results. As a young girl, Evalyn decided that walking to school was "trying" for her, so she asked Papa to hire a horse and carriage for her. Tom went one better: he bought her a blue victoria of her own, drawn by a pair of matched sorrels with silver bridle bits and a personal coachman in silk hat and gloves.
Born to raise hell
When it came time for Evalyn to marry, in her early 20s, she chose Edward Beale Maclean. Ned, as he was known, was born to raise hell. When his DTs became too severe, he would tie a bar towel to his drinking wrist and pass it round his neck, pulley style, the better to raise the glass to his lips.
The couple honeymooned in Europe. "Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Cologne, Vienna, Constantinople, each one for me stands for a shopping spree," Evalyn fatuously recalled. "One day in Leipzig, we lost patience with the fact that we had only one Mercedes and went overnight to Paris and bought an extra one."
All through her life, and Ned's, there would run this black thread of self absorption and self indulgence that would bring them national notoriety. "Mrs Ned Maclean" even merited a mention by Cole Porter in the words of Anything Goes.
On that honeymoon in Paris, Evalyn turned her mind to the serious question of what her fond father, with his gift of $100,000 (Ned had been given the same sum by his father), should give her as a wedding present.
On the Rue de la Paix she fell in love. The object of her passion was pear shaped and brilliant, and weighed 92 1/2 carats. "It was the Star of the East diamond. It rested on a 34 1/2 carat emerald, which in turn was supported by a pearl of 32 1/4 grains.
Evalyn clapped her hands with delight, paid Jacques Cartier $120,000 on the nail and gaily smuggled the bauble through customs into America.
As the years passed, Evalyn's profligate use of laudanum, morphine and alcohol became dependence. Diamonds were no less an addiction. The high she derived from owning the Star of the East wore off and, by good fortune, Cartier again presented himself and dangled before her an even more alluring trinket.
It was the Hope diamond, 45 1/2 carats of pale blue perfection in the centre of 16 large stones. Evalyn succumbed gracefully, handing over $154,000 for it.
Along with the Hope diamond came the story of the curse that attended it. How the stone had once belonged to Marie Antoinette, who ended up keeping an appointment with Madame La Guillotine. How a later owner, a Greek, jumped to his death from a cliff top. How another had gone down with a ship.
Thunder and lightning
Evalyn professed to find all this amusing. But, just in case, she took the stone to have the curse laid by a priest, a certain Monsignor Russell. And it is recounted that, as the monsignor pronounced the incantation, lightning flashed unbidden from the sky and thunder rolled.
By the time Evalyn came to write her memoirs, in 1936, the Hope diamond was still with her. In a manner of speaking, anyway; it was regularly travelling back and forth to the pawn broker with the rest of her jewellery.
"Money is power," she mused in print. "Power for good, power for evil, accordingly as it is used. I can hear my father talk now of clean money. His came directly from the earth, not from other men. He took pride in that."
But by then, it must have been clear to the Tipperary miner's daughter that there was indeed a curse on her. Her estranged husband was in a lunatic asylum, a hopeless drunk. Her son had been killed in a car crash. Her daughter would take her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.
And she herself would spend the last decade of her life racked by drug and alcohol addiction and would die, it is said, with an awful scream in her throat.