In crossing over from the literary to other fields, where I have instructed and amused myself and a few others by my studies, I pass to ground, where I occupy a somewhat different position—that of an absolute, incorruptible amateur. I see clearly enough that, whatever advantage may attach itself to the commercial side in these matters, the genuine pleasure lies in purchasing for oneself, even if the price is here and there such as to ensure loss on realisation; for there is the sense of patronage and superiority. I never descended to petty transactions; but where an appreciable amount was involved; I would far liefer have stood aloof, or have acquired for myself. There was only the sovereign motive in the background, which conquered my instinctive repugnance to the conversion of literary monuments into a commodity and of my hardly-acquired knowledge into a mint.

Outside Books, I have conceived, as I proceeded, and as I mingled with other hobby-riders, an interest in such matters of secondary human concernment as China, Coins, Plate, Postage Stamps, Pictures, and Furniture. The two former have occupied in my thought a station not much less prominent than that of literature; and as I abandoned the practical inquiry into the first subject after ten years’ devotion to it, I shall commence by giving some account of my observations and experiences in that particular market, which, like all others, offers its peculiarities and idiosyncrasies.

There is hardly a triter remark than that we are slaves to our passions; and the genuine collector certainly is unto his, whatever his line may be. Where there are ample resources, it signifies less; but the servitude presses very heavily on the more necessitous or more moderately endowed. It is in vain to say that a man ought not to buy luxuries, if he cannot afford them; he will have them, as another will drink alcohol or chew opium. To secure something which he covets he is capable of pawning his coat or ‘dining with Duke Humphrey.’ Had I been exempt from fancies, I might have spared myself the ordeal of going into the highways and byways in quest of that doubtful benefactor a publisher; I might have dispensed with ingratiating myself with booksellers and bookbuyers; I might have enjoyed the pleasures of reading and thinking amid some sort of paterna rura. But as a citizen, who leaves London only for the sake of the satisfaction which it yields to return to it (for your Londoner, if he likes to see and feel the country must live in urbe), I naturally contracted certain pleasant and costly vices incidental to a metropolis, and became an unthrift and through my unthriftiness a hireling. I often resolve to break my fetters; but I lack the courage. The tastes, in which I have graduated, have sweetened my life, and enlarged my vision, if they have trenched a little on my freedom; and I even think that they have tended to humanise me, and subdue a not too tractable temper to the harder and sterner uses of the world.

I have not the least objection to avow that, when I accidentally acquired in 1869 at Llandudno an example or two of Oriental ceramic art, I was deplorably ignorant of the bearings and merits of the pursuit, and had, as usual, no idea that I had embarked in one. A good-natured and well-informed relative, who was always ready and pleased to serve and flatter me, suggested that my Eastern porcelain was Brom’ichham. Of course an English factory could not, in the first place, have produced the things at the price. I received a good deal of encouragement and sympathy from those near and dear to me just about this time; my extravagance was censured; and my early insolvency considered probable.

Through my father I became acquainted about that time with Dr Diamond of Twickenham House, the possessor of one of the most extensive and miscellaneous assemblages of porcelain and pottery of all ages and countries ever formed in this country. Who had first bitten the doctor, I never heard; I found him, on my first introduction, the owner of a mass of examples, good, bad and indifferent, of all of which, however insignificant and obscure, he could tell you the pedigree and place of origin. He had many other tastes; he was curious about photography, books, pictures, prints, coins, and plate; his house was a museum, of which he was the curator and showman; but I think that during the last years of his life old china and plate kept the ascendancy.

My personal progress was at first leisurely, for I do not recollect that I made any farther investments till 1872 when, happening to be at Lowestoft where Alderman Rose, brother of James Anderson Rose, also a collector, was then staying, he and I were equally seduced by the attractions of a shop kept by a person named Burwood. It was extremely fortunate for the latter that Rose and myself had nearly all our knowledge to learn; we bought largely and not too well, and Burwood was so exhausted by the drain on his stock, that he announced his intention of travelling down into Herefordshire, in order to buy some very valuable bits reported to him from a farmhouse in that rather distant shire. There was a second depÔt in the same watering-place, kept by an old man and his wife, with whom it was a favourite phrase, when their stock ran low, to say that they must ‘take a journey.’ In short, I amassed a large hamper of ware on this occasion, and brought it home. Diamond, as soon as he was apprised of my new foible, exclaimed, ‘God help him!’ and I suspected that there must be something in it, when I called at a place in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, and ascertained that that and the Herefordshire farmhouse were one.

