The Confessions of a Collector Part 6

It was on this ground that I had the bad luck to fall into a trap laid by myself. In some sale a copy of Dekker's _Belman of London_, 1608, occurred in a volume in old vellum with the same author's _Lanthorn and Candlelight_, bearing the same date as the first piece, and so far known only in a re-issue of 1609. I committed the stupid and double blunder of fancying that it was the former and less important article, which was imperfect, and of suggesting to the auctioneers, that the book should be sold with all faults. Even then I had to give 5, 2s. 6d. for it, and it turned out that the missing sheet in the middle was in the _Lanthorn and Candlelight_. I separated the two pieces, and sold the _Belman_ to Smith; and the other, when I had kept it a twelvemonth or so in the vain hope of completion, I handed over to the Museum. I just saved myself.

Nothing is much more remarkable than the jetsam, which chance brings up to the surface here and in Wellington Street alike. Some of the rarest books and pamphlets in our early literature have fallen under my eyes in Leicester Square. Once it was a parcel, I recollect, including, among others, Drayton's _Shepheard's Garland_, 1593; but the lots were uniformly, in point of condition, hopeless; and I had to leave them to others.

But the most signal acquisition on my part was the series of the SOMERS TRACTS in thirty folio volumes, which had belonged to the famous chancellor, and had pa.s.sed through several hands, but were still in the original calf binding. This set of books and tracts comprised some of the rarest _Americana_, especially the _Laws of New York_, printed there in 1693-4, and probably one of the earliest specimens of local typography. I forget what I left with the auctioneers; but the price, at which the hammer fell, was 61. A single item was worth double that sum; and there were hundreds and hundreds. I spoke to Mr Quaritch after the sale, and begged him to say why he had not bidden for the article. I apprehend that he overlooked it--at all events its peculiar importance. What a lottery!

Now alike in Wellington Street and here all is changed. A new school has arisen, and every article of the slightest consequence is carried to the last shilling--and beyond. The highest bidder never despairs of finding, when he gets home, somebody more enthusiastic or more foolish than himself. I sometimes look round, while a sale is proceeding, and nearly all the faces are strange. They are those of young men, who represent firms, or who speculate on their own account. There are no cheap lots, save to the preternaturally knowing or lucky.

I have reserved to the last the name, which should by right, perhaps, have come first in order--that of Mr Quaritch, because he co-operated with me in the enterprise, which const.i.tuted throughout my motive for mingling in the commercial circle, and has enabled me to preserve from the risk of destruction a vast body of original matter. Mr Quaritch cannot have realised any appreciable advantage from publishing my _Bibliographical Collections_ from 1882 to 1892; and he left me a perfectly free hand with the printer, saying that his share of the business was to pay the bill and sell the books. I waxed tired of the practical side, when I lost 140 by a single volume of the series.

But, while he a.s.sociated himself with me in a variety of ways, some more mutually profitable than this one, our practical transactions were, comparatively speaking, not so important or heavy as might have been expected. Mr Quaritch used at one time to have cheap books as well as dear; and I suppose that I gave the preference to the former. I saw a copy of _Fortunatus_ in English in his window one day, marked 12s., and I went in to buy it. He was just by the door, and when he learned my object, 'Ah,' said he, 'I have kept that book so long, that it is 15s. if you want it,' and the higher figure I had to pay. There was never any remarkable event in my life immediately identifiable with these cla.s.sic premises. I fear that I was suspected of knowing too much. I was not like the good folks, to whom, when he had bought the first copy of the Mazarin Bible, he exhibited an ordinary early printed specimen on their application for leave to inspect the real article. They were just as happy and just as wise. How many thumbs it saved!

I shall always cherish a sentiment of grat.i.tude toward Mr Quaritch for his valuable aid during a whole decade in putting it in my power to present in instalments the fruit of my labour at the auction-rooms and elsewhere, and in agreeing to defray the entire cost of the _General Index_ to a large portion of it. I look forward to the possibility of carrying on the task piecemeal, till it embraces the entire _corpus_ of our earlier national literature in all its branches, each item derived from the printed original, and ill.u.s.trated by such notes as may appear desirable and appropriate.

