The Black Prince’s Ruby
The historical stories tell fascinating tales of changes of ownership, as the gems endure across the dying centuries. In the state crown of Britain, guarded in the Tower of London, is a stone called the Black Prince’s ruby. It belonged, when first we hear of it, in 1367, to the King of Granada. Don Pedro, King of Castille, slew him and took the gem. But Edward III of England, the monarch who established the Order of the Garter, had sent Don Pedro some 5,000 men; in thanks for these services, the triumphant Spaniard sent the ruby to Edward’s son, the Black Prince. The ruby was pierced at the top, as though it had, back in its unknown past, been part of a fabulous necklace of an Orient potentate; today, the hole is filled with a small ruby set in gold. The Black Prince, dying before his father, left the stone to his son, who became King Richard II in 1377 and was deposed by Henry IV in 1399 and probably murdered in the very Tower where the ruby now rests. Henry V, to whom it came in his turn, wore the stone at the Battle of Agincourt, where against great odds he defeated the French. After that, it was deemed safer to leave the gem in London; there it became part of the crown jewels. But the crown jewels were scattered by the Puritans in 1642, after Cromwell became Lord Protector. With the Restoration, the Black Prince’s ruby was returned to the crown and has remained unharmed since—save that modern methods of examination have revealed that it is not a ruby at all, only a “balas ruby,” that is, a spinel.
Other Precious Stones
The Stuart sapphire, a great oval an inch and a half by an inch with a hole near the top, can be removed from the royal crown and used as a pendant. This sapphire, after James II was deposed by the Bloodless Revolution of 1688, was carried away from England by the Young Pretender, who—when he grew older and more sage—bequeathed the sapphire, along with other Stuart relics, to George III of England. Since then, it has rested quietly in the crown.
Other precious stones have had their historic moments or movements. Catherine the Great of Russia sent thousands of workers into the Ural mines to hunt for amethysts. Some of Napoleon’s gifts to the Empress Josephine were of emeralds and pearls. The American Museum of Natural History holds among its treasures a great star sapphire weighing 563 carats.
The Crystal Palace
Almost impatiently, however, when great gems are discussed, everyone turns from the other precious stones to talk of diamonds. At the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the pride of Prince Albert in 1851, stones of all sorts were on view. The collection of gems from India, the great subcontinent that was soon to change the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland into an Empire, was stupendous. Queen Victoria noted in her diary: “The girdle of nineteen emeralds is beautiful, all set round with diamonds and fringed with pearls. The rubies are even more wonderful and one is the biggest in the world ... I shall certainly make them Crown Jewels.” Among the pieces exhibited by the lapidaries of Calcutta were strange creations never seen in the western world before: gowries (“blackamoors’ teeth”), golden gothas, ferozahs, a gallobund set with diamonds, and other wonders that have since fallen out of the dictionary. There were also educational exhibits, new and world-shaking inventions like Nasmyth’s steam-propelled engine, the Folkestone express locomotive, and McCormack’s reaping machine from America. But the gaping crowd passed by all these prizes to gather and stare before the diamonds.
The Diamonds
There were diamonds for which there should have been automation to count the value. The great collection of Henry Thomas Hope and his son was displayed, all the glory of their Hope chest, including the mysterious blue stone that came to be called the Hope diamond. There on white velvet lay the great Black Diamond of Bahia, weighing 350 carats, so hard that no one had been able to shape it with facets. And there, not far from a replica of the ship that had just brought it from India, was shown for the first time in England what the catalogue called “the great diamond of Runjeet Singh called the Mountain of Light or the Koh-in-noor.” This is what the millions came to see. (They were disappointed by the sight, for the diamond had been poorly cut and did not reveal all its brilliance.) The Kohinoor lay on a velvet cushion in an iron bird cage on an iron pedestal. When the doors of the Crystal Palace closed each night, wheels began to turn, and the bird cage descended into the pedestal. Safe from all the itching fingers of international thiefdom, the Kohinoor rested in its cage.