Collectors And Collecting

( Originally Published 1924 )

Everybody collects something nowadays. The difficulty is to find something that no one else is collecting and to gather up a collection that will not only give pleasure and be an enterprise, but also will some day, if needs demand, fetch more than the modest sum already expended.

Collecting can be not only a joy, a solace, a refreshment, but an investment. For example, Sir John Day bought the paintings of the Barbizon School, the works of such men as Diaz, Mauve and Maris, and his family reaped great advantage from his discretion. Look again at Mr. Yates Thompson who has bought manuscripts wisely and sold many of them for sums far greater than he gave for them; or look at the many collectors of mezzotints and drawings whose care in buying has been amply repaid in the auction-rooms.

Then again there is the delight of purchasing at last what you have been seeking for a long time, or of completing sets, as Mr. Morgan once did when he bought from a casual caller, out of a newspaper parcel, a Sevres vase which matched one he had possessed for years and for which he would gladly, to complete the pair, have paid at auction an enormous sum.

I myself had an odd and curious happening of this kind.

When a schoolboy I bought, for fourpence, an old volume of a rare county history, published in 1719, out of a box of old books at a stall. It was the third volume, rather well bound, and in clean condition. The work was published in five volumes. I had always desired to possess it, but could never find any other odd volumes. Five-and-twenty years afterwards my father, who, like myself, had long desired a copy of this particular book, marched in with great triumph, having purchased in Reading for a large sum, a complete set of the same book, in beautiful order. He and I looked it over, and I drew his attention to the fact that the third volume was bound just a little differently to the others, the variation being slight, but quite clear when it was recognised. We went through the set of five books, page by page, and at the end of the last found a note by the owner, whose name was inscribed in each, to the effect that he had lent

the third volume soon after the publication of the book, that is to say probably in about 1750, to a friend, and had never been able to regain it. In consequence, he had purchased an odd third volume, and had it bound closely as possible to the other four. I at once thought of my own third volume and declared I believed I had the missing one. My father laughed the idea to scorn, saying that the chances were a million to one that the books could have ever come together, or that the son should buy the odd volume in London, and the father the remaining four in Reading, but on sending home for the volume, my suggestion was found to be the correct one ; mine was the missing volume which had been separated from its fellows for over a hundred and fifty years, and which also had its owner's signature in it. The result is, that this interesting set of books, which still remains in the family (although not, I regret, in my own possession) has two Volumes III, and the whole story inscribed inside one of them. This is one of the thrills of collecting, and every collector will understand the delight that such a circumstance brings out.

Changes in value offer another series of romances. We have recently witnessed some extraordinary ones at the Britwell sale. There was a man called Narcissus Luttrell, who died in 1732, a collector and a bibliographer, who bought many books and broadsides, forming altogether, in Chelsea, an extraordinary collection. He had a habit of marking inside the books the price he had given for them, and for a copy of George Chapman's " Shadow of Night " he paid Threepence (3d.), and put the price on the title page. On February 6th of this year that book sold for £270-rather a substantial increase on the original price ! On the third day's sale of the Britwell library, another of Luttrell's books came up, Gale's "Pyramus and Thisbe," in which he had marked the price he had given for it as Twopence (2d.), and this book fetched £617. If, however, this is going too far back in changes in value, take another great collector, Richard Heber, who died as recently as 1833, and many of whose books appeared in the Britwell Library. At his sale, which took place at Sotheby's in I834-5 and 6, a copy of Henry Petowes' "Faire Lady of Britaine" sold for £4 19s.; at the Britwell sale it realised £300. Another of his books by Dekker, called "Warres, Warres, Warres," sold for £6 2s. 6d. Dr. Rosenbach gave 250 guineas for it the other day.

Two more instances may be given in the Chalmers sale : only eighty years ago a book of Willoughby's sold for 10 guineas, this year it fetched £1,950, and a Heber book which sold, in 1834, for £5 10s., now sold for £960.

A still further instance of romance in the way of book collecting, is provided by a tiny volume, only measuring five inches by three and a half, found in an attic at Sir Charles Isham's house at Lamport, about 1890. The book contained four little pamphlets and fetched £3,600 These are, of course, the exceptional romances in book buying, but there are others that are quite as interesting, both in that section of collecting and in others. The most curious occurrence in the Britwell sale was provided by the Marlowe book of " Hero and Leander," which Sotheby's did not even illustrate and made no fuss about. It turned out to be the only copy in existence. In 1836 it fetched & 6s.-to-day 1,810 Dr. Rosenbach found out this fact and of course bought the book.

