12 
House & Garden 
CONCERNING COLLECTORS 
W HENEVER I meet a collector of old, curious or rare objects, I 
hold him in especial regard. There is a man in whom Romance 
can never entirely die. He may be crusty, curt, uncivil and even 
miserly, but the very fact that he cares enough for ancient or unusual 
things to collect them proves that he has a door on some side of his 
heart. Sooner or later, if I find that door and knock, it is opened to me. 
Sooner or later if I show him I am interested in the same things, his 
tongue loosens, his eyes light up, he bids me enter and pours for me the 
wine of friendship. 
Age, wealth and position—the three things that build walls around 
men and make them unapproachable, have little to do with collectors. 
Such distinctions dissolve before the glow of common interest that the 
mere habit of collecting engenders. 
Of course, like fishermen, collectors are clannish. If you come to 
scoff or out of vain curiosity the door will never open. The instinct 
for collecting is such an intimate side that no man would dare expose it 
ruthlessly to the world lest it lose its charm for him. 
A SK a collector how he first got interested in collecting and, nine 
times out of ten, he’ll say he “just happened to.” There is more 
truth than fiction in that. The beginning of most collecting is just a 
happenstance that can come about in as many different ways as there 
are types of minds. The one universal element in all collectors would 
seem to be a form of whimsicality, of unaccountable affections and at¬ 
tractions. Some men have a postage stamp mind; they are also often 
interested in geography. Others, like Horace Walpole, go in for china. 
The varieties are legion and as inexplicable as the choice of wives and 
husbands. No man has ever been able to give a satisfactory reason for 
marrying the woman he did (even Solomon was stumped by that!) nor 
have I met the man who could tell me exactly what it was that made 
him pick out and cling faithfully to his collecting specialty. 
The parallel can be carried even 
further. For as a man gets accustomed 
to having a wife around and finds his 
curiosity growing into interest, so he 
gets accustomed to his hobby and be¬ 
comes more and more absorbed in it. 
He begins to look up the history of his 
objects and gets chummy with the men 
who collect the same sort of things. 
From that point on it is a grand 
progress. He learns values, makes 
comparisons, studies his subjects, ac¬ 
quires discrimination; and eventually 
a day arrives when he has to choose 
between a box of cigars and an addi¬ 
tion to the collection. He passes up the 
cigars. And thereby he becomes a con¬ 
firmed collector, member of the clan; 
Romance flames high in him and Rev¬ 
erence is an added virtue. 
R OMANCE and Reverence, as a 
collector feels them, are mostly in 
the past tense. To him an old chair 
is more than something to sit on—-it 
was a chair that belonged to So-and-So, 
who lived at such-and-such a time. It 
is a chair that shows fine or curious 
taste and the infinite pains of patient 
craftsmanship. Its wood has a patina 
that only time can give. So he annexes 
it to his collection and shows it proudly. 
Then, too, he had the romance of 
acquiring it. His is the last item in 
a pedigree that includes the maker, the 
men and women who have owned it 
from time to time, the houses it has 
graced, the worthy folks who have ad¬ 
mired it, the twists and turns of for¬ 
tune that made it pass from hand to 
hand, and finally the good luck that 
made it his. 
It is the weighing of this past ro¬ 
mance against the possession of a mod¬ 
ern luxury that determines the inveter¬ 
ate collector. He acquires a standard 
of values that is purely personal and not to be measured by dollars and 
cents. Apart from the intrinsic value of the object he seeks is the valua¬ 
tion his enthusiasm places upon it. Anything is at a premium so long 
as he wants it. 
Naturally, not all collectors go in for antiques; the curiosity and 
the novelty are quite as collectable, and the man who seeks them is as 
much a collector as the millionaire whose hobby costs him fortunes. As 
there are grades of men, so there are grades of collectors. One may go 
in for Chinese porcelains and Rembrandts, the other for valentines and 
painted tin trays. Yet in both burns the same ardor of Romance and 
Reverence. They are brothers under their hides! 
T O a collector the mere act of possessing in no wise compares with 
the adventure of acquiring; and fishermen’s tales have nothing on 
the tales of collectors. Yet, this is exactly what makes the game so 
fascinating. It also accounts for the fact that when a man has as¬ 
sembled a fairly good collection of any one kind of objects, he forth¬ 
with loses interest in it and begins another. It is complete when it is 
the beginning of something new. 
Collections change hands, on the average, every ten or fifteen years. 
It takes about that time to assemble a good collection. Interest is then 
diverted to something else, and the collection put on the market and 
scattered. Thus the Romance is perpetuated for other collectors. So 
there is nothing selfish about collecting. Human interest has a satura¬ 
tion point which prevents selfishness. 
The only sins the collector recognizes are fraud and destruction. In 
both of these our Teutonic enemies have proven themselves peculiarly 
adept. It would seem that Germany was applying her policy of fright¬ 
fulness to the art and beauty of the past, for she has deliberately caused 
the destruction of innumerable collections, destruction that men who 
love beautiful things can never forget. Her passion for substitutes and 
THE GHOST 
She’d left us then . . . forever gone . . . 
The drear monotony of the rain 
Crowded, with its incessant blur, 
The drumming, dripping window pane . . . 
Each echo was a thought of her. 
The house was full of little sounds. 
The red fire dwindled, spark by spark, 
As daylight, stricken grey at birth, 
Was gathered back into the dark 
And ancient night reclaimed the earth. 
Still all the room was full of her 
So sweet and solemn and serene; 
There was her footstool, here, her chair . . . 
A book with hasty mark between . , . 
A fugitive pin, dropped from her hair . . . 
Was that her hand against the door 
Or the wind grappling with the rain? 
Was that her face that glimmered white 
A moment, at the rattling pane, 
And then drew back into the night? 
—Harry Kemp. 
cheap wares is the result of a machine- 
made industrialism which holds no 
regard for the patient work of men’s 
hands. Yet it is to this regard that all 
collectors are devoted and on which all 
collecting is based. 
T HE Romance of collecting has 
an indestructible element in that 
through the exchange of antiques the 
heritage of the past is constantly being 
renewed. During the last four years 
the turn of fortune has forced many a 
fine collection into the auctioneer’s 
hands. Happily for America, many of 
these collections have found a market 
here. This will surely have its effect. 
As time goes on Americans will be 
more a race of collectors than they have 
been. 
Collecting is not a hobby of pioneer 
people. We are inclined to think of 
the English as the# ideal collectors. 
They are a people of permanent homes 
—homes of long standing. Something 
of this principle is being worked out 
gradually here in the States—-we are 
getting into the habit of settling down 
in one place, rearing a new generation 
in an atmosphere of permanency. The 
home is the basis of our national life; 
we have even crossed the seas to defend 
that home. Surely such a development, 
coupled with our recent opportunities, 
will stimulate the collecting habit. As 
we age and grow in national experience 
our material heritage will take on value 
and romance. It will give to collecting 
in America an increased impetus. 
For collecting is nothing more than 
this—preserving the good of the past 
for the inspiration of the present. Col¬ 
lectors are men who cherish the legends 
of noble crafts, who keep the dust 
brushed from history, who perpetuate 
the appreciation of beauty. 
