The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Collector's Whatnot, by Cornelius
Obenchain Van Loot
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
using this eBook.
Title: The Collector's Whatnot
Authors: Cornelius Obenchain Van Loot
Milton Kilgallen
Murgatroyd Elphinstone
Release Date: April 19, 2023 [eBook #70597]
Language: English
Produced by: Emmanuel Ackerman, Quentin Campbell, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTOR'S WHATNOT ***
Transcriber’s Note
In the following transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_
while bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. Small capitals in the
original text have been transcribed as ALL CAPITALS.
See end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.
—————————————— Start of Book ——————————————
[Illustration:
REAR VIEW OF THE STATUE OF PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN FLORAL PARK
CITY, FLORIDA
Note the manner in which the sculptress denotes motion and
vibration by the addition of the stump, which expresses with one
bold stroke the action of the subject in rising from meditation.
Visitors to Floral Park City are advised to walk all around the
statue in order to get these different expressions of mood.
]
THE
COLLECTOR’S WHATNOT
_A Compendium, Manual, and Syllabus of Information and Advice
on all Subjects Appertaining to the Collection of Antiques,
both Ancient and not so Ancient_
Compiled by
CORNELIUS OBENCHAIN VAN LOOT, MILTON KILGALLEN
AND MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE
[Illustration]
Boston and New York
_Houghton Mifflin Company_
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The First Edition of _The Collector’s Whatnot_ consists of 3127
copies, as follows:
Twenty-seven on choicest domestic leaf, bound in teakwood, with
leather hinges, numbered A to &, with the Authors’ thumb-prints
in red ink in each copy.
Three thousand one hundred copies on American antique wove,
bound in manila boards.
The Second Edition consists of one thousand pure and pink
copies, bound to sell.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
_To_
The Resigned Husbands and Wives of
All True Collectors
This Book
is most feelingly
DEDICATED
[Illustration]
PREFACE
The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities was
formed on February 14, 1911, by Eben S. Twitchett, B.B.S., Cornelius
Obenchain Van Loot, D.A., C.O.J., Raymond L. Pry, A.B., A.M., S.I.W.,
and Professor Milton Kilgallen, F.R.S., of Balliol College. The
present volume is largely made up of the papers delivered by these
distinguished pedants before their equally distinguished society.
The 14th of February is a red-letter day in the history of antiques and
antiqueing; for the exhaustive researches and diligent labors of the
members of the Academy have not only awakened untold numbers of people
to the refining value of something really old, but have cleared up
those highly important moot points; that is, when does a thing cease
to be merely old and become an antique; and when is an antique not an
antique?
One of the finest contributions to the literature of antiques, for
example, was Dr. Pry’s masterly monograph on _Chisel Markings and
Screw-Driver Scratches of the Lower Connecticut Valley_ (Bulletin of
the American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities, Vol. IV,
No. 7, pp. 3682 _et seq._). In this monograph Dr. Pry pointed out that
an old Colonial frying-pan was a genuine antique, worthy of being
used as the central object in a modern mantel-ornament grouping. The
workmanship, the artistry, the incomparable grace of a genuine De
Ruyter frying-pan puts it in the same class with a great painting or a
great ruin. A De Ruyter frying-pan in first-class shape is, in fact,
infinitely preferable to some great ruins, especially if the ruins come
under the head of third-class ruins.† On the other hand, a genuine
Oppendink frying-pan, carefully made during the same year that, say,
the De Ruyter frying-pan was produced, is worthless as an antique. Both
are antiques, yet one is not an antique. There are some who persist
in buying Oppendink frying-pans and hanging them on the walls of their
living-rooms, alongside a beautiful old Colonial hack-saw and a rare
Colonial egg-beater; but their numbers, thanks to the magnificent,
careful, and far-reaching work of the American Academy for the
Popularization of Antiquities, are gradually becoming fewer.
————
† Grasswink, H. Q., _Ruins: Brick, Stone, and Human; Their
Classification and Idiosyncrasies_.
This is only an isolated example of the Academy’s efforts. Its field
agents have collected, collated, segregated, documented, annotated, and
filed over seventy-three hundred pounds (August 28, 1922) of reports
on American-owned antiques alone. Some of them have undergone the most
severe dangers; while two have even made the supreme sacrifice in their
pursuit of duty. This tragedy cast a shadow over the entire Academy;
for among its members there were no more ardent or well-informed
students of antiques than Judson F. Rapp, Litt.D., and Herman Hymen
Heller, of Cracow University. The beautiful Rapp-Heller monument,
soon to be erected either in Washington, D.C., or in the lonely spot
in Northern Maine where Dr. Rapp dug up the first known specimen of
folding iron Colonial camping-stool, will represent the Spirit of
Antiqueing in a most dignified and touching way. Sketches for this
monument have already been prepared by Mrs. Claudia Gaines Gumme, the
distinguished sculptress; and the accepted sketch shows a stern-visaged
New-England housewife refusing to accept seven dollars from Professor
Heller for a beautiful Colonial cradle, while Dr. Rapp surreptitiously
examines the bottom of a ladder-back chair in the shadow of a
convenient highboy.
The details of the tragedy are probably still fresh in the minds of all
antique-lovers. Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller, it will be remembered,
had secured for the society a flawless specimen of early well-sweep
with bucket attached. They took the well-sweep and bucket to their
rooms and prepared to study their treasures with the painstaking care
which characterized all their efforts. Dr. Rapp was a native of Calais,
Maine, and therefore had developed his New England conscience to a
high degree. Professor Heller, though born in Kishinew and educated in
Cracow, had thoroughly absorbed the New England traditions and ideals
in the nine years he had lived in America. He often laughingly remarked
that his New England conscience had become so acute that he was
thinking of changing his name to Lowell or Fitzgerald.
In making a careful examination of the well-sweep with their magnifying
glasses, Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller reached markedly different
conclusions as to its age. Dr. Rapp, as shown by the hasty notes
which he jotted down at the time, was of the opinion that it dated
back to 1683. Dr. Heller, on the other hand, basing his conclusions
on the moss-layers at the end of the pole, was firmly convinced that
it could not have been made prior to 1765. Each scientist labored for
hours in the effort to win over the other to his views. The arguments
finally became bitter, and eventually they attacked each other with
their magnifying glasses, which were unusually large and heavy. The
noise of the struggle was heard by several neighbors; but it was not
investigated, as Professor Heller had long been accustomed to distil
alcohol, sampling the results as he went along, and frequently becoming
rather noisy. The neighbors, unfortunately, thought he was sampling a
new batch. On the following morning, when an attendant came to clean
the Professor’s apartments, both Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller were
dead. This is a beautiful example of the devotion to a cause which
characterizes the work of all the members of the American Academy for
the Popularization of Antiquities.
The finest fruit of the work of the Academy, however, came when it
commissioned Professor Milton Kilgallen, F.R.S., of Balliol College,
to collate and edit the notes, papers, and reports of America’s
greatest antique-collectors for the benefit of the present and future
generations. The monumental labors of Professor Kilgallen, which have
extended over a period of seven years, cannot, of course, be included
in any book weighing less than seventeen pounds. The ensuing work is
merely a sketch or bird’s-eye view of the Professor’s toil, published
in the present form by the Academy in order that antique-lovers may,
in a few hours’ reading, obtain an idea of the vast amount of material
suitable for individual research work which has been collected in the
Academy’s files through the indefatigable energy and enthusiasm of
Professor Kilgallen.
The Kilgallen family has long been distinguished in the realm of
Arts and Sciences. Colonel Everard Kilgallen, father of Professor
Milton Kilgallen, became celebrated at the age of twenty-two for his
exhaustive treatise on “The Seasonal Movements of the Potato Bug.” His
wife, the beautiful Sheila Catherwood-Trapp, daughter of Sir Almeric
Catherwood-Trapp, D.S.O., K.C.B., F.R.G.S., was noted for her bird
studies, and particularly for her inimitable paintings of the lesser
flycatcher, on which she specialized. So realistic were her paintings
of the lesser flycatcher that flies have actually been observed
hurriedly leaving a room in which one of these works of art was hung.
This accomplished couple had two sons, Morton and Milton Kilgallen.
Both, curiously, were educated at Balliol; and both became full
Professors during the evening of the same day—June 21, 1906. Both sons
inherited from their gifted parents the love of science and research.
Professor Morton Kilgallen devoted his life to ichthyology.
Professor Milton Kilgallen had planned to devote his life to
entomology. Fortunately for all antique-lovers, his first researches
were made among the borers. This chance brought him in close
contact with antiques; since it is among the antiques that many
of the wood-borers seem best able to function and to express their
individuality. Although he has never lost interest in the borers, his
early love for entomology has been abandoned in favor of his second
love, antiques. He has devoted himself to the study of antiques with
the enthusiasm which has always characterized the activities of the
Kilgallen family. His tall, somewhat wooden figure and his rich
mahogany-colored features—due, probably, to his somewhat eccentric
but constant use of furniture polish as a face lotion—are familiar to
antique-dealers from Odessa to Otaru and from Edinburgh to Eski-Shehir.
His knowledge of antiques verges on the supernatural. Other
antique-collectors cannot account for it; but he himself ascribes it
to a trimonthly subcutaneous injection of the special furniture polish
from his own laboratory. With the charming simplicity that always
characterizes his speech and acts, he declares that if one wishes to
place himself _en rapport_ with an Indian, one lives like an Indian; if
one wishes to familiarize himself with the gorilla, one lives the life
of a gorilla as nearly as possible. If, therefore, one wishes to become
thoroughly familiar with furniture, one must live like furniture: that
is to say, he must _think_ like furniture. The whimsical directness and
incontrovertibility of this suggestion is typical of the man; and if we
are to believe him, it accounts for his penetrating knowledge of all
sorts of furniture. Other collectors have tried the same system, but
most of them either went blind or lost their reason.
Professor Milton Kilgallen has the largest collection of worm-holes
(in furniture, of course, not in the earth or other substances) in
the world. In his beautiful residence on the Maine coast is one room
devoted entirely to these little miracles of patience. Some of them are
plain, without edging, while others are cross-sections. It is almost
impossible for Professor Kilgallen to state from day to day how many he
has in his possession; but at the lowest estimate there are more than
twelve thousand. Professor Kilgallen is also an ardent collector of
samples of patina, or the polish which comes on ancient articles from
constant handling and rubbing. These samples range all the way from an
arm of a desk-chair once used by Savonarola to the elbow of a frock
coat worn for several years by the Honorable William J. Bryan, which
last he obtained with great difficulty. Not counting kitchen utensils
and garments patinated by the Professor himself, he has more than 1178
specimens of patina, which establishes a world’s record for a single
collection.
The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities counts
itself fortunate to have secured the services of the world’s greatest
expert on antiques in the preparation of this book and in the
collecting of the enormous mass of data which is always open to any
member of the Academy or to any antique-collector in good and regular
standing. If this book shall further the cause of antique-hunting and
somewhat lighten the arduous labors of those whose lives are dedicated
to finding something old to put in the house, then the American
Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities shall not have come into
existence in vain.
CORNELIUS OBENCHAIN VAN LOOT, D.A., C.O.J.
_President, A.A.P.A._
FLORAL PARK CITY, FLORIDA
_September 30, 1923_
CONTENTS
ANTIQUEING AHEAD, BY EBEN S. TWITCHETT, B.B.S.,
F.A.A.P.A., ETC. 1
HINTS FOR BUYING FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES, BY CECILIA
LEFINGWELL PRYNNE (MRS. GÜTZ) 29
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS, BY MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE,
A.B., A.M., F.R.F.H.A., LECTURER ON SCROLLWORK
AND FRETS AT SINSABAUGH UNIVERSITY, 1917–18 39
OLD RUGS, OLD IRON, OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS: A BRIEF
BROCHURE ON THE SEARCH FOR THE ANTIQUE BY A
PROFESSIONAL, JARED P. KILGALLEN, J.D. AND R.P. 61
THE EUROPEAN FIELD, BY PROFESSOR CHARLES A.
DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S. 77
HORSECHESTNUT 113
A WORD ON POONING, BY AUGUSTULA THOMAS 133
LIST OF PLATES AND
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
REAR VIEW OF THE STATUE OF PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN
FLORAL PARK CITY, FLORIDA _Frontispiece_
PLATE I: OLD DUTCH OVENSIDE CHAIR WITH THE RARE
PRETZEL BACK 4
PAIR OF WONDERFUL OLD FRENCH STATUETTES NOW THE
PROPERTY OF DR. TWITCHETT 10
PLATE II: MAGNIFICENT OLD FLAT-FRONT EARLY NEW
JERSEY SIDEBOARD DISCOVERED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN
IN AN OBSCURE PART OF NEWARK 18
PLATE III: FROM PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S COLLECTION OF
BEAUTIFUL OLD WOOD-CARVINGS: FIGURE OF POCAHONTAS;
BELIEVED TO BE THE WORK OF JOHN ALDEN 26
OLD NEW ENGLAND PRINT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES 32
STATUE ERECTED TO PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN FLORAL
PARK CITY, FLORIDA, BY GRATEFUL CITIZENS OF THAT
COMMUNITY 42
PLATE IV: PRICELESS BIT OF OLD STAFFORDSHIRE WARE
(A PAPER-WEIGHT) COLLECTED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN 50
PLATE V: RARE BIT OF OLD WORCESTERSHIRE WARE 58
DR. TWITCHETT AND MRS. AUGUSTULA THOMAS’S HUSBAND
(MR. THOMAS) WEARING THE INSIGNIA OF FULL
MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION
OF ANTIQUITIES 64
THE GLASS PERFECT 68
PLATE VI: OLD SKIPWORTH WARE: DOG ON PAPER-WEIGHT 74
PLATE VII: PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S MAGNIFICENT COLLECTION
OF EARLY AMERICAN UTENSILS, ALL HAND-WROUGHT,
AND SOME OBTAINED FROM THE DESCENDANTS
OF THE FAMILIES IN WHICH THE ARTICLES HAD BEEN
HANDED DOWN FROM FATHER TO SON 80
PLATE VIII: COLONIAL TRIGLE-STOOL, DISCOVERED IN A
NEW HAMPSHIRE WOODSHED, AND PURCHASED FOR A
MERE SONG BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN 86
PLATE IX: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL AS IT IS TO-DAY 94
PLATE X: NEW DESIGN FOR COLOGNE CATHEDRAL 94
PLATE XI: COLONIAL KITCHEN SINK FROM THE OLD PALAVER
THOMPSON MANSION IN HAVERHILL 102
PLATE XII: SAMPLER IN THE POSSESSION OF PROFESSOR
KILGALLEN’S FAMILY 110
THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL: “RISING
IN THE NIGHT, TROUBLE OVER THE YEARNING OF THE
BASSINES TO BE REUNITED TO THEIR ORIGINAL SOURCE” 124
“HE KNEW THE OLD MUSICIAN SUFFERED FROM HEADACHES,”
ETC. 126
THE BECKET (ACTUAL SIZE) 128
PROFILE VIEW OF THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À
CHEVAL RECONSTRUCTED AND IN USE 130
RECEPTION HELD BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE
POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES ON THE LAWN BEFORE
THE ACADEMY’S BUILDING AT THE SAN FRANCISCO EXPOSITION 136
OLD VIRGINIA FOUR-POSTER INLAID WITH MAHOGANY 144
————
ANTIQUEING AHEAD
By
EBEN S. TWITCHETT
————
[Illustration]
ANTIQUEING AHEAD
By
EBEN S. TWITCHETT, B.B.S., F.A.A.P.A., ETC.
It was Mr. Leslie Stephen, I believe, who remarked, of the repartees of
the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, that it was futile to defend them except
to those who enjoyed them without defense. Some color of this same
good-humored contempt, this faintly supercilious _laissez-faire_ [or,
as the French phrase has it, this spirit of leave it lay], has too long
characterized the attitude of antiquers in general toward those who
seem, to the esoteric view, at least, Philistine, gentile.
Antiquers have, as a rule, contentedly held themselves above the
indignity of proselyting; a little jealous, perhaps, of their relative
rarity, they have looked askance, or two, even, at those who strayed,
unbidden, into their company. It was, they felt, enough to be an
antiquer and to antique; they knew no restless itch for converts; they
believed, or affected to believe, that the antiquer is as impossible of
post-natal evolution as the ventriloquist or the Ethiopian.
Herein, as Professor Kilgallen has at last made manifest, antiquers
have been doubly at fault—at fault in a parochial willingness to
conserve for their own behoof an avocation at once innocent, diverting,
and, if individual taste so incline, remunerative; at fault again in
assuming that the antiquer must needs be born [in the vernacular] that
way.
These errors, happily, no longer reproach the confraternity at large.
The popularization of antiqueing, under the purposeful leadership of
Professor Kilgallen, is, one may assert, almost a _fait accompli_, or,
as the clever Gallic dictum puts it, an accomplished fact. And it has
been incidentally established, surely, that the antiquer may be made
almost as expeditiously and convincingly as the antique itself.
[Illustration: PLATE I
OLD DUTCH OVENSIDE CHAIR WITH THE RARE PRETZEL BACK; PICKED UP IN
A PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN SETTLEMENT BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN
Sketch by the Professor
]
The inspiring example of Milton Kilgallen, and the indisputable success
of his endeavors, have, together, persuaded me that I have been even
more at fault than those esoteric antiquers, if I may, for the last
time, so describe them, toward whom, in the pride of my peculiarity,
I have felt and spoken very much as they, in turn, have felt and
spoken of the Philistine proper. For years, sedulously and vigilantly
I have enjoyed a monopoly of the great branch of the art and science
of antiqueing which continues to preoccupy my powers. I have made no
effort to interest other antiquers in my province; I have thought of
them, indeed, as scarcely less pitiable than those to whom an antique
is a piece of, in the vulgar idiom, junk.
Too, even had I felt a need of sympathy and envy and applause in my
secret ambitions and achievements, I should have been restrained from
the essay to share my enthusiasm by my fixed belief that it could be
acquired in no way except that accident of inheritance by which it came
to me.
_Peccavi_, or, in the perhaps more pungent idiom of Cicero, I have
sinned. I now make confession and, as far as may be, atonement. I
reveal my guarded secrets, at last, without reserve.
I am still, I believe, the only antiquer ahead, _sui generis_, or,
to adopt the scintillating Italian phrase, alone in my class. Rather,
now that these lines have seen the light, _fui_, _non sum_. I have
been, as the Latins put it, not I am. For it will be enough to whisper
my revelations; there will be, to-morrow, I realize, more antiquers
ahead than one can shake a stick—if the reader will indulge me in the
solecism of ending a sentence prepositionally—at.
To this I am resigned. Long enough have I enjoyed the sole entry to an
entire tense; long enough have brother and sister antiquers rummaged in
the traditional and commonplace haunts of the antique, the past; long
enough have they ventured no farther than the abode of the antiquer—the
present. To-morrow, forsaking these well-trodden precincts, they will
join me in the virgin, but pregnant, future.