Thousands of new t.i.tles await the printer.

It was through this medium that Lord Crawford was pleased to honour me with a proof of his lordship's catalogue of _Proclamations_, thinking that it might be of service; but I had to return the copy with a message by the same channel that the descriptions were drawn up on a different principle from mine, and that I never accepted information at second-hand, if I could possibly avoid it.

After what I had seen of Lord Crawford's bibliographical discernment, I was rather distressed to hear that his lordship is regarded as one of the best-informed men on the Board of Trustees in Great Russell Street. But the qualifications of an _ex-officio_ member cannot be always satisfactory.

I conclude that it is, except among the general public, an open secret that Mr Quaritch has been during quite a long series of years eminently indebted for his success to the varied and extraordinary erudition of his adviser, Mr Michael Kerny. Mr Quaritch was accustomed to say to me: 'I am a shopkeeper; Mr Kerny is a gentleman;' and there was a degree of truth in this remark. Yet the former is something more than _le grand marchand_; his enterprise and pluck are marvellous; and they are the outcome, for the most part, not of foolhardihood, but of genius. A man, who buys blindly, soon reaches the end of his tether. That Mr Quaritch for divers reasons has often made unwise purchases, and has missed his mark, may be perfectly the fact; but in the main he has obviously struck the right vein; and he pursues his policy season after season, witnessing the departure of old clients (or, as he would rather put it, customers) and the advent of new ones. He despises popularity, and has ere this given umbrage by his _brusquerie_ to supporters of long standing and high position; and he leaves them to do as they please to seek other pastures or to return to their former allegiance. He is a striking example--the most striking I have ever seen--of a man, who knows how to accommodate unusual independence of character and conduct to commercial life.

The successive authorities in the Printed Book Department of the British Museum have earned my cordial grat.i.tude by their uniform deference to my somewhat peculiar and somewhat exacting requirements. They soon formed the habit, when it was found that I was an earnest and genuine worker, of waiving in my favour, so far as it was consistent with reason and propriety, the hard and fast rule of the establishment, and even under the now rather remote and quasi-historical keepership of Mr Watts.

It was as a simple student that I in the first place sought the British Museum, and in the old reading-room initiated myself in the learning requisite to qualify me, as I imagined, for becoming the English historian of Venice. I was self-complacently happy in the unconsciousness of my own intense ignorance of the magnitude of the task and of the fact that, at a distance of forty years, I should still have merely reached a more advanced stage of my labours. It at any rate speaks for my perseverance and resolution, that my interest in the topic is unabated, and my desire and intention, to see the project of my youth completed on a suitable and satisfactory scale inflexible.

I ventured into type in 1858 and 1860, and since then I have printed farther instalments destined to fall into their places, when the time arrives. But accident directed my steps and thoughts about the same time into a different groove, and I turned my attention to book-collecting and bibliography, at first vaguely and desultorily, and by degrees on a more systematic principle; and cogent circ.u.mstances--that necessity for living, which Dr Johnson ignored--finally drove me into the market as a speculator. My conversance with old books was very special and defective; of many cla.s.ses I knew next to nothing; but I gradually gained a fair insight into the value of those, for which I had contracted a personal liking--the early poetry and romances--and I tried my hand as a hunter for specialities. I naturally turned to the Museum as a channel; for I was not acquainted with many of the booksellers, and I had yet to meet with Mr Huth.

It may not be, indeed is not, generally known, how wide a diversity of persons offer their possessions or acquisitions to the national library.

There are great differences of opinion respecting the questions of rarity and value, and the authorities are most unconscionably plagued by a host of individuals of imperfect bibliographical attainments, who shoot parcels of old volumes in Great Russell Street in the expectation of a more or less rich harvest, in which they are apt to be more or less disappointed.

