Part 14

But to be out of the fashion is more dreadful to women than tears, so it has come to pass that with the increasing vogue of the pearl, less is heard of the superstition and it is dying, not of age or the contempt of knowledge, but by the potency of fashion.

A story already referred to in these pages, that has been current for over two thousand years during which time it has been mentioned by almost every writer about pearls, deserves, for its antiquity and absurdity, consideration here. It is of Cleopatra and the pearl worth upwards of three hundred thousand dollars she is said to have dissolved in wine to drink in costly fashion to her lover. This was, of course, impossible. She may, with the help of the wine have swallowed it like a pill or, as Sir Thomas Gresham did later, have ground it to powder and mixed it with the wine she drank, but to dissolve a pearl of great size as one of this value would be, was a conjurer's feat.

The lime of which a pearl is chiefly composed will dissolve in acid, but the gem although softened, would remain a pulpy mass held by the organic matter interwoven throughout the strata of calcium carbonate. Whatever she really did, or in what form she swallowed the pearl, if she did so, Cleopatra and her pearl are better known to-day to the general public than either of her Roman lovers, and they will probably be handed down through many generations yet to come.

To exaggerate is a common tendency. Dealers usually place inordinately high figures on exceptional gems which they do for several reasons: the great price excites wonder and interest; it makes a large profit possible; it permits considerable reduction to a shrewd buyer; and it pleases the person who finally purchases it, for if the sale is made public the first asking price is usually given as the value of the jewel, and sometimes even that is exceeded. The buyer prefers to have it so because it increases the importance of his possession in the public mind and paves the way for a good price if he too at any time should wish to sell.

One reads constantly in the daily papers of sales where the prices given are enormously beyond the sums actually paid, for the public like big figures. Reporters know this and do not fail to supply the demand. For instance: in an eastern city of the United States, a man while at a lunch counter found a pearl in the oyster he was eating. He took it at once to a jeweller of his acquaintance who handed it to a New York pearl-dealer present and asked him to value it.

The pearl was large and round but, like all such formations in the edible oyster, quite devoid of the nacre which constitutes a true pearl. The dealer so informed them, adding casually, "If it were a true pearl it would be worth several thousand dollars." An evening paper that day had a half column story about it with, "A pearl worth five thousand dollars found in an oyster at a lunch-counter," in black head-lines, and the morning papers of the following day enlarged the story by adding fanciful details.

Undoubtedly in the old days of license when immense fortunes were made not only in trade but by piratical wars, large prices were paid by fortune's favorites for pearls but it is extremely probable that report, bruited from mouth to mouth, exaggerated even more than the printed fables of our times do. It is doubtful if the pearls of ancient chronicles were as fine, judged by the standards of to-day, as we imagine or that all of them were as large as reported. The public were more ignorant about them than now and also more credulous and these invite exaggeration.

Very large pearls which for perfection of shape, luster and freedom from flaws are beyond criticism, are the most rare of all gems. The conditions under which a pearl grows, makes large size, without the development of irregularities in the form and imperfections in the skin, almost impossible; and as they all grow in the same way, by the same process, out of the same sources of supply and subject to the same limitations, we find big and little, fine and ordinary, in about the same proportions as they occurred thousands of years ago; the fish that made them then makes them now, in the same kind of a narrow workshop and within the bounds of a life whose duration has not changed.

Of very ancient historic pearls, the only one of which we have reliable and expert knowledge, is that of the Shah of Persia seen by Tavernier. This and La Peregrina are supposed to be still in existence. Of the very large pearls generally mentioned by writers, three undoubtedly exist, viz., La Pellegrina, the Beresford Hope and one of medium quality in the Austrian Crown weighing about twelve hundred grains.

It is probable that very many pearls have been found, which if generally known would have become celebrated, but of those chronicled, most have passed out of public knowledge. It is probable that some of those about which much has been written were not as beautiful as others which have escaped notoriety. The writer's habit of drawing upon the past to illustrate a subject, has narrowed the literature of pearls to reiterated records of a few great pearls which one by one have been brought to public notice during the past centuries.

Exact and reliable statements about gems are a modern innovation. In the old times unverified report was the only evidence the general public had of them. Crown jewellers, not always quite reliable, would make public some statements in general terms about the jewels of a reigning house. Occasionally, as in the case of France, the state had the crown jewels inventoried so that some fairly definite knowledge could be had of them. Infrequently a traveller published his observations, made under more or less favorable circumstances, of the jewels of some oriental prince. Chief of these was Tavernier, the French jeweller. He not only had expert knowledge of gems but was able by recommendations of the French court, to gain such access to the jewels of eastern princes and dealers that he could make critical examinations of them.