Like me, they will stoop no longer to the facile, shameful processes
of searching, in cobwebbed bins and attics, for antiques which any
novice must recognize, at a glance, as old. Like me, they will even
smile at the enthusiasms of those who scratch in the dust and crow,
like barnyard fowl, at each inevitable discovery. Like me, they will
know the pure joy of explorations and discoveries among the boundless
stores of to-morrow’s antiques.
I must begin at the beginning, with my birth. My destiny was
predetermined by the ancestry of which I sprang. My parents, both of
sturdy native stock, were by instinct mated to produce the original
antiquer ahead. It was inevitable, I apprehend. It was to be. It was.
My father, worthy fellow, had no clear knowledge of his natural
talent. My mother, I sometimes fancy, was remotely, dimly conscious
of her gift. I can recall, as yesterday, the exalted look with which
she witnessed the removal, from our stately parlor, of the array of
commonplace antiques with which it had been furnished, the joy with
which she and my father arranged, instead, those potential antiques
which only the gropings of their common hunger recognized for what they
were.
Even I, then in plaid kilts, did not at once share their delight,
their understanding. I found the red plush surface of that priceless
varnished oak sofa a harshly ticklesome affair; I was, to be sure,
impressed by the new frosted globes adorning the gasolier, the
intricate arabesques of the plaster rosette on the ceiling, from which
it sprouted downwards; I need not say, surely, that these globes,
tinted a glorious winey purple, decorated with protuberant knobs and
profound depressions, were none other than those very treasures of the
Obenchain collection, famous in four hemispheres as the sole surviving
set of admitted Roscoe Conkling gas-glass. They were, and I must marvel
helplessly before the phenomenon of instinct which urged my father, a
simple-minded barber in the town of Yonkers, to choose, unerringly, for
the tastes of fifty years beyond!
His taste, untutored by any device of art, was all but infallible.
He left me this, and with it the store of masterpieces which have,
discreetly vended, placed me beyond the reach of that financial anxiety
which, especially after the invention of the safety razor, clouded
his declining days. My unhappy father! It was his lot to begin his
profession in the full flower of the Whisker Period, and to survive
those troubled years only to confront the ignoble age of the tubed
cream and the tame, inglorious two-edged blade. It is impossible for me
to think of him save with a filial tear, and yet how cheerful he was!
How his place of business invited and allured the intellectual society
of Yonkers of his day! How the racked, lettered mugs gleamed in the
gas-lights! And how the air, of a Saturday night, was gay with innocent
mirth and pungent anecdote!
Thus I began, equipped by lavish Nature as if to recompense in me
the leanness of my paternal lot. Our house, long before I grew to
trouserable age, was filled to flowing with such a collection as not
even the indefatigable burrowings of the ineffable Rapp and Heller
could, in these degenerate times, assemble. In the parlor—incredible
as it may sound—stood, not one, but two Ulysses Grant cuspidors, one
nicked a trifle, but the other flawless—the priceless forget-me-notted
Grants, I mean, not the relatively common gilt-edged type. They were
even then my father’s chiefest pride; I—gratified in other boyish
whims—was never suffered to use either of them except by stealth.
He treasured them, born antiquer that he was, undreaming that the
pair would one day yield his son a thousand-fold their modest cost.
I owe him for them; my mother, herself no less percipient in other
lines than he, would have discarded them when, after the unforgetable
visit of Moody and Sankey, my father forewent his self-indulgence in
tobacco; but his taste was true. He clung to them with a dogged, blind
attachment for which I bless him still.
[Illustration:
PAIR OF WONDERFUL OLD FRENCH STATUETTES NOW THE
PROPERTY OF DR. TWITCHETT
The owner has identified them as Sèvres and pronounces them
portrait statuettes—No. 1, Victor Hugo in one of his moods; and
No. 2, a certain Marquis de St. Quai, probably a patron of Victor
Hugo.
]
It was my mother who provided me with my inheritance of _objets-d’art_,
or, as my Parisian friends prefer to say, objects of art. In its way
her instinct was as infallible as my father’s own, though possibly
more limited in scope. Indefatigably she scrimped and saved to bring
together the nucleus of my subsequent collection. It would be cruel,
in the present era of inflation, to set forth the catalogue. My
estimable colleague Van Loot, forewarned as he is, would not survive
the list, even if I omitted the prices, but I owe her memory at least
the tribute of some little particularity in the connection. It was she
who far-sightedly sacrificed our Thanksgiving turkey to procure the
figures of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, obtainable then, in the admirable
porcelain work of the period, for the trifling sum of three dollars
each, and even urged upon the buyer at that price by the agent of the
pious firm which held the monopoly of their production. My mother, I
remember, shrewdly beat him down to $2.75, and exacted that ten cents
of this sum should be paid in trade at my father’s shop—the agent
happily requiring his professional attention at the moment.
It was typical of her, this combination of prodigality and thrift—the
distinguishing characteristic, as Professor Kilgallen has so often
said, of the true antiquer. Without knowing why she did it, my mother
could and did perform prodigies of economy to lavish the slow, niggard
savings in which they fruited on the gratification of her driving,
dominant passion for that which, she must have realized, would be one
day an antique. It was what we learned to expect of her, my father and
I; he complained only covertly, when our Thanksgiving dinner revealed
itself to be the usual baked beans and pork, and cautioned me with
emphasis against repeating in my mother’s hearing the remarks he
permitted himself on the subject in the relative privacy of the shop.
As zealously as my father his Grant cuspidors, so did my mother cherish
and guard the images of the exhorters. They stood like tutelary saints
at either extreme of our mantel-shelf, dusted by no hands but her own,
at once the pride and solace of her lot. In spite of breath-stopping
offers—among them the blank, signed check tendered me by Cornelius
Obenchain Van Loot in person—I have never brought myself to part with
them, although, having now become obvious antiques, they possess but a
purely sentimental interest for me.
So, too, have I preserved the glass cane which our journeyman barber, a
roving, sportive soul, brought with him from the Centennial Exposition
at Philadelphia, during the closing days of the fruitful Grant Period.
I cannot forget the intensity with which my mother thirsted for
possession of this trophy; she gave the adventurous journeyman no peace
until he consented to part with it, taking payment in the laundering of
his stiff-bosomed shirt, which, indulging a taste for display perhaps
out of harmony with his station, he rarely wore more than a week
without having it restarched and ironed.
The cane, affixed with a bow of wide red ribbon to our parlor wall,
became, presently, a proof that our family had visited the Centennial.
I held my tongue in the presence of impressed visitors, learning
swiftly to avoid the unstimulating truth and, no doubt, even then in
vague, secret sympathy with my mother’s aspirations. She must invent
a reason for buying a thing at once so impractical and so little
decorative; she did not guess that she saw in it an antique beyond
price; perforce she explained her purchase on the disingenuous and
unworthy ground that folks would be bound to think we’d went there and
bought it right off them glass-blowers our own-selves. But I knew. I
understood. Even then, I must believe, I was an antiquer ahead.
For, with my own savings, one Christmas in the Arthur Period, I bought,
as a gift to both parents in common, no less a treasure than a genuine
Garfield toothpick-container—the miniature, in genuine pressed glass,
of a silk hat, which, inverted, stood for a decade in the centre of
our table on all occasions of state, and which, with its original
content of toothpicks, including four showing signs of actual use, I
reluctantly disposed of to the buyer for Queen Mary’s collection at
a price which both modesty and my gentleman’s agreement forbid me to
confess.
It was only natural that I should react to the twin stimuli of
inheritance and environment. My early days were spent in the constant
and inspiring contemplation of articles of _vertu_ which the most
discerning taste of the contemporary moment would not have recognized
as even potentially antiques. I could not, indeed, enter our house
without contemplating the statuettes of the Christian Slaves who knelt,
one on each side of the steps, mutely supplicating the beholder’s piety
and pity. If I would strike a sulphur match in the front hall, to light
my way up the stairs to bed, I must do it on nothing less precious than
a perfect specimen of the Benjamin Harrison match-holder—the peculiarly
rare and exotic type, I mean, wherein a mother hen and a young chick
are depicted, the mature fowl’s plumage being formed cunningly of
colored sand-paper and the wee chickling being made to say, in a loop
issuing from its open beaklet: “Don’t scratch me—scratch Mother.”
This, even in those unappreciative days, was held far preferable to
the alternative device, wherein a frowzy vagabond is illustrated, his
raiment a mosaic of sand-paper fragments, with the legend: “Scratch
your matches On my patches.” We possessed a number of these, in
addition to the rarer article already described.
Our home, simple though it was, and afflicted always with the pressure
of harsh poverty, was veritably a treasure-house of potential antiques.
It was impossible to enter any room without coming under their subtly
stimulating influence—even the bathroom contained, from my earliest
recollection, the most perfect specimen of the Garfield tin tub I
have ever seen, and the incidental plumbing, though hidden, according
to the mode of the moment, under a mask of painted pine, was in
entire harmony with the spirit of this dominating piece. Our mantel,
in addition to the figurines already mentioned and illustrated, was
laden with the tokens of my parent’s discernment and discretion.
There was an all but priceless decalcomania picture on varnished
wood, portraying the glories of Niagara Falls; there was a wealth of
companion pieces, illustrating the Natural Bridge, Ausable Chasm, the
Town-Hall of Darien, Connecticut, and an especially rare piece [_circa_
’84] purporting to be merely a souvenir of Sulphur Springs Grove, Erie
County, New York, and long since unobtainable except at auctioneers’
sales of large and unusually complete collections.
I inherited, among other treasures, my father’s unusually
well-preserved file of Police Gazettes, running back to that celebrated
issue in which Lillian Russell’s portrait appeared for the first time.
The man, simple and unpretentious as he was, possessed a true genius
for preserving such memorabilia and discarding items of little or no
value. These pink pages were his pride and treasure through dark days
of stress and privation; he handled them reverently, even when they
were fresh from the press, and insisted that those of his patrons
who examined them should treat them with circumspection. Invariably,
with the advent of a new issue, the previous one, tenderly smoothed
and flattened, was laid away in the closet, to be bound when occasion
permitted. Connoisseurs have told me that I erred in parting with this
collection when I accepted the proposals of that prince of antiquers,
Morton Fitz, in 1913. I realize that the file must inevitably have
appreciated heavily in value with the passage of another decade, but I
have no regrets. It was too difficult for me to look over those ageing
pages without yielding to the weakness of tears. _Eheu, fugaces_ ...
not even in the recent era of display of certain anatomical details
could the eye rest so happily on opulent, artless curves ... the
flesh-tones, too, thanks to the happy selection of the paper, were
poignantly realistic. I am not sorry that I parted with them all. I am,
always, an antiquer ahead, and these had become antiques of the past.
_Ave_, and farewell.
There must be an end even to the reminiscences of an antiquer.
And my purpose, in this paper, has not been to excite a vain envy
in the readers of the “Atlantic,”† but rather to invite them to
antique, hereafter, in the hereafter, to espouse, if they will, that
all-but-maiden fancy which has beguiled my leisured hours for twice two
lustrums [forty years]. They, too, if they please, may be antiquers
ahead instead of back.
————
† This essay, with others of Mr. Twitchett’s charming papers,
inevitably first saw the light in the periodical which, most
happily, reflects the spirit of the antiquer.
My great discovery of my own talent for this field of art came to me,
seemingly, by chance; but, after all, who dare affirm that such things
owe their origin to blind accident, that there is behind events so
pregnant no purposeful and actuating Cause? Not I, of all men. I say
seemingly. So be it. The way of it was this:
Workmen had demolished a decaying building which stood, in those days,
within a few squares of my father’s humble cottage. With other boys of
the vicinity I had looked on, fascinated by the appeal which wanton
destruction must exert on youth. Like them I had dreams, too, of buried
treasure below those venerable timbers, and burrowed hopefully among
the litter which the wreckers left behind. One of my playmates after
another kicked aside, in these explorings, a metal object. I found it,
and, inspired by that inherited passion for the antique which has ruled
my days, held it, examined it. A cry of joy escaped me: I detected,
along one of its blunt edges, the corrosions of what seemed to me might
have been spilled blood. I looked more closely still, crouching, now,
shielding my treasure from the glances of the bigger boys, able, if
they guessed the nature of my trove, to snatch it from me and make
it theirs instead. I slunk away. In safe seclusion I looked again.
There could be no doubt. To that sinister rusted edge stout, short
hairs still adhered! I thrust the precious relic inside my shirt and
sped homeward. In my ingenuous, artless youth I made sure that I had
found a token of some ancient deed of blood; that luck had led me to a
trophy such as no other youth in all Yonkers—at that day—could hope to
possess. I hid it lovingly below my Sabbath garments in my bureau
drawer, and gloated over it, in private, when the thing seemed safe.
[Illustration: PLATE II
MAGNIFICENT OLD FLAT-FRONT EARLY NEW JERSEY SIDEBOARD DISCOVERED
BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN AN OBSCURE PART OF NEWARK
]
Inevitably, I was taken in the act. My father found me fondling my
relic and took it roughly from me.
“What you got there, Eb?” He held it gingerly, for his profession had,
of course, made him fastidious. He was always careful of his hands,
my father. He always washed them with soap, before coming home to
meals, even after shaving a dozen customers! My treasure displeased his
cleanly instinct, I could see.
“A murderer’s knife,” I whispered. “It’s mine! I found it under the
McWhorter house. See—there’s some hairs stuck to it!”
My father flung it from him. “You’d ought to know the difference
between bristles and hair—and you a barber’s son! That ain’t a
knife—’tain’t nothin’ only Dib McWhorter’s old sow-scraper! Seen a
hundred jes’ like it! Folks used to keep ’em for hog-killin’ time, when
everybody kep’ a pig and done his own butcherin’. Scrape the bristles
with.”
I was crestfallen at the sordid truth. For a moment I almost shared
my father’s fastidious disgust. But, when he had gone, my instinct
reasserted its control of my emotions. I recovered the sow-scraper
from the rag-carpet where it lay. I replaced it reverently in its
hiding-place. Why? I told myself, then, that my father was wrong; that
it was no sow-scraper, but in truth the instrument of some forgotten,
gory deed. I clung to it. And, later, when it had lost its first
vivid appeal, I fetched it down to exhibit it to that great patron of
antiqueing, no less a person than Cornelius Obenchain Van Loot himself.
He had stumbled on our humble dwelling in one of his tireless searches
for the antique—quests which, the world knows, have led him even
farther afield than Yonkers and Poughkeepsie. He had bought from my
mother an excellent set of bedroom enamelware [circa ’88] and his
appetite had been whetted by the success. He wanted more. I remembered
my relic. This man, to my untutored eye, seemed artless and even
a little contemptible—an opinion in which, I perceived, my mother
concurred. [He possessed then, as now, that remarkable faculty of the
gifted antiquer for convincing vendors of his complete simplicity.] I
might persuade him, I reflected, that the bristles were human hair; it
seemed unlikely that he could be expert in such distinctions, unless
he had been, like me, a barber’s son. I shall not soon forget his
cry of joy as his eye fell on my scraper. It was the one time in my
acquaintance with him that he permitted himself to betray satisfaction
before a bargain had been closed. It cost him, on this occasion, twenty
dollars.
“By all the gods, a sow-scraper—a genuine, unquestionable sow-scraper,
with bristles, intact, in excellent condition! Boy, did you come
honestly by this? No tricks, now! Is it your own to sell?”
I established, with my mother’s ardent corroboration, my character and
my title. The great Van Loot believed, at last.
“Priceless,” I heard him murmur. “Perfect! Superb!” and then aloud, to
me: “Little man, I’ll give you twenty dollars for this old piece of
iron. Twenty dollars—!”
“I guess you will,” I said, even then actuated by the instinct of the
antiquer. “Who wouldn’t? See any green in my eye?” [A phrase since
fallen into disuse, but at that date much in favor.] “You gimme fifty
and we’ll talk.”
We compromised at forty. It was a triumph rather for my family than
for me, for my mother expropriated the cash before I could escape, and
subsequently invested it, happily for me, on a mustache-cup dutifully
gilt-lettered “Father,” a small bone carved in the crude semblance of a
human hand and attached to a long slender rod [an instrument employed,
as all antiquers know, in the day of red-flannel underwear, for the
comforting purpose of scratching an itching back without the tiresome
routine of removing clothes], and a pottery sculpture of a pug-dog,
which articles, ripened into antiques by the amiable, intervening
years, yielded me some thousands per centum on the investment. But the
episode was far more significant than it seemed, in its effect upon my
life.
Forty dollars was the price current of a sow-scraper. I consulted my
father, cannily. They had been made, it appeared, by the local smith,
at a uniform price of twenty-five cents. His memory is accurate.
Informed of the transaction he used emphatic speech in regretting his
failure to lay in a stock, in the days of plenty. It would have paid
better, he averred, than barbering for Jay Gould himself, or curling
Ferd Ward’s own whiskers!
From that day I was a blooded antiquer ahead. I have no passion for the
merely old; it would be as unexciting, for me, to delve and seek for
treasure in dusty corners, after the habit of the commonplace antiquer,
as to angle for goldfish in a glass bowl. I play the nobler game. I
antique, not in yesterday, but in to-morrow.
Ah, the fascination of it! The intoxication of tearing the veil from
the inscrutable hereafter, the blood-quickening element of risk, as one
selects and stores away the antiques of to-morrow-years, against the
day of rarity and famine! Ah, the triumph of a well-stocked bin, sealed
till the day of reckoning! I have enjoyed these delights alone; I share
them, now, with those who have the soul to follow in my steps.
Since the closing days of the first Cleveland Period, I have
systematically antiqued ahead, privately, unadvertised, secretly
exulting. Even now, those earlier bins and cupboards have begun to
justify my penetrating choice. Who, of all the unthinking thousands who
beheld the wired bustle in its heyday, thought to preserve a full dozen
against to-day? Who, but Eben S. Twitchett, ridiculed as a crank and a
fanatic by his neighbors, unhonored and unsung by myopic antiquers,
the prey of dealers in alley trash?
Who, but Eben S., had the forethought to store, in ample camphor, a
perfect set of Harrison red flannels, and no less than six petticoats
of the same material and date? Who, of all the gray-haired collectors
who seek and cherish them to-day, but might have laid by as full a
stock as mine of lapel-buttons [_circa_ ’94] bearing the obsolete
argot of the period—quip and jest which have all but lost their
significance now? Or the buttons advertising bicycles—The Rambler and
the Tribune—built with a truss—the Victor and Columbia and Pierce? Who
had the wit and courage to store away the stereoscopes and the twin
photographs that in them found perspective—priceless and unattainable
to-day? The Chinese Tea Pickers? The Yellowstone? Brooklyn Bridge?
Who boasts of these but Eben S. Twitchett, with his mid-ninety bin
crammed to overflow with perfect specimens? Who stored the spun-glass
trinkets of the Chicago Fair? Who, if he chose, might break the market
in cylindrical phonograph records of “Ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” and
“The Stars and Stripes Forever”? Who, I ask, possesses one gross of
American flags of the McKinley Period, each exquisitely inscribed with
its “Remember the Maine—to hell with Spain”? Who can supply collectors
with uncut, first edition pamphlet copies of the Great Cross of Gold
oration, each with its rare Bryan print—that almost unobtainable
portrait including hair?