Here and there a real treasure is netted. The Bishop of Bath and Wells brought a small octavo volume from Ickworth, comprising the _Prophete Jonas_ and other tracts of singular scarcity and importance. A gentleman from Woolwich introduced a quarto volume in old vellum of poetical compositions of the middle of the sixteenth century, including the _Scholehouse of Women_, the _Defence of Women_, the _Seven Sorrows that Women have when Their Husbands be dead_, etc., with the autograph on a flyleaf of 'John Hodge, of the Six Clerks' Office 1682.' Such prizes atone for a vast amount of annoyance and rubbish.

But Mr Maskell, Mr Halliwell, Mr Henry Stevens, and myself have probably, apart from purchases made direct from the sales and the shops, contributed of late years most largely to supply _lacunae_ in the Early English Department, and supersede the three-volume catalogue.

At the Bodleian the late Dr c.o.xe and the Rev. Mr Madan have always done their best to help me, and at Cambridge the late Mr Henry Bradshaw was a host in himself. These relations, however, were purely bibliographical; while those with the Museum were of a more mingled yarn, and my connection with that inst.i.tution, both as regarded printed literature and ma.n.u.scripts, was in fact part of the system, which I have above fully explained.

I did a good deal _con amore_. A strange story reached me about a copy of Monstrelet's Chronicles in French, printed on vellum, for which Mr Quaritch was not willing to give as much as the owner desired, in fact throwing discredit on the genuineness of the book. Whereupon it was carried to Great Russell Street, duly inspected, and as to the price--the authorities were prepared to hand over all the cash in hand, about 700.

Mr Quaritch was stated to have been very wroth, when he found that he had missed the lot, and declared that his ground for scepticism was the fact that the only copy in the market or likely to occur for sale was in Russia; and he then learned for the first time, that the present one had been obtained at St Petersburg. I called on Mr Garnett, and inquired what were the actual circ.u.mstances, so far as the Museum was concerned; and it appeared that the book did come from Russia, and consisted only of vols. 2 and 3; but the library already possessed vol. 1 (wanting one leaf only) in an incomplete set formerly belonging to King Henry VII.; and the purchase was arranged. The keeper referred to the accounts, and found that the transaction took place in 1886, and that the sum given was 375.

My experiences of bookbinders have been tolerably manifold, and not exempt from the sorrows, with which the employers of this cla.s.s of skilled labour are bound to become familiar. The earliest of my acquaintances was Mr Leighton, who executed a great deal of work for Sir William Stirling-Maxwell--in those days known as William Stirling of Keir. There was a stupendous copy of Maxwell's _Cloister-Life of Charles V._, published at a few shillings, which I understood Leighton to say had cost with the ill.u.s.trations and elaborate Spanish binding about 1000. I saw the book in Brewer Street, but not the value. Leighton's speciality was Spanish calf, as Riviere's was the tree-marbled pattern. I had a considerable amount of work done for me here, while I filled the _role_ of a collector on my own account in a humble degree. But when I had occasion, at a later period, to put volumes into new liveries, and their condition demanded nice handling, I employed Riviere, whom I found very satisfactory and punctual. His place of business in Piccadilly adjoining Pickering's shop was during years one of my not least agreeable resorts, and I profited, with the concurrence of the princ.i.p.al, by the constant presence on the premises of undescribed books or editions consigned for binding. Of Bedford I saw very little. He was a true artist, and a very una.s.suming, pleasant fellow, whom I occasionally visited at his address in or near York Street, Westminster. My first call was in consequence of Mr Huth having given me leave to take notes of some rare volumes, which were in course of treatment. Bedford was more reliable than Riviere, who could bind well, if he liked; but he sometimes left too much to subordinates.

Pratt, who had been a workman at Bedford's, was a respectable binder, but an indifferent cleaner and mender, two very essential features, where the slightest neglect or oversight may prove disastrous. It is trying to look in casually, and perceive that the tender t.i.tle-page of a quarto Shakespear has parted with one of the letters of the poet's name or a figure of the date, and that one of these is floating on the surface of a tub of water; and such thrilling episodes have occurred.