For various reasons it is extremely difficult also in these days to obtain accurate knowledge of extraordinary gems. Dealers for business reasons are chary of information, nor will they make such pieces common by allowing many to see and handle them. The buyer is equally averse to publicity, so that exact knowledge does not pass far beyond the dealer and his customer as a rule.

The finest pearl known is that in the Museum of Zosima, in Moscow, called La Pellegrina. It is perfectly round and so lustrous that it appears to be transparent. It weighs about 112 grains and was bought of the captain of an East India ship at Leghorn.

The largest known pearl to-day is in the Beresford Hope collection shown at the South Kensington Museum, London. It is two inches long and its circumference is four and a half inches. It weighs three ounces (1818 grains).

[Illustration: COUNTESS TORBY]

Tavernier saw a pearl in 1663 belonging to the Shah of Persia which was valued at 3200 tomans or about $320,000 of our money. It was very perfect, pear-shaped, and nearly three inches long. It is believed to have come from the ancient fishery at Catifa in Arabia. Even this great sum was exceeded by Pliny in his estimate of the pearl Cleopatra is said to have swallowed. He placed the value of that at $375,000. As the Shah's pearl was about three inches long, Cleopatra's must have been large enough to reflect on the story connected with it.

It is said Julius Cæsar presented a pearl valued at an equivalent of nearly $250,000 to Servilla the sister of Cato of Utica and mother of Marcus Junius Brutus. The pearl taken from the ear-drop of Caecilia Metella by Clodius to dissolve and drink in vinegar was valued at $40,000.

A large pear-shaped pearl weighing one thousand grains was found at the island of Margarita off the Colombian coast and given to Philip II. of Spain. Some reports say it was obtained in 1579; others give the date as 1560 and say it was presented to the monarch by Don Diego de Temes. It was valued then at something over $30,000, but Freco, the king's jeweller, said it might be worth twice to twenty times as much for such a gem was priceless. It was later known among the crown jewels as La Peregrina. Prior to this, a companion of Magellan reported having seen two pearls as large as hen's eggs in the possession of the Rajah of Borneo.

The pearl which Sir Thomas Gresham drank in his wine to Elizabeth of England is said to have been worth seventy-five thousand dollars. It was reported some years ago that the Queen of the Gambiers owned a pearl of extraordinary luster, as large as a pigeon's egg. There is a story that in 1779 a pearl weighing 2312 grains which cost in India $22,500, was offered for sale in St. Petersburg. It was called the sleeping lion because of its shape and must have been therefore a baroque.

The republic of Venice presented a pearl to Soliman The Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, which was valued at $80,000, and Pope Leo X. bought one of a Venetian jeweller for $70,000. These sums make the prices of to-day seem insignificant and it is very probable that many of the pearls which brought such large amounts would not pass criticism now. Perhaps one reason for the scarcity of large pearls among those taken from the fisheries in this age is that many of them are classed as baroques or are not sufficiently fine and perfect to attract attention. They pass therefore among those considered unworthy of notice.

A brown pearl valued at $25,000 was exhibited by Marchisini of Florence at the Maritime International Exhibition at Naples in 1871. Among the Dudley pearls exhibited at the London Exhibition of 1872 was a necklace of exceptionally fine pearls valued at $150,000. The late Czar of Russia spent twenty-five years in collecting sufficient perfect Virgin pearls to form a necklace for his wife. The Countess Henckel owns a necklace of pearls which for value and associations is unrivalled. It is composed of three strands, each at one time being a separate and historical necklace. One was the famous necklace belonging to the Empress Eugénie which has been valued at £20,000; one known as "the necklace of the Virgin of Atokha," formerly owned by a member of the Spanish nobility, the third belonged to the ex-Queen of Naples. For value this is exceeded by a single strand necklace of large pearls lately bought by a western millionaire of the United States. It is composed of thirty-seven pearls ranging from eighteen to fifty-two and three-quarter grains each, the latter being the largest central pearl. The combined weight of the pearls is 979-3/4 grains and the value is given at $400,000.

A very beautiful and nearly perfect pear-shaped pearl was found on the north-east coast of Australia in the seventies. It weighed 159 grains. There is a pearl about the size of a pigeon's egg in the French crown jewels, valued at $8,000. Many fine pearls, especially black or colored, have been found on the Mexican coast during the last twenty-five years, among them a black pearl of 162 grains and another of 108 grains, a white pear-shape weighing 176 grains, an oval of 128 grains, and three weighing 300 grains, 180 grains and 372 grains respectively, the first two being found in the same year.

