Читать книгу The Pearl, its story, its charm, and its value - Wallis Richard Cattelle - Страница 7

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Although the pearl like all other jewels, has had its periods of extreme and general public favor, unlike other gems if it is once appreciated by an individual or a nation it is never utterly discarded by either. If not the fashion, pearls are always in fashion. Far as we can look back among the dim, uncertain figures of the mystic past whose shades stand where the unknown multitudes have fallen, we find pearls.

The princes of India through all their generations, the dynasties of Egypt, the royalties of Persia, the wild chiefs of Arab tribes, the potentates of Greece, Rome and Venice, the houris of Turkey, the Queens of every European court, from the time they found a place in history until now, all wear pearls. At first thought this seems strange, for of all gems the origin of the pearl is most humble. No titanic forces, groaning in the travail of subterranean convulsions, crushed and ground and fired its particles to shape and beauty. It grew, a few fathoms deep, where the waters are at peace, in the embrace of a mollusk and out of its exudations.

PRINCESS ABAMALEK LAZAREFF

(From the painting by Vitelleschi)

From this lowly parentage it rises at once to a place among the noblest, for it is the aristocrat of gems and finds its warmest admirers among the aristocrats of all nations. The favorites of fortune the world over in all ages have succumbed to the modest beauty of the pearl. Its ascendancy marks not alone the refinement of the individuals with whom it finds favor, but the high status of the nation where it is widely appreciated. The pearl is the favorite of those who are surfeited with jewels. One may become tired of the diamond's splendor, but those who learn to appreciate the unobtrusive loveliness of the pearl, seldom lose that fondness for them which it develops. It is the one gem which does not satiate. The love of pearls usually marks a connoisseur of gems and one accustomed to the possession of jewels. Diamonds emblazon the gates of luxury but pearls are the familiars of the luxurious. Glittering gems are admired by all classes but usually the pearl is fully appreciated only by old countries and persons "to the manor born." It is in the treasure-houses of the princes of the Orient and among the jewels of great and noble families that one must look for the pearls gathered during the centuries. Except in Italy and Arabia, where all classes prize them, the pearl is not a jewel of the people, but of the gentry and the very rich who come in contact with them.

It is essentially a jewel for the wealthy. Unostentatious, exquisite, it is insufficient for those who have no other jewels and unfit for common wear. Of a nature too delicate for rough usage, it must be well cared for and properly housed. Even then the hand of time bears heavily upon it for it is susceptible to many influences which do not affect other gems. Comparatively soft, the lustrous skin is injured by rough and careless contact with other jewels. The gold of the setting, in time, cuts into the surface where it binds, or if it is pierced and strung, the rings of nacre about the orifices gradually peel away. Hot water injures it; gases discolor it. As the cheek of beauty grows dim with age, so gradually the brilliancy of youth fades from the pearl and the complexion of it is changed. And yet it retains a certain loveliness which may well be compared to the exquisite serenity with which the maturer years of some women are adorned.

The pearl, therefore, being essentially a jewel of the rich, is not affected as others by the whims of fashion. In Oriental countries, where the lives of the masses and what little property they hold are practically at the mercy of their rulers, the centuries make little change in conditions and less in fashions. The nobles have always possessed the jewels of the various eastern countries and the fashion continues through generations and dynasties, to accumulate and hold them until some stronger power takes them away by force. As the people hammered heavy bracelets and anklets out of the precious metals, not alone for display, but also to hoard them, so their princes hoarded jewels.

In the old times these hoards of the precious metals were periodically gathered by the requisitions of the princes on the people, and of jewels by the demands of a successful invader upon the princes; but while the possessors changed, the fashion remained always the same, and whether the Shah of Persia, the Ameer of Afghanistan, or the Mogul, there has been no variation in the constant desire to obtain more jewels, pearls among them, and to display them after the same fashion through all the generations.