It has been my fortunate experience to come into contact with many of the great collectors of the day. For Mr. Pierpont Morgan, who was an old and personal friend, I was able to compile several of his catalogues and to travel all over Europe in search of material which he desired for these volumes, and in regard to his treasures I have heard from him many interesting stories.

He it was who bought from Mr. Salting that amazing Red Hawthorn vase that was the glory of his collection. Salting had bought it, I believe, for £90. He sold it for £900, and after Mr. Morgan's death Duveens gave a huge price for it. He also it was who bought for a small sum a miniature of a woman and child that I opened and found inside a bit of the handwriting of Napoleon III, saying that it was a picture of his mother and himself when he was a baby.

He showed me once an old dilapidated, rare book. He had sent it to be carefully repaired and inside the binding two unique broadsides had been found worth five times what he had given for the volume !

Mr. George Salting, the benefactor of the South Kensington Museum, was also a friend with whom I came into contact very frequently and who dined with me, and I believe I was the person who induced him to commence to buy miniatures.

How curious were his rooms in St. James's Street : every chair covered with precious things, while he even had to lie on half his bed because on the other half were some rock crystal vases for which he could find no other place; and he told me he lay very quiet for fear of shaking them off the bed.

Salting had strange fits of strict economy. He returned once from Paris one day before a great sale was over for fear of losing the value of his return ticket. When he sold his famous Red Hawthorn vase he was afraid that he might suddenly lose his huge fortune and die a pauper. He often walked in heavy rain to a dinner party, as he " really could not afford a taxicab," he said, I have met many of the great American collectors, and have visited their houses, especially Mr. Widener, Mr. Gould, Mr. Frick, Mr. Pratt, and others of the benefactors of the great museums of America, and I believe that Mr. Widener would never have bought Rembrandt's "Mill" but for my telling him one day when I was in his gallery that there were a certain few pictures in England which no money would buy, and a number of great collectors who would never be persuaded to part with their treasures. He asked me to name one or two and, rather unwisely, I put Rembrandt's " Mill " first, saying that I believed nothing would induce Lord Lansdowne to part with it. The old man replied to me, with a chuckle, and said, " We shall see " and it was not a very long time after that I had a letter from him, in the course of which he said, "Do you remember talking to me about Rembrandt's `Mill' ? It is now hanging in this gallery."

I have met Mr. Huntington, who had just bought " The Blue Boy," and is building a palace in California for his books. He will have the greatest private collection in the world, and all students will be welcome to go and see them if they care to take the long journey to Los Angeles.

Mrs. Colis P. Huntington, whom he married, I have often seen, and admired her glorious furniture and the superb Lawrence portrait group she possesses, and her wonderful Polish rugs. She gave her son, Archer Huntington, as a New Year gift, a great Velazquez portrait, the finest in America, and paid very many thousands for it. I have seen it hanging in his gallery in New York, at the Hispanic Society's rooms.

Mr. Henry Clay Frick so loved his pictures that, when he left New York for Eagle Rock, the best of the pictures went with him in a steel covered motor van, into which they slid on steel rollers into velvet-covered partitions, and his great works by Hals and Rembrandt, Hobbema, Vermeer, Reynolds, Romney, Titian and Turner were all rehung at Prides Crossing, where I saw them with delight and admired the glorious taste and superb means that had enabled him to acquire them. He was Morgan's great antagonist, and all his pictures now belong to the City of New York.

Mr. Gladstone, in the very midst of his great political efforts, gave considerable attention to the study of pottery made at Leeds, and I remember having a long conversation about it with him, in which he amazed me by the knowledge he had brought together, and which almost seemed as though information about the Leeds pottery had been the sole object of his life and that nothing else had ever interfered with it. He recognised in a flash a genuine piece of Leeds pottery, differentiating it from some Wedgwood ware which very much resembled it. He told me of a very

rare catalogue of Leeds ware which, at that moment, was for sale, and on his advice I bought it, at a price which was fifty times less than its present value ; and he said that the joy of being able to pass from the turmoil of politics and the anxieties of Parliament to a quiet contemplation of the cream-coloured ware which he so loved, was a source of great solace and rest to him, and in searching some of the antique shops for a new example of Leeds pottery he was able to refresh, in fact, to re-create his mind, and then come back with a renewed zest to what was, after all, the main purpose of his life. In this he spoke no more than the bare truth. Every collector will agree that the joy of being able to throw off worries and think about the objects with which he tries to fill his house (often to the grave concern of his wife), is one of the best joys of life, and if, with that, he can add the delight of picking up a bargain, such as a Whistler catalogue that I once bought for a penny and is now worth very many pounds, the joy is one sure to be the greater.