I soon made a second discovery, which almost discouraged me from prosecuting the fancy any farther. Diamond had knowledge and feeling; but I now saw that he was deficient in taste. I had naturally modelled my small collection on his plan or want of plan; I fell in with one or two dealers, who opened my eyes; and the Lowestoft cargo was thrown overboard. A Jew named Moss had a whole tableful of crockery in exchange for a good plaque of Limoges enamel of the earlier epoch. He once let me have at a moderate price an old SÈvres plate painted with a pastoral scene, and with a rich amethyst blue and gold festooned border. I continue to think favourably of it. He brought it and a number of other pieces, all rubbish, in company with a co-religionist, to my house at Kensington in the evening. He was so discouraged by my frugal selection, that I lost sight of him. He was not miserly in his warnings against his professional contemporaries. This is a common trait.

I began to work on a new principle—to buy fewer and better things, studying condition, to which the doctor was more or less insensible; and I found myself about 1880 the owner, even on such a basis, of a multitude of wares which threatened to compete in the early future with the Twickenham prototype.

This was all the more serious, so to speak, inasmuch as while I drew from very few sources, the doctor was a mark for everybody, while he continued to buy with zest and avidity. All sorts of people came to the high iron gates, bringing every variety of article for sale; and few carried their freights back. Even those who were on the list of private guests occasionally shewed their good taste by drawing out of their breast-pockets at dessert some object for Diamond’s approval and purchase. There was Major ——, one of Her Majesty’s messengers, who was an habitual offender (as I thought) in such a way. But in the eyes of our common host the end in those days justified the means. It was all fish.

I dealt in chief measure with a house in Hanway Street (Morgan), Gale in Holborn, Brooks at Hammersmith, and Reynolds of Hart Street, Bloomsbury. I seldom left these tracks, and met there with only too much to tempt me. Morgan sold me a few pieces of SÈvres and some very fine Oriental. It was curious that, just after my purchase of three or four large porcelain dishes, the ‘china earth’ of the Stuart era, a gentleman of old family from Newcastle-on-Tyne looked in at Morgan’s, and observing a broken specimen of the same lot, mentioned that at home he had some precisely similar, which had belonged to his predecessors since 1650. A very beautiful SÈvres tea-stand of small dimensions, with a circumference representing a tressure of six curves, has the marks of the maker, the painter, and the gilder, and belongs to 1773; I gave him £23 for it; Morgan tried to get the companion cup and saucer; but it brought £86; and was bought, I think, by the late Mr Lawrence, F.S.A.He had a rather prolonged and troublesome negotiation in one instance on my behalf. The executors of some gentleman offered him a pair of superb Japanese dishes, 24 inches in diameter and of a rare pattern and shape, for £140. I declined them at that figure, and heard no more of the matter, till he informed me that his correspondents had modified their views, so as to make it possible for me to possess the lot for £85. I took them; and the vendor has repeatedly applied to me, asking if I have the dishes still, and care to part. He sold me a few other rather costly articles—costly in my eyes.

Morgan initiated me in the true facts about Blue and White, and helped me to steer clear of the blunders, which many of my contemporaries perpetrated over that craze. I have a small cylindrical bottle, white and ultramarine, which illustrates the matter as well as a dearer example, and shews the pains which the Chinese took to prepare their paste and pigments during the best period—the seventeenth century. Both are most brilliant, and it is alike the case with Chinese and Japanese ware of this class, that the ancient appears to a superficial or inexperienced observer more modern than that made in our own time, of which the ground and the decoration are faded and weak.

I likewise gained an insight from the same source into the mysteries of Hawthorn, which seems to be rather Plum-blossom. I handled a goodly number of specimens; but I encountered scarcely any, which awakened a very strong interest. Really fine examples are of the rarest occurrence, and it is still more difficult to obtain pairs of vases or jars with the genuine covers or lids. They are generally false or wooden. Odd pieces are not wanted. You must have either a couple or a set of two, three, five, six, according to circumstances.