If it is in some cases an advantage to take your acquisitions to a binder, and have them separately clothed, it is in others, and perhaps for the most part, one to buy ready-bound. It saves expense, delay, and annoyance.

Of my publishers I am scarcely ent.i.tled to speak in a volume devoted to the collecting side beyond such works as directly arose from my pursuit as a book-lover pure and simple between 1857 and 1867. But, when I look closely at my professedly literary undertakings, I discern more or less in nearly all of them a bibliographical spirit and training. My Venetian labours included the formation of a fair representative collection of books relating to the subject and a study of the MSS. within my reach. My p.r.o.nounced taste for method and minutiae in early English literature extended to Italy, when I was endeavouring to concentrate on the history of the Republic all the direct and collateral light, which I was enabled to gather from various sources; and the same thing may be truly predicated of the commissions, which I executed for several publishers, beginning with Russell Smith and Reeves & Turner. Mine have been chiefly enterprises, where a knowledge of detail and a familiarity with extant or available material were apt to prove of eminent service; and such was especially the case with the _Early Popular Poetry_ and the _Dodsley_.

Disciples of the _belles-lettres_, who entertain less respect for the extrinsic side or part of their tasks, may be wiser than myself; but it strikes me, that it is difficult to do justice to a subject without surveying the entire ground occupied by it.

Two very mortifying ill.u.s.trations of the soundness of this view occurred to me at different times. In my collected edition of Randolph, I collated everything with the original editions except the _Aristippus_ and had the satisfaction of discovering, when it was too late, that all but the first issue were incomplete in many places, in one to the extent of omitting a line. In my reconstructed and enlarged Dodsley, _in fifteen thick octavo volumes, containing eighty-four dramas_, I have a table of _errata_ of _thirty-six items_, many very trivial and even dubious; and of this total _five-and-twenty_ occur in one play, which I neglected to compare with the old copy deposited in an inconvenient locality, and gave from the Shakespear Society's text. I attach greater blame to myself, that I should have forgotten, when I reprinted in 1892 my Suckling of 1874, to set right the stupid mistake in the song from 'The Sad One,' of _dawn_ for _down_.

I shall remain highly pleased, that I succeeded, in the volume ent.i.tled _Tales and Legends_, in putting in type my long-cherished ideas about Robin Hood and Faustus; and I adopted a sort of old-fashioned, vernacular style throughout the book, apparently not unsuitable to the nature of the topics treated. Both the stories just mentioned were there for the first time presented in an English form and text agreeably to my view and estimate of the facts relative to two of the most remarkable characters in romance. The acc.u.mulation of absurdities round those heroes of the closet and the stage prompted me, years and years since, to endeavour to reduce the legends to a shape more compatible with evidence and probability. Yet I am informed that some of the critics wondered, what the aim of the volume was. It struck others, as well as myself, as fairly clear; indeed the undertaking was strictly on recognised lines. But I had unfortunately omitted to graduate as a specialist and to add myself to the roll of the faithful.

Another venture, which involved the writer in a slight temporary _imbroglio_, was the monograph on the _Livery Companies of London_. I was most unhappy in the season and circ.u.mstances of launching this work. It was a tolerably hard six months' task, and I hurried it forward, inasmuch as I knew that a rival scheme was on the stocks. Considering that it is a big book with numerous ill.u.s.trations supplied by the editor, it is perhaps not much worse than it might have been, had it proceeded from a pen writing _superiorum approbatione_. The rumour arose that, as soon as the real work on the subject appeared, the attempt of an outsider would sink into merited oblivion; but the real work did not appear, and its proposed author had to content himself, in the presence of his disappointment, with sending me an anonymous communication, based on erroneous intelligence, that the word _Gild_ ought to be spelled with a _U_, as it is in _Guildhall_, _Gild_ signifying _to face with gold_.

