_Watches_
_Queen Elizabeth I_
The watch was an article of utility that became an article of fashion,
hence was woven into a jewel. Queen Elizabeth I of England owned more
than two dozen watches, some dangling from her girdle, one at her wrist.
Four of them were gifts from one courtier, the Earl of Leicester. All
were elaborately designed in various shapes, with cameos or many jewels.
They were changed according to the costume. The Queen had a special page
whose duty it was to wind them.
_Princess Sophia_
Even more watches were in the possession of Sophia Dorothea of
Brunswig-Lüneberg, though she came to have little need of them. The wife
of the Crown Prince of Hanover, she became involved in intrigue and
was accused of a liaison with a Swedish nobleman; she saw her marriage
annulled, then spent thirty-two years in prison. Her released husband
became George I of England; her son, George II; her grandson (through a
second Sophia Dorothea), Frederick the Great of Prussia. In the heyday of
her beauty and gaiety at the Hanoverian court, Princess Sophia possessed
over fifty watches, many of their cases made of a single large stone,
such as a lapis lazuli or an onyx.
_Early Forms_
Because the early watches were in the main large and ugly, handsome
cases were designed for them. As each watch was made individually, a
painstaking jeweler could create a smaller instrument, such as the
bracelet watch. Mme. de Pompadour wore a watch in a gold finger ring, set
round with diamonds.
Watches were also made with extra devices. Some, at a time set in
advance, would ring an alarm. Some would when pressed chime to reveal the
present hour. In all these early watches, accuracy was not the goal. In
fact, it was not until about 1680 that most watches were equipped with a
minute hand; before that, one pointer marked the passage of the hours.
These watches were worn, by gallant gentlemen, less for checking their
business, of which they had little, than for adding to their finery, of
which they had much. The time they could spare from the adornment of
their persons they devoted to the neglect of their duties. Often indeed
there was a watch at each end of the chain, and both might be taken out
at the same time, with ostentatious comparing of their accuracy. William
Cowper in eighteenth-century England neatly pinned such gallants:
An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless when it goes as when it stands.
And the Earl of Chesterfield, prince of etiquette in his day, admonished
his son: “Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and
do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.”
Gradually, as businessmen saw the usefulness of the watch in marking
time for engagements, the accuracy of the instrument increased, and with
that the frequency of its use.
_Where to Wear the Watch_
For practical purposes today, the wrist watch is almost universal.
The watch on the wrist of Queen Elizabeth I of England dangled from a
bracelet; the watch _in_ the bracelet is a distinctive development of our
own time. Railroad men and some others still prefer the larger pocket
watch, but the accuracy of the good wrist watch suffices for all save the
finest scientific measurements of time. That the timepiece, nevertheless,
remains partly a fad and a fashion is made clear by the many less
practical ways in which it is mounted. Watches have been designed in
rings, on cuff links, buttons, heads of canes; on knives, notebooks,
lipsticks—Time for a fresh application!—on cigarette cases and lighters,
wallets, ladies’ garters—Time!
Sometimes, especially for more formal wear, the pocket watch is still
worn, not with a chain but with a fob. In the vest, or in the right front
“of the waistband of the breeches,” is a special pocket for the watch.
To the watch is attached a black ribbon that hangs out and forms the
background for a medal, a seal, or other jewel.
Oliver Cromwell wore a watch fob. This method of wearing a watch was
especially fashionable—in spite of the notice the fob gives to a
pickpocket—from about 1875 until 1914, when the World War popularized the
wrist watch. Fifty years ago, every college Senior wore a fob with his
school’s coat-of-arms and his class. The fob is still affected by certain
clubmen, bearing the jeweled insignia of the club.
A recent chronometrical development for the fairer sex is the watchclip.
This jewel possesses all the versatility of the clip itself, with the
added usefulness of the timepiece. The watch face can of course be
cunningly hidden, in the heart of a flower, or as an element of an
abstract design. It may be worn on a low neckline, at a lapel, at the
cuff, or even on a bracelet.
For a woman during business hours, or at golf, there is good reason for
wearing a watch. The wrist watch is the best. For sports, a plain leather
band should hold a simple watch. At business, a simple band or gold chain
is appropriate; the watch itself may be encased with small diamonds. It
should be attractive, but not call attention to itself.