The reader bears with my little pæan of triumph. These things are
history, among antiquers of high degree and low and middle. But who, of
all those who beat on Eben S. Twitchett’s doors to-day, who plead and
supplicate for even a peep into the sealed bins of the Roosevelt Epoch,
who, of all these, has the courage to antique, in this year 1923, for
the antiquers of to-morrow?
Eben S. Twitchett has. Time, the great revealer, shall one day let
in full light on the storerooms where his treasures are laid down,
to-day as yesterday. What will Time see there? Ah, that is for each
forward-looking antiquer to determine for himself. I cannot bring
myself to share too many of my secrets, even now. And the true antiquer
would regret a guidance too exact; the allure of the avocation lies,
for the select few who find the true spirit of the art, in the very
element of doubt. One may lay down the wrong thing; it may never
achieve the quality of an antique. Who can tell?
For me, I put away, from time to time, such trifles as commend
themselves to my tried instinct. Just now, by way of illustration,
I am putting down a complete line of felt pennants such as the
travelling public loves to flaunt from burdened Fords—Brick Creek,
Iowa—Wappingers’ Falls—Keeseville and Ogunquit. These must, one
day, be seen as rare and lovely things; I give the hint for what it
may be worth. The pocket-flask, too—the still—the vanity-case—the
cigar-lighter—and the flower-holder with which the stately limousine
must be equipped—the photographs of screen divinities! It will not be
long before I shall unseal my bin of portraits where J. Warren Kerrigan
and Francis X. Bushman, autographed, await the questing antiquer’s
delighted eye.
[Illustration: PLATE III
FROM PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’s COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL OLD
WOOD-CARVINGS
Figure of Pocahontas; believed to be the work of John Alden
]
Only yesterday, I sold the last of my cigarette pictures. Della Fox! I
had a hundred of her, once. It seemed impossible for us Yonkers boys,
trading acutely in that fresh, delighted loveliness, that it could
ever be antique! I must have felt, intuitively, even then, that it
must be. Wanting that intuition, too, I would not have stored away the
thumbed installments of my nickel weeklies—those precious specimens
that one may view, now, under glass, on free days, at the Metropolitan
Museum of Antiques.
Time has done it. And time will do it again. Antiquer, antique, but
antique ahead!
————
HINTS FOR BUYING FROM
ORIGINAL SOURCES
By
CECILIA LEFINGWELL PRYNNE (MRS. GÜTZ)
————
[Illustration]
HINTS FOR BUYING FROM
ORIGINAL SOURCES
BY
CECILIA LEFINGWELL PRYNNE (MRS. GÜTZ)
If, in passing a New-England farmhouse, you see a fine piece of old
furniture through the open front doorway [which is not probable, as
the front doors are seldom used], or if perchance you spy upon the
veranda, or in the fairway beside the barn, some rare old bit of glass,
a bow-backed pine Windsor chair, a tambo-door sideboard, or a hooked
rug, or any other article you may wish to purchase, it will be well for
you not to approach the subject directly, but in a somewhat roundabout
manner, as the peasants of this section are [on account of bitter
experience] extremely suspicious of strangers; and if they perceive
that you wish to buy anything of them, they are likely to become
instantly so fond of the object of your desire that they will decline
to part with it; or they may get the notion that you are connected with
the prohibition enforcement laws and are merely disguising your real
interest in how hard their cider has turned. Therefore the editors have
asked me to prepare a few model dialogues which may be found useful
in this connection. The form of approach suggested can profitably be
studied by the motorist collector.
DIALOGUE ONE
[_Mr. B., a Chicago collector of hooked rugs, has observed a fine
specimen hanging on a clothes-line beside a New Hampshire farmhouse.
Mr. B. descends from his car and approaches the proprietor, who is
sawing wood near the kitchen wing._]
_Mr. B._: Good-morning. I stopped to inquire if you have a calf for
sale.
_Peasant_: Did ye?
_Mr. B._: I am willing to pay quite a good price for an original
she-calf in fair condition.
_Peasant_: Be ye?
_Mr. B._: I would pay $350 for a really excellent she-calf.
_Peasant_: Let’s see the money.
_Mr. B._ [_displaying the sum mentioned_]: But _have_ you such a calf?
_Peasant_: Yes; but I wouldn’t never sell her under $355.
_Mr. B._: Done with you at $355! Go fetch her. But stay;—I have nothing
to wrap her in.
_Peasant_: What ye want to wrap her fer?
_Mr. B._ [_laughing graciously_]: It is customary in the city to wrap
all purchased articles, and besides she might take cold. Let me see
what you have to wrap this she-calf in. Ah! There is a worthless old
hooked rug. _That_ will do to wrap my purchase in.
_Peasant_: Well, I don’t know. That there rug’s wuth somethin’. I’ll
have to charge ye two dollars extry for the rug.
_Mr. B._ [_restraining his excitement, handing the peasant $2.00 and
removing the rug from the clothes-line_]: Very well. I hereby purchase
the rug; and upon second thoughts I find I have no definitely pressing
need for a she-calf at this time. Good-morning and the best of luck to
you!
[Illustration:
OLD NEW ENGLAND PRINT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES
From the collection of Miss Cora Kilgallen Brütche, of Appleby,
Pa., two (and possibly three) of whose ancestors took part in the
meeting.
]
DIALOGUE II
_Mrs. C._ [_wishing to buy for her salon in New York a fine old white
pine fan-backed rocking-chair she has discovered upon a farmhouse
veranda_]: Can you tell me if there is a family of the name of Pibuddy
living in this vicinity?
_Peasant_: No, I can’t.
_Mrs. C._: Or Littlefield?
_Peasant_: Never heard of ’em.
_Mrs. C._: Or Smith?
_Peasant_: They’s some Smiths up at Baxter’s Dam Corners. Them who ye
lookin’ fer?
_Mrs. C._: Yes. They are the very ones. I want to take them a cradle
for their baby, as they are relatives of mine. Have you a cradle for
sale?
_Peasant_: No, I ain’t.
_Mrs. C._: Or any watermelons, perhaps?
_Peasant_: Don’t grow none.
_Mrs. C._: I’m _so_ sorry. I haven’t seen these dear old cousins of
mine for _so_ long; and I _did_ want to take them some little thing to
please them. I’d give as high as three or four dollars for a cradle or
a watermelon.
_Peasant_: I don’t see no way to oblige ye.
_Mrs. C._ [_affecting to discover the rocking-chair_]: Oh, I know what
we could do. My chauffeur is very ingenious. I could give you forty
cents for that old chair and he can make a cradle out of it as we go
along.
_Peasant_: That chair’s wuth more’n forty cents. It’s wuth a dollar if
it’s wuth a penny!
_Mrs. C._ [_handing the peasant a dollar_]: Thank you! Please place it
in my car. [_Exit._]
DIALOGUE III
_Miss D._ [_entering country general store because she has seen
through the window a magnificent 1804 Seneca grate-burner stove with a
fire-back showing the arms of Massachusetts which she wishes to add to
her collection_]: Have you by chance seen a lost Mexican hairless dog
with one white forefoot, three brown, and a slight limp?
_Storekeeper_: Who?
_Miss D._: I am looking for a lovely little dog without any hair and
very susceptible to low temperatures.
_Storekeeper_: We don’t handle none.
_Miss D._: He is lost, but I should fear to find him here because your
store is so chilly and he would lack warmth. I wonder you do not buy a
new stove. Permit me to send you one.
_Storekeeper_: Who be ye?
_Miss D._: I will give you my address. [_Hands him her card._] I fear
if my lost little hairless dog should wander in here he would find the
air too cold. On that account I wish to offer you a modern stove in
place of that fearful old thing yonder. When the new stove arrives,
will you be so kind as to have this old one shipped to me, express
charges collect, as a slight compensation for the trouble I am taking
on account of my dear little dog’s health?
_Storekeeper_: If you send me a new stove, I’ll _do_ it, by ’Ory!
_Miss D._: That is all I wished to ascertain. Thanking you—[Exit
_laughingly_.]
DIALOGUE IV
[_Professor K., the well-known historian, has heard that a Fisherman of
Martha’s Vineyard owns a set of Venetian glass comfit boxes once the
property of Henri Quatre. He enters the Fisherman’s shack._]
_Prof. K._: Good-morning. I am interested in getting your opinion of a
set of Whitman, bound in green cloth or morocco at your option. May I
show you—
_Fisherman_: No, ye can’t. I don’t take no interest in politics.
_Prof. K._: Then perhaps I could get your opinion of a line of
haberdashery I carry. My own necktie, or scarf, if you prefer that
term, is an example. Do you like it?
_Fisherman_: Can’t say as I don’t: can’t say as I do.
_Prof. K._: It would become you better than it does me. Let me exchange
it with you for some bait. I observe that you keep your clams for bait
in those funny-looking little red glass boxes, yonder. I will give you
my necktie for the clams, but I shall have to ask for the boxes also,
since the nude clams would soil my pockets.
_Fisherman_: No. Them glass boxes was left to me by my grandmother and
I wun’t throw ’em in with no clams.
_Prof. K._: As you will. But how am I to carry the clams unless I have
the boxes? Ah! I have it! I will borrow them of you and return them by
a messenger from my hotel.
_Fisherman_: How do I know ye will?
_Prof. K._: I will leave my hat, coat, and trousers as security. [_He
removes them as he speaks, and ties the scarf about the Fisherman’s
throat._] There, look in the cheval glass and see how vastly it
improves you. I will return the glass boxes by the messenger and you
will kindly give him my clothes. Au revoir! [_He takes the comfit boxes
upon his back and instantly swims with them to the mainland._]†
————
† It was by following these hints that the Rockfund collection
of _petiteries_ was largely made. Collectors will do well to
wear several suits of clothes.
————
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS
By
MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE
————
[Illustration]
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS
BY
MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE, A.B., A.M., F.R.F.H.A.
(_Lecturer on Scrollwork and Frets at Sinsabaugh University_, 1917–18)
The secret of antique-collecting is persistence. My friend G——, who
spent three years of her life walking through the mud and dust of
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont roads in an attempt to locate the
Log-Cabin-With-Flag-And-Cider-Barrel cup-plate, which she needed
to round out her set of cup-plates, claims that the true secret of
antique-collecting is good health. She is no judge, however, as she
encountered a series of unusual misfortunes in her search for the
missing cup-plate. First she was caught in a bad northeaster without
her goloshes, and developed a severe case of rheumatic fever. Then
she fell down and broke her arm. Shortly after that she was struck
by lightning. And a little while later she was run over by a Ford
which appeared from nowhere as she was trudging up a mountain-side
one glorious golden morning in search of a farmer who was reputed
to use cup-plates as fly-poison receptacles. G——, in her droll New
England manner, throws me into convulsions by saying that she thinks
the Ford, like Topsy, just growed. I am sure that if G—— had persisted
in continuing her search for the missing cup-plate, even though she
had to travel on crutches, she would eventually have been successful.
Therefore I say that the secret of antique-collecting is persistence.
It is persistence that brings to light the unexpected treasure. It is
persistence that effects unexpected results. It is persistence that
enables the antique-collector to secure for fifty cents or one dollar a
genuine antique that is worth from one hundred to five hundred dollars
until it is put up for sale at an auction, when it isn’t worth so much.
[Illustration:
STATUE ERECTED TO PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN FLORAL PARK CITY,
FLORIDA, BY GRATEFUL CITIZENS OF THAT COMMUNITY
Professor Kilgallen himself kindly took the entire responsibility
for raising the fund for the beautifying of Floral Park City by
the erection of this splendid bronze, which is the work of Mme.
Olga Mugsawflovich of Moscow.
]
A guiding star for all antique-collectors, whether amateur or
professional, may be found in the adventures of the old Elon D.
Whipplefish house just outside the little town of Sunkset, one of
those delightful little settlements surrounded by cranberry bushes,
sand, and Down East accents on quaint and picturesque Cape Cod. The
Elon D. Whipplefish house was built in 1742 by Isaiah Thrasher, a
direct descendant of the Marjoribank family of Lower Tooting-on-Wye,
England, one or more of whose members came to America on the Mayflower.
Considerable haziness exists concerning the descendants of the
Marjoribanks family owing to the fact that the name was pronounced
Marshunk by those familiar with English pronunciation, and that some
American records refer to the Marjoribanks as Marsh or as Shawbank
or as Bunk, owing to the difficulty of properly separating the
pronunciation and the spelling.
At any rate, Isaiah Thrasher was a descendant of the one or more
members of the Marjoribanks family who came to America on the
Mayflower; and he inherited from his ancestor a number of rare old
pieces of English furniture, including a very fine old chest. The top
of this chest was missing, the feet were worn away, and several of
the boards had been removed, stolen or lost from the front and sides.
Nevertheless it was a very fine old chest, and very rare. Probably
not more than twenty-eight or thirty of these chests, all told, were
brought over in the Mayflower. He also owned an extremely fine cradle
of the same general type as that which is said to have sheltered
Peregrine White, who attained fame by being born among the furniture of
the Mayflower, though there are some who say that some of the furniture
had to be moved out before Peregrine could get in. This cradle was of
wicker and had probably been made in the Orient, whence it was brought
to Holland, and there picked up, just before the Mayflower sailed, by
one of the Marjoribanks family who had a fine eye for odd pieces of
furniture. Another of his possessions was a beautiful turned chair
with an unusual number of spindles. It had so many spindles that any
one who sat in it could easily spend two or three hours counting the
spindles. This came over in the Mayflower, and was unusually rare,
owing to the fact that most of the Mayflower tourists eschewed chairs
and stuck to larger and more space-filling pieces of furniture, like
desks, whatnots, highboys, lowboys, clocks, bedsteads, and chests. Most
of them were evidently content to sit on the floor or lean against a
highboy, when not asleep or in motion.
The mere fact that Isaiah Thrasher inherited these rare and beautiful
pieces of furniture from his ancestors filled him with a love for the
good and the beautiful. When, therefore, he moved from Plymouth to
Sunkset in 1742 in search of more religious freedom than obtained in
Plymouth, the farmhouse that he built conformed in every way to the
best standards of Colonial architecture. The doorway was perfect; all
of the beams were hand-hewn of the finest oak; the balustrades on
the staircases were as gracefully curved as the lines of a woman’s
throat; the fine corner cupboards throughout the house were gems of the
joiner’s art; the fireplaces were generous and hospitable, flanked by
settles, brick ovens, and cupboards of pumpkin pine, and duly decorated
with spits, cranes, pot-hooks, trammels, trivets, and sturdy andirons.
Isaiah Thrasher found all the religious freedom for which he sought in
Sunkset; for there was practically nothing in Sunkset but religious
freedom and cranberries. He died at the age of eighty-two, and his
house passed into the hands of his nephew, Jared Titcomb, who was
noted on Cape Cod for being the champion cranberry-sauce-eater of the
district, and also for having accounted for three British soldiers
just after the battle of Concord by pushing a stone wall over on them.
Jared Titcomb in turn bequeathed the house to his son-in-law, Rufus
Whipplefish, who was noted for nothing, so far as can be learned; and
when Rufus died, the house descended to his son, Elon D. Whipplefish,
who had the reputation of making the hardest cider in Duke’s County.
It was from this owner that the house took its name—the Elon D.
Whipplefish house—and it was through this owner that I became familiar
with the house, its history, and its contents.
The house stood well out on the outskirts of Sunkset, surrounded by a
heavy growth of apple trees, pine trees, lilacs, willows, rosa rugosa,
actinidia arguta, stinkbush, poplars, and cranberries. For this reason
it had been overlooked by antique-hunters, who buzz around Cape Cod in
the spring, summer, and autumn with the same eagerness with which flies
buzz around a cow in September.
I shall never forget the thrill which shot through me, therefore, when
my friend L——, who rather fancies himself as an antique-collector,
but who never knows enough to collect anything until some one has told
him that it is worth collecting, came to me one day and stated that he
had visited an old house near Sunkset, but that there was nothing in
it worth having. In fact, said he, the old man who owned the house was
probably a nut, since he was saving an old chest that had no top and no
legs, and looked like something the cat brought in.
The flash of second-sight which should be possessed by all true
antique-lovers, and which almost never deserts me except when I am
confronted by a reproduction so perfect as to deceive even the man who
made it, warned me that this chest was probably something very rare and
unusual, and possibly even a most important piece of Americana. With an
air of careless unconcern perfected by years of antique-hunting—an air,
I may add, which must be cultivated by all persons who hope to make a
success of antiqueing—I obtained from my friend L—— complete directions
as to the location of the House Of The Chest. As soon as L—— had gone
on his way, I dropped my air of unconcern, snatched up a pint flask of
gin, which I find to be of inestimable value in dealing with the stern
and rockbound New-Englanders, and hastened at once to Sunkset.
It was a brisk autumn day, and the odor of stinkbush was particularly
apparent as I made my way through the grove of trees which surrounded
the Elon D. Whipplefish house. I shall never smell stinkbush again
without thinking of that red letter day; though I must confess that at
the time it depressed me slightly.
Mr. Whipplefish was seated in his beautiful old kitchen with his feet
resting comfortably in a beautiful old brick oven; and as I knocked
at his back door, he cried out in his kindly New England manner that
he didn’t want any, and to go away. Pretending to misunderstand his
words, I opened the door and walked in. Then, lest there be any
unpleasantness, I dropped my hat as though by accident, and in stooping
to pick it up permitted the pint flask of gin to slip from my breast
pocket and fall into my hat. This is a gesture which has saved the day
for me on many and many an occasion where all seemed to be lost save
honor. A few days of practice will enable any one to drop a pint flask
from his breast pocket and catch it unharmed in his hat with the utmost
nonchalance.
Having done this, I affected great embarrassment and looked at the
flask ruefully, as though it had betrayed me in an embarrassing manner.
Mr. Whipplefish’s manner at once became more affable, and he asked me
with gruff Cape Cod hospitality what I wanted.
One thing led to another, and by the time we had consumed the pint
of gin, he was permitting me to examine the furnishings of his home
without protest.
The briefest examination of the topless and legless chest sufficed
to convince me that I had encountered a genuine treasure. All of
the worm-holes of the tertiary class bore the unmistakable stigmata
of the Dutch worms of the first quarter of the seventeenth century.
Those familiar with Dr. Christian Eisenbach’s† monumental work on the
furniture worm will recall that a peculiar recurrence of frosts during
several successive winters in Holland so affected the nervous systems
of the Dutch furniture worms that they bored to the left in successive
_échelons_, or steps, and cut into the borings of the worms beyond them.
————
† _Bores and Borings._ Dr. Christian Eisenbach. Leipzig, 1847.
The best test of the Dutch worm of the first quarter of the
seventeenth century is to place the forefinger over any worm-hole in
a given space, place the lips over the worm-hole next to the left of
the obstructed orifice, and blow firmly into it. If the hole is a true
Dutch hole of the early seventeenth century, a small cloud of dust will
emerge from the hole next to the one in which the blower is blowing and
will usually enter his eye.