A far more serious misadventure, however, was occasioned by an unlucky clerical oversight. In the account of the Cutlers' Company I stated that there had been, many years before, a defalcation by the Clerk, whereas I should have said 'by a clerk;' the wrong article and the capital letter drew down on me the ire of the party, who still occupied the position of Clerk to the Gild, and who pleaded damage to his reputation by the misprint, pointed out to him by the frustrated compiler aforesaid. There could be no sustainable plea of injury, and the large amount lost rendered it obvious that there must have been neglect by superiors; but the publishers thought it better to agree to cancel the leaf, which was done in all copies unsold or recoverable. The Clerk was in fact the responsible officer, and although he might have had no hand in the misappropriation, he must have exercised a very imperfect control over the accounts, to render such a thing possible.

Owing to the unlucky retention in my agreement for the Livery Companies'

book of certain clauses, I involved myself in an unpleasantness, which made me anxious to get rid of the entire business. Accordingly, the moment that I was advised by the firm, that they had (without previous consultation with me as a royalty-holder) converted themselves into a limited company, I solicited a cheque in settlement of all claims, and obtained it. I have very possibly set a precedent, by which others might not do ill to profit.

I know that to my more recent acquaintances and auxiliaries I must have appeared rather n.i.g.g.ard of presentation copies of my publications. But I used to be generous enough in distributing such things, till I was thoroughly disheartened and disgusted. Some stopped short of acknowledgment; others might without much disadvantage have done the same.

I sent a privately-printed volume worth several pounds as a gift to a reverend professor at Cambridge, and he wrote back on a card: 'Thanks.

Curious.' My former schoolmaster at Merchant Taylors had only to say that I had left out a Greek accent in a quotation, and a female relative, after two years' deliberation, apprised me that I was guilty of printing the wrong article in a French maxim. When I forwarded to Mr William Chappell direct as from myself an important volume edited for Mr Huth, he pointed out to the latter, leaving me unrecognised, that I had made a slip in a particular place. An official at the British Museum, who solicited one of my books as a memorial, which would be cherished as an heirloom in his family, forthwith pa.s.sed it on to a bookseller, who priced it in his catalogue at 12, 12s., and Mr Huth, till I explained the circ.u.mstances, imagined that I was the culprit.

CHAPTER X

As an Amateur--Old China--Dr Diamond of Twickenham--Unfavourable Results of His Tutorship--My Adventure at Lowestoft--Alderman Rose--I turn over a New Leaf--Morgan--His Sale to Me of Various Objects--The Seventeenth Century Dishes--The Sevres Tray of 1773--The Pair of j.a.panese Dishes--Blue and White--Hawthorn--The Odd Vase--My Finds at Hammersmith--Mr Sanders of Chiswick and his Chelsea China--Gale--The Ruby-backed Eggsh.e.l.l--A Recollection of Ralph Bernal--Buen Retiro and Capo di Monte--Reynolds of Hart Street--The Wedgewood Teapot--The _Rose du Barri_ Vases--My Bowls--An Eccentric Character and His Treasures--Reminiscences of Midhurst and Up Park--The Zurich Jug and My Zurich Visitor--The Diamond Sale.

In crossing over from the literary to other fields, where I have instructed and amused myself and a few others by my studies, I pa.s.s to ground, where I occupy a somewhat different position--that of an absolute, incorruptible amateur. I see clearly enough that, whatever advantage may attach itself to the commercial side in these matters, the genuine pleasure lies in purchasing for oneself, even if the price is here and there such as to ensure loss on realisation; for there is the sense of patronage and superiority. I never descended to petty transactions; but where an appreciable amount was involved; I would far liefer have stood aloof, or have acquired for myself. There was only the sovereign motive in the background, which conquered my instinctive repugnance to the conversion of literary monuments into a commodity and of my hardly-acquired knowledge into a mint.

