People who find the British Museum exhausting—and they are many—take too much of it at one time. It is therefore small wonder that they often suffer from a kind of mental indigestion—"Museum headache" it has been appropriately termed. A pretty young girl complained to me of just such a headache the other day: "I wanted," she said, "to go to "Niagara," but T— insisted on taking me to that dreadful Museum instead, and I had to walk past rows and rows of awful headless things for two hours!" Poor thing! But many people share her feelings without possessing her frankness. And to walk through the long, gloomy galleries of the Museum without due object, preparation, or intention, is, no doubt, exhausting. It is true that we are there "heirs of all the ages," but it is equally true that nobody can satisfactorily inherit all the ages at one and the same time. If we content ourselves with but one department for the day, it is wonderful how interested we may become. Mr. Grant Allen—who, by the way, was generally unkind about London, must have experienced the boredom that comes with a mental surfeit.
"The British Museum" (he says) "is indeed a place to despair in—or else to saunter through carelessly with a glance right and left at what happens to catch your eye or take your fancy. I must add" (he continues unpleasantly), "that a certain blight of inexplicable shabbiness hangs somehow over the vast collection; whether it is the gloom of Bloomsbury, the want of space in the galleries, the haphazard mode of acquisition, or what, I know not; but certainly, for some mysterious reason, the objects here exhibited are far less interesting, relatively to their intrinsic scientific and artistic worth, than those of the Louvre, the Vatican, the Munich galleries, or any other great European museum. Dinginess and stinginess are everywhere conspicuous."
Mr. Grant Allen was, evidently, a West Ender. And as he elsewhere calls St. Paul's "bare, pretentious, and unimpressive," and London generally "a squalid village," we need the less mind his calling the British Museum "a gloomy and depressed looking building." He had evidently never seen the pillared portico shining in the May sun, its flocks of pretty pigeons feeding on the green plots that line the enclosure, and the lately-planted young plane-trees bursting into vivid green,—a new "boulevard" along its outer line of railings.
Mr. Allen was, of course, thinking of the more romantic surroundings of foreign galleries, housed in ancient palaces, with all the adornments of parquet, mosaic, and often tropical gardens. There is, however, a faint glimmer of truth in what he says. We in London have not the consummate art of the foreigner in the arrangement and setting-off of beautiful objects. In the Louvre, for instance, all the galleries lead to a final star, shining through the long vista of space,—the Venus of Milo; in the Vatican, all the noble chefs-d'œuvre glimmer in alcoves round a central fountain. Here, in our Museum, per contra, you seem rather to be in a Gallery of Instruction. It is not only in shops that we in England have to learn how to "dress our windows." But at any rate, no one will deny that we have of late made enormous advances in the art.
Nevertheless, the beauty and grandeur of the British Museum collections, beauty on which I have already touched in the Bloomsbury chapter, impress us in spite of fog, and grime, and dull London galleries. And the feeling for the suitable arrangement and disposal of our artistic treasures grows upon our directors year by year. Thus, the gigantic figure of Mausolus, as he stands driving his triumphal car, a wonder of the world, is effectively placed; and though it is but seldom light enough to view the Assyrian Bull-gods thoroughly in their dark corner, they form, doubtless, an imposing entrance to the old Greek marbles. The Egyptian Hall is also impressive, and the enormous scarab, called irreverently by an American visitor, "about the biggest bug in Europe," is advantageously placed, as also that Grammar of Hieroglyphic, the "Rosetta Stone."
At the Royal Academy.
The collection of Tanagra figurines, on the upper floor, near the Jewel Room, is one of the most interesting departments in the Museum. Here, in a small compass, you may follow the whole development of the plastic art, from the rudest clay effigies and caricatures, to the most lovely realisation of the Greek feeling for beauty. Some of the ladies, with their palm-leaf fans and "Liberty" draperies, seem hardly to come to us from the tomb; have we not met and loved them in our own day? Their dresses, their attitudes, are so modern, even their hair is arranged in the present styles. Especially charming are two damsels in tea-gowns, leaning earnestly towards one another, enjoying some choice bit of gossip. And there are two figures in this particular gallery, in which I claim to take a quite special interest; having seen them, so to speak, in their transition stage. It happened thus: When I was in Athens some few years back, a waiter, taking us no doubt for "rich English milors," said, in a stage whisper, that he had some fine things to dispose of. He kept them, he said, for safety in the cellar. So to the cellar he went, and produced, from many wrappings of cotton-wool, the treasures:—that very winged Eros and that same pirouetting ballet-dancer that now adorn one of the central wall-cases. Alas, in our case, that waiter was doomed to disappointment. He wanted no less than £40 for the Eros and £30 for the ballet dancer; and they were returned to their cotton-wool and to the cellar. But, a twelvemonth passed, and behold! one fine day we recognised with joy our old friends in the familiar surroundings of the British Museum!
Many of the British Museum treasures have, like that winged Eros, endured strange vicissitudes of fortune. The great "Elgin" marbles,—those sculptures from the Parthenon so long furiously raged over in print on the much-vexed charge of vandalism in appropriation, and still more furiously threatened by the rage of the sea on their transit from the Acropolis,—were, indeed, shipwrecked on their way here. Then there are the contents of the "Mausoleum" Room, the whole story of the discovery of which, by Sir Charles Newton at Halicarnassus, in 1856 is like one long romance. Other objects recall various stories. The familiar bust called "Clytie," for instance, so admired by Carlyle, and so familiar in drawing schools, was the most cherished possession of Mr. Townley, who "escaped with it in his arms when he was expecting his house to be sacked during the Gordon riots." "Fortunately," says the chronicler, "the attack did not take place, and Mr. Townley's wife, as he called her, returned to her companions." The corridors of the British Museum, that suggest such boredom to the uninitiated, are full of such stories. So much we know, but, ah! if these stones could only tell their histories, and let the full light into their chequered past!