If it is not a seventeenth-century Dutch hole, the blower can blow all
day without obtaining any noteworthy results except a flushed face.
My first venture in applying this test to the Whipplefish chest
resulted in a cloud of dust which entered my eyes, nose and ears and
nearly choked me. Succeeding tests on other holes resulted in similar
clouds of dust of such proportions that I was at length forced to
desist in order to remove the accretions from my eyes.
This was incontrovertible proof that the chest had been in existence in
Holland during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and that
it had undoubtedly been acquired by the Pilgrims during their enforced
vacation in Leyden before sailing for America in the Mayflower.
[Illustration: PLATE IV
PRICELESS BIT OF OLD STAFFORDSHIRE WARE (A PAPER-WEIGHT)
COLLECTED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN
]
Cursory glances around the interior of the Whipplefish house, after
my eyes had been cleared with the assistance of Mr. Whipplefish and
a little gin and water, revealed, in addition to the cradle and the
spindled chair which I have mentioned, some very fine old wrought-iron
latches and H and L hinges on the doors, which were in themselves
beautiful specimens of the art. The lintels and sills of the doors were
simply but exquisitely carved; while the oak rafters which held up
the ceilings were so mellowed and patinated by age that their rugged
strength was most attractive. All of the downstairs rooms were sheathed
in boards of pumpkin pine nearly three feet in width and without a knot
in them.
How symbolical of the changes that have taken place in our country is
the pine, that simplest of trees! In the earnest, upright, early days
of America, the pine grew without knots. To-day every pine tree has
so many knots in it that a person must rise at midnight in order to
get them counted before breakfast. And similarly, to-day, the ancient
ideals of honor and honesty seem to have departed from us. This is
particularly apparent to one who moves much in antique circles. Behind
each corner lurks a human harpy who would gladly take candy from a
child or use a sand-bag if all else fails.
Concealing my passionate desire to relieve Mr. Whipplefish of all
his belongings, I dismissed the subject of antiques as being of no
consequence, and spoke at some length with him concerning gin. When
he voiced his appreciation of the flavor of my particular brand,
I informed him that it was genuine pre-war gin, and that it was
practically priceless.
While this was not strictly true, I had none the less manufactured
it according to a tried receipt given to me by an employee of the
Cuban Legation in Washington who dispenses great quantities—which he
makes himself—as genuine pre-war gin. His statements are believed in
Washington; and the gin is used at many important social functions
in the capital and always spoken of reverently as pre-war gin.
Consequently I believe that I am within my rights in speaking of it in
the same way.
When I had made plain to him the extremely valuable nature of the gin,
I told him frankly that since he seemed to have a discriminating taste
in such things, I was willing to let him have an entire quart of it,
and that in exchange I was willing to take his old chest as a pleasant
reminder of my visit to Cape Cod.
After some grumbling Mr. Whipplefish agreed to this exchange, whereupon
I repaired to my room in the Sunkset House, mixed the gin, and hastened
back to the Whipplefish home with it. I carried the chest away the same
day, and have since refused an offer of two hundred dollars for it.
During the next two days I did not go near the Whipplefish house; but
at the expiration of the two days—which, in Mr. Whipplefish’s case, I
judged to be about the life of one quart of gin—I returned and found
him in a state of nerves.
The antique-collector must learn to be patient. Nothing is gained
by rushing matters. If I had gone to Mr. Whipplefish before he had
finished the gin, I could have done very little business with him
probably. The antique-collector must also learn restraint. If I had
offered Mr. Whipplefish a case of gin for his chest instead of one
quart, he would probably have smelled a rat. He might have held the
chest for a higher price, or he might have had the gin analyzed. Either
course would have caused me considerable embarrassment.
At any rate, I found him in a state of nerves on my second visit. The
offer of another quart in return for his cradle met with an instant
response. I subsequently sold the cradle for six hundred dollars. On
my third visit I got the spindled chair for three quarts of gin. I am
holding this chair for fifteen hundred dollars† and expect to get it.
————
† Prospective buyers will kindly communicate with the
publishers.—_Eds._
By this time Mr. Whipplefish was growing somewhat accustomed to my
presence, and seemed almost willing that I should help myself to
whatever I wanted so long as I placed a bottle or two of pre-war gin in
his hand as a little token of remembrance and esteem.
For two bottles of gin per room I was permitted to remove the pumpkin
pine wainscoting from the downstairs walls of the Whipplefish house. I
used a part of it to sheathe my own library, which has been pictured
many times in the pages of _The House Elegant_; and the remainder I
sold for seven hundred and forty-five dollars.
The doors of the inside rooms cost me one quart apiece, with the
hardware thrown in. The big front door and carved sills with a
graceful fanlight came higher. That cost me half a case, but it was
worth it, as I have since refused an offer of twelve hundred dollars
for it.
This purchase also caused me a large amount of worry; for Mr.
Whipplefish, not being so young as he once was, fell downstairs several
times during the half-case period, and led some people to think that he
might die of over-exertion. In fact, he was found in a rigid state by
neighbors two or three times before the six bottles were gone, and was
thought to be dead; but each time he proved merely to be ossified, and
came back to life before the undertaker arrived.
My feelings may well be imagined during this trying time. Since there
were several things which I still wished to remove from the Whipplefish
house, my anxiety over his condition was naturally tremendous. It
affected me to such an extent that my hand slipped on one occasion when
I was mixing a batch of gin, and I got in twice as much essence as I
should. I was forced to throw away an entire quart of alcohol.
Eventually Mr. Whipplefish finished the six bottles without succumbing;
and after allowing him several days in which to recover, I returned to
the chase. He was, of course, very glad to see me, and did not demur
at all when I gave him two bottles and removed the big brick fireplace
with its quaint brick oven from the kitchen. I could easily get five
hundred dollars for this fireplace if I wished to take the money; but
I put Art above Commercialism, like every true lover of the Beautiful.
I shall always keep this quaint and hospitable hearth, unless somebody
offers me so much money that I cannot refuse.
My final purchase from Mr. Whipplefish and the celebrated old
Whipplefish house was made on July 14th. I remember the day very well,
for it is the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Hereafter the
date will always be associated in my mind with two falls.
Early on the morning of that day I called on Mr. Whipplefish and found
him shaking all over. His first question was, “Got any gin?” I at once
realized that the time was ripe to get the magnificent hand-hewn oak
beams in the kitchen—beautiful things that I had coveted ever since I
started coming to the house. Mr. Whipplefish was wholly reckless at
that time, and insisted on a higher price than I cared to pay; but the
beams were such rare and delightful pieces that I threw caution to the
winds. Mr. Whipplefish, with his Yankee cunning gleaming in his little
blue eyes, insisted on an entire case of gin in return for these beams.
And I—I paid it. It may have been foolish of me to do so; but the lure
of the antique, which no true collector can resist, led me on. I gave
him the case for which he asked. Then I took out the beams.
As I was loading them on the team to take them away, kindly old Mr.
Whipplefish stood in the doorway of the historic old Whipplefish
house, waving a partly empty bottle around his head and crooning an
old Cape Cod melody to me by way of farewell. Unfortunately, in the
middle of the song, the bottle struck the side of the doorway. The
house, weakened by the many removals, at once collapsed, burying Mr.
Whipplefish in the remains.
July is the busy season on Cape Cod; and since it was supposed that
Mr. Whipplefish had been killed, no effort was made to dig him out
on that day. On the following morning, however, he was heard crying
for more gin; so a number of natives rather reluctantly desisted from
their regular summer occupation of relieving the summer visitor of his
bank-roll, and dug him out. He was little the worse for wear, for he
had shielded the partly filled gin bottle with his body as the house
caved in on him, and the stimulant had eased the trying hours.
This, however, was not the end of the old Whipplefish house. A
few months after the collapse a retired harness manufacturer from
Rochester, New York, who was travelling on Cape Cod in search of the
antique and the quaint, passed the ruins of the old Elon D. Whipplefish
house, lying amidst the pine trees, poplars, stinkbush and cranberries.
As I have said before, persistence is at the root of all successful
antiqueing. W——, the retired harness manufacturer, for some unknown
reason made up his mind that he wished to restore the Elon D.
Whipplefish house to the exact state in which it was before its
collapse.
[Illustration: PLATE V
RARE BIT OF OLD WORCESTERSHIRE WARE
Table ornament collected by Professor Kilgallen. The little
circles are all in gilt.
]
Under his guiding hand and bank-roll it rose again amid the poplars,
pines, and stinkbush. All Cape Cod yielded up its treasures to him,
and almost every family on the Cape enriched itself from the Bright
fortune. If they didn’t have genuine antiques to sell him, they
manufactured them. To-day the Elon D. Whipplefish house stands in
Sunkset, a monument to Isaiah Thrasher and the Marjoribank family
from whom he descended.
W—— paid Elon D. Whipplefish three thousand dollars for the lot and the
ruins; and with this money Elon bought into a nice two-masted schooner.
He went into the business of running rum up from the Bahamas; and when
he saw the stuff that goes into the bottles that he sold, he went on
the water-wagon. In a little over a year’s time he became a wealthy
man, and bought a house on Mount Vernon Street in Boston, where he
could be near the movies and the atmosphere from which his distant
ancestor, Isaiah Thrasher, had fled in 1742.
————
OLD RUGS, OLD IRON
OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS
A Brief Brochure on the Search
For the Antique
By a Professional
JARED P. KILGALLEN
————
[Illustration]
OLD RUGS, OLD IRON
OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS
A Brief Brochure on the Search
For the Antique
By a Professional
JARED P. KILGALLEN, J.D. and R.P.
(_A Second-Cousin of Professor Kilgallen_)
The lure of the antique! Who is there that has not thrilled and flushed
at the words?
I confess at the outset: I am a collector and you may even call me
by that damning word “dealer,” too, if you choose, since, like all
non-amateur collectors, I part with items of my collection from time to
time; or, if you prefer to put it so, from day to day. No collection
is a permanency until it is established in an endowed museum: all
private collections are constantly in a state of fluctuation, or flux;
for the taste of the true collector is as constantly altering. Other
contingencies also affect collections. For instance, no collection of
Colonial utensils is safe from carelessness, and I have known a pair
of the virtually priceless old hand-wrought 1852 B-mark Brunswick
sheep-clippers to be thrown out upon an ash-heap by an Irish housemaid
under the impression that they were valueless even to herself. (I know
this because those very clippers formed a temporary part of my own
possessions immediately afterward.)
Every collector is aware also that after the visits of even the
best-introduced people almost any small article in a collection may
be missing; and under such circumstances the tracing of the lost item
may prove too embarrassing to be considered. My good friend, Dr. G——
R—— Vet. M.D. and Surg. of Erie, Pennsylvania, missed a valuable metal
medallion of President Rutherford B. Hayes (_circa_ ’78) in this way,
after the visit of a number of his wife’s relatives to the famous
old G—— R—— Manse at Erie. What is a collector to do in a case like
this, when a complaint might endanger actual estrangement? Dr. G—— R——
informed me himself that when he discovered his loss he thought the
matter over for some days and decided to say nothing about it.
[Illustration:
DR. TWITCHETT AND MME. AUGUSTULA THOMAS’S HUSBAND (MR. THOMAS)
WEARING THE INSIGNIA OF FULL MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR
THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES
]
Now, to take up my own specialties (if I may call them so), I have the
temerity to assume that my long experience in securing and handling
these has possibly given me a little knowledge that may be of use to
the amateur collector. I do not claim too much, perhaps, when I state
that hooked rugs and early American iron and glass were familiar items
in my possession long before the present craze for collecting them came
to rage so wildly and widely. I have had exquisite hooked rugs, and
rare fragments of such rugs, for instance, as far back as 1886.
American glass has always been a passion (if I may use the word) with
me. In fact, among my friends and relatives, my search for really good
glass has made me almost something of a by-word, jocularly speaking.
The reader will easily connote that what I consider good glass is
not a thing to be found every day in the week and that I am somewhat
particular in my taste. Well, I confess it, and to substantiate the
confession perhaps I should essay some description of what I mean by
“really good glass.”
Glass, to be perfect in my eyes, should be absolutely in the condition
in which it left the retailer who sold it to the private purchaser. I
am aware that broken, cracked, or partially decomposed pieces have some
value to the beginner, and I myself do often handle them, as a dealer,
it is true. But it is sound glass that has kept me so diligently on the
search day after day, year after year. Sandwich and Stiegel I leave
to the beginner who likes to pay $17 for a ruby finger-bowl that was
a drug on the market at two-for-a-quarter five years ago; who gladly
signs a check for $125 in exchange for a dozen Benjamin Franklin
cup-plates regularly turned out at the Sandwich factory for thirty
cents a dozen, up to the time when the strike closed production in
General Benjamin Harrison’s administration; but for myself—well, even a
quaint old Colonial Sandwich lamp chimney, manufactured during Grover
Cleveland’s first term, or as far back as the supremacy of Chester A.
Arthur, does not excite me. A friend of mine proudly exhibits a lamp
chimney said to have been persistently mistaken for a spy-glass by
Lafayette himself on a Christmas Eve, on the occasion when he was so
well entertained by the citizens of Yonkers, during his second visit
to this country. I have never made the slightest effort to obtain this
bit.
No. The perfect glass of my dreams—for I admit I am always dreaming
of it—the perfect glass of my dreams is a bit of plain glass, very
simple. It may be either pressed glass or moulded glass—I care not;
and it may be browned in the making, or clear; I am indifferent about
that. I do not even insist upon its antiquity, though the older it is
the better, of course; but what I do value is the state of preservation
in which I find it. That is to say, as I have already pointed out, a
specimen of glass, to be really worth while, should be precisely in the
condition in which it left the retailer’s shelf to pass to the original
purchaser’s possession, and, above all, THE ORIGINAL CONTENTS SHOULD BE
INTACT.
I admit that this is asking a great deal. It is more than one requires,
for instance, of seventeenth-century Venetian glass, or of old Bohemian
or of Bristol. Shall I be accused of jingoism when I say that I,
personally, have found perfection only in American glass? (A Hungarian
collector, now resident in this country, once asserted to me that he
had found a sample of Scotch glass in the state I hold to be really
worth while; but he was absolutely unwilling to show it, though I
made every effort to induce him; and I ended by doubting him.) I do
not claim that I have found worth-while glass frequently. Alas, no!
For though I have looked and looked and hoped and hoped for it during
many years, I have actually discovered but two perfect examples—only
two! The first (a superb thing from Kentucky) I found absolutely
by chance in the queerest, quaintest little place imaginable, up a
passageway behind a hotel, early in the morning after the election
of President Taft; and the second (not so pure, but nevertheless
wonderful) I discovered only last September, among some shrubberies
close to a summer mansion on the rugged coast of Massachusetts. What
these discoveries meant to me, only one who seeks with a like patient
enthusiasm could comprehend. I shall not describe my sensations; it is
enough to say that there are pleasures one must keep to one’s self. I
did not even speak of my discoveries at the time; but it may not be
out of place for me to say now that they made me very happy. Indeed,
after the second, I wandered for hours as in a dream, and even on the
following day, when I chanced to meet a friend, he passed me, and
then looked round over his shoulder at me for some time, all without
recognizing me.
[Illustration:
THE GLASS PERFECT
From a drawing by Jared P. Kilgallen, Esq., J.D. & R.P., of the
item he considers most worth while in his collection. Note: This
glass is no longer in original condition.
]
Now, a word upon the manner and means of collecting. As will readily
be supposed, I do not follow the ordinary channels or patronize the
customary marts of trade in antiques. I have nothing to say against the
Antiquity Shops as such; and I freely admit that many of them contain
genuine prizes for the persistent seeker; but after all they are for
the amateur of careless purse. It is true that in a shop one CAN pick
up a very small bit of rare value for nothing sometimes; and I have
done it successfully; but the chances are against it, and, as it is
always risky, usually I have thought better not even to try. No, the
shops are not my field of endeavor. I say it in all modesty, but I have
done better among the garnered old treasures of one quiet, private
house than in a hundred Antiquity Shops.
In general, a collector needs what I may be pardoned for calling the
Collector’s Eye. To illustrate my meaning: How many of my readers
have not at some time missed an heirloom, or other treasured object
that has simply disappeared? We all have these losses. The missing
object has, most probably (as we say), just been “thrown out.” The
true Collector’s Eye is ever busy in those places or receptacles where
things _are_ “thrown out.” Of course, most of one’s discoveries made
in this manner consist of portions, rather than of entire objects of
_vertu_; nevertheless, I have thus picked up many of my best things.
But the true Collector’s Eye is never at rest. Take an old gate in a
fence, or a dilapidated building of any sort: the ordinary gaze may
pass over these surfaces with mere _ennui_, but many of my best old
hinges, latches, etc., have been wrenched from such environments,
merely in passing, as it were. The Collector’s Eye will note the very
fall of a fine old bit of blacksmithing from some careless horse. No
doubt the uninitiated critic will cry “Fie!” upon this. “What? Are
there collectors who collect horseshoes?” And may I ask: “Why not,
indeed?” Aside from the intrinsic value latent in any fine old bit
of iron, no true quoit-player would miss an opportunity to make a
contribution to the beautifying and decoration of his home club. And
let me whisper in the ear of the Philistine skeptic for his better
information: Is he aware that in the finest Louis XV _vitrine_ in the
palace of Prince Oscar Schofield, at Zorn, under glass and reposing
upon delicate shagreen velours, is the gilded shoe of the steed of
Balaam? If no collector had picked it up, would it be there?
But I would impress upon the beginner: he must not be content with
merely picking up things. He must, indeed, pick up what he can,
wherever there is a fair opportunity; but I should not stand where I do
to-day among collectors, had I stopped with merely “picking up” things.
True, I have picked up many and many’s the good thing; but my BEST
things were not obtained in this way.
I was quite a young man when I began collecting, taking with me a
sack, and sometimes a wheelbarrow also, for this purpose, on my daily
rambles. One day it struck me that a splendid old Colonial house, which
I had often passed, must contain many lovely, quaint old things that
would be charming for a person of taste to number among his curios.
There was a “To Let” sign upon the house, and I confess that the
thought of the difficulties in my way dismayed me. To seek out the
agent, to obtain from him the name and location of the owner of the
house, who might prove to be, perhaps, a resident of some distant city
difficult of access—to do all this and then bargain and bicker with
the owner (in case I reached him), to chaffer over prices, and in the
end, very likely, to find him obdurately avaricious: what was the use?
Seldom have I been more discouraged; but I think I may have mentioned
that I am a collector. To the real collector, discouragement is never
despair.
After thinking the matter over, I decided to go about it in the
straightforward, manly way, instead of adopting the roundabout and
involved means I have just sketched. There was the house; the frank
thing was simply to go in and see whether or not it contained the
treasures that the noble old classic façade seemed to suggest. And this
was the course I sensibly determined to follow.