A collector had long cast a longing eye on a very beautiful vase in a London shop, but would not have it, because it was odd. He kept a sharp look-out for the companion, and at last he found it to his immense satisfaction at Newcastle, and brought it up to town. On inquiry at the dealer’s there, he found that the latter, despairing of getting rid of his piece, had consigned it to a friend at Newcastle in the hope of meeting with a customer.

This was agreeable to the circular system, by which curiosities go the round of the watering-places and spas in quest of homes. I saw a Worcester jug at Bournemouth, which had visited nearly every resort in the kingdom, and still awaited an admirer.

I very soon abandoned the idea about Lowestoft porcelain. Gillingwater in his History of the place (1790) merely mentions that they had clay, suitable for making pottery, in the neighbourhood; but there was no material for fine china. Very possibly certain pieces of Oriental were shipped thither in the white, and locally decorated. But I have yet to see an important example of so-called Lowestoft, which was not really of Chinese origin.

At the place of business long kept by Brooks I was an habitual caller, and used to meet Mr Sanders of Chiswick, whose collection of Chelsea porcelain was probably one of the finest ever brought together. It comprised many large examples in figures and nefs seldom seen and of great importance. It was Sanders, who related to me the anecdote of a singular find at Antwerp of Chelsea figures in a confectioner’s establishment. The proprietor or his family once belonged to Chelsea, and had taken these pieces with them as part of their trade fittings or decorations; and he willingly exchanged them for others on payment of a reasonable difference.

Sanders and myself occasionally met also at Sotheby’s. He must have been a person of no mean resources; but his ways were mysterious, and his home, I fear, uncomfortable. Perhaps he found the neighbouring Sign of the Hoppoles more congenial for this reason; he found it, poor fellow, only too much so.

I possess numerous memorials of my transactions with Brooks. He had, besides china, occasional pictures on which I may have sometimes looked with extravagant distrust; and he was in fact an omnivorous buyer and not an injudicious one. I recall a tall Chelsea cup and saucer with a stalk handle, painted with fruit, and marked in puce, which my good acquaintance had obtained from a small house-sale in Chiswick—the sole treasure of the establishment. It was in the finest state. ‘They thought me a fool,’ remarked Brooks, ‘because I gave £10, 10s. for it.’ ‘And what would they say of the person,’ I put to him, ‘who took it of you at a profit?’ He grinned, and informed me that a medical man in the neighbourhood would jump at it. This frightened me, and I closed with him at £14. I owed many another prize to the same agency, particularly, in a small way perhaps, an old Dresden plate with a crimson and gold border, painted with a bird and foliage, the prototype of the Chelsea pattern, of which examples have fetched £35. Brooks had this lying in a drawer, and one day I disinterred it, and took it home at 25s. My Hammersmith man was not invariably so discreet in his consumption of liquor as he ought to have been; and I have to confess with some shame and contrition, that I priced, not for the first time, a very fine Cambrian ware mug marked (as usual) in gold, when he was a trifle festive, and he let me have it for 35s. He had two; the other was badly cracked; and I saw it in another shop some time after, valued at £7, 15s.

There were two examples of ceramic ware in his hands at different times, protected and (as I thought) disguised by old black frames. I asked him to take them out for me, that I might be satisfied as to their condition, which he did. One was a Wedgwood plaque, light blue, with figures in relief; the other an original Capo di Monte one, literally hidden under accumulated dirt. It was of the second period, in the alto relievo style, and represents the Bath of Diana, I believe. The sharpness of the impression was a strong contrast to the modern copies from the moulds. Brooks asked £6 for it; I took both.

He was ultimus Romanorum in the sense that he left no successor in Hammersmith with a stock of the kind worth regarding.

Brooks was an odd-looking small man, and he and his wife resembled Mr and Mrs Johnson in the Vauxhall song. I once spoke to him of his confrÈres in the trade, and as to his relations with them, more particularly in the old china line, and his less explanatory than sententious rejoinder was: ‘I knows them, and they knows me.’

