For want of a more suitable place, I shall here reproduce an account of the “Method of making false pearls” (nothing else being meant in the above passage), cited, from Postl. Com. Dict., in vol. xxvi. of “Rees’ Cyclopædia,” London, 1819:
“Take of thrice distilled vinegar two pounds, Venice turpentine one pound, mix them together into a mass and put them into a cucurbit, fit a head and receiver to it, and after you have luted the joints set it when dry on a sand furnace, to distil the vinegar from it; do not give it too much heat, lest the stuff swell up. After this put the vinegar into another glass cucurbit in which there is a quantity of seed pearls wrapped in a piece of thin silk, but so as not to touch the vinegar; put a cover or head upon the cucurbit, lute it well and put it in bal. Mariæ, where you may let it remain a fortnight. The heat of the balneum will raise the fumes of the vinegar, and they will soften the pearls in the silk and bring them to the consistence of a paste, which being done, take them out and mould them to what bigness, form, and shape you please. Your mould must be of fine silver, the inside gilt; you must also refrain from touching the paste with your fingers, but use silver-gilt utensils, with which fill your moulds. When they are moulded, bore them through with a hog’s bristle or gold wire, and then thread them again on gold wire, and put them into a glass, close it up, and set them in the sun to dry. After they are thoroughly dry, put them in a glass matrass into a stream of running water and leave them there twenty days; by that time they will contract the natural hardness and solidity of pearls. Then take them out of the matrass and hang them in mercurial water, where they will moisten, swell, and assume their Oriental beauty; after which shift them into a matrass hermetically closed to prevent any water coming to them, and let it down into a well, to continue there about eight days. Then draw the matrass up, and in opening it you will find pearls exactly resembling Oriental ones.” (Here follows a recipe for making the mercurial water used in the process, with which I need not occupy more space.)
A similar formula, “To make of small pearls a necklace of large ones,” is given in the “Lady’s Magazine” for 1831, vol. iv., p. 119, which is said to be extracted from a scarce old book. Thus, whatever mystery may surround the art in Asiatic countries there is evidently none about it in Europe. The process appears to be somewhat tedious and complicated, but is doubtless profitable.
In Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius there is a curious passage about pearl-making which has been generally considered as a mere “traveller’s tale”: Apollonius relates that the inhabitants of the shores of the Red Sea, after having calmed the water by means of oil, dived after the shell-fish, enticed them with some bait to open their shells, and having pricked the animals with a sharp-pointed instrument, received the liquor that flowed from them in small holes made in an iron vessel, in which it hardened into real pearls.—It is stated by several reputable writers that the Chinese do likewise at the present day. And Sir R. F. Burton informs me that when he was on the coast of Midian he found the Arabs were in the habit of “growing” pearls by inserting a grain of sand into the shells.
THE SINGER AND THE DRUGGIST—Vol. I. p. 203.
The diverting adventures related in the first part of this tale should be of peculiar interest to the student of Shakspeare as well as to those engaged in tracing the genealogy of popular fictions. Jonathan Scott has given—for reasons of his own—a meagre abstract of a similar tale which occurs in the “Bahár-i-Dánish” (vol. iii. App., p. 291), as follows:
PERSIAN VERSION.
A young man, being upon business in a certain city, goes on a hunting excursion, and, fatigued with the chase, stops at a country house to ask refreshment. The lady of the mansion receives him kindly, and admits him as her lover. In the midst of their dalliance the husband comes home, and the young man had no resource to escape discovery but to jump into a basin which was in the court of the house, and stand with head in a hollow gourd that luckily happened to be in the water. The husband, surprised to see the gourd stationary in the water, which was itself agitated by the wind, throws a stone at it, when the lover slips from beneath it and holds his breath till almost suffocated. Fortunately the husband presently retires with his wife into an inner room of the house, and thus the young man was enabled to make good his escape.
The next day he relates his adventure before a large company at a coffee-house. The husband happens to be one of the audience, and, meditating revenge, pretends to admire the gallantry of the young man and invites him to his house. The lover accompanies him, and on seeing his residence is overwhelmed with confusion; but, recovering himself, resolves to abide all hazards, in hopes of escaping by some lucky stratagem. His host introduces him to his wife, and begs him to relate his merry adventure before her, having resolved, when he should finish, to put them both to death. The young man complies, but with an artful presence of mind exclaims at the conclusion, “Glad was I when I awoke from so alarming a dream.” The husband upon this, after some questions, is satisfied that he had only told his dream, and, having entertained him nobly, dismisses him kindly.