To some extent this is true of pearls in the Occident also. Since Rome set the fashion there has not been a time in the history of any European nation, once it had risen to the pearl-wearing eminence, when the upper classes did not wear pearls. There is this difference between the East and the West however; whereas the men of the East wear them, in the West, pearls are worn almost entirely by women alone. The more rugged life of European men, the coarser fabrics of their garments to suit climatic needs, and their virile distaste for effeminate display, all combine to bar them from a jewel suited only to soft silks and linens or the touch of softer flesh.

In ancient times, among Asiatics, fashion probably did not culminate in any direction, as to-day, in a vogue. The inability of the masses to follow a fashion of the upper classes, both for lack of means and permission to do so; the absence of all rapid methods of communication between sections of country within and without national borders, with the consequent limitations of a knowledge of men and things to community affairs, and the paucity of manufacturing possibilities, all combined to make fashions permanent. With the awakening of the vigorous barbarian tribes of Europe to a knowledge of their power, and their rapid civilization, came the frenzied desire of men new to the situation, to crowd as much as possible into the span of life.

Rome rioted in the accumulations of ages. With an appetite whetted by an heredity of unsatisfied desire, she drank the finest vintages and gourmandized the choicest morsels of the world, immune from present punishment for excess by a long ancestry of hard and simple life. Every land that she could reach, sent to her the best of all their products, and from the incoming tide of things new to her experience, she adopted many fashions, among them that of wearing pearls. For several centuries they were in vogue, so much so that edicts were issued restricting them to certain classes. Since that time, the very general use of them by persons of high station in Europe, beyond all other gems, seems to have been confined to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is now being revived at the opening of the twentieth.

There is one fashion of wearing pearls which is common to all ages and races, viz. strung as beads in chains to hang about the neck. The mound-builders of North America, the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, of Virginia, of the coasts of Florida, of the lands around the Gulf of Mexico and everywhere in New Spain, all wore them so. Egyptians, Persians, Arabians, Hindus, Singhalese and South Sea islanders, many of them without knowledge of countries or peoples beyond their own or very near territory, alike adopted this fashion. And it has been followed by every newer people, as they acquired by trade or the sword, the pearls with which to so adorn themselves.

In lands of tropic heat the women wound these strings of pearls about their arms, wrists and ankles also. Nor was the fashion confined to women. When the Spaniards first reached these shores, the caciques of Florida and the incas of Peru, on occasions of State, wore ropes of pearls around their necks, and so to this day do the rajahs and princes of India and the eastern islands. The more civilized peoples used round pearls, and became more critical about the quality and perfection of the gems as they grew in wealth and refinement.

The necklaces found in the Indian mounds are made principally of baroques, some of them rounded, but many of them long, slender pieces, bored a short distance from the thinner end, so that they hung in pendant festoons. As with all primitive races, the magnificence of size appealed to the Indians of this hemisphere, as it did also to the Spanish adventurers who first landed on the coasts of America. A chronicler of events during the time when De Soto was governor of the province which now forms several of the Southern States, mentions that a cacique brought as a present to the governor at the town of Ichiaha, a string of pearls as large as filberts, five feet long.

It is noticeable, that in all the accounts given of the wealth of pearls discovered in the possession of the natives, the Spaniards rarely say anything about the shape or quality of the pearls seen or taken, but always mention the size when large. They do, however, constantly deplore the discoloration caused by the use of fire in the process of boring them. One may imagine the chagrin of these freebooters on finding heaps of royal gems wrecked by the ignorance of the plundered; the value burned out of them, like bank notes for millions mutilated beyond redemption. The pearls composing this five-foot string were all discolored,—good enough for Indians, but of little value in Spain and Europe.

Round baroques are strung for necklaces to this day, especially in Italy, where the peasantry save from their small earnings the equivalent of two to three hundred dollars, to them an enormous sum, to buy the coveted necklace of pearls. These necklaces are composed usually of several strands of small rounded baroques weighing about one to two grains each and connected by bars. Usually there are three to five strands, but some are made with as many as eleven or twelve. Necklaces are made also in the same way, of small round pearls, and the bars, of which there are generally four, including that containing the clasp, are studded with diamonds.