Outside Books, I have conceived, as I proceeded, and as I mingled with other hobby-riders, an interest in such matters of secondary human concernment as China, Coins, Plate, Postage Stamps, Pictures, and Furniture. The two former have occupied in my thought a station not much less prominent than that of literature; and as I abandoned the practical inquiry into the first subject after ten years' devotion to it, I shall commence by giving some account of my observations and experiences in that particular market, which, like all others, offers its peculiarities and idiosyncrasies.

There is hardly a triter remark than that we are slaves to our pa.s.sions; and the genuine collector certainly is unto his, whatever his line may be.

Where there are ample resources, it signifies less; but the servitude presses very heavily on the more necessitous or more moderately endowed.

It is in vain to say that a man ought not to buy luxuries, if he cannot afford them; he will have them, as another will drink alcohol or chew opium. To secure something which he covets he is capable of p.a.w.ning his coat or 'dining with Duke Humphrey.' Had I been exempt from fancies, I might have spared myself the ordeal of going into the highways and byways in quest of that doubtful benefactor a publisher; I might have dispensed with ingratiating myself with booksellers and bookbuyers; I might have enjoyed the pleasures of reading and thinking amid some sort of _paterna rura_. But as a citizen, who leaves London only for the sake of the satisfaction which it yields to return to it (for your Londoner, if he likes to see and _feel_ the country must _live in urbe_), I naturally contracted certain pleasant and costly vices incidental to a metropolis, and became an unthrift and through my unthriftiness a hireling. I often resolve to break my fetters; but I lack the courage. The tastes, in which I have graduated, have sweetened my life, and enlarged my vision, if they have trenched a little on my freedom; and I even think that they have tended to humanise me, and subdue a not too tractable temper to the harder and sterner uses of the world.

I have not the least objection to avow that, when I accidentally acquired in 1869 at Llandudno an example or two of Oriental ceramic art, I was deplorably ignorant of the bearings and merits of the pursuit, and had, as usual, no idea that I had embarked in one. A good-natured and well-informed relative, who was always ready and pleased to serve and flatter me, suggested that my Eastern porcelain was _Brom'ichham_. Of course an English factory could not, in the first place, have produced the things at the price. I received a good deal of encouragement and sympathy from those near and dear to me just about this time; my extravagance was censured; and my early insolvency considered probable.

Through my father I became acquainted about that time with Dr Diamond of Twickenham House, the possessor of one of the most extensive and miscellaneous a.s.semblages of porcelain and pottery of all ages and countries ever formed in this country. Who had first bitten the doctor, I never heard; I found him, on my first introduction, the owner of a ma.s.s of examples, good, bad and indifferent, of all of which, however insignificant and obscure, he could tell you the pedigree and place of origin. He had many other tastes; he was curious about photography, books, pictures, prints, coins, and plate; his house was a museum, of which he was the curator and showman; but I think that during the last years of his life old china and plate kept the ascendancy.

My personal progress was at first leisurely, for I do not recollect that I made any farther investments till 1872 when, happening to be at Lowestoft where Alderman Rose, brother of James Anderson Rose, also a collector, was then staying, he and I were equally seduced by the attractions of a shop kept by a person named Burwood. It was extremely fortunate for the latter that Rose and myself had nearly all our knowledge to learn; we bought largely and not too well, and Burwood was so exhausted by the drain on his stock, that he announced his intention of travelling down into Herefordshire, in order to buy some very valuable bits reported to him from a farmhouse in that rather distant shire. There was a second depot in the same watering-place, kept by an old man and his wife, with whom it was a favourite phrase, when their stock ran low, to say that they must 'take a journey.' In short, I ama.s.sed a large hamper of ware on this occasion, and brought it home. Diamond, as soon as he was apprised of my new foible, exclaimed, 'G.o.d help him!' and I suspected that there must be something in it, when I called at a place in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, and ascertained that that and the Herefordshire farmhouse were one.