Gale, who lived in Holborn, where I regularly visited him, was the brother of the County Court judge. He was an intelligent fellow, but not very speculative, nor did I ever, save once, carry away from him anything very notable. He set before me, however, on one occasion a splendid pair of ruby-backed eggshell plates painted with quails, and said that the price was £6. I felt slightly nervous, lest he should have made a mistake; but I agreed to his terms, asked him to pack the things up, and departed. I nearly broke them by a collision on the pavement, but eventually landed them in safety, calling en route at Reynolds’s in Hart Street, who told me that a customer would give him £60 for them, if I would let him have them at a figure below that. They are as thin and transparent as paper. It may be just worth noting that a cup and saucer of Capo di Monte of the first type, the paste opaque and the decoration Spanish, was sold to me by Gale as Buen Retiro. It is painted in the same taste, and has the same mark—M for Madrid; but I have always regarded it as of Italian origin, and as the work of the operatives who migrated from the neighbourhood of Madrid to Capo di Monte. The real Buen Retiro resembles eggshell.

Ralph Bernal had formerly dealt with Gale, who was fond of narrating anecdotes of the great collector’s hesitation and nearness. There was a particular SÈvres cup and saucer, which brought a heavy sum in his sale, and which he got for £5, 5s., after a palaver with the holder of some months’ duration.

Reynolds allowed me to make his premises in Bloomsbury one of my regular lounges. I did not altogether take a great deal off his hands, as he paid attention to Wedgwood, bronzes, ivories, and jade, rather than to china; and as I grew wiser, I also grew more exclusive, from a persuasion that one or two subjects are amply sufficient for any single madman, especially a rather poor one.

I have stated that my range of sources of supply was limited. I was now and then attracted by an object in a strange window, and might go in, and demand the figure expected. It was the height of the run upon Chelsea, when I did so in Holborn, and the owner, in response to my appeal, proceeded to disengage from a hook an old Chelsea plate valued by him at £14, 14s. Unfortunately the poor fellow lost his balance, and let the plate go; it was broken into I know not how many fragments. I shall never forget his astonishment and dismay. What could I do? A neighbour of his once fixed me with a Nantgarw plate, and was lavish in his eulogy. ‘Why,’ he exclaimed, allusively to its lustrous brilliance, ‘it laughs at you.’

My acquisitions at public sales have in thirty or more years been limited to two: a Derby mug painted with a military subject, which I gave away, and a large Dresden plaque in a rich frame, which occurred at Sotheby’s ever so long ago, when sales were occasionally held in the warehouse downstairs. The piece was an exquisite copy of the painting by Rubens of his second wife and their child on her knee. Although there was no picture or china buyer present, it fetched £12, 12s., and F. S. Ellis pronounced it a bargain at that figure. I verily trust it may be so (Ellis named such an amount as £50); for it has hung in my study ever since, and owes me some interest.

Time was, when the bijou tea-pot held me in bondage. I have two of that very soft paste made at Mennecy in the department of the Seine, and a third of the finest Dresden porcelain, painted with landscapes (even on the lid), and with the spout richly gilt.

I was tempted, side by side with the Mennecy pieces, by a milk-jug with a silver hinge of Sceaux-PenthiÈvre, of which the paste is also remarkable for its softness. It was a factory conducted under the patronage of the Duc de PenthiÈvre. Its products are very rare.

A Welsh clergyman obliged me with a present of a few specimens of china, including a small octagon blue and white dish with Salopian impressed in large characters on the bottom. I value it the more, because the authentic early Salopian is most difficult to procure, and it is the fashion to ascribe to this manufactory the Worcester marked with an S.

I look upon the Nantgarw, of which I relate a trivial anecdote, the Swansea, and the Colebrooke Dale groups, as rather cold, insipid, and tawdry. The first-named is common enough in plates, dishes, and shaped pieces; but I possess a cup and saucer most exquisitely painted in roses with their stalks and leaves, but without a mark, which I have always attributed to this source. I never saw another similar.

But I did take from Reynolds from time to time a few articles: a Wedgwood tea-pot of solid green jasper, a small Chelsea dish of the Vernon service with exotic birds and the gold anchor, a pair of rose du Barri tulip-lipped SÈvres vases, 6 inches high, painted with cupids, and so on. I deemed the tea-pot dear at £7; but the vendor, who had studied the particular branch of the subject, reassured me by offering to buy it back at any time at the same price; and he put this in the receipt—not to great purpose; for he died years ago. For the Vernon dish he asked £20, and took £11. The pair of rose du Barri vases, which belong to the Louis XVI. epoch, he picked up at a Lombard’s for a trifle, and paid me the compliment of charging me £10 for them. But their quality was excellent, and in their gilding there was that free hand, which distinguishes the early work, and is charming from its very informality. The rich gold scrolls and foliage on either side do not correspond, as they would in pieces of modern fabric.