The Asiatics prefer strings of large pearls, graduating in size on either side from a large central one. A number of these of increasing length and fastened together at the clasp are worn by Oriental royalties, so that each string festoons below the preceding one, the lowest and longest string sometimes hanging to the waist. There are few however even among the Hindu princes whose store of large pearls is equal to such prodigality.

When pearl necklaces were adopted by the Romans after their conquests in Egypt, Persia and India, they vied with the monarchs they had conquered, some of their rulers acquiring pearls of enormous value. The wife of Caligula owned pearls worth two million dollars, but Oriental treasure-houses held greater accumulations. The pearls of the late Rana of Dholpur in Upper India, were valued at seven and a half million dollars. From Rome the fashion spread with the advance of civilization through all the nations of Europe and followed their colonizations westward. Only in the last decade has the use of pearls in the United States become sufficiently general to place them in the list of things that are a fashion.

Many large pearls of pear, egg, or drop shape, and some round, are used as pendants, to be hung on slender gold neck chains, or suspended from brooches of diamonds. They are bored at the smaller end to a depth of about one-eighth of an inch, the hole is filled with a composition which hardens rapidly, and in this a gold wire, looped at one end for connecting, is inserted. Formerly the pearl was drilled quite through and the suspending wire riveted, but this is rarely done now as it lessens the value of the pearl and destroys the perfect pendant effect. This is a European fashion. The Chinese mount pearls by boring into the body of the pearl at two, three or four points and inserting the bent ends of spreading wires so that the gem is clasped as by spreading finger tips.

Pear-shaped pearls were used in Rome for pendant purposes as now and were known as "elenchi." After the Roman fashion of "crotalia" or "castanet" eardrops had passed, drop pearls continued in more or less favor throughout succeeding centuries as eardrops, the matching of one nearly doubling the value of both. Of late, egg and pear-shaped pearls have been used largely as heads for scarf pins. They are drilled and set on a gold wire or "pegged" as it is called, in the manner described for pendants but with the smaller end resting upon a light gold ring soldered to the scarf pin, or in a small cup, so that the pressure, while inserting the pin, is distributed over the body of the pearl and upon the end, instead of upon the inner wall in contact with the end of the pin.

The Persians used pearls largely in the jewelling of royal headgear, for Pompey is said to have brought home twenty crowns of pearls with the loot from his eastern raid. Hindu princes strung them on straight wires of equal length and bound a number of them together, to be fastened as pompons or aigrettes, to their turbans. They encrusted and edged their robes with them as also did the royalties and nobles of Europe during the middle ages. Seed pearls were strung in lengths of four to six feet and the strands twisted together like a rope. This fashion continues to this day, such ropes of pearls sometimes measuring five feet in length.

The semi-barbarous Indian tribes of America did not confine the use of pearls altogether to personal adornment. They decorated their idols, state canoes, the handles of the paddles, and the figures in their temples with them, and they buried enormous quantities in the sepulchres with their dead. There is no evidence that this latter form of extravagance was at any time general in Asia or Europe, but Julius Cæsar made a buckler of British pearls which he hung up in the temple of Venus Genetrix after dedicating it to her.

Among the ancients it does not appear that pearls were used in connection with the precious metals to a great extent. Collars of gold and silver with large pearls as pendants were sometimes seen upon the necks of Indians by the Spaniards when they landed on this continent, but in Asia, Africa, and upon their first introduction into Europe, pearls were not used with the metals as freely as other gems. As the art of the jeweller developed however, they came into more general use and are now utilized with gold in every form of jewelry. Round and button pearls with diamonds or other stones, or alone, are set in gold as brooches, ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, hair-ornaments, scarf-pins, dress-pins, studs, cuff and dress buttons, etc., and baroques are also used for the same purposes. Brooches, lockets and pendants are paved with solid masses of half pearls.