I soon made a second discovery, which almost discouraged me from prosecuting the fancy any farther. Diamond had knowledge and feeling; but I now saw that he was deficient in taste. I had naturally modelled my small collection on his plan or want of plan; I fell in with one or two dealers, who opened my eyes; and the Lowestoft cargo was thrown overboard.

A Jew named Moss had a whole tableful of crockery in exchange for a good plaque of Limoges enamel of the earlier epoch. He once let me have at a moderate price an old Sevres plate painted with a pastoral scene, and with a rich amethyst blue and gold festooned border. I continue to think favourably of it. He brought it and a number of other pieces, all rubbish, in company with a co-religionist, to my house at Kensington in the evening. He was so discouraged by my frugal selection, that I lost sight of him. He was not miserly in his warnings against his professional contemporaries. This is a common trait.

I began to work on a new principle--to buy fewer and better things, studying condition, to which the doctor was more or less insensible; and I found myself about 1880 the owner, even on such a basis, of a mult.i.tude of wares which threatened to compete in the early future with the Twickenham prototype.

This was all the more serious, so to speak, inasmuch as while I drew from very few sources, the doctor was a mark for everybody, while he continued to buy with zest and avidity. All sorts of people came to the high iron gates, bringing every variety of article for sale; and few carried their freights back. Even those who were on the list of private guests occasionally shewed their good taste by drawing out of their breast-pockets at dessert some object for Diamond's approval and purchase.

There was Major ----, one of Her Majesty's messengers, who was an habitual offender (as I thought) in such a way. But in the eyes of our common host the end in those days justified the means. It was all fish.

I dealt in chief measure with a house in Hanway Street (Morgan), Gale in Holborn, Brooks at Hammersmith, and Reynolds of Hart Street, Bloomsbury. I seldom left these tracks, and met there with only too much to tempt me.

Morgan sold me a few pieces of Sevres and some very fine Oriental. It was curious that, just after my purchase of three or four large porcelain dishes, the 'china earth' of the Stuart era, a gentleman of old family from Newcastle-on-Tyne looked in at Morgan's, and observing a broken specimen of the same lot, mentioned that at home he had some precisely similar, which had belonged to his predecessors since 1650. A very beautiful Sevres tea-stand of small dimensions, with a circ.u.mference representing a tressure of six curves, has the marks of the maker, the painter, and the gilder, and belongs to 1773; I gave him 23 for it; Morgan tried to get the companion cup and saucer; but it brought 86; and was bought, I think, by the late Mr Lawrence, F.S.A.

He had a rather prolonged and troublesome negotiation in one instance on my behalf. The executors of some gentleman offered him a pair of superb j.a.panese dishes, 24 inches in diameter and of a rare pattern and shape, for 140. I declined them at that figure, and heard no more of the matter, till he informed me that his correspondents had modified their views, so as to make it possible for me to possess the lot for 85. I took them; and the vendor has repeatedly applied to me, asking if I have the dishes still, and care to part. He sold me a few other rather costly articles--costly in my eyes.

Morgan initiated me in the true facts about Blue and White, and helped me to steer clear of the blunders, which many of my contemporaries perpetrated over that craze. I have a small cylindrical bottle, white and ultramarine, which ill.u.s.trates the matter as well as a dearer example, and shews the pains which the Chinese took to prepare their paste and pigments during the best period--the seventeenth century. Both are most brilliant, and it is alike the case with Chinese and j.a.panese ware of this cla.s.s, that the ancient appears to a superficial or inexperienced observer more modern than that made in our own time, of which the ground and the decoration are faded and weak.

I likewise gained an insight from the same source into the mysteries of Hawthorn, which seems to be rather Plum-blossom. I handled a goodly number of specimens; but I encountered scarcely any, which awakened a very strong interest. Really fine examples are of the rarest occurrence, and it is still more difficult to obtain pairs of vases or jars with the genuine covers or lids. They are generally false or wooden. Odd pieces are not wanted. You must have either a couple or a set of two, three, five, six, according to circ.u.mstances.