In the old house on Market Street Mr. Mickley was not alone popular among prominent people from afar. He was equally loved by his neighbors on all sides. Many of the more unconventional of these knew him best by the familiar title of "Daddy." To the better-educated class of young musicians he was almost as much a father as a friend. Nor were his close friendships confined to the young. Among his most steadfast admirers was an old-bachelor German musician by the name of Plich. Herr Plich was a piano-teacher, and it was under his tuition that the afterward favorite prima-donna Caroline Richings made her first public appearance as a pianist in 1847. This old teacher induced Mickley to take him as a boarder, and he lived for a number of years in one of the upper back rooms of No. 927. One night a fire broke out in a building directly contiguous with the rear of the Mickley mansion. There was great consternation, of course, and busy efforts on the owner's part to gather together the manifold contents of his treasure-house. When all had been at length secured in a place of safety, he bethought himself of Herr Plich. Hastening to the upper room, he discovered the old man in a state of semi-insanity, marching up and down the apartment, and carrying in his hands only a valuable viola. So confused was he with fright that main force was required to get him out of the room. After seeing him safely out of the front door, Mickley went back and secured a considerable sum of paper money which had been totally overlooked for the sake of the beloved viola. Plich at his death bequeathed the viola to Mickley, and it was the only instrument which the latter always refused to part with during his lifetime. The entire savings of Plich were also left in trust to Mickley, to be distributed for such charitable objects as he should consider most worthy, and for about twenty-seven years Mr. Mickley carefully administered this trust.
Mr. Mickley's most remarkable success in life was obtained as a numismatist. His habit of collecting coins began almost in childhood. It has been stated that at the age of seventeen he first became interested in coin-hunting, owing to his difficulty in finding a copper cent coined in 1799, the year of his birth. Every student of numismatism knows that this piece is exceedingly rare. The one sold in Mr. Mickley's collection after his decease brought no less than forty dollars. The taste thus formed continued a prevailing one for sixty years. It is surprising to find how speedily he became a leading and recognized authority. Although as guileless as a child and the easy victim of numerous thefts throughout his life, he was scarcely ever deceived in the value of a coin, token, or medal. Once, at Stockholm, in 1871, he visited a museum where rare coins were exhibited. "The collection," says his diary, "is very, very rich in Greek and Roman, but particularly in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon. There are not many United States coins, but among them I was astonished to find a very fine half-eagle of 1815." The known rarity of this coin thus on exhibition in a far country very naturally attracted the keen eyes of the aged collector.
These researches, continuing year after year, grew to be more and more valuable, until they became widely celebrated. By the time he had reached middle age he was as well known among the guild of antiquarians as a Quaker is known by his costume. Before his death he had been elected a member of all the prominent societies in numismatics, history, and archaeology throughout the world. The last honor of this kind, which reached him in his eightieth year, was a notice of his election to membership in the Société Française de Numismatique et d'Archéologie. His great collections in this department of knowledge were not confined to coins, but extended also to the literature of the subject. This was splendidly illustrated in his famous library, which comprised many works of the utmost value and scarcity.
A taste thus developed in early youth naturally became in the course of years a habit, a sentiment, a leading passion of Mickley's nature. By the year 1867 his coin-collection had become the most extensive in this country. By this time also the entertainment of curious visitors absorbed a good share of the collector's daily duties. He was naturally proud of his treasures, and took a great delight in showing them to all who came. Utterly devoid of suspicion, he was a ready victim to designing persons. The following memorandum, which was found among his later papers, will show how he suffered from this source:
"I have become rather indifferent about numismatics, or, at least, about collecting coins. It was a great source of amusement for a period of over fifty years. But, having been so unfortunate at different times with my coins, it is, as it were, a warning to desist from collecting any more. In the year 1827 the United States dollars from 1794 to 1803, all good specimens, together with some foreign coins, were stolen. In 1848 about twenty half-dollars were taken. In 1854, after showing my collection to three Southern gentlemen (as they called themselves) I missed three very scarce half-eagles. The great robbery was in 1867. In Jaffa, Palestine, a small lot, worth about one thousand francs, with a collection of Egyptian curiosities, was stolen at the hotel; and, finally, last winter, at Seville, Spain, some old Spanish coins were missing while I was showing them to some persons."