Owing to certain technical difficulties, I was obliged to make my visit
after dusk had fallen, and then only by the inadequate illumination
of a small, patented electric lamp; nevertheless, even so hasty and
umbrous (if I may use the word) an examination of the contents of
the place as I was able to make proved disappointing. The house had
been fitted up for tenancy, not for the owner to live in, and the
collecting of scarce an object in the whole interior paid for the
expense of removing it in a small hired vehicle.
However, all houses are not alike; not even all unoccupied ones, and it
should be emphasized that in this first experience of mine I overlooked
something of importance. Many a time, afterward, in examining rental
properties and residences offered for sale, I have recalled with a
mournful smile that first omission; and seldom indeed has my patient
search gone unrewarded by beautifully patined sections of brass or
copper, perhaps, and some fine old bit of plumbing.
Let me say again, the Collector’s Eye overlooks nothing, and the
great point is, not to follow the fad, but to anticipate it. There
is not a single class of antiques that I did not collect long before
the amateurs began to “pay prices” for such things, and I am now
principally engaged in collecting the antiques of the future. I know
better than anybody else what the priceless old things of the future
will be, because I have formed the habit of picking them up at the time
when they are thrown out.
* * * * *
Now, let me add just one word upon a bit of old textile now in
my possession. I have hanging upon my wall a superb bit of old
Kuppenheimer weaving. People say to me: “How in the world did you ever
find a piece of that color? We have specimens of Kuppenheimer, but ours
are not like THAT! How DID you obtain it?”
I shake my head and smile. A collector’s secrets are not for everybody.
And yet—and yet, I appreciate the honor that has been done me by the
eminent association under the auspices of which this book is compiled,
and I will drop just a hint. Reader, _your_ Kuppenheimer (in case you
are so fortunate as to possess one) can be of the same faint, elusive,
subtly napless shade, if you will treat yours as I did mine.
And withal, I am compelled to admit that the unique quality of MY
Kuppenheimer was the result of an accident. I will tell you part and
let you guess the rest—if you can—and if you do guess it, you will have
a Kuppenheimer worth owning.
[Illustration: PLATE VI
OLD SKIPWORTH WARE
Dog on paper-weight. From Baxter’s Dam Corners, N.H.
]
I did not obtain my Kuppenheimer from Rochester. In fact, it had passed
through several hands before it came to me, and then, as it still had
that peculiar garment-like quality, which a real Kuppenheimer often
possesses, I wore it, myself, for several seasons. In time the patina
began to alter noticeably, but it was not thus that it acquired the
sheen I have mentioned. However, I found myself somewhat conspicuous,
and in the autumn of 1921 I placed the Kuppenheimer among my
collections, which I keep on the other side of my apartment, opposite
the window.
Now during the following winter, I happened to notice that the glass
in the larger pane of the window became defective, during an absence
of mine upon a collector’s excursion. There are a great many boys
in my neighborhood, and I am a special favorite among them. One of
them, evidently not knowing of my absence, had been trying to attract
my attention with a large pebble and the window glass had thus been
inadequate. Without thinking much of the incident, I placed the
Kuppenheimer in a position that would remedy the inadequacy of the
window.
Fellow-collectors, have you guessed the secret? In the spring I found
the Kuppenheimer to be as I have described it. That is the true
story of what is perhaps not undeservedly known as the Kilgallen
Kuppenheimer.... I never wear it now, except upon Inauguration Day, in
honor of a new President....
People say I am trustful to leave the treasure in my apartment when I
go out, but the Kilgallen Kuppenheimer is much, much too well known to
be stolen. Any thief who would even consider such a proceeding, knows
perfectly well what he would get, too.
————
THE EUROPEAN FIELD
By
PROFESSOR CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE
Fellow of the Peloponnesus Archæological Association; member of
the Society for the excavation of Monuments in the Dodecanese;
Director of the Paris Antique Armchair Club; former Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Bessarabia; and
author of THE USE OF WORM-HOLES AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
————
[Illustration]
THE EUROPEAN FIELD
By
PROFESSOR CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
I
OF THE PLENITUDE AND INTOXICATING EFFECT OF EUROPEAN ANTIQUE-SHOPS—OF
THE LARGE SHOPS AND OF THE SMALL ONES SMELLING OF CHEESE-RIND—AND
OF THE NUMEROUS STORIES WHICH ARE USED AS ENCOURAGEMENT FOR AMATEUR
ANTIQUE-HUNTERS
————
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Charles A. Doolittle, F.R.A.C.S., because of his wide
knowledge of European antiques, was made Furniture Polisher to King
Ferdinand of Bulgaria early in 1913, retaining his high position for
several years. He was decorated with the Order of the Holy Quail, first
class, for exemplary bravery during the Rumanian attack on Tirnova,
when for three consecutive days, under heavy shell fire, he remained
under a Louis Quatorze sofa, polishing it with as much care as could
have been used under normal conditions.
* * * * *
Whatever one’s bent in antiques may be, he will find it encouraged
in Europe to a point undreamed of in America. Antique-shops are as
plentiful in every large European city as were saloons in South Boston
not long ago; and their contents, in many cases, have an equally
intoxicating effect.
Uncultured persons who go into them with the intention of purchasing
just one small Louis XV eggcup will frequently emerge with increased
learning and laden down with a Provençal dough-trough, a pair of
stirrup-irons, half a dozen French prints, an old leather purse, four
pewter plates, and a large painting of a vaseful of wild flowers.
The streets of Paris are punctuated with shop-signs which read
_ANTIQUITÉS_; the streets of Rome and Florence and Milan and Venice
are spotted with _ANTICHITA_ signs; just around every corner in
Vienna and Berlin is an _ANTIQUITÄTEN_ shop. The word for antiques is
approximately the same in all languages, as a result, of course, of an
international agreement between antique-dealers who wish the tourists
to enjoy their travels.
[Illustration: PLATE VII
PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S MAGNIFICENT COLLECTION OF EARLY AMERICAN
UTENSILS, ALL HAND-WROUGHT, AND SOME OBTAINED FROM THE
DESCENDANTS OF THE FAMILIES IN WHICH THE ARTICLES HAD BEEN HANDED
DOWN FROM FATHER TO SON
1. Instrument used in making early furniture. 2. A colonial
plastron, used in disciplining the cattle. 3. Old mantel
ornament. 4 and 5. Instruments used in disposing of undesirable
pottery. 6. Colonial calambosa; early Spanish-American instrument
for seeding turnips.
]
The shops start in the expensive shopping districts with the large,
impressive, brightly lighted establishments where important-looking
salesmen remove individual treasures from safes and cupboards, exhibit
them proudly and learnedly, and quote prices on them that cause a pale
green flush to steal over the face of the unsuspecting quester after
antiques.
They end in the little side streets with small dark shops smelling of
a peculiar blend of cheese-rind, fish-glue and unfinished subways, in
which the pallid proprietors wait with old-world patience for customers
to come and fight indefinitely to get a four-dollar article reduced to
sixty-five cents.
The latter shops, of course, are of the greatest importance to the
itinerant or catch-as-catch-can antique-hunters; for it is only in
them that one stumbles on something rare and costly that has lain
hidden in a shop-corner, regarded by the shopkeeper as a mere piece
of junk—something, for example, like one of Marie Antoinette’s crown
jewels or a piece of genuine fifteenth-century arras tapestry or one of
Henry the Eighth’s marriage certificates or a coal scuttle which was
used by Madame du Barry—something that can be bought for a dollar and a
quarter and sold for ten thousand.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that the antique-dealer is
usually thoroughly conversant with the value of his possessions, that
being his chief business in life. Still, he sometimes makes a mistake,
as do such highly respected oracles as Senator William E. Borah, David
Lloyd George, and Benito Mussolini; and it should be the aim of every
true antique-hunter to encourage him to make all that he can.
Wherever one moves about in European antique-circles, one is apt to
hear the story of the helpless amateur who stumbled into a Marseilles
antique-shop and bought an amber necklace for twenty-five dollars. When
he got it home, he took it to a large jewelry shop to have it valued.
The jeweler, after examining each bead with great care, offered its
owner a thousand dollars for it. This aroused the owner’s suspicions,
so he took the beads to an expert and thereupon learned that each bead
was engraved _N à J_ in very small letters, and that it was a string
that Napoleon had given to Madame Pompadour as a little token of his
esteem.
Some of those who tell the story declare that the lucky owner sold
the beads for ten thousand dollars. Others say that he sold them for
twenty-five thousand dollars. The most enthusiastic antiquers claim
that he received fifty thousand for the string. But a little matter
of fifteen or twenty-five thousand dollars should be nothing to
amateurs in antiques, especially when such sums are merely matters of
conversation and cost the converser nothing at all.
The foregoing story, and the thousands of others like it that
constantly go the rounds in Paris and Rome and other antique centres,
are all true; but certain of the ignorant view them with suspicion.
They should never be viewed with suspicion because all the people who
tell them almost always state that they happened to friends of personal
friends of theirs; and this, as is well known, is always symptomatic of
rock-bottom facts.
II
OF THE ULTRA-SATISFYING ANTIQUE-SHOPS OF ITALY—OF THE DASH AND SPIRIT
OF ITALIAN WORM-HOLES—OF THE SUPERIOR SHOP-FILLING POWERS OF THE
ITALIAN ANTIQUE-DEALERS OVER THAT OF THE FRENCH—AND OF THE MODERN
TENDENCY TOWARD CRABBEDNESS IN THE FRENCH DEALERS
Generally speaking, the antique-shops of Italy are more satisfactory
than those of any other country because of the fire and _verve_ with
which the Italian shopkeepers fight against attempts to make them lower
their prices; because of the inventiveness and resource of the ancient
Italian furniture artists in turning out the best worm-holes known to
science; and because of the enormous number of places where ancient
and mediæval art objects can be bought for as little as eight dollars
per object—duplicates obtainable from Fifteenth Century craftsmen at a
moment’s notice.
A very charming American lady recently declared that of all the Italian
cities, Florence was the most fascinating and attractive. She had
not, however, been fascinated or attracted by the scenery or the
architecture or the churches or the picture galleries. “Why,” she
explained, “you can get antiques there at half the prices that you have
to pay in Rome and about a quarter of what you have to pay in Paris!”
This fascinating feature is due to the fact that there are so many
Cinque Cento artisans still living in Florence. Nevertheless, the
French antique-shops are superior in general grace and style to the
Italian because the ancient Italian workmen now living in Florence lack
a certain dash and spirit which seem to be common to the French—except
in the matter of making worm-holes.
The Italian worm-holes stand at the very pinnacle of the worm-hole
world; and when an antique Italian workman really exerts himself
to worm-hole a piece of oak, the French workman stands aside in
reverential amazement. The French workman, however, has the dash.
Before purchasing antiques in Europe, one should acquaint himself with
the various brands of dash which may be observed in different sorts of
furniture. French furniture dash, for example, is much dashier than
Bavarian or Ukrainian dash. Czecho-Slovak dash and Bulgarian dash
are quite dissimilar. Subscriptions are even now being taken by the
American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities to establish
classes in furniture dash.†
————
† Donations for this worthy cause may be sent in the form of
certified checks, postage stamps, or unused golf balls to
Dr. Milton Kilgallen, Floral Park City, Florida.
The average Italian antique-dealer will crowd into a given space,
say, four wooden candlesticks made to represent four angels, two or
three Venetian glass mirrors, a Savonarola chair, seventeen pieces of
china, three wooden chests containing fifty-six square feet of surface
and eleven miles of worm-holes, a dozen venerable and tattered altar
cloths, made by ancient weavers and embroiderers in Naples in 1919, and
a few wrought-iron odds and ends removed from a palace in the purlieus
of Pisa by a prominent palace-wrecker.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII
COLONIAL TRIGLE-STOOL, DISCOVERED IN A NEW HAMPSHIRE WOODSHED,
AND PURCHASED FOR A MERE SONG BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN
As one of the legs was partially missing, it is believed that
the owners considered this rare old piece valueless. Professor
Kilgallen has not allowed any restorations to be made. The
profane hands of the modern reproducer of old furniture have
never been permitted to touch any articles of his collection.
]
In the same space the average French dealer seems unable to find
room for more than one dough-trough, two pewter plates with the
salamander of Francis I done on them in _repoussé_, a pair of Louis
XIV curling-tongs, and a washed-out-looking portrait of a satin-clad
and powdered-haired lady whose face has the lop-sided aristocratic
appearance that will only be found in true aristocrats or in persons
who have been kicked by mules perchance in their early days. And
the portraits which are on sale in every Parisian antique-shop are
sometimes most valuable because the general unpleasantness of the
aristocrats which they represent serves to make every beholder wonder
why the French Revolution didn’t start exterminating aristocrats about
a hundred years sooner.
At any rate, the superior shop-filling ability of the Italian dealers
is one reason why it is far easier to indulge one’s passion for
antiqueing in Italy than in France.
A disappointing feature about the French antique-shops is the apparent
indifference of the shopkeepers to the attempts of customers to engage
them in violent and interesting altercations over the prices of their
wares. This is a modern phase of the antique-business and ranks, in
France, with such inexplainable matters as why man-sized boys wear
little tight knickerbockers that come only halfway down to the knee,
and why a Parisian who apparently lives in comfort in his home or a
hotel with the thermometer down to forty degrees will shriek with
anguish when any one raises a window in a railway compartment in which
the temperature is hovering around ninety-four degrees.
In the old days when a Parisian antique-dealer placed a price of
fifteen hundred francs on an article, the prospective buyer offered
five hundred for it, and then the argument began. The dealer shed
tears; swore that his business standing would be shattered if he
dropped a centime in price; mentioned his sick wife most touchingly;
gave a long history of the antique in question, showing its great
value; beat his breast and begged the purchaser not to ruin him; and
ended by selling the article for seven hundred francs.
To-day, when a Parisian dealer places a price of fifteen hundred francs
on an article and the customer offers five hundred for it, the dealer
is more than likely to smile quietly but contemptuously, remark,
“M’sieu jests,” and refuse to converse further on the matter. This
removes the zest from the proceeding. One does not care to purchase
antiques as one purchases collars; one goes elsewhere.
III
OF THE APPROVED METHOD OF DOING BUSINESS WITH AN ITALIAN DEALER—OF
THE ARTISTIC DECEPTION OF THE CUSTOMER—OF THE MASTERFUL PROFANITY
AND THE UNCONVINCING ASSEVERATIONS OF THE DEALER—AND OF THE
ULTIMATE SATISFACTION OF BOTH PARTIES
The purchase of antiques in Italy, in order to be successful, must be
attended with enormous amounts of subtlety, gesticulation, swearing,
lying, and passion. The proceeding is, or should be somewhat as follows:
The antiquer first locates an antique-shop, which he does by walking
along a street until he is struck in the nose by a peculiarly fusty
odor, faintly resembling recently disinterred boots, and finds
the proprietor sitting in a gloomy corner of the shop writing,
or pretending to write, in a ledger and giving an excellent but
unconscious imitation of a large spider observing the approach of a
juicy bluebottle fly.
The customer greets the proprietor simply but elegantly, and the
proprietor, going on with his writing, replies in an apparently
perfunctory and preoccupied manner. Then the customer proceeds to
look about. He notes without interest the worm-eaten sideboards and
chests, the paintings of anæmic bunches of flowers, the bronze mortars
and pestles made in Florence, the Venetian mirrors that make the face
look as though it had been run through a clothes-wringer, the venerable
priests’ vestments and coatments and pantments, and the hanging silver
lamps made out of superb tin; and finally his eye lights on, say, a
marble plaque of a Pope’s head from a monastery wall.
It has an air, that plaque. He examines it carefully while pretending
to scrutinize a small but offensive painting of Saint Mark’s by
Moonlight. The buying fever seizes him, and he prepares for action.
“Have you not a pair of beaten-iron candlesticks in the Venetian
manner, projecting straight out from the wall?” he asks the proprietor,
making gestures like a candlestick. He asks this question in order to
provide a smoke-screen for his future movements.
“No, signore,” replies the proprietor gloomily. “We had them, but they
were sold yesterday.”
“Ah,” says the customer in disappointment. He starts as though to go;
and then, as an afterthought, he picks up a bronze mortar and weighs
it meditatively. “This little thing, now,” he ventures. “The price
unquestionably is prohibitive, eh?”
“A very fine thing, very old and very fine,” says the dealer, examining
it appreciatively. “And very cheap, signore; very cheap. Four hundred
lire only, signore.”
The signore laughs loudly and bitterly and turns away with a shudder.
“Cheap!” he ejaculates in scornful tones, “Cheap! You mistake me for
two millionaires. Madonna! What a price! For such a thing as that
good-for-nothing imitation in the corner, that pretended Pope’s head,
you would probably charge such an impossible price as one hundred lire!”
“Hah!” says the dealer, staring carefully at the customer. “Hah!” Then
he goes over to the corner and looks at the Pope’s head as though he
were seeing it for the first time.
“Signore,” he says solemnly, “this is a very fine and very rare piece.
It is an historical piece. I will sell it for one tenth of its value.”
“Ah, true?” asks the customer sarcastically. “And what is that,
signore?”
“Six hundred lire, signore,” replies the dealer calmly.
“Body of Bacchus!” gasps the customer, as though he had been mortally
wounded. “Six hundred lire! Are you mad, signore? It is robbery! The
thing is good for nothing! It would be dear at sixty lire!”
“Signore,” declares the dealer earnestly, “your words are an insult.
That Pope is worthy of a museum. Look at it, signore! In the large
establishments you would pay six thousand lire for it. Signore, I am
experienced in the buying and selling of antiques. In selling it at six
hundred lire, I am giving it away.”
The customer shakes his head pityingly. “Poor little one,” says he,
“that Pope’s head is a forgery. It probably cost six lire. In buying it
at all you must have fallen among thieves.”
“Signore, it is not true,” says the dealer indignantly. “It is a gift
at six hundred lire.”
“Pah!” says the customer, wagging his extended thumb and forefinger at
the level of his ear to signify utter contempt and disbelief.
“Then what will you give, signore?” demands the proprietor in
exasperation. “Name me a fair price and let us speak about it.”
“No,” says the customer, “I do not want it. Your prices, signore, would
make a cow weep.”
“Then name me a price,” insists the proprietor. “Come, name it and let
me hear.”
“Sixty lire!” shouts the customer defiantly.
“Sixty lire!” wails the proprietor. “Presence of the Devil, signore, I
paid five hundred lire for that object. I am a poor man, signore, and
the thief of a Government takes everything away in taxes—the luxury tax
and the tax for the wounded and the export tax. One must live. Come,
signore, give me five hundred and fifty lire and take it.”
“Madonna!” cries the customer in a rage. “I would not pay five hundred
and fifty lire for a dozen of them. I will give you one hundred lire
and not another soldo.”
“Ah, Madonna!” shrieks the proprietor. “You are stealing the bread from
the mouths of my children. Ah, my God, but this business is ruining me.
No, I will not do it! Come, signore, take it for five hundred and let
us weary ourselves no longer with fruitless talk.”
“It is useless, signore,” declares the customer firmly. “I will not pay
your price. Come, now: here is my last word: wrap it up and take three
hundred lire for it.”
“Body of Bacchus,” moans the proprietor. “We cannot deal together, you
and I. Go to a cheap shop, signore. I—I am not a noted dealer, signore.