Some ancient swords of Hindu warriors betray a curious custom. A groove with over-lapping edges was sunk in the blade and into this pearls were introduced from the hilt end to represent the tears of enemies. There are blades so constructed in the collection of Indian swords presented to King Edward of England when, as the Prince of Wales, he visited India.

Jewellers frequently avail themselves of the odd shapes in which baroques occur to construct unique jewels. Nature frequently gives them a resemblance to animals, and sometimes to the human figure and face, which may be accentuated by the jeweller's art so as to make the resemblance striking. In one notable instance lately, a baroque was so mounted that it might easily pass as a modelled portrait of Queen Victoria. Baroques resembling bird's wings are common and are often made effective by mounting them on a bird of gold. Others remind one of fish, birds, insects, and beasts of various kinds. Clustered pearls enveloped together sometimes look like dog's heads, in which two of the enveloped pearls near the surface pass for eyes. Long, slender baroques are set to resemble the petals of a chrysanthemum, and others, mounted singly in sepals of gold, are suggestive of the buds of various flowers, roses, lilies, etc.

VARYING FORMS OF PEARLS

1-5 Abalone Baroques. 6 Blister. 7-10 Twinned Pearls. 11-21 Baroques. 22-29 Round Baroques. 30-31 Wing Pearls. 32-35 Button Pearls. 36-37 Colored Round Pearls. 38-41 White Round Pearls. 42 Jockey Cap.

Round and button pearls are used extensively now, and have been at various periods formerly, as centres for circles, or "clusters" of diamonds mounted as scarf-pins, finger-rings and formerly, when they were worn, as ear-rings. The pearls are sometimes drilled and set on a peg; sometimes they are held by claws or prongs as the diamonds surrounding them are.

Pearls are very generally used now as studs by men for evening dress, usually mounted on pegs so as to avoid the display of any gold.

But all fashions of wearing pearls except as necklaces, are ephemeral. The fashion of pearl necklaces has been constant for thousands of years, though it is only brought to general public notice when some new country with its great and rapid accretions of wealth, adopts it. The markets of the world are then affected, the price of the gem rises, and this in turn tempts ancient and impoverished families to unlock their jewel cases to the bidding of the nouveau riche. That this condition has existed from the beginning of this century is shown by the sales which are being made constantly in Europe at the great public auctions of jewels. In 1901 the Comtesse de Castiglione necklace was sold for $84,000. At the sale of the Princess Mathilde jewels in Paris, a three strand necklace of 133 pearls weighing 3320 grains, once the property of Queen Sophie of Holland, brought 885,000 francs, which with the taxes to the purchaser made the cost $188,000. At the same sale, a seven strand collar given by Napoleon I. to the Queen of Westphalia, weighing 4,200 grs., brought $89,000, and another collar once owned by the same Queen containing thirty-three black pearls, weighing 1040 grs. was sold for $20,240. Several fine strings were sold in London in 1903. Among them a three-row necklace from the Aquila Jewels for $22,400. A string of 198 finely matched gem pearls, round and graduated, was sold at Christie's for 6,500 pounds. A triple row of 153 of the same kind brought 6,500 pounds. Many important sales have been made in the States, during the last ten years especially, but as they were made privately, and as buyers here are averse to any publicity they are not chronicled. It is a fact well known to jewellers, that Americans in their home market are extremely difficult. They demand a degree of perfection, not only in the gems themselves, but also in the matching of them, rarely exacted in other countries. There are strings of pearls in this country which if less magnificent, for extreme perfection and beauty are seldom equalled by the more notorious jewels of Europe, and princely sums have been paid for single pieces of great size and purity. Greater quantities of the coveted treasures of the earth are pouring into the lap of the United States of America through the channels of peaceful industry, than were ever gathered to a nation in the olden times by the marauders of the sword, and the jewel cases of our princes of commerce will soon eclipse those held by the scions of ancient freebooters.