CHAPTER XII
Coins—Origin of My Feeling for Them—Humble Commencement—Groping in the Dark—My Scanty Means and Equally Scanty Knowledge, but Immense Enthusiasm and Inflexibility of Purpose—The Maiden Acquisition Sold for Sixteenpence—The Two Earliest Pieces of the New Departure—To Whom I first went—Continuity of Purchases in All Classes—Visit to Italy (1883)—My Eyes gradually opened—Count Papadopoli and Other Numismatic Authorities—My Sketch of the Coins of Venice published (1884)—Casual Additions to the Collection and Curious Adventures—Singular Illusions of the Inexperienced—Anecdotes of a Relative—Two Wild Money-Changers Tamed—Captain Hudson—The Auction-Thief—A Small Joke to be pardoned.
I started as a numismatist by the merest accident in 1878, at the precise juncture when, owing to the sudden death of Mr Huth, I was concluded by my well-wishers to be on the brink of ruin. My son, who was then quite a little fellow, had had a first-brass Roman coin presented to him by a gentleman, whose intentions were excellent; and shortly after a relative, who had kept by him in a bag a number of ‘butcher’s’ pennies of George III. and a few other miscellaneous pieces, and who was profoundly anxious to throw them away, made a free gift of the whole collection to the same recipient. I was naturally led to examine our treasure trove, not by the light of experience of coins, of which I had absolutely not a tittle, but by that of my knowledge of collateral and analogous matters, in which several years’ training had developed certain conclusions; and I soon formed a private estimate of the twofold donation unfavourable to the judgment of the late proprietors.
The youthful owner himself was not the master of any definite views on the subject. There was the bag and there its contents; and they remained for some time inviolate, while I was deliberating and instituting inquiries at intervals, myself a sheer tyro. I believe that in my strolls about the suburbs I added to the cabinet without greatly improving it. Mr Huth was no more; and the future was not reassuring. My early acquisitions went many to the shilling. I was not more than a lesson or so ahead so far of my boy and his kind friends. Of works of reference, despite my acquaintance with books, I knew nothing. Of those, who could have put me on the right track, I was equally ignorant. I do not think that I had heard of such an institution as the Numismatic Society. It was new ground, and I stood on the edge of it contemplatively, bag in hand—the bag not even strictly my own—with a wavering sentiment and with decreased resources—resources likely to decrease yet more. One morning chance led me, as I passed, to linger at the window of Messrs Lincoln & Son in New Oxford Street; and after a pause I went in. The result was momentous in this sense, that I saw at the shop mentioned a ‘butcher’s’ penny, which bore the same relation to the inmates of the bag as an immaculate copy of a book or a faultless piece of china bears to the most indifferent specimens imaginable; and I handed half-a-crown to Lincoln for his coin, which I took home with a rather full heart. We compared notes, and I privately meditated a coup. A few days after, our sixteen ‘butcher’s’ pennies and sundries just realised what I had given for the cornerstone of a New Collection; and I may say that at a distance of nearly twenty years I yet keep that piece, which has become a very difficult one to procure in unexceptionable state—far more so than the twopence of the same type and date.
My son and I thus acquired an assemblage of numismatic monuments represented only by an unit. But it was not very long, before I revisited Lincoln’s, and doubled the collection at one bound by buying a half-crown of Queen Anne for eight shillings and sixpence. These two were my earliest investments, when I seriously began; but I must explain that I was not only fettered by lack of courage and the apprehension of contracted means, but by the fact of being in partnership with my son in the venture. His pocket-money and savings partly contributed to the revised and enlarged scheme; and in the earlier stages I am sure that progress was hesitating and slow. In the end, the estate of my partner was swallowed up; and whatever funds were required came from the other member of the firm.
In the case of what was a pure hobby at first and long after its original commencement, it is impossible to lay down the exact chronological lines or the order, in which certain coins or series were acquired. The English and Roman long united to monopolise my attention; my son ceased, as he grew older, to manifest an interest in the subject; and I found myself invested with a paramount discretion, held in check only by very slender means of exercising it. I may as well add here, that I deemed it best, under the circumstances, to return the amount, which the retiring sharer in the concern had sunk in purchases; and I was thus at liberty to do as I pleased.
I am speaking of a period, which seems nearly prehistoric. It was about fifteen years since, that I took over the entire responsibility in this affair, and found myself in possession of coins of various kinds, chiefly selected at the emporium in New Oxford Street, and representing a considerable outlay. I had discerned the errors of others in collecting, but I had not failed to commit one or two myself. I conclude that it is a very usual oversight on the part of the novice to neglect to measure his ground, and lay his plan, beforehand; it was so with me; I bought rather at random coins, medals, and tokens; and even under these wide conditions I vaguely calculated that from £150 to £200 would place me in possession of a cabinet, capable of vying with most of those in existence.
It has been from no wish to exaggerate the importance of the initiative taken in 1878 under a casual impulse, that I have written down the foregoing particulars. But as I have uninterruptedly persevered from that date to the present in enlarging and improving the collection, and in communicating the fruits of my researches to the public, it appeared worth while to put on record the facts connected with the formation and development of the new taste. There have been men, who have gained a rank as numismatists far higher than any to which I can aspire or pretend, whose beginnings at least were not less humble and not less fortuitous.
When I affirm that a single season suffices to exhaust the patience or enthusiasm of many an amateur, it will supply some indication of my earnestness, when I state that at the end of three years I had barely emerged from my novitiate. I still retained my loyalty to Lincoln, but I made occasional investments elsewhere. I had abandoned the ambitious notion of comprising medals and tokens in my range, but on the other hand, through the miscellaneous nature of Lincoln’s stock and his large assortment on sale of foreign coins, I conceived the possibility of admitting a few chosen specimens of the various Continental series. I resembled a ship without a compass; I had never had under my eyes any guide to this family of monuments, and I could only estimate its extent and cost from the selection put before me. How necessarily imperfect, nay fragmentary, that was, I did not learn till long afterward. The foreign section of the New Oxford Street stores constituted my Continental side in its first state, not so much as regarded condition, as variety and completeness. For somehow my furnishers began to understand my views touching character and preservation, and although I have throughout my career felt bound to change specimens from time to time, I apprehend that the preference for fine coins set in with me unusually early, and saved me from a good deal of loss and annoyance.
Under the auspices of the same firm I extended my lines to Greek coins. Lincoln happened to have placed on view about 2000 pieces in silver, and I took all that struck me as being within my standard—I forget how few. About the same time I added to them some in gold and copper. I thenceforward, during many years, was in the habit of selecting from the series immediately in hand whatever interested me, and this is another way of saying that my possessions were growing considerable. My grand safeguard was my peremptory principle of rejecting everything, no matter how rare or otherwise valuable, which did not rise to my fastidious qualification; and the greater the choice submitted to me, the more stringent became my application of the rule. It was in pure self-defence. My pocket-money, so to speak, was extremely limited; and I thus closed the door against a deluge of rubbish or of mediocre property. I laid down for my own government the paradoxical maxim, that if a poor man buys at all, he can afford to buy only the finest things. That is to say, he should never acquire what does not represent the outlay or, if possible, a profit on it. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a quicksand, and I saw no other practicable outlet in the event of realisation.