A gold ring set with an oval blue diamond, surrounded by eighteen white diamonds, made in Europe, the setting of about 1825.

A gold ring set with an oval blue diamond, surrounded by a border of twelve diamonds. A further three diamonds are set in triangular mounts on each shoulder of the ring.

Bequeathed by the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend

This ring forms part of an important group of gemstones bequeathed to the V&A in 1868 by the Reverend Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798-1868). Townshend was a minor poet, musician, amateur painter and a collector of paintings, gemstones and coins. He became acquainted with the poets Robert Southey and William Wordsworth and was a close friend of Charles Dickens who described him as a ‘poor dear fellow, good affectionate gentle creature’.

Dickens and Townshend had a shared interest in mesmerism, a wildly popular form of hypnotism named after the German doctor Franz Mesmer. Townshend’s interest led to the publication of his 1840 ‘Facts on Mesmerism: With Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry Into it’, a section of which described his experiments in applying gemstones to the foreheads of sleepwalkers, stating that the opal gave a soft feeling and the Brazilian diamond was particularly agreeable. Dickens gave Townshend his manuscript copy of ‘Great Expectations’, with an affectionate inscription and in return Townshend made Dickens his literary executor, a task which Dickens found unpleasantly onerous but which eventually resulted in the publication of a collection of Townshend’s notes under the title of ‘Religious opinions of the late Reverend Chauncy Hare Townshend’.

An obituary published in the Times (7 April, 1868) described him thus:

“He was a lover of art, and collector of rare judgment and exquisite taste. Every house in which he lived had, indeed, the interest of an art museum, though they will chiefly be remembered for the refined and gracious hospitality with which they were thrown open to his friends during the brief periods in which they were occupied by their owner, for during the whole of his later life he spent the greater part of the year at his villa, "Monloisir," at Lausanne…. He bequeaths to the President of the Council for the time being, for the benefit of the South Kensington Museum, such of his pictures, water-colour drawings, and engravings as the Lord President may select; also his collection of Swiss coins and his boxes of precious stones and cameos, together with the ancient gold watch which, having been stolen by the celebrated Barrington, was the cause of his transportation; also the looking-glass and frame over his drawing-room chimneypiece, carved by Grinling Gibbons.”

The collection of 145 gems came to the V&A (then known as the South Kensington Museum) in the early days of the museum. The 19th century curator G.F. Duncombe described the circumstances which led to the bequest:

‘Some years ago, the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend…while walking with me through the Museum stopped to examine the jewels exhibited in the South Court, and to compare them with those in his own collection. Mr Townshend having no children, it occurred to me that it would be a noble thing for him to leave his collection by will to the South Kensington Museum, which at that time, had no precious stones except on loan. I made the suggestion to him and he seemed pleased with the idea, and subsequently often referred to it… I have since had the satisfaction of learning that about three years ago, Mr Townshend added a codicil to his will , by which he more than carried out the suggestion that I ventured originally to him.’ .

The acquisition aroused great public interest, being featured in the ladies’ magazine ‘London Society’ as a plot device in ‘A Romance of South Kensington’ and was almost certainly the inspiration for Dorian’s collection of jewels in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.

Diamonds are made of a crystalline form of pure carbon, creating the hardest mineral known. They have a high surface ‘lustre’, meaning that much light is reflected from their surface. This light is combined with light reflected through the stone from the back facets to create ‘brilliance’. Light passing through the stone is also split into a broad spectrum of colours termed ‘fire’. A modern brilliant-cut diamond is faceted so that it combines a high level of brilliance with fire. Diamonds occur naturally in a variety of colours: colourless, yellow, brown, black, blue, green, pink and extremely rarely red.

Today diamonds can be artificially coloured or otherwise enhanced. These techniques were developed in the 20th century. Because the Townshend Collection has been in the care of the Museum since 1869, we can be confident that the colours are natural. As a result, these coloured diamonds are of great interest to specialists in the field of gemmology. This ring is set with a large blue diamond. This colour is caused by the presence of boron.

The diamond rings (Museum nos 1172 to 1179-1869) all came to the V&A as a bequest by the Reverend Chauncy Hare Townshend. They had previously been part of the famous Hope collection of gemstones.

1179-1869