The Collectors: Being Cases mostly under the Ninth and Tenth Commandments

by Frank Jewett Mather

If neither Sam nor Dick waited even a day, it was because each was a bit afraid that the other would begin alone. College mates, collectors both, they were fast friends in a way and rivals beyond dispute. Their common taste for antiquity and adequacy of means had made their graduate course chiefly one of travel. And when travel wore out its novelty they naturally settled in the easiest, as the least exacting, European city, occupying two halves of one floor in the same palace. Their apartments started full, and quickly overflowed with objects of curiosity and art—all old, for their knowledge was considerable; some fine, for neither was without taste. But taste neither had in any austere sense, for they collected art much as a dredge collects marine specimens. Nothing came amiss to them. Wood, ivory, silver, bronze, marble, plaster—they repudiated no material or period. Stuffs, glass, pictures, porcelains, potteries—it was all one to them so the object were old and rare. Inevitably, then, they had come to primitive pots, and simultaneously, for they not only watched each other closely, but almost read each other's minds. And when they came to primitive pots it was certain that they would beg, borrow, or steal a well, since in old wells, and cisterns, besides less mentionable places, primitive pots abide. Many pots were there, as we shall see, from the first, and the maids and children of the centuries, by way of concealing breakages, have usually made notable secondary contributions. So when amiable Stanton Mayhew freely conceded a most ancient well to Cleghorn and Webb, it was like receiving Pandora's box, with the difference that the well might safely be opened.

Here had ensued a most delicate negotiation concerning the division of the spoil. A mathematical partition of the fragmentary material that an old Italian well contains is extremely difficult if at all possible. After much debate it was agreed that after they struck pay dirt, each should dig in turn, each to have the bucketful that came under his trowel or fingers. Scattered fragments of the same pot and other complications were to be adjudicated by Mayhew, whose ignorance and disinterestedness were safe to assume. But the well gave up quantities of noncontentious matter before Mayhew's services were required. The first five feet had revealed nothing but fragments of kitchen pottery of our time and a fairly perfect hoopskirt of Garibaldian date. A little lower had emerged the skeleton of a cat. Similar tragedies were in evidence, on an average, at every quarter century of depth. Between the second and third cat, lay Ginori imitations of Sevres and Wedgewood, scraps too of gilded glass—the earnest of better things below. Five cats down, some eighteenth-century apothecary pots, damaged but amenable to repair, had inaugurated the alternation of buckets under the agreement. It were tedious to follow the ascending scale of excellence as the digging went deeper. Enough to say that below the mixed ingredients and the nethermost cat they found a homogeneous layer of beautiful fourteenth-century shards, affording many buckets full, and promising delicate adjudication to the referee.

Before the lustred pots themselves shed a baleful gleam over this narrative, something should obviously be said about Italian wells and why they contain pots. Beyond those casually acquired from careless or secretive servants, there is, if the well be old and of good make, a certain number of intact pieces put in to serve as a filter. Often a group of pitchers or similar crocks is imprisoned between the two bottom-stones. Sometimes there are two such layers. After this filter had been made there was frequently scattered a bushel or more of small shards above. From these by careful sorting complete or nearly complete pieces may be recovered. Through all this mass of whole or broken pottery the water had to find its way up, for the cement sides of an Italian well are watertight. Thus, barring the indiscretions of housemaids and cats, the early Italians drank pure water.

Naturally Cleghorn and Webb were conversant with these refinements of mediaeval hydraulics. In fact when Webb, the sturdier of the two, hauled up the bottom-stone all dripping, Cleghorn promptly declared that in the sense of the contract it was a bucketful; hence his first go at the now uncovered pots. So heated grew the debate, that finally the grimy excavators climbed to the upper air and appealed to Mayhew, who promptly denied the quibble, deciding that stones and pots were not interchangeable. The diversion drew attention from the great perforated disc itself, and as the sullen Cleghorn let the exultant Webb down upon the ancient pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb on the crumbling slope of a rubbish heap. And now Cleghorn with bitterness of heart was reeling up Webb's find. As the coils broadened on the windlass a small iron bucket rose above the parapet, brimming with something that glinted metallically under the dirt. Beside the bucket flapped the rude swing in which the entrances and exits of the partners were made. As Cleghorn grasped the bail and swung the precious cargo clear of the well, came up once more the voice of Webb: "Hustle, Old Man, I'm keen to see them, they feel good."

Good they were indeed. Cleghorn, who for fifteen years had haunted shops and museums had never seen the like in equal compass. As he took them cautiously one by one and held them high in the uncertain light, each revealed a desirable point. Here was a coat of arms, a date, the initial of an owner. There were grotesque birds and beasts. Differing in form and colour, the entire lot agreed in possessing that dull early Italian lustre, which perhaps accidental and less distinguished than that of Spain, is even dearer in a collector's eyes. They hinted of all enamelled things that come out of the East—of the peacock reflections of the tiles of Damascus and Cordova, of the franker polychromy of Rhodian kilns, of the subtler bloom of the dishes of Moorish Spain, of the brassier glazes of Minorca and Sicily—all these things lay enticingly in epitome in these lustred Italian pots, as they glimmered with a furtive splendour. Yes, they were a good lot, thought Cleghorn as he placed them reverently on the flagging. It was the find of a lifetime. A man with nothing else in his cupboard must be mentioned respectfully among collectors from Dan to Beersheba.

Again the impatient voice of Webb below: "Hurry up, I say. It's getting cold: the water is gaining."

"All right," called Cleghorn, giving a few strokes of the pump, but never taking his eyes from the lustred pots. Then as if by a sudden inspiration he asked, "Any more in that lot, Dick?"

"Not a one," cried Webb jubilantly, "there was just a bucketful and a squeeze at that. But there may be others beneath. There's another bottom-stone, and it's your next turn. But why don't you hurry up?"

A scowl passed over Cleghorn's thin face set unswervingly towards the pots. They glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence—green, blue, carmine, strange purplish browns. So the glittering coils of the serpent may have bewildered our first Mother. There were other pots below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a batch as these. And then his dazed eye for a second left the fascinating pots, and mechanically searched the vaulted chamber. To his excited gaze the rubbish heaps centring about the curb seemed already in movement. The massive bottom-stone overhung the parapet, resting only on loose dirt and shards. With horror he noted that a breath might send it down. If it slipped, whose were the lustred pots? Against his will the phrase said itself over and over again throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he forgot everything in the vision of the lustred pots.

"Damn it, hurry up," came thunderously from below. Cleghorn stumbled with a curious hesitation between the crank and the poised bottom-stone. The clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down; the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in uncertain oscillation. Profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth of the well.