The "great robbery" above alluded to occurred on the evening of April 13, 1867. It was of such magnitude as to cause a wide sensation at the time, and enlisted the sympathies of his coin-hunting brethren the world over. Mr. Mickley's chief precautions, notwithstanding his previous warnings of danger from another source, had been against fire. In a third-story room was his cabinet. This had been long since filled, chiefly with an unbroken and historic list of American coins. The additional accumulations of years, nearly all foreign, and many of great rarity, had been stored in an old piano-case in his bedroom, where, as he said, in the event of fire they would be close at hand. On the evening in question Mickley was alone in his workshop, engaged in repairing a musical instrument. He had then been living entirely alone for a number of years. A single servant, who provided his meals, had gone home. About nine o'clock the loud barking of his dog in the yard below called him to the window. It was afterward found that a pair of old shoes thrown from an upper room by the burglars had thus called away the attention both of dog and master from what was going on inside. An hour later a caller discovered several pieces of money lying in the hall. An investigation disclosed the startling loss which he had sustained. The entire contents of the piano-box had been carried off. A private desk had also been broken open and despoiled of a few medals, although its chief contents were intact. A gold pencil, the gift of Ole Bull, and other keepsakes, remained undisturbed. But the larger portion of a collection of foreign coins, one of the most complete in the world, and the product of a lifetime's intelligent research, was gone!
It was a heavy calamity, and one from which the old collector never fully recovered. Sir Isaac Newton's historic Fido did not do nearly the amount of irremediable damage when he overturned the lamp upon his master's papers. The actual pecuniary loss, reckoning at cost prices, was in the neighborhood of nineteen thousand dollars. The market value of such a collection was of course vastly greater, and increasing all the time at a good deal faster rate than compound interest. It was somewhat of a coincidence that Mr. Mickley had received and refused what he records as a "tempting offer", for the entire collection only a short time before the robbery.
The ardent passion of a lifetime was now chilled, and his one desire seemed to be to get rid of his remaining coins and of the responsibility which keeping them entailed. Such, however, was the completeness of Mickley's literary methods of condensing, that an entry of three or four lines made in his diary on the night of the robbery is all that he had to write about the appalling loss. A week or two afterward he records in the same volume the disposal of all the remaining coins, with an air of great relief, as he adds, "I do not doubt I should be robbed again if I kept them." A large box full of the most valuable had been taken, for safe-keeping, to the Mint just after the robbery; but these were sold with the rest. It is understood that this remnant of the original lot was disposed of for about sixteen thousand dollars, the largest purchaser being Mr, Woodward, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The dollar of 1804 went to a New York collector for the enormous sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars.
Efforts to restore the lost treasure were not wanting. It might be supposed that the possession of such rare tokens of value would have speedily led to the discovery of their whereabouts. Mr. Mickley himself intimated that he suspected the quarter from which the depredation had come. Yet from that day until the present the secret has been as securely kept as that of the rifling of Lord Byron's letter from a vase at Abbotsford, or of the Duchess of Devonshire's portrait from the London Art-Gallery. In fact, the same mild generosity which had always characterized Mr. Mickley still came uppermost in the face of this trying disaster. He frequently sought to overlook the misdoings of petty thieves. A London pickpocket who had successfully practised upon him Oliver Twist's little game was only prosecuted because his testimony was insisted upon by the authorities. At the foot of the Pyramids he deplored the chastisement inflicted by an Arab sheik upon one of his native servants who had committed a similar depredation. His life-long friend the late William E. Dubois, of the United States Mint, has stated that "eight or nine years after the robbery a few very fine gold pieces of English coinage were offered for sale at the Mint cabinet-rooms. I was so well convinced that the labels were in his handwriting that I sent for him to come and see them. He could not deny the likeness, but seemed reluctant to entertain the subject at all."
During these years of study and research Mr. Mickley must not be thought of as a strict specialist. Side by side with his fascinating collection of coins there was an ever-growing library, the extent and value of which were never appreciated until his death. This accumulation was in itself an example of his cosmopolitan tastes. It was copious in local history, in biography, in music, in general literature, in costly and well-preserved black-letter editions, in illuminated missals dating back to the thirteenth century, and, above all else, in autographs. Of the latter, space cannot be spared here for anything approaching a full description. As some indication of their value, it may be mentioned that a letter of George Washington (the last he was known to write), dated six days before his death, was bought by George W. Childs, Esq., for one hundred and fifteen dollars. A letter of Abraham Lincoln to General McClellan fetched nearly one hundred dollars. There were also signed autograph letters of all the governors of Pennsylvania, of all the Presidents, and of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The latter group is rarely met with complete; and three of the scarcest names alone sold for as much as all the others put together. There were signatures also of about forty generals of the Revolutionary war, of both the British and American armies, and including Lafayette and Kosciusko. Both Napoleon and Josephine were represented; and the lovers of poetic justice will be glad to know that the latter name brought double that of the great emperor. In autographs of literary and musical celebrities the collection was extraordinarily rich, those of Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven and Mozart, being conspicuous. But the chief rarity was a large album formerly owned by Babet von Ployer. This contained, among other treasures, a manuscript of Haydn, believed to be the only one ever offered for sale in this country. It also contained an India-ink sketch of Mozart, drawn by his wife Constance. At the sale in 1878 this album was knocked down for one hundred and twenty-six dollars, although three hundred dollars had been previously refused for it. The Mozart letter, a particularly interesting specimen, was sold for fifty-two dollars to M.H. Cross, Esq.