The Lost Jewels.
Kirsty Manning.
Allen & Unwin. 2020. 324 pp.
ISBN 978 76052 810 2.
FACT: On June 18th, 1912, a workman clearing rubble from a cellar in London's Cheapside, close to St Paul's Cathedral, stuck his pick-axe into a lump of earth and was astonished to find it studded with jewels. The wooden box in which the jewels had been buried had disintegrated, and as he and others dug further, jewels mixed with earth spilled over the floor. Quite a few ended up secreted in the workmen's pockets. In all, over 500 pieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery and precious stones were recovered, all preserved by the soil in near perfect condition. This became known as "The Cheapside Hoard."
No one knows why these jewels were buried, but the style of the pieces suggests it was in the late 1600s and early 1700s—a time of civil unrest: the Great Plague of London (1665-6); and of the Great Fire of London (1666), in which the house was destroyed.
And no one knows who buried them. Perhaps it was an immigrant goldsmith working in the house, which was then owned by the Goldsmiths' Company. Or maybe it was a wealthy collector. It may even have been a fence hiding stolen goods.
An antique-collector known as "Stony Jack" (George Fabian Lawrence) was known to buy pottery, jewels, and anything old and interesting dug up in the City, and to pay in beer or small sums of money. Many jewels that had probably come from the hoard turned up at his establishment and were subsequently sold to London museums and other museums around the world.
The Museum of London now owns the Cheapside Hoard. There are photographs of it on their website, and more photographs and details of its story can be seen at the GIA gemology institute website.
FICTION: Who owned the jewels? Where did they come from? Who buried them and why? In The Lost Jewels, Kirsty Manning has taken these questions and woven her own stories around them.
Kate Kirby is a successful writer and researcher with specialized knowledge of jewels. Jewels fascinate her, so when the editor of a "luxury" American magazine asks her to write an article about the Cheapside Hoard, which has just been catalogued at the Museum of London, she is interested. The editor wants a unique angle to the story and makes it clear the commission will be well-funded. Kate would be accompanied by a photographer and would be able to travel to various countries to trace the origin of the jewels.
Kate, who is trying to finish a synopsis for her post-doctoral fellowship application to Harvard, and who has other unfinished work, is not sure she wants to take on the job, but she has a personal reason for wanting to see these jewels, so she accepts. Amongst the papers she inherited from her Great-grandmother Essie are several intriguing sketches. One is of two unidentified pigtailed little girls in Edwardian dress. The other is of a jewel-studded brooch or button, which resembles some she has seen in photographs of Elizabethan buttons held in the Museum of London.
Kate's first glimpse of the jewels in the Museum of London's secure basement takes her breath away. There is a watch encased in an emerald the size of a baby's fist, rubies set into gold, long gold chains with delicate enamel decoration, a Byzantine pendant cameo carved in a sapphire, and a salamander brooch:
The creature had been picked out in circles of emeralds soldered together with gold links. Kate wanted to poke her fingers into the tiny mouth dotted with black enamel because she was certain she would feel teeth.
"The mystical creature who rose from the fire, the salamander," Saanvi, the Museum's conservator tells her, linking ancient Alchemical lore with historical fact.
There are also buttons identical to the one in the sketch she found in her great-grandmother's papers.
For her magazine article, Kate sets out to trace the history of some of these jewels. This takes her and the photographer, Marcus, around the world to the source of some of the stones, the mines where such stones were unearthed, the bazaars where they would have been sold, and places where they might have been cut and set. Some chapters imagine the lives of the people who found and handled the stones, and some follow Kate and Marcus as they experience the countries and places from which the stones are likely to have come.
Kate's great-grandmother, Essie, also has a fascinating story, which is woven into the book between chapters describing Kate's life and her travels. Kirsty Manning's imagines a past in which Essie and her family are closely linked with the finding of the Cheapside jewels, and she tells of the subsequent history of some of those jewels as they pass from hand to hand.
The Lost Jewels is a richly imagined family saga. It has history, love, adventure, priceless jewels, colorful and unusual locations, and a smattering of social comment. It is Kate's story of adventure, loss, and love. It is Essie's story of hardship, deaths, emigration, and the founding of a shipping line. And it is the story of Essie's beloved sister, Gertrude, who gains an education and "dedicates her legal career to the support of women and children." It is the story of Sachin finding a diamond "like purest water" in the Golconda mines, and of Ekmel selling it in an Indian bazaar. And it is the story, too, of a tiny diamond ring: "...the diamond flickered like a flame and Kate wondered why this simple ring had been buried in a damp cellar... What promises were made with this ring?"
Later, under high magnification Kate finds an inscription which has never been noticed before: "I give you this in love, Aurelia." So, the story comes full circle to the moment when the jewels were buried.
There are almost too many stories in this book, and there is much that is pure fantasy mixed with fact, but it is light reading, enjoyable, and well-written.
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