The Koh-i-noor, the great diamond that, thanks to the still greater
Exhibition, so many have seen, and so many more have heard of, is now
in the hands of skilful diamond-cutters, that, unlike the sable
beauties of Abyssinia, its charms may be augmented by a judicious
reduction in magnitude and gravity. Cut at first with the view of
preserving intact as much of the stone as possible, it never possessed
the sparkling lustre derived from the scientific disposition of the
several sides and angles, technically termed facets, of a
well-polished diamond. It is now intended to be fashioned into a
brilliant; that is, to have the form of two flattened pyramids joined
at the base, the upper pyramid much flatter than the lower one. In
England, the art of diamond-cutting has ceased to exist, but in
Holland it still maintains its ancient pre-eminence; and from thence
the cutters of the Koh-i-noor have been brought to perform an
operation, which, taking into consideration the size of the stone, had
never previously been accomplished in this country.
It is not known, with any degree of certainty, whether the ancient
inhabitants of the East had any knowledge of the art of
diamond-cutting; but it is at the same time very clear, that the
nations of the West knew nothing of it till a very late period. Even
to the latter part of the fifteenth century, the diamond was
appreciated principally for its supposed talismanic properties and its
hardness; and as that hardness prevented its hidden beauties from
being brought to light by cutting and polishing, it was regarded more
as a rare cabalistic curiosity than a precious ornament. Some
diamonds, however, whose natural form and polish were more favourable
to the development of their clouded brilliancy, foretold the splendour
they would display were it possible to cut and polish them as other
gems. Numerous attempts were made to attain this desired end, but all
in vain, until, about 1460, Louis de Berghen, a young jeweller of
Bruges, succeeded in cutting the first diamond.
The invention of the art of diamond-cutting has, like many others,
whether mythically or not, been mixed up with a love-story. Berghen,
it is said, was a poor working-jeweller, who had the audacity to fall
in love with his wealthy master's daughter. The young lady was
favourable to his suit; but on proposing to her father, the old man
reproached him for poverty, and sneeringly said, in allusion to the
supposed utter impossibility of the feat: 'When you can cut a diamond,
you may marry my daughter, but not before.' These discouraging words
induced a train of reflection in the mind of the young man. He
considered how other hard substances were cut; iron, he mentally
cogitated, is cut by steel. 'What is steel,' he exclaimed, a light
breaking upon him, 'but iron?--the diamond, then, may be cut by a
diamond.' Laying out all his available means in the purchase of two
small diamonds, he contrived, by cementing them to two pieces of wood,
to rub them against each other till they were reduced to dust. With
this dust, and a machine which he invented, he cut two facets on
another diamond, which he triumphantly exhibited to the old jeweller.
But a diamond had never previously been cut: men, wise in their
generation, had said that a diamond never could be cut; and
consequently, according to the general mode of treating inventors in
those days, a charge of sorcery was brought against the first
diamond-cutter. Berghen, thrown into prison, had abundant leisure for
deliberation. Two courses were open to him: one was to keep his
secret, and be burned as a sorcerer; the other, to clear himself of
that charge by shewing how he cut the diamond by natural means, and
thus lose the exclusive benefit of his invention, to which he
considered he was so justly entitled. He adopted neither. Fortunately,
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the ruler of Flanders, came to
hold his court in the city of Bruges, and was soon informed of the
diabolical art of the young jeweller. Charles was passionately fond of
jewels, and possessed a very large diamond. Like the Spaniard, who, if
the miracle were performed, did not care if Mohammed himself did it,
the Bold duke sent for Berghen, and commanded him to cut and polish
the large diamond, as he best could, either by aid of the Prince of
Darkness, or his own unassisted efforts. In due time the work was
completed; and Charles was so delighted with the brilliant beauty of
the previously dull stone, that he remunerated the young jeweller with
three thousand ducats. We need not inform the reader how Berghen soon
married his lady-love; but we may state that, retaining the secret of
diamond-cutting in his own family, he and his descendants acquired
immense wealth. After the death of his patron Charles, he removed to
Paris, where, for two centuries afterwards, the Berquins, as the name
was Gallicised, were the most famous jewellers of their time.
The after-history of that large diamond, the first ever cut in Europe
at least, is perhaps worthy of narration. Charles constantly carried
it with him on his own person, till at last a soldier found it beside
the duke's dead body, on the fatal battle-field of Nancy. Unconscious
of its value, the finder sold it for a crown to a priest; the priest,
equally ignorant, sold it for three ducats to a pedler; the pedler
sold it for a large sum to the Duke of Florence. From that prince it
passed into the hands of Antonio king of Portugal, who, when a refugee
in France, sold it for 70,000 francs to Nicholas de Harlay, Lord of
Sancy; thus it has since been known, in the history of precious
stones, as the Sancy Diamond. Sancy was a faithful adherent to Henry
IV. of France, and, during the civil war, was sent by that monarch to
solicit the assistance of the Swiss. Finding that nothing could be
done without money, he sent a trusty servant to Paris for the diamond,
enjoining him never to part with it in life to any one but himself.