I cannot do those things. Farewell, signore.”
“Three hundred lire,” says the customer firmly.
“Three hundred and fifty,” counters the proprietor.
“Three hundred,” insists the customer hoarsely, starting toward the
door.
The proprietor gives his shoulders the tremendous shrug which, in
Italy, signifies that the shrugger can do nothing more to prevent you
from utterly wrecking yourself by your colossal idiocy. He reseats
himself at his desk and paws around among his papers with sudden and
complete absorption.
“Three hundred and twenty-five,” says the customer, holding the door
half open and making what the modern school of diplomacy would call a
gesture of departure.
[Illustration: PLATE IX
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL AS IT IS TO-DAY
]
[Illustration: PLATE X
NEW DESIGN FOR COLOGNE CATHEDRAL
The enthusiasm of Professor Kilgallen for the pure Colonial has
led him to propose the remodeling of Cologne Cathedral. Above is
a design drawn and submitted to the Archbishop of Cologne by the
Professor, without charge. It is felt that the alterations would
give the building a more restful character.
]
The proprietor capitulates, rolling up his eyes and tossing his hands
in the air to show that he accepts misfortune’s dread harpoon in a
sportsmanlike spirit. “You have a bargain, signore,” says he genially,
rising and unhooking the marble plaque of the Pope from the wall.
“To-morrow I shall have candlesticks of beaten iron in the Venetian
style. Come to-morrow and I will sell them to you for nothing.”
IV
OF THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN ANTIQUES AND OIL STOCKS—OF THE
CONFOUNDING OF EXPERTS BY FRENCH AND ITALIAN ANTIQUE-FAKERS—AND
OF THE MOST ADVANCED METHODS OF FAKING
The percentage of antiques among the antique-shops of Paris, Rome,
Florence, Berlin, and Vienna is said by some to be about the same as
the percentage of good investments among the oil and mining stocks of
America. Sometimes an antique is easy to detect, and sometimes it is
not so easy.
There are a number of experts who claim to be able to expose a
worm-hole that would deceive any worm in the world; but there are
occasions when groups of the most serious and profound experts become
embroiled over a particular painting or piece of furniture, some
claiming fiercely that the article in question was produced in 1519,
and others maintaining noisily that it was done in 1915. The only
satisfactory way in which such a matter could ever be settled would be
to have a war over it.
Large numbers of experts have also gone into ecstasies over certain
beautiful Old Masters: expert has purchased a painting from expert,
running up the price at each change of hands until its cost is on a par
with that of a new Town Hall; then some low, coarse, non-expert has
come along with an X-ray machine and shown, by X-raying the paint, that
it is so new that its value is somewhat less than that of a dog-house.
The best of the renaissance and primitive and seventeenth century
artists now producing Italian and French antique paintings are full
of quaint conceits for the intriguing (if one may use so coarse an
expression) of experts on paintings. They welcome the cynical and wary
purchasers who start to examine a painting by looking at its back in
order to make sure that the canvas is old. They beam affectionately at
the suspicious buyers who must have a certain number of cracks to the
square inch of surface, who count the fly specks with loving care,
who test the paint with alcohol in order to find out whether it is
new paint or old paint, and who hunt so assiduously for that rich and
mellow golden-brown tone that comes only with age.
A golden-brown glow on a painting is a sign that it was painted back
in those good old roistering, swashbuckling days when the most sincere
fighters and the noisiest drinkers wore lace frills around the bottoms
of their short plush sport-clothes. Fortunately the same beautiful
effect can be obtained by dissolving licorice in water, pouring the
result on the canvas and rubbing it around for a few moments with the
palm of the hand. Very beautiful and realistic fly-speck effects may be
added by dissolving gum arabic in water, coloring the liquid with sepia
and Chinese ink, dipping an ancient toothbrush into it, and spraying
it on the canvas by drawing a match along the toothbrush bristles.
The wisest fly that looked at the result would declare unhesitatingly
that a yearly fly-convention had been held on the painting ever since
Christopher Columbus abandoned the flat-earth theory, and that all the
leading speckers of the fly race had tracked their muddy feet on it at
one time or another. It’s a poor human that can’t beat an insect.
If it were not for these happy devices the antiques now existing in the
world would be arbitrarily limited—a condition of things destructive
to the wide dissemination of culture and dismaying to the Academy
for the Popularization of Antiquities. Fortunately, paintings may be
aged without waiting for years to pass over them. One way is to cook
them in hot ovens. Another is to take an old, decrepit painting and
paint something more interesting on top of it. Or one may take a new
painting, cover the back with glue, and paste an old canvas over it.
Some of the most experienced antiquers carry little bottles of alcohol
in their breast pockets; and when they are investigating a picture with
great care, they slyly produce the bottles and surreptitiously pour
alcohol over it in order to find out whether or not the colors run.
If they run, the picture is new. If they do not run, the picture is
old. So, at least, the experts say. The idea is excellent; but happily
the dealers have learned that if they cover a painting with a sort of
transparent glue, it will resist the action of alcohol and confound the
experts. Also, dealers of intelligence have remedied the unkind fate
that seemingly limited the work done by Old Masters to the paintings
they produced in their lifetimes. What could be simpler and yet more
beneficial to the patron than to add the signature of an Old Master to
a painting and let the patron discover it for himself? Many of the most
priceless Old Masters in existence have reached America in this way,
and many a millionaire’s home would be a gloomier place to-day were it
not for this simple but pleasure-giving little device.
There are certain technical points about antique-collecting in Europe
that are easily picked up by the antique-collector in two or three
years’ time.
Venetian glass, for example, breaks more readily than ordinary glass.
When in doubt about a piece of Venetian glass, strike it one inch from
the base with a small hammer, using a stroke of fourteen foot-ounces to
the square inch. If the glass breaks, it is Venetian.
Then there are Capo di Monte saucers, which, when scaled over the
surface of a smooth body of water, will skip several times more than
an ordinary china saucer. One should pick out a broad lake and scale
all questionable saucers over its surface with an under-arm motion.
A saucer, if genuine Capo di Monte, should skip at least eight times
before sinking. The lake may then be pumped out with a bicycle pump.†
————
† See _From Broad-Axe to Peanut-Roaster_, by Emmet Gilhooly.
V
OF THE SOURCE OF THE WORM-HOLES IN NEAR-ANTIQUE FURNITURE—OF THE
LATEST WORM-HOLE MACHINE—OF THE MODERN METHOD OF PRODUCING
ANCIENT WOOD-CARVINGS IN FIVE MINUTES—AND OF THE UNLIMITED
FURNITURE OWNED BY MARIE ANTOINETTE
The collector of antique French and Italian and other foreign furniture
is to be congratulated upon other benevolent circumstances that prevent
supplies of wonderful old things from approaching exhaustion.
So long as there are any ancient houses in France and Italy, just
so long will the manufacturers of French and Italian antiques have
enough working material of absolute genuineness. This is due to the
fact that the wainscoting and all the concealed woodwork of these
venerable houses have been heartily eaten by many generations of true
worms. Whenever a house is pulled down, therefore, the Old Masters
of furniture-making flock to the scene and acquire large stocks of
truly worm-holed wood. This, when incorporated into the magnificent
chests, tables, sideboards, and other pieces which are destined to
fill the antique-shops of Paris, Rome, and Florence, catches and holds
the eye of the purchaser. It is obvious to any one—or at least to any
amateur—that any piece of furniture which contains such intricate and
symmetrical worm-holes must have been made before the worms started to
bore, and must, therefore, be very ancient.
The old, worm-eaten wainscoting is used to make the shelves and
drawer-bottoms of sideboards which are known as _credenzas_ in Italy
and _crédences_ in France. It is also drawn on for the backs and
bottoms of chests, for picture-frames, for wooden stirrups, and for
almost any beautiful, wonderful old thing Milady or Mimister brings
home to exhibit upon the sitting-room table.
The fronts and tops of chests and sideboards may, however, be made
of new wood and will probably look just as well. For example, the
new wood can be carved even more prettily than the old, and when the
carving is finished, the manufacturer turns over the product to three
or four muscular hirelings whose sole duty is to injure furniture. They
are armed with large sticks of various shapes, and their activities
are limited to chastising the wood with extreme severity. In this way
the chests and sideboards acquire, in a matter of half an hour, the
scratches and indentations for which slow centuries might otherwise be
required. The wood is given the proper color by boiling it with walnut
rind. Or it may be given the peculiar irregularities of great age by
applying nitric acid, which eats into the surface, and then coloring
the marks of the acid with permanganate of potash.
[Illustration: PLATE XI
COLONIAL KITCHEN SINK FROM THE OLD PALAVER THOMPSON MANSION IN
HAVERHILL
The metal work, all done by hand, is in a remarkable state
of preservation. There was no spigot; but here we find an
illustration of the ingenuity of our forefathers. Professor
Kilgallen has come to the conclusion that the water was all
poured in from a bucket and entirely by hand.
]
The new wood, of course, must be carefully worm-holed. The crudest
variety of worm-holing is done with a shotgun. The result looks
sufficiently wormy to suit the most captious worm-hole collector;
but one can always find a Number 10 shot at the bottom of each hole.
The shotgun method, therefore, is not acceptable to members in good
standing in our Society. The worm-hole machine, which is used by
several of the leading Parisian _chineurs_, is a new and excellent
invention. Its front is a square plate with serpentine grooves in
it. When the plate is pressed against a piece of wood and the handle
turned, a number of slender augers push out and make a cluster of
worm-holes. A turn of a lever changes the position of each auger
slightly, so that the worm-hole pattern does not recur.
But the best worm-holes in the world are made in Italy by hand. The
auger with which they are made is bent in an irregular shape; and the
purchaser of a piece of furniture which has been worm-holed with it is
at liberty to thrust wires into the holes in order to investigate their
wormy crookedness.
The most thorough furniture manufacturers, knowing that the careful
collector will rap on the furniture in order to see whether dust falls
from the worm-holes—as would be the case if the hole is the work of a
normal worm—should be careful to fill the holes with wood dust.
In a number of the antique-shops along the Rue Saintes-Pères and the
Boulevard Raspail in Paris, one may see many specimens of carved wooden
panels about a foot and a half long and about five inches wide. Every
one of these has been taken from old châteaux and palaces which have
been recently torn down. This statement is obviously reasonable; for if
it were untrue, practically every château in France would be standing
to-day, whereas nearly all of them have long since been demolished to
provide the great number of wooden panels that have been placed on sale
in the past few years. The panels are attractive and not made by great
pressure—a method sometimes used in France and Italy in making cheap
antiques. Pressure-carvings, as they are called, always show a bent
grain; whereas the small carvings show a severed grain.
But in order to save a few châteaux for tourists to visit, it was
decided to make panels somewhat artificially, so to speak. That would
make a tourist twice happy: he could visit a château and look at the
panels; then he could return to Paris and buy them to take home. Iron
moulds were heated until they were white-hot, and then pressed against
very dry wood. When the moulds were removed and the burnt surface
brushed with steel brushes, the wood had the color and the polish
and the texture of ancient carvings. A dose of Number 10 shot from
the manufacturer’s shotgun supplied the worm-holes for each panel,
after which they were ready to be sold to the travelling public for
about four dollars apiece. Their cost was approximately forty-five
cents—twenty cents for the wood, twenty cents for the labor, and five
cents for the shotgun cartridge, and thus an embarrassing problem was
solved to the contentment of everybody concerned.
Articles as large as mantels for generous fireplaces are made by
this burning method and passed on to eager collectors at prices that
distress the proletariat greatly and cause frequent demands for an
equal distribution of wealth.
There is a wood-carving company in Paris which advertises that it will
be glad to deliver the furniture of any period to antique-dealers at a
moment’s notice.... There are workshops of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
which produce boule cabinets decorated with birds, beasts, and flowers
of which André-Charles Boule might well have been proud.... There are
places in Auvergne where the best ancient artists in the world turn out
furniture which Parisian dealers later are kind enough to guarantee to
have been owned by Marie Antoinette.
There is a true benevolence in all this. Culture is spread, and many
people otherwise innocent of history learn that Marie Antoinette
furniture is similar to that produced under one of the Louies. It is
quite untrue, however, that she sent it all over to this country in the
Mayflower.
VI
OF THE VIOLENT PEWTER-COLLECTOR AND HIS PATOIS—OF THE PECULIAR
PASTIMES AND PLEASURES OF THE PEWTER-HOUNDS AND OF THE DANGERS
OF FOREIGN PEWTER
The pewter-collector provides a pleasant source of income to European
antique-dealers; for he is one of the most ardent collectors. Pewter,
as is well known, is a base metal made of tin, to which a small amount
of antimony, copper, or lead has been added. It was originally made
for use in the homes of the wealthy before the days of pottery and
china; then it was used in kitchens of great houses; churches which
couldn’t afford gold or silver services had pewter services; taverns
had complete outfits of pewter pots and tankards which could be thrown
promiscuously by intoxicated guests without damage to anything except
the guests.
When properly cleaned, old pewter has a soft, silvery lustre that is
highly esteemed by all collectors; and a true pewter-lover will travel
many miles for the privilege of handling a pewter plate, hearing it cry
and taking rubbings of it.
Pewter-collectors speak a technical language which has little or no
meaning to persons who have never been exposed to the pewter-germ: and
it is in the antique-shops that one hears the pewter-lovers running on
by the hour. The _cri d’étain_, or the “cry of the tin,” is not, as
might be supposed, the noise which the pewter-collector makes when he
finds out the price of a piece of pewter. It is the noise which genuine
pewter always makes when the collector holds it close to his ear and
bends it backward and forward. Pewter always refuses to cry for some
people, but it is certain that there is a cry in it, just as it is
certain that there is a lady in the moon, though few of them are ever
able to see her.
All the pewter made in the old days in London and Paris and the German
cities bore on its back the small private mark of its maker, due to
the fact that a certain standard of metal was required by law.
The chief recreation of the pewter-collector is to search out several
pieces of pewter, place tissue paper or tinfoil over a mark, and
then diligently rub the paper or foil with some blunt instrument
until a copy of the mark has been transferred to it. Two advanced
pewter-collectors will squabble for hours as to whether the best
rubbings can be made with cigarette-paper and a hard pencil, or with
tinfoil and an ivory penholder, and as to whether the best results can
be got by heating the pewter before taking the rubbing or by leaving it
cold.
The most excitable pewter-huntsmen keep little books of pewter-rubbings
on their persons, and think nothing of spending two or three hours
trying to locate a given mark in their books. If interrupted in
this pursuit, they become violent and use hideous language to the
interrupter. They exchange rubbings with each other, and can spend as
much as eight or ten hours in brooding over half a dozen dilapidated
pewter plates. When they have hopelessly disagreed over the proper
method of taking rubbings, they can argue for weeks over the best
method of cleaning pewter, which develops an almost impenetrable crust
when it lies neglected in a barn for half a century, as most of the
genuine appears to have done. Some hold out for ashes and vinegar;
others for boiling with hay; others for oxalic acid mixed with rotten
stone; others for hydrochloric acid; others for oxide of tin; others
for Calais sand and elm leaves; others for soft soap, rotten stone, and
turpentine. One of the most delightful things about collecting this
metal is that you can experiment for years with pewter without making
any progress.
The same thing is true, of course, of all sorts of antiques. Only a
short time ago the official expert of the French Government carefully
examined a portrait owned by a Parisian lady, and pronounced it a
genuine Leonardo da Vinci. The lady was about to sell it to the Kansas
City Art Institute for the modest sum of $500,000, when another
celebrated dealer examined it and declared emphatically that the
painting was a copy, and not a Leonardo da Vinci at all. Both of the
experts had international reputations and should have been qualified
to know exactly what they were talking about. The Kansas City Art
Institute, however, decided not to part with its money just then; and
the lady at once sued the second expert for $500,000. Our Society hopes
that when she gets the money she will endow us; and we have written her
to that effect; but probably she is busy just now.
I myself found a gem of a pewter inkwell in a little Parisian shop one
day, properly marked and battered and time-worn. It had a cylinder
for ink, a cylinder for sand, and a space for pens; and its age was
declared by the dealer to be one hundred and fifty years. By haggling
exhaustively with him, I beat him down from one hundred francs to
fifty francs, and bore off my prize in triumph. When I got it home, I
examined the interior of the ink-cylinder with an electric torch and
discovered that the inside surface was bright and shiny. On a guess,
it was only about eight months old; but what of that? Eight months is
eight months, and what _is_ antiquity, anyhow? If you ask a geologist
you will get one answer; if you ask a debutante you will get another.
As for me, I used a little acid inside my inkwell and hope to dispose
of it to a friend. It is already months and months antiquer than when I
bought it.
[Illustration: PLATE XII
SAMPLER IN THE POSSESSION OF PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S FAMILY. IT WAS
THE WORK OF THE PUPILS OF THE PROFESSOR’S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER, DAME
MARJORIE KILGALLEN, OF OSSIPPEE FALLS, AND WAS PRESENTED TO HER
BY THEM ON THE CONCLUSION OF HER THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR AS A TEACHER
IN THE SCHOOL
]
Almost every Parisian antique-shop will, if pressed, produce a pair of
pewter plates with the salamander crest of Francis I on the bottom of
each plate in _repoussé_ work—work done by hammering the under side of
the plate until the desired figure is raised on the upper side. These
salamander plates are charming and should be bought by the pewter
collector. If he gets too many he can always use them for sinkers when
fishing—or they may readily be employed as wedding-presents.
Generally speaking—speaking, that is, as our careful advice to the vast
body of travellers who wish to take home a few attractive antiques
as souvenirs—it is best to make purchases as soon as possible after
arriving in Europe. If one remains there long enough the antiques will
be absolutely genuine by the time one gets home.
————
HORSECHESTNUT
————
[Illustration]
HORSECHESTNUT
COMPILERS’ NOTE
The subjoined paper, so happily cast in narrative form, could not
have been omitted from this compilation without gravely lessening at
once the charm and value of the work; its inclusion, however, has
been arranged only after extraordinary efforts on the part, not only
of the compilers, but also, they are happy to testify, on that of the
talented author herself—a figure as impressive and delightful among
antiquers as her name, among critics and patrons of the modern American
novel, is authoritative and inspiring. Her charming little story,
although read by her in person at the March session of the Academy, in
1923, seemed for a time to be impossible of republication here; her
contract with her publisher, a person of highly developed commercial
instincts, restrains her from publishing through any other channel, and
in the face of united persuasion on the part of Professor Kilgallen
and the author herself, this gentleman has stood firmly on the precise
letter of his bargain. Fortunately, however, the advice of counsel was
procured, with the result that the compilers are permitted to reproduce
the paper, although denied the pleasure and privilege of accrediting it
to the author by name.
This prohibition would cause them a distress far more acute,
nevertheless, were they not wholly confident that the identity of the
author will be transparently evident to every antiquer and to all
lovers of her colorful literary art.