In the World's Fair in Paris, 1889, seven black pearls from this district, valued at $22,000 were exhibited. These and others are described in "Gems and Precious Stones" by Kunz. No fresh-water pearl has attained an equal notoriety with the Queen pearl found at Notch Brook near Paterson, New Jersey, in 1857. It weighed 93 grains and was sold to the Empress Eugénie.

Another round pearl of 400 grains, ruined by boiling, had it been properly extracted from the mussel, would probably have been the finest and most notable pearl of this age, though another as large as a pigeon's egg, dropped from the mollusk and lost when the shell was opened, might have rivalled it. The finder was wading in a stream in Ohio, feeling for the projecting edges of the mussels with his feet, and opening them as he brought them to the surface, as was custom there. This, however, may have been like the fish that got away.

PEARLS IN LITERATURE

In all countries where woman has been enthroned in the respect as well as the affections of man, the pearl has been inseparably connected with her in his mind as a peculiarly fitting accompaniment to feminine loveliness. In the romantic dreams of youth, which hide betimes the harsh realism of life under a golden haze of imagery; where belted knights and fair ladies live and move unfettered, and all the impossible delights of sweet desire free from untoward consequences are reasonable; where invincible swords have no thought of the horrors of carnage, and unimpeded love is without cold calculation or following of sorrow, pearls everywhere shimmer.

And when in his exalted moods man paints the shadow picture of the goddess of his life, he finds one gem alone befitting with which to deck her, namely, the pearl. This has come to pass probably because the ideal qualities of woman and the sea-gem are alike, purity and modesty. The beauty of the most lustrous pearl is unobtrusive and its quality is virginal. In our visions of the spectral past, the shades of the consorts of the mighty all wear them.

Pearls hang pendent from the ears of Egypt's voluptuous queens, and Rome's proud matrons. Pearls clasp the dainty flesh of Moslem houris and rest in the soft folds of draperies that cling about those daughters of the Orient, the common mortals of their day might not look upon. Great pearls hang festooned and pendent round the necks of lightly draped Dianas of the warm south lands, and coiled about the brown arms of the daughters of the chiefs in far-off islands of the South Seas.

Upon reclining figures in the ancient palaces of Persia and Arab tents: wherever the proud women of the conquering occident move in stately measure across the high terraces of noble placement: in all dreams of fair women and brave men, are swords and pearls. And this is so because in all the ages, women of high position have loved pearls and writers have told it. In our old world so far, neither earth nor sea has yielded ought else so fit to lie in the bosom of woman, or to symbolize her character and beauty, as the chaste and dainty pearl.

This high atmosphere of precious supremacy and reverence, which surrounds the gem now as it has for more than twenty centuries, is a legacy of Rome. The east loved pearls as beautiful and precious trinkets; while Rome gave to them imperial honors and drew around them the mystic circle of patrician favor. And since that day, in every land where an aristocracy existed or came into existence, pearls have been the familiars of the exclusive.

This natural fitness of the gem for refined associations is recognized by Emerson in his "Friendship." He says:

Thou foolish Hafiz! Say! do churls Know the worth of Oman's pearls? Give the gem which dims the moon To the noblest, or to none.

It is a late echo of the scriptural saying, "Cast not your pearls before swine." No modern poet shows more knowledge of the nature, or a more just appreciation of the delicate beauty of the gem than Emerson. In his "May Day," speaking of the tardiness of the spring, he writes: "Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl."

Evidently he knew of the slow process by which the successive coats of filmy nacre increase the size of the growing gem. Likewise a couplet in "Nature" betrays the poet's observation of the iridescent nature of the colors in mother-of-pearl, and in the gem occasionally when those fleeting tints are added to the beauty of its luster; the lines are a dainty illustration:

Illusions like the tints of pearl, Or changing colors of the sky.

Some of the great poets, notably Tennyson, apparently confuse the gem with its mother-of-pearl, or refer to the latter only when they speak of pearl. In his "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," however, Tennyson in describing one of his beauties evidently refers to the gem:

And a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony.

Writing of the mermaid, the lines are more suggestive of the shell nacre:

Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl.

Again in a sonnet, he evidently refers to mother-of-pearl when he says:

All night through archways of the bridgèd pearl, And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.