The servant arrived in Paris, and received the diamond, but never
returned to his master. After waiting a considerable time, Sancy,
feeling confident that the man had been robbed and murdered by one of
the many hordes of robbers that then infested France, set out to
endeavour to gain some traces of him. After many adventures, he
discovered that a person answering the description of the servant had
been found, robbed and murdered, in the Forest of Dole, and had been
buried by the peasantry. Sancy immediately had the body disinterred,
and found the diamond--the faithful fellow having, in obedience to his
master's injunction, swallowed it. Sancy pawned the diamond with the
Jews of Metz, and with the money raised troops for the service of his
royal master. 'Put not your faith in princes,' is an adage as sound as
it is ancient. Henry, seated on the throne that Sancy's exertions
saved, took occasion of a petty court intrigue to ruin and disgrace
his too faithful partisan. The pledged diamond never was redeemed; it
remained in the hands of the Israelite money-lenders, till Louis XIV.
purchased it for 600,000 francs. It then became one of the
crown-jewels of France; but its vicissitudes were not over. In 1791,
when the National Assembly appointed a commission of jewellers to
examine the crown-jewels, the Sancy Diamond was valued at 1,000,000
livres. At the restoration of Louis XVIII., it was nowhere to be
found, and nothing positive has been heard of it since. But as so
well-known and large a diamond could not readily be secretly disposed
of without attracting attention in some quarter, it is shrewdly
suspected that a jewel sold in 1830, by the Prince of Peace, for
500,000 francs, to one of the wealthiest of the Russian nobility, was
the missing Sancy Diamond.
The operation of diamond-cutting is exceedingly simple, and is without
doubt performed by the cutters of the Koh-i-noor at the present time
in almost precisely the same manner as invented by Berghen. The stone
is held in the proper position by being embedded, all but the salient
angle to be cut or polished, in a solder of tin and lead. It is then
applied to a rapidly-revolving horizontal iron wheel, constantly
supplied with diamond-dust, and moistened with olive-oil. The anxious
care and caution required in this operation render it a very tedious
one: the cutting of the Koh-i-noor will last many months, and be
attended with an immense expense. A still more tedious operation,
however, is sometimes performed by diamond-cutters, when it is found
necessary to cut a stone into two parts; it is termed sawing, and is
thus managed:--The stone to be sawn is scratched across in the desired
direction by a very keen splinter of diamond, technically termed a
_sharp_. An exceedingly fine iron wire, with a small portion of
sweet-oil and diamond-dust, is then laid upon this guiding scratch;
and the workman draws the wire backwards and forwards, as we may see
blocks of stone sawn on a larger scale in the yard of the statuary.
Still greater care and attention are required in this operation than
in diamond-cutting: seven months have been occupied in sawing a
good-sized stone. Sometimes the diamond is cut by two being cemented
each upon a separate handle, and rubbed together over a box, which
catches the precious dust as it falls; but the stones thus cut are
disfigured by scratches, and must subsequently be polished upon the
wheel.
For many years India supplied the rest of the world with diamonds; and
it was long supposed that they were not to be found in any other part
of the globe. The Portuguese settlers in Brazil, seeking for gold,
found a number of small stones resembling pebbles, which, from their
singularity, they kept as curiosities, using them as counters at their
card-tables. An officer, who had been removed from the Portuguese
settlements in India to serve in Brazil, suspected that these stones
were diamonds, and sent a few to Portugal. The jewellers of Lisbon,
having never seen a diamond in its unpolished state, laughed at the
idea of such rude pebbles being of any value, and so the inquiry was
for some time dropped. But the Dutch consul at Lisbon managed to
procure one of the stones, and sent it to Holland, then almost the
only country in Europe where diamond-cutting was pursued as a regular
business. The stone, in due time, was returned to the consul in the
form of a sparkling brilliant; and the Brazilian diamond-trade
immediately commenced. The European dealers in diamonds, and many
retired officers of the English and Dutch East India Companies, who,
as was customary then, had, on their return to Europe, invested a
large part of their wealth in those precious stones, fearing that a
great reduction in price would follow, were alarmed when the Brazilian
diamonds first came into the market. These interested parties
published pamphlets, warning the public against purchasing the
so-called Brazilian diamonds, stating that no diamonds were found in
the Brazils, but that the inferior class of stones was purchased in
India, sent to Brazil, and from thence imported as Brazilian diamonds.
In consequence of these false statements being repeated by persons of
rank and station, a strong prejudice existed against the Brazilian
diamond, although it is now well known to be equal in every respect to
its Indian brother. The Dutch, who then farmed the Brazilian
diamond-mines from the crown of Portugal, met this trick of trade by
another. They dug their diamonds in Brazil, brought them to Holland,
and cut them, then sent them to India, from whence they returned to
Europe as true Oriental jewels. We may add, that the anticipations of
the dealers were not verified in defiance of the great influx from
Brazil, and, later still, the discovery of the diamond in the Ural
Mountains: the price of that stone is at present as high as ever it
was.