I
The room was subtly instinct with—James Femms admitted to an inchoate,
egocentric admonition—default. Tormented by an awareness of distress,
alien, vicarious, yet poignantly perceptible, his consciousness
opposed, almost with petulance, his endeavors to confine it to—in
fulfilment of his trust and purpose—spleening.
Loss; separation; sundering—the words formed themselves in characters
feathery and funereal as the cross-stitch letter of a Garfield
wall-motto; they contrived to make themselves, above the florid,
valiant persuasions of the auctioneer, audible. There was, James Femms
informed himself, even an overtone, as of an adscititious dolor,
inexpressible by any clumsy symbolism of syllables; he seemed, indeed,
to experience, at second-hand, those first lingual explorations,
incredulous and baffled, of the wistful void where but the ache and
memory of the tooth remain.
James Femms put forth the power of his will against his habit of
thinking in such intorted, raffled inversions as these. Confronted by a
problem, he resolved to ratiocinate straightforwardly, in a manner as
candidly unintricate as the spleened finials of the _porte-chapeaux_
which, at the moment, engaged the brazen eloquence of the vendor. He
would not think, he decided, in the style of an Empire girandole,
but in the direct and honest simplicity of, say, that spleened and
half-groined becket.
This was James Femms, not as he had been, but as he had come to be,
a man colored by the years, so that his glass—a walnut caracole,
wonderfully woodmarked—seemed to invest him with a patina, so that,
indeed, he resembled one of those Victorian antiques, ornately ruinous,
which were the dominant, as it were, of his existence. His passion
for the lost art of the period had come to affect him in cunning,
secret ways, to inform his spirit with a cold flame of rebellion
against himself and his environment; he detested his body, designed,
he reflected bitterly, after the Roycroft manner and as innocent of
decorative values; he abandoned, in his moments of surrender, the
artless names which had been foisted on his helpless infancy; he ceased
to think of himself as James Femms, and softened, mellowed, ornamented
the harsh, stern sounds with Gallic fancies. In his dreams he became a
figure of romance, pinch-waisted, nobly whiskered, an illustration from
a time-stained page of “Godey’s Lady’s-Book,” a man who could bear,
with corseted grace, a name like Jambes des Femmes!
He became, for the time being, this Jambes des Femmes; he looked about
him with the very elegance and grace of a des Femmes. The salon, he
observed, was filled by people for whom Jambes des Femmes must feel no
more than a gently supercilious distaste; there were faces familiar
enough to James Femms: Kitchler, the bulbous, raffish dealer, one
sienna eye cocked contemptuously at the _porte-chapeaux_, a fleshpot
finger lifted in token of a careless bid; there were others as foreign
to the mood of Jambes des Femmes—sly, chaffering professionals and the
inevitable scattering of amateurs. Here, he concluded, there was no
one capable of setting up in him those telepathic vibrations of which,
baffled and distrait, he was obstinately aware.
His glance moved back to the _porte-chapeaux_. He had examined it, of
course, before the sale and decided, with a lingering regret, to make
no offer for it. Horsechestnut—he discarded the coarse term; James
Femms must use it, when he spoke, but Jambes des Femmes might think in
more gracious wise: _noisette à cheval_—it was a fine piece, des Femmes
admitted, a magnificent affair, save for but the one fatal defect. And
he had always, he reflected, adored _noisette à cheval_.
Again he was pervaded by the haunting awareness of an elusive, poignant
melancholy. His eyes moved to the spurious becket—to the discerning
scrutiny of James Femms a palpable counterfeit, a thing so obvious
and crude that even Kitchler, with the three originals to scream
their warning, might have noticed it—not even hand-wrought groining,
des Femmes pronounced, a clumsy fraud, grouted, at a guess, and
bench-gammoned to trick the eye of ignorance!
It seemed to des Femmes that his atrabilious depression found its focus
here. He lifted himself to see more clearly; was it—could it be—that
he felt the yearning of those sundered parts, the shame and longing of
the _porte-chapeaux_ for that ravished becket? Had his sympathy, his
passion for _noisette à cheval_ refined his perceptions to a delicacy
so incredible, so splendid? He dallied wistfully with the thought and
put it from him. Not even Jambes des Femmes could have attained a
receptivity so exquisite.
Suddenly, as the voice of the auctioneer became premonitory, James
Femms moved in his chair. He remembered Sonoff!
As if hours instead of years were overlaid upon the recollection he
could see that _porte-chapeaux_ in Sonoff’s _entresol_, its lovely
amber tone warmed by the crimson wall! It was Sonoff’s!
Jambes des Femmes saw him, as he had been—Sonoff the debonair, high
on the crest of his wave, Sonoff, the greatest artist of his time! And
now—abruptly, ineludibly, came the thought—and now, even the art was
dead!
Dead. Since that day of Sonoff’s greatness men had been born, lived out
their lives, died, without knowing that the art had ever lived! Jambes
des Femmes tasted the bitterness of it; he saw Sonoff, behind the great
_râtelier_ of bells, his hands flashing like the lustres of _bobèches_
on a girandole, from the elfin-tinkling tinniness of the soprano to
the rugent clamor of the bass! Sonoff, a Russian, had taught the Swiss
their place!
“_Grandes fromages_,” Sonoff would say. “Let them yodel!”
And now—!
Sonoff, beggared, reduced to the shrewd torment of testing the
timbre of telephone bells for a niggard pittance, and Sonoff’s
_porte-chapeaux_, degraded and disfigured by that pinchbeck becket,
going, for the last, third time to Kitchler!
James Femms lifted his catalogue.
II
The bassines, at least, James Femms admitted, were good. Sound
bronze—he stiffened as memory quickened in him. Gently his finger-nail
tapped their margins and a hushed whispering resonance seemed to bring
an audible perfume into the chamber. James Femms nodded. It had been
Sonoff’s whimsy to have these bassines cast and toned in bell-metal—one
to sound the low A flat and the other the D that Sonoff had loved best
of all his bells.
The bassines, at least, were possible under James Femms’s roof. But the
_porte-chapeaux_ itself, with a fraudulent becket? James Femms negated
the suggestion with a resolute, peremptory movement of his head. He set
his shoulder to the task of thrusting the piece before him to the open
porch. He closed the door upon it. Except for the bassines, it would
have been better, after all, to let Kitchler have it; perhaps, even
now, he could let Kitchler persuade him to part with it—not too easily,
of course; it would be simple to pick up another pair of bassines, in
place of these. There were two in Reading, Femms remembered, and, he
thought, another pair in a junk-shop on the edge of Camden.
Yes, he would let Kitchler have it, at a price. He lifted the two
bassines and brought their edges softly together, inclining his head to
catch the moonlit fragrance of their conjoined note. He carried them to
his bedroom; he would keep them here, on either side of the Benjamin
Harrison bureau. He set them on the twin plackets that jutted out from
the mirror-frame.
III
Sleep eluded James Femms. Isolated in umbrageous stillness, the
grosser sensory reactions no longer obstructed the reception of what,
he now conceded, must be the telepathic apperceptions of sixth or
seventh sense. Below the coverlet his body, resentful under mysterious
reproaches from without, expressed its unrest in gyratory saltations;
his mind ached and quivered in sympathy with baffling emotions of which
his awareness was so acute that it all but equalled experience itself.
He was cognizant, dimly but with certitude, of a relation between
these sufferings and the presence, the propinquity, at least, of
the _porte-chapeaux_ that had been Sonoff’s. Again he contemplated
the hypothesis that understanding and affection had established
between James Femms and the inanimate objects of his passion, a
_rapprochement_, a _rapport_ analogous to, if not identical with, the
sympathy that unites the sundered halves of a spiritual union. Below,
from the doorstep, the _porte-chapeaux_ of Mikail Sonoff seemed, to
James Femms, to upraise a muted ululation, a sound of exquisite desire,
as pitiful and penetrant as the call of the widowed wood-dove. He came,
at last, to the window, a panel of translucent pressed glass surrounded
by a bordure of plaquettes, each of a different primary color, now
delicately diminished in the pallor of a moon as cold, Femms thought,
as the belly facet of a flounder.
He slept with the window, after the mode which he sensed intuitively
would have been that of Jambes des Femmes, closed. Lifting it, now,
and shivering in the humid inrush of nocturnal airs, he identified
the crooning note; the leprous, unchaste cry of feline concupiscence.
Femms’s sibilant ejaculation motivated a flitting shadow; the gashed
silence seemed to lick its wounds; there was stillness, but not, for
James Femms, peace.
[Illustration:
THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL
“Rising in the night, troubled over the yearning of the bassines
to be reunited to their original source.”
]
Rising, later in the night, convinced at last that his spirit was
troubled by the yearning of the bassines to be reunited to their
original source, he bore them down and left them in the embrace of the
_porte-chapeaux_.
Sleep coquetted with him, now, a sleep of caprice, through which, more
remotely, James Femms continued to respond to that inanimate yearning,
palliated but still passionately unsatisfied.
IV
A dawn of gusts, with spurts of disingenuous rain, revived James
Femms; dressing, he avoided the candor of his glass, harried now by a
recurrent thought of Sonoff.
He seemed, indeed, to see the old _sonneur_, abroad in this malicious
weather, his battered _parapluie_, its proper service forgotten,
serving him but as a staff, his garments maculate with party-colored
inlays, his glorious hair unhatted.
Distantly, elusively, James Femms sensed, now, a relationship between
his inchoate mental gropings and that whimsy of Mikail Sonoff. He
knew that the old musician, his ears envenomed by the clack of
telephone bells, suffered hideously from headache, but did he, James
Femms demanded of himself, walk bareheaded in the rains to cool that
throbbing capital, or was it, perhaps, because of some sentiment less
practical—because of some profound attachment to a hat, too deeply
loved, which, lost at last, had moved Sonoff to vow, in this respect,
perpetual celibacy? Or was it...?
James Femms, percipient though he was, must have failed to draw that
gossamer inference; it was an inspiration worthy of the _finesse_ of
Jambes des Femmes himself! He saw, now, with a sudden utter certitude,
that Sonoff bared his splendid finial to the elements because a
hat, any hat, must have revived and deepened his yearning for the
_porte-chapeaux_, the _porte-chapeaux_ of _noisette à cheval_ that
symbolized all the grace and splendor of Sonoff’s ravished youth!
[Illustration:
“HE KNEW THE OLD MUSICIAN SUFFERED FROM HEADACHES, BUT DID HE
WALK BAREHEADED IN THE RAIN TO COOL HIS HEAD OR PERHAPS BECAUSE
OF SOME PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO A HAT HE HAD ONCE OWNED? HAD HE
LOST IT, PERHAPS, AND VOWED NEVER TO HAVE ANOTHER?”
]
And, as if the ghostly emanations of the _porte-chapeaux_ had sought
him out in whatever beggar’s den now harbored his decay, had called
him forth and guided him hereward, Sonoff himself passed before James
Femms’s window, a figure of compassion, a spectacle as insidiously
saddening as that Wagner Palace Car which James Femms had once
beheld degraded to the indignity of a nocturnal, nickel restaurant.
James Femms cried out to him, the sacrifice already made. Sonoff should
have it for his own again, without money and without price!
V
“Headache? And what head would not ache, good little Jambes des Femmes?”
James Femms remembered that it was Sonoff’s quaint pronunciation of his
detested name that had first suggested the thought of changing it, in
his secret meditations, to the softened grace, the Parisian flavor, of
Jambes des Femmes. A rush of gratitude welled in him.
“Sonoff—I have guessed.” He laid his hand horizontally above the pocket
where he carried his priceless stylograph, filigreed in the very flower
of the Rutherford B. Hayes manner. “It is the heart that aches. And I
have found the cure. Come!”
Silently he led the antique _sonneur_ through the _entresol_ and to the
porch.
“There!” He flung his hand in a wide, fine gesture.
Sonoff blinked.
“_Mon porte-chapeaux._” He spoke with no zest, no vestige of his
quondam _joie de vivre_. “I tired of it, Jambes.”
“Take it. I give it back to you!” James Femms repeated the wide arc of
his flourish.
“But I no longer want it.” Sonoff shook his head and raised a hand to
it as if in sudden pain. “I wear no ’at, mon brave Jambes. The pain—ah!”
Again his features were intorted.
“You won’t take it?” James Femms disbelieved. Surging up in his
consciousness, innegable, compelling, he felt that conviction of mute,
poignant yearning for reunity which had obsessed him from the first.
“I cannot. It saddens me to behold it. It stirs, _mon vieux_, memories.
Ah—the pain—the pain.” He pressed spatulate fingers to his temples and
a groan forced passage between his teeth. “It comes back to me at the
sight.”
“It makes your head ache—the _porte-chapeaux_?” James Femms regarded
him incredulously.
[Illustration:
THE BECKET (ACTUAL SIZE)
Note 1. The perfect hand-wrought groining. Note 2. Observe the
accurate spleening of the old handicraftsmen.
]
“But yes. It was then that they began, the headaches—the night that
the becket lost itself. I woke, that day, happy; they had listened,
_enfin_, those adder-deaf imbeciles of the telephone; the bells were
tuned at last to the F sharp; I was free from the ignominy of the E—— I
sang, that day, my friend. I was _gaie_! I laughed as I snatched up my
hat from the becket where, of old habit, I had hung it. Lightly, as a
schoolboy is light, I placed it on my head; I tilted it; I was myself,
the self that took them by storm that night in Philadelphia when I
rang the overture from ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ using my feet for the _basso
profundo_! All day among my new bells I was that self. And at night,
returning with song in my heart and a tin of caviare and a _carache_
of vodka below my arms, I was that self. But ah, when I would have
slept—the pain—the pain, mon Jambes! I shudder at the thought of it! I
walked the floor in torment, as how often I have walked it since.”
He pressed his temples again.
“And it was while I walked that I observed the vanishment of the
becket. It was gone. I do not know where, nor how—I only know that the
sight of the _porte-chapeaux_ was hateful. I could not endure to behold
it. I sold it, and the pain, if no less, was easier to bear.”
James Femms heard him as one who listens to the opaque ventriloquial
speech of dreams. Dimly, remotely, but with a dawning fervor of
conviction, understanding burst in upon him. He lifted his hands in a
swift, furtive movement; his fingers penetrated the plush-like silky
depths of Sonoff’s hair. They closed upon a surface that James Femms
knew as intimately by touch as if his eyes beheld it through his
worm-hole lens. Delicately, with the merciful cruelty of the surgeon,
disregarding the anguished shriek of his patient, he drew forth the
missing becket. A profound, shuddering sigh came from Sonoff.
With hands that thrilled voluptuously at the delicious caress of that
spleened surface, but still were swift and sure to their task, James
Femms replaced the becket in its emplacement and stood back, his eyes
intoxicated with the charm of the perfect spleen-craft, the cool, proud
beauty of the hand-groined base.
The ether, like a restless, moaning sea upon which an instant calm
descends, was permeated with a vast, abiding peace.
Sonoff clasped James Femms to him, kissed his cheeks.
[Illustration:
PROFILE VIEW OF THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL
RECONSTRUCTED AND IN USE
I. The lost becket. II. Bassine
]
“The pain! It is gone! Ah, mon cher Jambes des Femmes—what can I say to
you—how shall I repay you?”
James Femms said nothing. His eyes, held and fascinated, drank in the
fragrant loveliness of the amber _noisette à cheval_, thrilled under
the thin, silvery aroma of its melodious oneness.
He was but distantly aware of a voice, Sonoff’s voice, far-away,
elfin-sweet with the echoes of a hundred blending bells.
“Keep it, Jambes des Femmes, keep it always in proof and token
of my gratitude! Keep it, des Femmes, in memory of Mikail Sonoff
Sonoffovitch!”
James Femms did not know that he had gone.
————
A WORD ON POONING
By
AUGUSTULA THOMAS
————
[Illustration]
A WORD ON POONING
By
AUGUSTULA THOMAS
Note: This work would be incomplete, indeed, without a few suggestions
from one-who-understands and has long been _the_ authority on pooning.
Pooning is a highly technical term and may perhaps need definition for
the benefit of laymen. Its significance is subtle, lying between that
of “properly placing” and the sense conveyed by the Italian phrase
“_Dove il dogagna_.” Many true lovers of the quaint-and-rare possess
the patience and the means to make collections, but, when it comes
to the tasteful _pooning_ of these, lack the connoisseur touch that
is distinctive. Madame Thomas’s position as a scholarly decorator is
now recognized as impeccable. Her hints will prove lambent to many a
collector.—_Eds._
* * * * *
A witty Frenchman once said to Madame de Montespan that the feminine
touch in decoration was _para cœli_, but without half measures! Not
pausing to debate the aspersion, I may admit that I have usually found
it more sympathetic to direct the replacing of beautiful old things in
the houses of bachelor and widower collectors than in those of somewhat
more matronly people. After which treachery to my sex, let me proceed
at once to the practical. _Enfin!_
[Illustration:
RECEPTION HELD BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF
ANTIQUITIES ON THE LAWN BEFORE THE ACADEMY’S BUILDING AT THE SAN
FRANCISCO EXPOSITION
This reception was in honor of the election of Mme. Augustula
Thomas to membership. Mme. Thomas is seen right of center in
conversation with Turrbyl Dewyns (Fellow of the Academy), who
wears the blue ribbon awarded by the Exposition as first prize
for antiquarians. Just eastward of him Hon. P. D. Smith (Member
of Congress from Arkansas) is seen courteously lifting his hat to
Dr. Twitchett in recognition of the latter’s talents.
]
To pronounce my creed, which is synthetic and never subjective, _a
priori_: Why own priceless marvels unless they are where they may be
_seen_? Why lock up Coriobantini enamels, for instance, in a damp
closet? The first thing I do, upon being put in charge of a collection,
is to throw the vitrines out of the house. I shall never forget the
amazement of the late Darrell Hazzard, of Hartford, when I thus
ruthlessly began my work upon his treasures. “What!” he exclaimed.
“Expose my faïence, my Louis Treize snuff-boxes, my Antoinette
miniatures to the careless handling of every chance visitor? This is
radicalism with a vengeance, dear lady! I suppose next you will be
placing my snuff-boxes and miniatures upon the living-room table!”
“Tush!” I replied serenely. “They are to occupy your front veranda
railing.” I had noticed that the railing was flat and within a few feet
of the sidewalk, an ideal location for the priceless little objects,
and there I had them placed. For that was where they would give the
most pleasure—and it will be well for the reader to intrigue himself
with the significance of this simple rule: Put your things where they
will give the most pleasure. I am often asked the secret of my success,
and I always reply with two words: “Simplicity! Pleasure!”
It is a mistake to clutter, as even the most _cadavre_ of amateurs is
aware. A touch here; a touch there—and for the rest, no cluttering! I
have always considered the Metropolitan Museum a dismaying example of
cluttering. One work of art is enough for one room. When I remodelled
the Rockford collection of _Chinoiseries_ I selected just one antique
absinthe-colored jade Buddha, which was exactly an inch and three
sixteenths in height, half an inch wide and three eighths of an inch
in thickness. I then decided upon one of the gallery exhibition
rooms, seventeen feet in height with a floor space sixty-four feet
by twenty-six, admirable proportions for my purpose. I had the floor
and walls lacquered a neutral mauve, and then placed the jade Buddha
in the exact centre of the floor and without a pedestal. Not even a
chair or a settee was permitted within the room; the walls were without
any adornment whatever, and the attention of spectators was thus
concentrated upon the one work of art present, the jade Buddha. The
effect, though slightly Dada and austere, was considered serene and
redolent of that allure of restfulness which is distinctive.
