I was at a sale of antiquities at Sotheby’s in 1890, and one of the lots consisted of two Greek vases which were so much alike in style and shape and size that they would make a pair. But one of them was obviously a modern copy of the Amymone vase in the Jatta collection at Ruvo; and people in the auction room resented this, and called out to the auctioneer to go on to the next lot. He said, “But really, gentlemen, are there no bids at all for this?” and I said, “Oh, ten shillings,” and he knocked it down to me. And thus I not only got the copy but got the other vase as well; and this is genuine enough and very interesting too, as it depicts the race in which a lighted torch was carried by runners in relays.
All these Greek vases here were made between 600 and 400 B.C. or thereabouts. In the early style the figures are painted in black and purple on the pale yellow of the clay: in the next style the clay is orange and the painting is technically better, and large portions of the vases are painted black: in the next stage the process is reversed—instead of black figures on an orange or yellow background, there is now a black background with red figures, red being now the colour of the clay. These red-figured vases show Greek art at its very best, and the others mark the stages that led up to it. Personally, I do not care much for vases earlier than these. Very nice vases were found at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen, but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay.
Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made me.” Another says, “Zephyria is a beauty”; and there is the lady herself, attired in a very big helmet and a little pair of drawers, wielding a shield and spear as she performs a Pyrrhic dance. (There is a picture of this vase in the Revue Archéologique for 1895, vol. XXVI, page 221.) Another depicts a man conversing with a youth, and the man has the features of Socrates and satyr’s ears as well. This vase came out of a tomb at Siana in the island of Rhodes, and is as fresh as when it left the potter’s hands at Athens: its only blemish is the imprint of his thumb, made by touching it before the clay was dry. Others are interesting for their former owners’ sake. One belonged to Fergusson, the historian of architecture, and another to Samuel Rogers, the poet, and others to great collectors of the Vulci period, such as Beugnot and Durand.
Being at Burgos, 3 September 1877, I went out to the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, the burial-place of the Cid. The monastery had been uninhabited for forty years: the keys were kept at a village some way off, and the man who kept them had gone out shooting. (Whilst waiting for his return, I saw a little of Spanish agriculture: the oxen treading out the corn, and the peasants winnowing it by throwing it up into the air and trusting to the wind to blow the chaff away.) When he returned, we went down to the monastery; and in the library he suggested that I might like to take away a book or two in remembrance of the place. I had scruples, but he really was considering the best interests of the books themselves. If I had taken them, they might be here in safety; and they have rotted away.
The museums at Athens were a sore temptation to collectors, when I first went there more than forty years ago. There were a dozen of these museums scattered about the town: some of them mere sheds, and hardly any with glass cases for the smaller things, but only wire netting. And there were such beautiful little things that would so easily come through the mesh and go into a collector’s pocket; and they could not possibly be reclaimed, as they were not marked or numbered, and the inventories were vague. In my innocence I bought a vase from a distinguished man (a Greek) and paid him rather a high price for it, forgetting that he probably had stolen it, and I might just as well have stolen it myself.
A very curious vase was discovered in Ægina and placed in one of these museums, a shed on the Acropolis. The vase had a globular body and a griffin’s neck and head above, with the griffin’s beak as spout. A long time afterwards the British Museum bought a vase exactly like it, discovered (it was said) in Thera. As there was one vase of this kind, there might very well be others; but the vase from Ægina was no longer to be found in any museum at Athens.
There was a good collection of ancient coins in one of these museums, and on the night of 10/11 November 1887 the best part of the collection disappeared. It was stolen by a well-known resident at Athens, Dr Pericles Raphtopoulos, who was afterwards unwise enough to go to Paris and steal a collection there, not realising that the French police-force was more efficient than the Greek. But the facts had not come out when I reached Athens in the early spring (1888) and everybody told me that the Keeper had been selling the finest specimens, one by one, and replacing them by imitations, until at last he saw the game was up, and sold off all the fine coins that remained. (In reality, the imitations had been bought to illustrate some lectures.) There is much public spirit in Greece; and many people were giving their private collections to the nation, to make good the loss. I fancied that the next Keeper might sell all these as well; but the answer was, “Oh, no, we will not have a Greek again,” and they appointed Dr Pick.
Accidents will happen in the very best museums. In 1845 the Portland vase was smashed in the British Museum, and in 1900 the François vase was smashed in the Museo Archeologico at Florence. The damage in London was done by an outsider: not so at Florence, if what I heard was true. I was told (at the time) that the Keeper was reprimanding a mutinous subordinate: the vase was on its pedestal in the centre of the room: the insubordinate person threw a heavy stool at his superior’s head, but unfortunately missed him and hit the vase instead. The bits were put together so very skilfully that, when I saw the vase again, I hardly noticed the repairs.
At the British Museum there used to be officials called Attendants. They were appointed by the Lord Chancellor, the Primate and the Speaker, and usually were men of whom they had some personal knowledge. One of these Attendants had been a servant of a former Primate, and he was like a father to the students, taking care of their drawings and easels, and giving them much good advice. I happened to be dining with some friends in Portland Place, and was amazed to see him officiating as butler there in his most archiepiscopal style. (The butler of the house had got the gout, and he had been called in.) When I saw him next, he spoke apologetically—“Not a very satisfactory dinner, sir, I fear, when I had the pleasure of meeting you last week. All aspics and jellies, sir, and there should have been lamb cutlets.”
One of my friends had a particularly pompous butler. A girl gave my friend a kitten, and he called it Cissy after her. Missing the kitten one morning, he inquired, “Where’s Cissy?” The butler bowed. “I beg your pardon, sir, you may not have observed it, but Cissy is a Lady’s name, and the cat is a Gentleman cat.”