All my successive departures in this as in other doings have depended on chance. Both at home and abroad I have often stumbled unexpectedly on the means of filling a gap, and have quite as often congratulated myself on the command of just knowledge enough to avoid mistakes and snares. Not always. For I once found myself at St Peter’s, Guernsey, with nothing to do, and visited so often the only place in the town, where there was any semblance of coins, that I felt bound to pay my footing, and gave 10s. for a silver London penny of Ethelred II.—a very fine specimen, but a very common piece. I subsequently bought another of a different mint in London for 4s. I added the Guernsey acquisition to my travelling expenses, with a private determination to avoid for the future these pitfalls.
I never committed myself very seriously. At Brighton, strolling about I fell in with a Jew, who had a very fine early rupee, which on reference to his scales he estimated at eighteenpence. I bought elsewhere a greater rarity—a double rupee of the last century—for four shillings. One of the finest Anne farthings of the common Britannia type, 1714, which I have seen, was the fruit of a visit to a depôt in Hastings, and the demand for it was not unreasonable—twelve shillings. At a corner shop in Bournemouth, the Hebrew proprietor was from home; but his consort waited on me. ‘Any old coins, madam?’ ‘Well, no,’ she thought not—yet, stay, she would shew me a shekel or two—family relics, and not for sale. She retired, and presently produced them. I told her that they must be of great and peculiar interest to her and her husband, and I disappointed her, I think, by not seeming eager to possess them. She muttered something sotto voce about seven guineas; whether that was a figure at which she would risk Mr ——’s displeasure by parting with each or all of the heirlooms, I do not know. They were all false.
The shekel, which belongs to my collection, once had a rather startling adventure. An acquaintance, a clergyman of the Establishment and an University man, asked leave to see it. I handed it to him, and as if he had cabman’s blood in his veins, he instantaneously placed it between his teeth. A significant gesture from me arrested his action. On taking his farewell he mentioned that he should shortly send one of his sons to look through my coins. I bowed, and I subsequently declined the proposed honour in writing. How could I tell that the teeth of the offspring might not be sharper than those of his intelligent papa?
The ignorance of the average man in everything, which does not concern his immediate calling, is well-nigh inconceivable. I held in my pocket an unusually well-preserved example of a bell-metal piece of the First French Revolution, when I was calling on a friend, who by training and descent should have acquired a tincture of conversance with such matters. He paid me the compliment of begging to be permitted to see the coin, eyed it for a moment, and then threw it across the table to me.
A relative, who was distinguished by his fulness and variety of information, and who, if he sinned, did so in the direction of not under-estimating the few relics which he personally owned, used to be fond of telling me, that he possessed a complete numismatic history of the Revolution in France, and when I appeared in the first instance curious on the subject, he displayed a handful of defaced copper or bell-metal pieces which, had they been better, represented only an instalment of a very large series.
The same gentleman had similarly acquired in the vicinity of Leicester Square at prices, which struck him as favourable to the buyer, some very rare and desirable examples of Greek numismatic art, including a Syracusan medallion or dekadrachm. On being informed with suitable delicacy that his purchases were forgeries, he was almost equally balanced between a sentiment of wrath against the vulgar broker, who had swindled him and a stealthy suspicion that his informant desired to wheedle him out of really valuable possessions.
He cherished some old halfpence of the early Georges, which he found in his boyhood in a hollow tree in Kensington Gardens. So far, so good. They were not coins; it was a strictly personal association. The interest died with him.
But two of the drollest accidents, which ever happened to me, succeeded each other on the same morning. I entered a money-changer’s in Coventry Street, and inquired for old coins. The bureaucrat was as short in his address as he was in his stature. ‘What did I want?’ ‘I did not know till I saw them.’ ‘He had no time to waste on such matters.’ I apologised for my intrusion; he looked at me, and then he pushed a bowl of money toward me. In a minute or so he joined me in a search, and we somehow entered into conversation. He found that I was literary. ‘Had I ever heard of Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon? It was his favourite book.’ I handed him ninepence, shook hands with him on the strength of his revelation, and departed, labouring to look grave.
I had no sooner emerged from that singular experience, than I encountered another. A party in Wardour Street had a similar inquiry put to him, and he laid before me an assortment of metallic monuments, which I investigated for some time without meeting with a solitary item worth pricing. On intimating so much in a polite manner, the owner impressed me with a persuasion that he intended to spring over the counter, and seize me by the throat; but I met the crisis by demonstrating the impossibility of purchasing duplicates and of always finding desiderata even in the choicest stocks; and his phrensy began to abate. He seemed a decent fellow—a watchmaker by his calling; and I pulled out my watch, and invited him to examine it. It required cleaning and regulating. ‘Clean it, and regulate it, then,’ said I, ‘and I will call for it in ten days.’ We parted on the best terms.
I have certainly obtained in the by-ways here and there, at home and abroad, occasional plums. I owed to a silversmith in London my £5 piece of Victoria, 1839, with a plain edge, without the Garter, and with the original reading. It cost me £8. 5s. But I have slowly arrived at the conclusion that the orthodox merchant is the most satisfactory on the whole—the safest and the cheapest.