THE PURSUIT OF COLLECTING 
“ T)LESSED is the man who has a hobby!” declared Lord 
_D Brougham; and of all the hobbies it is doubtful if any 
are more blessed than those of the collector of antiques and 
curios, old prints, coins and medals, rare books and bindings, 
and the like. “God never did make a more calm, quiet, inno¬ 
cent recreation,” said good old Isaac Walton of angling. But 
that is true, too, of collecting, which, figuratively speaking, 
is in itself a species of the art of angling, of dipping into the 
quiet pools of unfrequented places, there to angle for quaint 
curios and interesting mementoes of bygone days, conscious 
that though the bait may be small, the catch may be large! 
Besides, there is the fun of the fishing! 
In “Le Jardin d’Epicure,” Anatole France has written: 
“People laugh at collectors, who perhaps do lay themselves 
open to raillery, but that is also the case with all of us when 
in love with anything at all. We ought rather to envy col¬ 
lectors, for they brighten their days with a long and peaceable 
joy. Perhaps what they do a little resembles the task of the 
children who spade up heaps of sand at the edge of the sea, 
laboring in vain, for all they have built will soon be over¬ 
thrown, and that, no doubt, is true of collections of books and 
pictures also. But we need not blame the collectors for it; 
the fault lies in the vicissitudes of existence and the brevity 
of life. The sea carries off the heaps of sand, and auctioneers 
disperse the collections; and yet there are no better pleasures 
than the building of heaps of sand at ten years old, of col¬ 
lections at sixty. Nothing of all we erect will remain, in the 
end; and a love for collecting is no more vain and useless 
than other passions are.” France might well have added Sir 
James Yoxall’s observation, that “good for health of mind 
and body it is to walk and wander in by-ways of town and 
country, searching out things beautiful and old and rare with 
which to adorn one’s home.” Indeed, collecting has aspects 
other than the one of discovery, of acquisition, of entertain¬ 
ment, or of furnishing a pastime,—it has its utilitarian one as 
well. 
T HERE is an undeniable and an oftentimes indefinable 
charm about a home in which well-chosen antiques and 
curios form part of the decorative scheme and become part 
of its furnishing and adornment. Many collectors have be¬ 
come such through an increasing interest in old furniture, rare 
china, early silver, and other classes of antiques and curios, 
inspired, in the beginning, by the acquisition of some object 
of the sort, personal contact with which has served as an 
example of the pleasures which collecting holds in store for 
one. The true collector is not merely “a gatherer-of-things,” 
indifferent to the guidance of a discriminating taste. Instead, 
when he finds an object at hand, he considers it from many 
points of view—its historical value, its significance in the de¬ 
velopment of the arts, its anecdotal interest, its worth as a 
work of art and its workmanship. 
The intuitive sense will carry the amateur a long way, but 
his connoisseurship will depend upon his knowledge. Those 
persons who are absolutely indifferent to the whys and where¬ 
fores of things, uninterested in any effort to discover the 
“story” of an object, bored by its history or unappreciative 
of its beauty, are hardly likely to become collectors, though 
accident and the chances of fortune may throw interesting 
things into their possession. Neither are they ever likely to 
become as Thackeray, who, in “Roundabout Papers,” said of 
a certain antique and curio shop: “I never can pass without 
delaying at the windows — indeed, if I were going to be hung, 
I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more 
at the delightful omnium gatherum.” 
N OW it often happens that we find a collector-in-embryo 
(one with a desire to start a collection, but fancies it 
is an undertaking that requires very special qualifications), 
asking: “How could I hope to become a collector when I 
know so little about the subject I think I would be interested 
in? Then I fear good things cost too much, and that real 
bargains have long ago vanished from the mart.” To such 
an one the reply can truthfully be made that it is by no means 
difficult for the beginner to acquire definite and valuable 
knowledge on any subject in the collector’s field that may 
chance to interest him. 
The way one learns to collect (and that means the way one 
learns about the things worth collecting) is by collecting. 
Contact with the objects themselves is necessary to connois¬ 
seurship, just as it is one of the pleasures. The collector 
learns more about Oriental porcelains, old English china, 
Dresden figurines, French enamels, Russian brass, Italian 
laces or Bohemian glass by having a few representative pieces 
of them which he carefully studies than he could learn (so 
far as helpful knowledge fitting him to judge is concerned) 
than he could learn from volumes on the subject. While this 
contact with actual objects is necessary to developing a con¬ 
noisseurship—one may have this contact visually in museums 
or have access to private collections (the shops, too, will teach 
one much) — all the accessible writing on the subject should 
be consulted, as comparative study increases the interest and 
confirms or corrects one’s personal deductions and opinions. 
S UPREMELY fine examples of old furniture, china, silver¬ 
ware, bronzes, miniatures, and the like, have never, ex¬ 
cept in case of accident, been “picked up for a song.” The 
collector must remember that the pastime of collecting is not 
one of recent development. Indeed, the ancients were col¬ 
lectors of the rare, curious and beautiful, the Medici were 
renowned for gathering in their places objets de virtu, and few 
collectors of note of to-day could outvie the enthusiasm of 
Horace Walpole, who turned Strawberry Hill into a veritable 
museum. All this goes to show how keenly sought for have 
been all objets d’art of unusual importance. Naturally, when 
rare occasion brings them to the mart they command high 
prices. However, it is not for one to despair because he 
cannot collect museum pieces, to cry for those things which 
have little to do with the pleasure of collecting beyond the 
interest their contemplation affords. That the by-paths which 
the collector may tread are literally bristling with bargains is 
true. Certainly the small collector need not become dis¬ 
couraged. For instance, the writer continually finds within 
the boundaries of New York City alone numerous objects 
that any collector of limited means could have acquired with 
rejoicing heart. One day it was a yellow Wedgwood mus¬ 
tard-pot for two dollars, another day a genuine Paduan medal 
for fifty cents, then a Persian lacquer mirror-frame for a 
dollar, and a Japanese sword-guard by Shigataro, signed, for 
half as much! It adds to the interest of collecting that while 
the collector soon learns where to look for things, he con¬ 
stantly meets with them also where least expected. 
