At Brantwood in the early 'eighties there was a busy time with minerals. He was trying to get deeper into the secret, and to look up the more scientific side of the question. He even got a microscope, and his secretary had to make drawings of diamond anatomy, which I am afraid only confirmed him in his distrust of microscopes. He pored over crystallography, and tried to rub up his mathematics, only to find that nothing of the sort explained why gold made itself into fronds, and snow into stars, and diamonds into marvellous domes built up of shield within shield, round-sided triangles—not round-sided after all, but mysteriously straight lines, simulating curves, and so blended and harmonised and perfected that a good uncut diamond is perhaps the most bewilderingly beautiful thing in Nature. Here is one of his sketches giving a diagram of the big "St. George's" diamond he bought for £1000, and studied, and made his secretary study, for weeks together. It ought perhaps to be said that the diagram represents only one facet, and that this is magnified fully two diameters; the diamond is large, but not so large as all that. I cannot reproduce the best drawing made at the time, too elaborate in its attempt at transparency and detail; "That style of drawing was too utter by far," he said; but his diagram may give some hint of the reason why he preached "uncut diamonds" as well as the jewellery of native gold.
He put his theory into practice more than once; especially in a fine pendant he gave to Mrs. Severn, who designed the setting. It is about two and three-quarter inches long, not including the clasp. Two large moonstones en cabochon but irregular in outline are set in an arrangement of gold leaves and twigs; among them are nine spikes of uncut sapphire each about half an inch long, radiating from the moonstones, which are joined by two uncut diamonds, one round and one triangular; a quantity of small rubies are dotted about the group to give contrast of colour. The effect is most picturesque, but of course it has not the glitter—the vulgar glitter, Ruskin called it—of ordinary jewellery. To see the special charm you have to look close.
A much more entertaining and to him satisfactory line of research was in finding illustrations of crystal form and banded structure among the stones of the neighbourhood, with which his porch became encumbered, or in sugar and salt and coloured pastry, or tracing the diffusion of cream in fruit-juice, which makes a temporary agate. It was more fun for the secretary too, than working problems in the kitchen after bedtime, the only chance for a smoke; and who can tackle geometry of three dimensions without a pipe? If Ruskin had smoked he might have mastered his Miller and Cloiseaux; but it was better that he should satisfy himself that their ways were not his ways. The poetry of jewel-lore can't be stated in terms of h. k. l.
Those pie-crust experiments were everybody's delight. They are partly told in "Deucalion," illustrated with drawings by Laurence Hilliard, who became expert at bogus mineralogy on his own account. After displays of nature's wonders and Ruskin's eloquence, the visitor at luncheon or tea (tea was at the dining-room table) often did not know whether to laugh or look shocked when Laurie made minerals of bread and jam, or anything handy, irresistibly like; and described them gravely in the very accents of the Professor, who found it "entirely lovely," and sometimes even suggestive. He was always looking out for analogies, and could make bogus minerals too. One day, showing his jewels to a very young lady, he brought out of its purple plush nook in the glittering drawer a wonderful specimen, ropy, arborescent, semi-transparent, lustrous; descanting the while on stalactitic growth, chalcedony, chrysoprase, hyalite. "And what is this called?" she asked. "Wax, my dear; I got it at the candle myself."
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