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 It was originally made for use in the homes of the wealthy before the days of pottery and china; then it was used in kitchens of great houses; churches which couldn’t afford gold or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.