Almost precisely similar to this was my treatment of a pair of signed
Louis Seize candle-snuffers of chased silver, formerly the property of
Judge Bunting Palliphet, of Peterborough, Virginia, whose ancestors
entertained Rochambeau. A well-authenticated family legend had it that
the snuffers were in the Count’s portmanteau, which he was unable to
find at the moment of his departure from Palliphet Manor; and thus it
became an heirloom of the Palliphet family. The snuffers are now in the
possession of Mrs. George Woll Potter, of Jersey City, who visited the
Manor in 1899, during the absence of the Palliphet family, and it was
in doing over the Potter house that I perceived the proper decorative
value of these historic snuffers. I had a simple bit of neutral-toned
rope hung between two posts outside the library windows; and suspended
the snuffers therefrom, forming a vista of approach to them with two
perfectly symmetrical rows of arborvitae in black-and-white tubs. The
effect was harmonious and yet did not lack that touch of originality
which gives the right note at the right moment.
How _few_ people understand what may be done with a simple pair of
brass candlesticks! Does not one weary of seeing them eternally upon a
mantel? Upon a top bookshelf? Upon the gate-leg table? Upon a set-in
window-sill? There we find them invariably, driving us mad with their
monotony, when only a slight exertion of the imagination would give
them the touch that is different, the charm that is permanent. I have
found that it is only necessary to place one such candlestick in the
front yard and the other in the back yard to give them a setting that
is in keeping. Thus they can be seen from the windows, their sheen
rich against the out-of-doors, except at night; and then, if it seems
desirable, they may be lighted. It is not necessary to bring them in
when it rains. A light water-proof canopy, easily removable, may be
placed over them and will be found to give complete protection, and
even to add a note of color, if glazed with silver-gilt, the right
shade of apricot and just touched with cerise.
Now a word of confession: it is not always the easiest thing in the
world to go into a house and give it the _right_ decorative note. The
owners may have their own ideas and one must move tactfully. Let me
give an instance, though the gentleman in question shall be nameless
and designated merely as General X. He was a delightful man, elderly,
a retired army officer, a manly and gallant widower, notwithstanding
the fact that he possessed strong convictions that his own taste was
excellent.
He had gathered about him from all parts of the world a valuable
assembly of antiques, bibelots, paintings, stuffed animals, sculptures,
seashells, wood-carvings, miniatures, and _petiteries_, but had so
misplaced them in his halls and living-room and even in his master’s
rooms that one saw nothing but a heterogeneity of clutter.
I began with his master’s rooms. I went through one after another of
these, ordering everything—absolutely everything—removed to the garrets
and cellars. Then, when all was clear, I had my assistants place one
old Tutu Japanese print in each of his master’s rooms—nothing more—and
awaited the General’s return, for he was out at the time.
He was not at first able to comprehend that the new arrangement was
intended to be permanent.
“Well,” he remarked, smiling pleasantly, “I see you have made a
beginning, Madame Thomas.”
“No,” I smiled. “I have made a conclusion. Your master’s rooms are
finished. They now have that restfulness, that air _intime_ which your
master’s rooms lacked until I retouched them. This is how they are to
remain, General.”
He was dumbfounded. “But I miss everything to which I have been
heretofore accustomed!” he cried, with charming naïvete. “In my
master’s rooms were my favorite claw and ball feet, my inlaid knees,
my carved knees, _all_ my knees of curly maple and walnut! Here
were my bottle drawers, my swell fronts, my double-swell fronts, my
Jacob’s-ladder fronts, my serpentine fronts—all the fronts I had! I
wish my fronts and knees put back the way they were. I won’t have my
master’s rooms as empty as this!”
“This is how they are to be, however,” I made retort serenely. “There
is no alternative.”
“What!” he exclaimed, and his face became seriously empurpled. “You
mean to say I have no control over my own master’s rooms? I want all my
bibelots and _petiteries_ back where I put them, myself. My master’s
rooms are my _own_ master’s rooms, and not yours, are they not, pray?”
“My dear General,” I replied, “I know what your master’s rooms should
be and you do not. You do not see beauty in them now—perhaps you will
not to-morrow—but wait! Within a week or ten days you will begin to
feel the restful harmony I have put into them and you will be grateful.”
“I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!” he said, stamping his foot pettishly. “I
want my bow-backs and my fan-backs back where they were, and I’m sorry
I ever put my master’s rooms into your hands! I do just wish I’d never
seen you at all, Madame Thomas!”
It was then that I perceived I must use diplomacy, and I admit that if
I had not been conscious of wearing a becoming hat, I might have lacked
the courage. I put my hand lightly on his arm and looked full into
his reddened eyes. “General,” I said softly, “I have labored hard over
your master’s rooms. Surely, _mon Général_, you would not have my task
undone!” Then, seeing that he began to melt, I drew a little closer to
him; and he set his manly brown paw over my slender fingers, smiled
at me, and coughed. I comprehended that the moment had come to use my
utmost diplomacy.
“Oo drate bid naughty handsome mans!” I said playfully. “If I had a dun
I’d shoot oo, bang!”
It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that his master’s rooms
remained as I had done them, and that the dear old General and I are
still the best of friends.
* * * * *
And now a few “Don’ts,” as I call my little inhibitions. Some of them
are culled from my own experience and are rather technical, being
intended for the use of the beginning professional decorator, who is
but too prone to find her path not always strewn with roses, by any
means. Others of these little “Don’ts” of mine are for the guidance of
those who, unable to afford the counsel of established experts, must
fall back upon their own taste and what they may be able to cull from
tomes upon the subject. But let us see for ourselves what my “Don’ts”
portend!
Don’t, in arranging your bookshelves under the arch in the living-room,
place your editions of Boccaccio, Brantôme, Rabelais, and Casanova
on the same shelf with Burton’s “Arabian Nights,” “The Heptameron,”
Balzac’s “Droll Stories,” and your bound files of “Saucy Stories” and
“Le Rire.” The place for all of these volumes is the centre-table; or
they may be scattered about the house anywhere, so that they are handy
for the children to get at them.
Don’t fasten coat-hangers upon the wall just above valuable
water-color paintings. Wet raincoats may cause the colors to run. If
your wall-space is limited, the hangers should be placed above _oil_
paintings. (_Note_: This rule, being somewhat technical, need not be
studied by the amateur. I should advise the beginning professional
decorator, however, to pay particular attention to it, and even to
con it until it is committed to memory. The place for coat-hangers is
_never_ over a water-color painting.)
[Illustration:
OLD VIRGINIA FOUR-POSTER INLAID WITH MAHOGANY
Still in use by a private collector
]
Don’t adhere too closely to periods. If you have acquired a few _good_
pieces of Egyptian furniture of the Shepherd King Period for your
living-room, they may be easily combined with Sheraton or Eastlake
by placing a Ming vase or an old French fowling-piece between the
two groups; or you may cover the transition by a light scattering of
Mexican pottery, or some Java wine-jars.
Don’t hang your Boucher pastels on the same wall with your stuffed
moose-head. The proper place for the moose-head is over the
shower-bath, where it can be fitted by any good plumber with a nozzle
and used as a fixture.
Don’t attempt to do too much in the boudoir. The boudoir is a place
for restful repose and should be kept quiet. A few simple hangings,
a coquettish rosette or two of bright-colored ribbon attached to the
shutters, a _pince-nez_ over the mantelpiece, a couple of Waterford
crystal chandeliers with a light rod of dull brass between them from
which to suspend either a samovar or an old ship model—these touches
will be found sufficient to combine the charm of an intimate interior
with the lure that intrigues.
Don’t attempt to use alfalfa as a decoration for mirror- and
picture-frames. I know that this has been widely attempted, but the
effect is never good. Alfalfa has no place in the best interiors. Its
place is out-of-doors and it should be kept there. This is a point
upon which I have the strongest convictions, and what I usually say
to beginning decorators who insist upon using alfalfa in the home is
answer sufficient, I am sure. “Do you expect your client to entertain
horses?” I inquire. “If not, then the place for alfalfa is where it
will be convenient for the horse, but not in the living-room and not in
the reception-room. No, not even in the _entresol_.” I admit that there
was a charm in the customs of our ancestors under Garfield and Arthur,
when cat-tails and sumach were thus employed, and I find the tendency
to return to them rather intriguing; but alfalfa produces an effect too
stringy and tends to clutter. Let us have no more of it.
Finally, don’t paint your front hall water-cooler with floral scenes.
Go to some good marine painter and instruct him to make a decoration
in keeping with the purpose of the cooler. There is water inside the
vessel, is there not? Then let him paint water outside. Better still,
coat your cooler with mucilage and lightly spray powdered mica upon it.
But _don’t_, whatever you do, attempt to ornament your cooler with
festoons of gilt tassels. Your cooler is not the place for tassels. I
know it is done, but my last and only word on the subject is, Don’t.
Tassels of _any_ kind are absolutely out of key on your cooler. They
should be kept for your umbrella, where they will give that personal
touch that is distinctive.
These constitute most of what dear old General X used frolicsomely to
call my “little Don’ties,” and if they prove of some inspiration to the
beginning decorator or even to the commencing householder, this work
will not have been written in vain.
[Illustration]
————
OTHER BOOKS FOR THE
ANTIQUE-LOVER
BY OSRO T. NEWDLEHAM
THE HAIR-CLOTH ERA
_A Book of Furniture-Study for Young People_
Containing 16 full-page Illustrations in color, also 114 Reproductions
in color of hair-cloth seats, as well as numerous Illustrations in the
text.
_Large crown 8vo., bound in hair-cloth_
=By Post, 3/10= =PRICE 3/6 NET= =By Post, 3/10=
_Some Press Opinions_
“This pleasantly written book is well fitted to arouse in young people
an interest in the study of hair-cloth and other furniture, while
many of the older growth will probably find in its pages much that
is not unprofitable reading.... The chief difference between this
book and most others on Furniture is the prominence which it gives
to distinguishing the different grades of hair-cloth by sitting on
them.... Copiously illustrated.” _Athenæum._
“Mr. Newdleham’s agreeable, interesting and instructive volume.... It
should attract not only young people, but any one looking for an easy
introduction to hair-cloth furniture.” _Scotsman._
“Comprehensive though it is, it has been planned on clear and simple
lines. The terms used are, to begin with, non-scientific, though
leading by natural, simple process to the proper scientific words....
The author writes in a free, bright and fascinating style.... One can
imagine himself to be sitting on a hair-cloth seat, slipping gracefully
from one thought to another.” _Meguntic News._
“This fascinating volume.” _Dundee Dud._
“I wish in 6-point type to cheer a Book upon the Hair-Cloth Era.”
_F. B. A. in the New York Whirl._
HOW TO USE THE POLISHING RAG
Containing 20 full-page Illustrations from Photo-micrographs, and many
Line-Drawings in the Text.
_Large crown 8vo., bound in cloth which may be detached and used
as polishing-rag or shew-cloth_
=By Post, 1/9= =PRICE 1/6 NET= =By Post, 1/9=
_Some Press Opinions_
“There are several cheap books on the polishing rag before the public,
but we do not know a better than the one now under consideration.”
_Boston Transcript._
“This is a rotten book. It is reactionary throughout. Somebody ought
to shoot the author.” _The New Republic._
“Elaborate explanations are carefully avoided, except in the recipes
for furniture polish. The reader who patiently works through these
different recipes, especially the one on how to make sherry-flavored
polish out of scored prunes, will have an accurate and worth-while
knowledge of the possibilities of furniture polishing.”
_The Police Gazette._
CROSSING THE ANTIQUE DEALER
BY M. SPICKERING QUEEK
Containing 8 full-page dress-patterns for concealed pockets, and 50
smaller designs for home-made brass-knuckles, tear-gas and slung-shots.
_Large square crown 8vo., gilt top_
=By Post, 5/4= =PRICE 5/- NET= =By Post, 5/4=
These stories of outwitting the antique-dealer in city, village and
country will be read with much zest by all lovers of the antique.
They are brightly written, and are the outcome of long experience
at picking up rare autographed books that could not be acquired by
purchase, and at outwitting the antique-dealer at his own game. We
sympathize with the antique-hunter when the wicked dealer attempts to
charge him seventeen dollars for a Benjamin Franklin cup-plate needed
to round out his collection, and we rejoice when the hunter slips out
in full view of the dealer, leaving his monocle on the counter and
using the cup-plate as his monocle. There are equally stirring stories
of Sheraton high-boys, an old Colonial cradle, a 36-year-old bottle of
Glenlivet whiskey, and an original box of Haskell golf balls with seal
unbroken.
_Some Press Opinions_
“Stories of an unusual antique-sense, showing much close observation
and practical knowledge, as well as a bright and pleasant fancy.”
_Plumbers’ Guide._
“The author artfully combines instruction with advanced and
forward-looking ideals.” _The Nation._
“A refreshing book, after the wishy-washy, goody-goody trash with which
preceding generations have been led astray.” _The Dial._
“I am pleased with this book. I have read it entirely through once, and
I am thinking of reading it again. I think it would stand four or five
readings. It is written in the style that I approve. I shall mention
it to all my friends, and I hope that all my friends will mention it.”
_Hendrik Van Lunkhead in the Biltmore Bun._
TALKS ABOUT TABLE-LEGS
BY FRANK FLUSH, B.S., F.A.S.
Containing 36 illustrations of legs, 16 of which are full-page in color.
_Small square demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top_
=PRICE 6/-=
_Some Press Opinions_
“It is written in a most interesting style; and under Mr. Flush’s deft
touch, the table-legs seem endowed with almost feminine qualities.”
_D. H. Lawrence in the N.Y. Times._
“A fascinating introduction to the study of wooden legs.”
_Cabinetmakers’ Review._
“Mr. Flush has done for table-legs what some of the younger school
of American writers, notably F. Scott Fitzgerald, has done for
flappers—made them seem almost human.” _Tacoma Trade Gazette._
AUTOGRAPHS AND ANTIMACASSARS
BY C. VON WHISTELBERRY
Containing 55 illustrations, 31 of which are colored reproductions of
unusual autographs.
_Crown 4to., canvas boards, with Picture in Color on the Cover_
=PRICE 1/6=
_Some Press Opinions_
“This would make a charming and welcome gift for children who are
just old enough to learn about and be interested in forging and other
autograph features.” _Sunday School Times._
“In simple and yet glowing words the author introduces us to
‘Autographs and Antimacassars,’ and the glamour of the pictures is
sustained as we read about them.” _Peanut Growers’ Monthly._
“A mine of information for the antimacassar enthusiast.”
_Rome (Italy) Avanti._
PEEPS AT PRECIOUS DISCARDS
EDITED BY THE REV. CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
Each containing 16 full-page illustrations, 8 of which are in color.
_Large crown, 8vo., cloth, with Pictures in color on the cover_
=Post free, 1/9= =PRICE 1/6 NET PER VOLUME= =Post free, 1/9=
_List of Volumes_
POCKET FLASKS OF THE LONG AGO
BY THE REV. CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
PULSE-WARMERS OF MANY LANDS
BY W. PERCIVAL WISHBACK, F.S.S.
WHERE TO HUNT FOR DOOR-KNOCKERS
BY A. NICOL DUNDREARY, F.R.D.K.S.
CHIGNONS AND HAIR-NETS OF OLD NEW ENGLAND
BY DANIEL FILLWIDDLE, M.A.
1000 USES FOR FIRE-BUCKETS
BY A. M. SLIPOVER
ROMANCE OF A PEWTER-HOUND
BY THE REV. CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
THE BACK-YARD ANTIQUE-COLLECTOR
BY RICHARD SCRIMM, F.R.I.P., Superintendent of the Lemon River Park
and Playground Associates
THE ART OF SIGN-PAINTING AND SIGN COLLECTING
BY A. NICOL DUNDREARY, F.R.D.K.S.
PILL ADVERTISEMENTS
BY THE REV. CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
COMMON BRITISH COMMODES
BY A. M. SLIPOVER
UNCOMMON BRITISH BATH-TUBS
BY THE REV. CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S.
HOW TO GET PRESENTATION COPIES FOR NOTHING
BY THE REV. JAMES HOOKLEBERRY, F.R.A.C.S.
SIGN STEALERS’ MANUAL FOR THE
COLLEGE MAN
BY CONSTANCE MAY TURNSPIT
Containing 32 full-page illustrations from Photographs, a frontispiece
in color of a fascinating beer-advertisement, and a list of
professional bail-furnishers in the leading American and Continental
cities.
_Small square demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top_
=By Post, 5/4= =PRICE 5/- NET= =By Post, 5/4=
_Some Press Opinions_
“This handsome book, with its innumerable illustrations, will be of
the greatest interest to the progressive college man with an eye for
interior decoration. We congratulate the authoress on the pleasing and
learned way in which she discourses on the technicalities of removing
signs from their fastenings. She has evidently studied minutely the
methods of our leading second-story workers.” _Sing-Sing Occupant._
“A very taking book.” _Manchester Guardian._
“A valuable and handsome souvenir for those bound Up the River.”
_New York Call._
THE WHATNOT
AND HOW TO DECORATE IT
BY AGNES ACONITE
Containing 8 full-page illustrations by Patten Hairback.
_Small square demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top_
=By Post, 5/4= =PRICE 5/- NET= =By Post, 5/4=
_Some Press Opinions_
“One of the most fascinating of interior decorations, the
potentialities of the Whatnot are so little known to the majority
of people that this story of its possibilities is of the greatest
interest.” _Congressional Record._
“In Miss Aconite’s book the Whatnot is drawn so vividly that the reader
seems to see it covered with actual seashells, cut glass and cabinet
photographs, and follows its career with interest right to its tragic
close, when it is broken up to provide fuel during a coal strike.”
_Herrin (Ill.) Garroter._
“Miss Aconite knows the Whatnot as it is in its haunts, and she
presents it with such remarkable clearness and insight that you long to
throw a rock at it.” _Moscow Izvestia._
—————————————————— End of Book ——————————————————
Transcriber’s Note (continued)
Errors in punctuation and simple typos have been corrected without
note. Variations in spelling, hyphenation, accents, etc., have been
left as they appear in the original publication unless as stated in
the following:
Page 6 – “solecism ending” changed to “solecism of ending” (solecism
of ending a sentence prepositionally)
Page 56 – “Bastile” changed to “Bastille” (fall of the Bastille)
Page 90 – “painting” changed to “paintings” (paintings of anæmic
bunches of flowers)
Page 144 – “Brentôme” changed to “Brantôme” (Brantôme, Rabelais,
and Casanova)
————
Footnotes are placed immediately below the paragraph in which the
reference to that footnote appears.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTOR'S WHATNOT ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you “AS-IS”, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™'s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