I appear, as I look back, to have been thrown from my early manhood among curiosity hunters and dealers. I was once very dead on the Bowl, when it offered special attractions of any kind. I have one, which is jewelled round the border inside and out, but of which the drawback is that it has in the heel an extremely unconventional painting. The jewelling is in the manufacturing process, and was imitated at SÈvres. A second came from Scotland, and is remarkable for the presence of a Christian legend in the base of the interior, derived from the teaching of the Jesuits in China. I negotiated it at a marine-store dealer’s at North End; but he thought so well of it or of me, that he would not surrender it under £3, 3s. The most expensive specimen I possess cost me £9. It has a turquoise ground, is very richly decorated inside and out, is of large size, and of course absolutely perfect. But I was vouchsafed the sight of one at Deal in the hands of a private owner, for which a matter of £50 was expected. I preferred my own.

The Palissy, Henri Deux, and other costly faÏence I never acquired. There was a fellow at Hammersmith, named Glendinning, who had on sale during countless years a specimen of Palissy, for which he suggested a cheque for £250, and which was a palpable copy. This strange character, who was a sort of commercial Munchausen, never wearied of spinning the most outrageous yarns about the goods, which he had, or had had, for sale, and would repeat conversations between the ‘Prim’er’ (Gladstone) and himself, no doubt as thoroughly bon fide as everything else about him. The works of Correggio were to be seen only on his first floor; but you might inspect copies in Trafalgar Square and the Louvre.

There was a pair of modern French decorative vases at this establishment, said by the proprietor to have been obtained by him at the sale of the effects of a great lady in Hyde Park, a chÈre amie of His Majesty Napoleon III. His Majesty, quoth my friend, paid eighty guineas for the objects, which were manufactured expressly for his lady friend in 1869. The vendor judged his purchase with all this imposing provenance rather reasonable at thirty guineas; nor did I contradict him. I did not order the vases to be sent home; but they arrived on approval; and there they remained. I repeatedly invited him to fetch them away, as, however cheap, they would not suit me at the price. He eventually sacrificed them and himself, and his family, by accepting £7, 10s.

When I was at Midhurst in 1877, I had a glimpse of the splendid collection of porcelain formed by the late Mr Fisher. I had arranged with a common friend to go to Up Park, Harting, not far off, to view the SÈvres purchased in or about 1810 by the Featherstonhaughs for £10,000, and which is shortly to be dispersed under the hammer, because the heir is obliged to strip the house to enable him to keep it up. Besides the china, they had a great deal of plate, which was allowed, till the family was warned, to lie about the house, and superb antique furniture. One of the Rothschilds offered, I was told, £1500 for a single Florentine table. It was something of the same kind, which a West End dealer found in a lodging-house at Hastings, whither he had taken his family for the air, and purchased for £500 after a prolonged negotiation with the landlady. He sold it for £300 more.

I once obtained of Brooks a 4-inch vase with a gros bleu ground and painted with birds, without a mark, and sold to me as Worcester. I took it to be SÈvres from the peculiar unctuous appearance of the paste and the method of treatment; and I remain of the same opinion. Mortlock shewed me two cups, asking me not to look at the marks, and to tell him what they were. One was SÈvres and the other a Staffordshire copy. The paste and the bird on the latter betrayed its origin.

It seems strange that the SÈvres of a certain epoch should be valuable beyond all comparison with other porcelain, that of France included, and that the modern manufacture, indeed the whole of this century’s work, should be so slightly esteemed. But the skill and taste lavished on that of the Louis Quinze, or even Seize, period are immense. It is different with Chelsea, Derby, and Worcester, of all of which you may have examples of early date of poor, as well as of fine, quality. The SÈvres and Vincennes seem to have been more especially destined for rich patrons.

