The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

My personal progress was at first leisurely, for I do not recollect that I made any farther investments till 1872 when, happening to be at Lowestoft where Alderman Rose, brother of James Anderson Rose, also a collector, was then staying, he and I were equally seduced by the attractions of a shop kept by a person named Burwood. It was extremely fortunate for the latter that Rose and myself had nearly all our knowledge to learn; we bought largely and not too well, and Burwood was so exhausted by the drain on his stock, that he announced his intention of travelling down into Herefordshire, in order to buy some very valuable bits reported to him from a farmhouse in that rather distant shire. There was a second depôt in the same watering-place, kept by an old man and his wife, with whom it was a favourite phrase, when their stock ran low, to say that they must ‘take a journey.’ In short, I amassed a large hamper of ware on this occasion, and brought it home. Diamond, as soon as he was apprised of my new foible, exclaimed, ‘God help him!’ and I suspected that there must be something in it, when I called at a place in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, and ascertained that that and the Herefordshire farmhouse were one.

I soon made a second discovery, which almost discouraged me from prosecuting the fancy any farther. Diamond had knowledge and feeling; but I now saw that he was deficient in taste. I had naturally modelled my small collection on his plan or want of plan; I fell in with one or two dealers, who opened my eyes; and the Lowestoft cargo was thrown overboard. A Jew named Moss had a whole tableful of crockery in exchange for a good plaque of Limoges enamel of the earlier epoch. He once let me have at a moderate price an old Sèvres plate painted with a pastoral scene, and with a rich amethyst blue and gold festooned border. I continue to think favourably of it. He brought it and a number of other pieces, all rubbish, in company with a co-religionist, to my house at Kensington in the evening. He was so discouraged by my frugal selection, that I lost sight of him. He was not miserly in his warnings against his professional contemporaries. This is a common trait.

I began to work on a new principle—to buy fewer and better things, studying condition, to which the doctor was more or less insensible; and I found myself about 1880 the owner, even on such a basis, of a multitude of wares which threatened to compete in the early future with the Twickenham prototype.

This was all the more serious, so to speak, inasmuch as while I drew from very few sources, the doctor was a mark for everybody, while he continued to buy with zest and avidity. All sorts of people came to the high iron gates, bringing every variety of article for sale; and few carried their freights back. Even those who were on the list of private guests occasionally shewed their good taste by drawing out of their breast-pockets at dessert some object for Diamond’s approval and purchase. There was Major ——, one of Her Majesty’s messengers, who was an habitual offender (as I thought) in such a way. But in the eyes of our common host the end in those days justified the means. It was all fish.

I dealt in chief measure with a house in Hanway Street (Morgan), Gale in Holborn, Brooks at Hammersmith, and Reynolds of Hart Street, Bloomsbury. I seldom left these tracks, and met there with only too much to tempt me. Morgan sold me a few pieces of Sèvres and some very fine Oriental. It was curious that, just after my purchase of three or four large porcelain dishes, the ‘china earth’ of the Stuart era, a gentleman of old family from Newcastle-on-Tyne looked in at Morgan’s, and observing a broken specimen of the same lot, mentioned that at home he had some precisely similar, which had belonged to his predecessors since 1650. A very beautiful Sèvres tea-stand of small dimensions, with a circumference representing a tressure of six curves, has the marks of the maker, the painter, and the gilder, and belongs to 1773; I gave him £23 for it; Morgan tried to get the companion cup and saucer; but it brought £86; and was bought, I think, by the late Mr Lawrence, F.S.A.

He had a rather prolonged and troublesome negotiation in one instance on my behalf. The executors of some gentleman offered him a pair of superb Japanese dishes, 24 inches in diameter and of a rare pattern and shape, for £140. I declined them at that figure, and heard no more of the matter, till he informed me that his correspondents had modified their views, so as to make it possible for me to possess the lot for £85. I took them; and the vendor has repeatedly applied to me, asking if I have the dishes still, and care to part. He sold me a few other rather costly articles—costly in my eyes.

Morgan initiated me in the true facts about Blue and White, and helped me to steer clear of the blunders, which many of my contemporaries perpetrated over that craze. I have a small cylindrical bottle, white and ultramarine, which illustrates the matter as well as a dearer example, and shews the pains which the Chinese took to prepare their paste and pigments during the best period—the seventeenth century. Both are most brilliant, and it is alike the case with Chinese and Japanese ware of this class, that the ancient appears to a superficial or inexperienced observer more modern than that made in our own time, of which the ground and the decoration are faded and weak.

I likewise gained an insight from the same source into the mysteries of Hawthorn, which seems to be rather Plum-blossom. I handled a goodly number of specimens; but I encountered scarcely any, which awakened a very strong interest. Really fine examples are of the rarest occurrence, and it is still more difficult to obtain pairs of vases or jars with the genuine covers or lids. They are generally false or wooden. Odd pieces are not wanted. You must have either a couple or a set of two, three, five, six, according to circumstances.

A collector had long cast a longing eye on a very beautiful vase in a London shop, but would not have it, because it was odd. He kept a sharp look-out for the companion, and at last he found it to his immense satisfaction at Newcastle, and brought it up to town. On inquiry at the dealer’s there, he found that the latter, despairing of getting rid of his piece, had consigned it to a friend at Newcastle in the hope of meeting with a customer.

This was agreeable to the circular system, by which curiosities go the round of the watering-places and spas in quest of homes. I saw a Worcester jug at Bournemouth, which had visited nearly every resort in the kingdom, and still awaited an admirer.