This indiscriminate use of the gem's name to appropriate its pearly characteristics is a common poetic license. In Ben Jonson's "Hymn to Diana," he bids her,

Lay thy bow of pearl apart.

Sometimes metaphor is worse mixed, as when Milton in "Paradise Lost" describes the waters above the firmament about the gate of Heaven thus:

And underneath a bright sea flowed Of jasper, or of liquid pearl.

In this poem of gorgeous description, the author makes several allusions to the gem and some of them, especially those in his word paintings of scenes in Eden, are poetically beautiful and true. One delightful to the eye of the mind,

How from that sapphire fount the crispèd brooks Rolling on orient pearls and sands of gold,

and another in the description of morning in Eden, equally beautiful though it takes more license:

Now Morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl.

In his "Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester," a couplet shows that he was familiar with the superstition of sorrow connected with them:

And those pearls of dew she wears, Proove to be presaging tears.

Herrick also associated pearls and tears though more happily as in "Corinna's Maying."

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.

The same poet makes charming reference to pearls in his poem entitled: "To Daffodils."

Or as the pearls of morning dew Ne'er to be found again.

Shakespeare made frequent reference to the gem, sometimes to illustrate the magnificence of wealth and station but more frequently in connection with dew and tears. Oberon says:

And that same dew, which some time on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls.

King Richard III. when he argues with Queen Elizabeth for her daughter's hand in marriage, promises with smooth and brazen villainy to so offset the wrongs he had done her, that:

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transformed to orient pearls.

In "King John" Elinor speaking to Constance of Arthur, says, "Draw those heaven moving pearls from his poor eyes;" and in "King Lear," one of the gentlemen, speaking of the Queen of France when she received the news he carried, describes her mood thus:

Those happy smilets, That played on her ripe lip, seemed not to know What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence, As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.

In "Midsummer Night's Dream," Lysander says to Helen:

To-morrow night, when Phœbe doth behold Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.

Among his recognitions of pearls as a sign of the luxury of wealth and high position, he makes a lord say, in the "Taming of the Shrew,"

Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp'd Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.

And in "King Henry V," the King while deploring the sorrows incident to kingship, says:

'Tis not The intertissued robe of gold and pearl That beats upon the high shore of this world.

These two quotations indicate that the Roman custom of decorating robes and even the harness of horses with pearls was followed in Shakespeare's day by the nobles.

A line suggestive of the high-esteem in which the pearl was held in his day, and often quoted, occurs in Othello's grand but heart-broken self-denunciation just before he stabs himself:

Of one, whose hand Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe.

It is evident also that stories were current then of the western Indian's ignorant prodigality in the disposition of things common to him but very precious among more enlightened people.

In "King Richard III," Duke Clarence sees in his dream of drowning, "Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl."

Several times the great dramatist puts the gem in somewhat grewsome setting. In "A Sea Dirge" however, the bare horror of the idea which grins at one in similar connections, is transformed by the poetry in which it is draped:

These are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

A favorite use of the sea-gem by the lighter poets is to adorn their images of physical beauty. In "Don Juan," Byron, describing one of the Turk's houris in the harem, says:

Was slumbering with soft breath, And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath,

and another poet writes similarly:

Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearls a double row.

Shelley confines his references to pearls almost entirely to descriptions of Nature dew-bedecked, as in the "Revolt of Islam,"

I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled With dew from the mild streamlet's shattered wave,

and another in "Prometheus Unbound" where the chorus of spirits sing:

Nor aught save where some cloud of dew, Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers Of the green laurel blown anew.

In "Arethusa" he uses them to enhance the idea of regal magnificence in these lines:

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones.

The poets rarely refer to the gem as a symbol of spiritual attributes though it is peculiarly adapted by its natural qualities to illustrate purity, innocence, and other qualities of the human soul: nor is it often connected with religious ideas. Among the few, Andrew Marvell in his "Song of the Emigrants in Burmuda," avails himself of it somewhat prosaically thus,

He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast.

One of the most poetically beautiful references ever made to the Ocean's modest jewel occurs in the "The Rosary" by Robert Cameron Rogers.

The hours I spend with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over every one apart, My rosary. Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, To still a heart in absence wrung; I tell each bead unto the end, and there A cross is hung.

No poet has made more frequent allusion to pearls than Thomas Moore. His poems give evidence that he had read much of them in ancient writings and was alive to their poetic value. In his description of Ireland in "Fairest! Put on Awhile," the lines—

Lakes, where the pearl lies hid, And caves, where the gem is sleeping,