Biographical Sketch 19 



series of twelve descriptive labels or small charts published by the Metropolitan Museum 

 of Art, showing development (or evolution) of arms and armor. Into these labels or 

 charts he put the finest products of his researches on the historical development of helmets, 

 breastplates, gauntlets, shields, pole arms, swords, crossbows, guns and spurs. From this 

 period of comparative quiet after the great war also date numerous small papers on arms 

 and armor and the manuscripts of his catalogues of European daggers, court swords and 

 hunting swords published since his death. The "Bibliography of Arms and Armor" (in 

 collaboration with S. V. Grancsay), is still in course of preparation (1930). 



The last grand act of his life was the building of a noble Gothic hall adjoining his 

 residence at Riverdale-on-Hudson. In this he intended to place the finest pieces of his 

 own collection of armor. But the cord of life was snapped shortly before the great day 

 when all would have been ready for the opening. Nevertheless his devoted family and 

 his colleagues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art have arranged in this hall numerous 

 pieces from his collection of armor. There his friends may stand reverently before the 

 austere beauty of mediaeval armor revealed by this incomparable man. 



SUMMARY 



The foregoing pages give us the outline of Bashford Dean's Hfe and works without 

 enabling us ever to answer why under a given set of circumstances he reacted precisely 

 as he did. Other men of ''Old American" stock and of Victorian culture have early 

 manifested a keen interest both in nature and in their fellow men; have' followed various 

 branches of natural science, archaeology or history; have left behind them perhaps equally 

 great evidences of their unceasing labors for science or art. But it is the individual patterns 

 of their lives that baffle explanation, except that once having been started in certain 

 directions, they themselves wrought these patterns through intelligent use of the oppot' 

 tunities that circumstances chanced to open before them. And so it was with Bashford 

 Dean. From his father's friend Professor Edward S. Morse he is said to have learned a 

 certain trick in drawing with two crayons in each hand, but it was he who developed this 

 talent to the advantage of his students who received with delight his beautiful black' 

 board diagrams of the germ layers of vertebrate embryos. It was apparently from Eugene 

 Blackford that he derived his interest in the problems of oyster culture; and this opened 

 the way for his early visits to various countries in Europe, where he acquired the con' 

 tinental culture which was so essential in all his later work. 



The wide fame of Tennyson's poetic version of the Arthurian legend was probably 

 responsible for the existence of the picture book from which as a child Bashford Dean 

 loved to copy pictures of knights in combat. The incident of the helmet which excited 

 his eager curiosity and interest while he was still a very young child seems to bring us 

 near to the origin of his lifelong hobby, the study of arms and armor. But it was he who 

 chose to follow this hobby, at first almost apologetically as a relaxation from more serious 

 pursuits. 



