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.
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.
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† 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.
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.
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† 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
