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BOOK REVIEW
THE WEDGWOOD MEDALLION
By Emily Beatrix Coursolles Jones, Published in London by Chatto & Windus., 1922
302 Pages
Scouting the Internet one day, I found this little volume on eBay from a Welsh
seller. He was honest that it wasn't in the best condition, but it is hard-bound and
the pages are all intact. Having no pre-conceived idea of its content or subject
really, I dug right in. It takes a number of chapters to arrive at the first mention of
the Wedgwood medallions collected by the father of some of the main
characters. The symbolism comes out as he gives the medallions away to the
fiancee of one of his nephews. The book is a love story, very Victorian in style,
very much a "coming of age" story. Sweet, innocent people leading sweet,
innocent lives. The main character, a young girl living a cloistered life with her
mother & sisters on the Devon coast of England, discovers love when a group of
young men vacation near her home one summer. She meets one of them and
falls in love, but in her own way loves all of them. In the end things change, but
the circle remains intact. Her maturation from child frolicking on the beach to
young Englishwoman living on her own in London is traced through the lives of
her new-found friends, their loves, lives, tribulations and family ties.
The Wedgwood medallions owned by her uncle-in-law-to-be mesmerize her and
many others in the family. Her fianc‚e's sister has already married into the
family and has been given a doublet made from two of the small medallions,
sometimes called cameos in today's world. The owner of the medallions sees
them as small works of art, not different from many Wedgwood collectors even
today. The star of the story is named Sophie, which will help clarify the following
quote:
'Come here, little Sophie, said Mr. Watergate with a lightening of his solemnity,
as he took out a large, flat jewel-case, and you shall see your prototype.'
She rose;...to her host's side. He displayed his treasures-a double row of little
Wedgwood medallions, some round, some square; and one blank space,in the
puckered velvet of their bed. 'Here were Euterpe and Terpsichore you see; Enid
has them as a locket. And here is the lady tying her sandal, and her companion.'
Sophie, fascinated, leaning closer, saw, on the background of clear, definite, yet
delicate blue, the tiny white figure of the Grecian Sophie and on the reverse of
the medallion that of a young man, standing upright, with both arms raised to tie
the fillet round his head.
'Here, you see', he pursued after a moment,' is another pair; Hebe and Hermes,
cup-bearer and messenger to the gods of Greece-and, subsequently, of Rome.
That finishes the pairs; the rest are single.'
'I think they are perfectly lovely....they are so complete. Aren't they? That, little
Sophie, is Art. Completion. You recognize, and yet you are startled...shall I give
you that fillet-holding swain, and the lady whose sandal he is not worthy to
unloose?'
Further along in the story we hear a commentary by one of his sons:
"Yes; those Wedgwood plaques, for instance-father admires them, of course; but
half the excitement about them is because he inherited them from his father, with
a lot of the Hepplewhite and Chippendale and William-and-Mary furniture. It's
not so much as works of art that he worships them as because they are
heirlooms, and symbols of his solid position in society- honest back-bone of
England, patron of the arts, father of a family, and so on"
There is more symbolism, but I'll let each reader come to his or her own
conclusion. Don't expect a rousing adventure story here, if it were made into a
movie, it would definitely be called a "chick flick"!
This book can presently be found in a few libraries around the country, to wit:
Chicago Univ., Northwestern, Miami U, Ohio, Cincinnati Pub Library, Milwaukee
Co. Library Sys., Western Mich U., Ohio State, UAB Sterne Library, Birmingham,
U Michigan, Minneapolis Pub Lib, Atlanta Pub Lib, Cleveland State U Lib,
Cleveland Pub Lib, Texas A & M, Smith, Cal State, Duke U, Los Angeles Public
Library, Whittier College, CA.
It's a small compact volume, of course bound in a slate blue color. Enjoy!
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