For general day wear a gold bracelet made of flexible links is
attractive, worn with the face of the watch open or—for more formal
occasions—concealed. This may be made softer by the addition of gems or
other stones, but bright-colored stones should be used only if the dial
is hidden.
The functional appearance of the watch is further softened in an
attractive new style, which combines the watch with a gold fringe
bracelet. The fringe draws the eye artfully away from the timepiece.
_Jewelled Hours_
During social hours, however, one should be more regardless of time. It
seems almost an affront, by wearing a clearly functional wrist watch,
to let your hostess know you are measuring the time you grant her. At
theatre, at evening parties, a woman should at least seem not to care how
the time flits by. Indeed, there is on such occasions no need for her to
wear a watch at all.
Should she, for reasons of fashion or custom, or for other personal
reasons, desire to wear a watch, its functional aspects should be
minimized by adornment, if not wholly concealed in a jewel. For this
purpose, effective eye-catching bracelets can be devised of diamonds or
diamonds and pearls. To the beauty of the modern watches, the Swiss firm
of Gubelin Frères has contributed a great deal. This firm, probably more
than any other famous Swiss craftsmen, has succeeded in making the watch
a masterpiece of design and beauty. Gubelin added to the improvement of
the mechanical performance of the modern watch high artistic value.
There are beautiful flower brooches in the heart of which hides a watch.
There are pendants, for a loose necklace or a brooch, the bottom of which
is the watch face. In greater variety, the wrist watch can be fashioned
into a gem-studded beauty, as in the $20,000 diamond bracelet watch sent
by jewelers of Geneva to Elizabeth II of England on her wedding day.
Three parts of the wrist watch may be distinguished for purposes of
adornment. First the bracelet as a whole may be an attractive jewel.
It may be of plain or of twisted gold; or it may be a circle of small
diamonds or other stones. In still other ways, the entire band may be
ornamented, with the watch drawn into the unity of the jewel design.
Secondly, the main circle of the band may be of plain gold, with the
ornamentation beginning where the bracelet meets the watch. For an inch
or so on either side of the watch, the band may widen in a swirl of domed
gold wire, or some other modern patterns; or the band may there be set
with diamonds, baguette or marquise. Finally, there is the watch itself,
which may be circled or otherwise encased in diamonds. The design of the
bracelet, however, may almost wholly conceal the watch. Some settings
have been made in which a large stone covers the watch face, and must be
lifted to reveal the time.
The wrist watch, for practical reasons, should not be worn on the handbag
arm; the winding crown may be jarred or broken. For both practical and
aesthetic reasons, it should not be worn with other bracelets. The glass
may be jarred off. And while the watch bracelet may look attractive
alone, the presence of other jewels makes its utilitarian function
over-prominent. The wrist watch should be serviceable, but beautiful.
In any case, a watch is at best an interloper, if not a downright
intruder, in moments of feminine finery. Permitting a woman to espy the
hour when she should not be so concerned, the watch—like all spies—should
be as much as possible unnoticed and unknown. If it be worn, it should
not be as a watch but as an integral part of a jewel.
_In Front of Your Mirror_
A wise woman knows the importance of her jewels and does not squander
them in overlavish display. The “principle of parsimony” applies here
as elsewhere: unless there be an overriding reason for elaboration, the
simplest means are the best. Jewels may, as we have seen, be beautiful
on many parts of the body—but not on all of them at once. Each occasion,
each costume, calls for separate consideration and individual selection
of jewels.
It is not vanity, but common sense, for a woman to spend time before a
mirror, making her own acquaintance, becoming familiar with her qualities
and with the values brought out by various arrangements of her jewels.
Only by such a process, renewed frequently through the years (as jewels
and features alter), can a woman command the full power of her treasure
chest as a true ally to her own beauty.
Daniel Webster, looking at the great stone face of the “Old Man of the
Mountain,” observed: “Men hang out their signs indicative of their
respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a
monster watch ... but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty
has hung out a sign to show that here He makes men.” And let them not mar
themselves, Shakespeare reminds us, including the fair sex of the human
kind. And a woman, whose sign is beauty, keeps a “monster watch” over her
harmony in her jewels. Decorum and decoration, hand in hand, lead her to
the fullest capture of the values with which nature has endowed her and
which she has helped to foster, feed and bring to flower.
PART THREE
_The Etiquette of Wearing Jewels_