The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

There was one consolation. I was enabled to concentrate all my pecuniary forces on the few objects, which struck me as exceptional; and I succeeded in making myself master of nearly all the specialities among the Italians, which I coveted, and several desiderata elsewhere.

The competition was sensibly mitigated by an entente cordiale among a portion of the company, and the bulk returned to the continent. Had the collection been equally attractive and important to myself from a numismatic and a commercial point of view, I should have found much more than I could have possibly grasped; but the prevalent state conformed to the normal continental definition of beau, which in English signifies crucible.

There was little enough in the Boyne catalogue, which I had not learned from a careful previous study of those of all the great Italian, German, and French collections, which had been published or privately printed. But the occasion supplied me with a precious opportunity of holding in my hands coins, which, whatever might be their value or want of value as possessions, were and are in many instances of immense rarity, and seemed, when in direct contact, additionally substantial and authentic.

Four or five bidders saved the issue from being a fiasco in a financial sense. But the selection of London as the scene may tend to accelerate a little the recognition in Great Britain of the ancient money of the continent as at all events an appropriate chronological sequel to that of Greece and Rome, while it represents in itself a body of material of inexhaustible curiosity and value to the historian and the artist.

I purposely abstain from classing with the sales of explicit or professed private properties those, which, as season succeeds season, are dedicated by the trade everywhere to the object of converting their surplus or unrealised stock into money. One feels an almost painful delicacy in handling this part of the subject; and I propose to restrict myself to the criticism that it is possible to secure many absolute bargains at a reduced price by making an offer to the party who, for anything one knows, may be a kind of trinity in unity—owner, cataloguer, and auctioneer. Coins are speculative goods; and if a lot or so misses certain expected channels, it is sometimes a lodger with the proprietor long enough to make him tired of looking at it. Then, when he is in his most despondent vein, comes the moment for the opportunist, and there are twenty-four pence in every shilling.

The auction-rooms among ourselves and abroad, wherever there is a volume of business in coins (and in other second-hand commodities), appear to be vehicles, however, more and more for a systematic organisation, by which the dealer sells his goods under the hammer instead of over the counter. Foragers are observed collecting in one market by virtue of their special knowledge lots suitable for disposal in this way in another or others; and they have a machinery adapted to their peculiar requirements. Their stock is always a floating one. Thousands of pounds pass through their hands in a season. There are not many in the line, for it demands some capital, some credit, and some courage. There is one house, which avers that it carries on this system for the public good—in order to diffuse a conversance with numismatic science. We have more heroes and philanthropists than we dream of, have we not?

As I mentally or otherwise glance through my at length not so very inconsiderable accumulation of ancient or obsolete currencies, I strive to think how my own experience is capable of serving those, who have the starting-point nearer within view. It seems at first sight to be regretted, that not merely such large sums of money, but so much time and labour, should be expended in perpetuity in the stereotyped process of gathering up the wrong things, gradually detecting their character, and retrieving the error by casting overboard the original lot, and beginning anew on a truer basis.

The cause of numismatic archæology of course imperatively demands the preservation of every item of every mint, no matter how degraded may be its state, or how insignificant its individuality, so long as it is of that high degree of scarcity, which entitles it to monumental regard. I may more emphatically specify, as falling within such a definition, the examples engraved and described by my correspondent, Count Nicolò Papadopoli, in his Monete Italiane Inedite, 1893, the major part of which come very far short of my personal ideas of works of art, but of which the affectionate custody by posterity becomes a duty on historical grounds. At the same time, as my aim has been necessarily a narrow one, and as I elected at a very early stage in my experience to figure as one of the apostles of Condition, I cheerfully resign these records to others, and am quite satisfied with engraved reproductions of them. On that precaution I lay the utmost stress.

In my first apprenticeship to numismatics I believe that I was unusually ignorant of a subject, which the works of reference introduced since my school-days have rendered so much more accessible and intelligible. But I was industrious and observant, and was not deficient in taste. I began to collect at a period of life, when I was able to discern the fallacy of the penny-box principle; my level was never very low, if it was not in the earlier years so high as it ultimately grew; and I no sooner perceived a mistake, than I hastened to rectify it. An appreciable interval elapsed, however, before I found myself in possession of a sufficient body of coins to make a distribution into countries or sections of any service. There were so many specimens; the metals were unequally represented; and I recollect that gold resembled the plums in a school pudding.

It was a gala day, when I received my first cabinet home, and entered into a rudimentary and tentative phase of classification; and it was then, too, that not my opulence, but my excessive poverty and humility, as a collector was revealed to me. Providentially, these shocks are generally broken by some circumstance, and in my case it was my still most empirical acquirement of the full bearings and scope of my adventurous enterprise.