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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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wrist
watches. In fact, the first of all modern wrist watches was said to
have been an Englishwoman's small pocket watch which her husband
carried bound to his wrist while riding furiously in the cavalry during
the Boer War. When he returned to London, he had a leather strap with a
"window" cut into it made for his wrist by a saddler. The watch was
slipped into the "window" and carried safely. His wife liked the idea,
asked to have a new watch for herself and attached it to a bracelet.
The first diamond wrist-watches were made in Paris and Switzerland, and
American women took them up avidly.
Wrist
watches did not become popular with men until the World War and then
because of their efficiency in the field and in the trenches. But long
before, diamonds were popular with men in connection with other
jewelry, and Tiffany's was advertising diamond waistcoat buttons,
diamond sleeve links and diamond studs. Then quite suddenly their
popularity with men ceased. The real cause is a mystery, but it is
possible that the gaudiness of diamond jewelry, as symbolized in the
person of James Buchanan Brady, contributed much to it.
Brady
received the cognomen "Diamond Jim" because it was said he had the
largest collection of big, showy jewelry of anybody in New York. Albert
Stevens Crockett, in his excellent picture of a past era, Peacocks on
Parade, says Brady's collection took the form of complete sets which
included shirt studs, cuff buttons, waistcoat buttons, and finger
rings. One set was of diamonds, another of sapphires, another of
rubies, another of amethysts, and so on. Brady's great display was
attributed not so much to his own passion for gems, as such, as to his
desire to advance his personal business. His "sparklers" were his own
peculiar method of advertising.
(192)
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