Brooks was an excellent judge of china, and fairly reasonable. But he sometimes, like most of us, committed mistakes, and sometimes overshot the mark as to price and value. He long had on view a cup and saucer with the gold anchor, which he had probably bought as Chelsea, and for which he demanded £12. It was a contrefaÇon by the wily Flemings of Tournay. I eyed with much longing a beautiful jug of Plymouth ware, but unsigned, which he estimated at the same figure; but I deemed it too high, and Brooks was not the man to give way as a rule. After his death, Reynolds of Hart Street obtained the piece, and sold it to me for a third of the amount.

With respect to Chelsea, Derby, and Worcester china it is necessary, as I have just hinted, to be aware that much of the early work is of poor paste and decoration, and that the date is not a guarantee or criterion. Of all these factories there are abundant specimens of coarse execution and cheap fabric, though undoubtedly of original and genuine character. The Chelsea figure of Justice, 12 inches in height, is, for instance, of two distinct types: the first very inferior to the later, which exhibits the result of the introduction of Italian, perhaps Venetian, workmen. The mark on this porcelain seems to be borrowed from Venice, and is common to the ware made in that city.

Somehow—perhaps in exchange—Mr Quaritch had on sale in the seventies a fine pair of old cylindrical Japanese jars, such as in the common modern ware they use as stick or umbrella stands; I cast amorous glances at them; but the holder demanded sixty sovereigns; and I retired. They were the only objects of interest and value in the lot.

Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul at Zurich had been advised by some one, that I was in possession of an old Zurich jug mounted in silver, and solicited leave to inspect it, as he was engaged on a history of the porcelain factory at that place. I let him see my piece, which was not silver-mounted, but was far more interesting and important, because it had the original china hinge. My visitor averred that he had never met with any similar example, and expressed his anxiety, if I cared to part with it at any time, to become the purchaser. I mentioned that I had been foolish enough twenty years before to give £6, 10s. for it. He stated his readiness to pay £10, and would, I dare say, have doubled the offer; but I declined.

While Waller the bookseller was still in Fleet Street, knowing me to be interested in old china, he shewed me one day upstairs in his private apartments a French cup and saucer, which had been given to him in Paris, and which, according to the donor, had formerly belonged to that misconstrued enthusiast Robespierre. It struck me, I own, as of somewhat later date; it was uninscribed; and of course relics of this class are unlike books in not carrying on their face any valid or satisfactory evidence of their origin and prior fortunes. Waller meant kindly in letting me see his curiosity, and I offered no comment. Credentials I discerned none.

An unhappy acquisition here was one, which I owed to my indiscreet interference with things, which I did not understand. I bought of Waller for £5 a series of plaister casts of medals in a box, and subsequently parted with the lot for precisely as many shillings. I fared nearly as ill in a case, where I took of Stibbs of Museum Street a worm-eaten xylographic block, which placed it in my power to convert five guineas into two; and I fear that the buyer at the lower figure did not bless me. It was some modern fabrication ingeniously executed on a riddled square of ancient wood.

I saw the last of the Diamond collection, when it was offered at Sotheby’s. There was a considerable attendance; but the company was not a strong one, nor was the property. The doctor had preferred multa to multum. There was a large mass of specimens, curious and quaint, and a few handsome pieces, but nothing capital, no productions, which bore accentuation. The affair was the converse of the Fountaine one, where the quantity was limited, the quality magnificent, princely. Naturally the quotations corresponded. The best price was obtained for a lot, which was not in the category of porcelain or pottery. It consisted of a couple of Gothic crowns of Victoria, 1847, which, as Diamond told me, had been presented by Wyon to him, and which were in the original case. They were proofs, but of the ordinary type, and they realised eighteen guineas. If they had belonged to one of the rare varieties, that of 1847 with the dÉcolletÉe bust, or the one dated 1853, they would have still been extravagantly dear.

I remember Cockburn the Richmond silversmith mentioning to me that a customer, who owed him £6, begged him as a favour to take the amount in Gothic crowns, of which he handed him twenty-four unused. There was a ridiculous notion, that the graceless florin was rare, and Diamond inquired about it of Hugh Owen, author of the monograph on Bristol china, and cashier of the Great Western Railway. The following Sunday Owen came down to Twickenham with a small cargo of them.