William Carew Hazlitt

Coins—Origin of My Feeling for Them—Humble Commencement—Groping in the Dark—My Scanty Means and Equally Scanty Knowledge, but Immense Enthusiasm and Inflexibility of Purpose—The Maiden Acquisition Sold for Sixteenpence—The Two Earliest Pieces of the New Departure—To Whom I first went—Continuity of Purchases in All Classes—Visit to Italy (1883)—My Eyes gradually opened—Count Papadopoli and Other Numismatic Authorities—My Sketch of the Coins of Venice published (1884)—Casual Additions to the Collection and Curious Adventures—Singular Illusions of the Inexperienced—Anecdotes of a Relative—Two Wild Money-Changers Tamed—Captain Hudson—The Auction-Thief—A Small Joke to be pardoned.

I started as a numismatist by the merest accident in 1878, at the precise juncture when, owing to the sudden death of Mr Huth, I was concluded by my well-wishers to be on the brink of ruin. My son, who was then quite a little fellow, had had a first-brass Roman coin presented to him by a gentleman, whose intentions were excellent; and shortly after a relative, who had kept by him in a bag a number of ‘butcher’s’ pennies of George III. and a few other miscellaneous pieces, and who was profoundly anxious to throw them away, made a free gift of the whole collection to the same recipient. I was naturally led to examine our treasure trove, not by the light of experience of coins, of which I had absolutely not a tittle, but by that of my knowledge of collateral and analogous matters, in which several years’ training had developed certain conclusions; and I soon formed a private estimate of the twofold donation unfavourable to the judgment of the late proprietors.

The youthful owner himself was not the master of any definite views on the subject. There was the bag and there its contents; and they remained for some time inviolate, while I was deliberating and instituting inquiries at intervals, myself a sheer tyro. I believe that in my strolls about the suburbs I added to the cabinet without greatly improving it. Mr Huth was no more; and the future was not reassuring. My early acquisitions went many to the shilling. I was not more than a lesson or so ahead so far of my boy and his kind friends. Of works of reference, despite my acquaintance with books, I knew nothing. Of those, who could have put me on the right track, I was equally ignorant. I do not think that I had heard of such an institution as the Numismatic Society. It was new ground, and I stood on the edge of it contemplatively, bag in hand—the bag not even strictly my own—with a wavering sentiment and with decreased resources—resources likely to decrease yet more. One morning chance led me, as I passed, to linger at the window of Messrs Lincoln & Son in New Oxford Street; and after a pause I went in. The result was momentous in this sense, that I saw at the shop mentioned a ‘butcher’s’ penny, which bore the same relation to the inmates of the bag as an immaculate copy of a book or a faultless piece of china bears to the most indifferent specimens imaginable; and I handed half-a-crown to Lincoln for his coin, which I took home with a rather full heart. We compared notes, and I privately meditated a coup. A few days after, our sixteen ‘butcher’s’ pennies and sundries just realised what I had given for the cornerstone of a New Collection; and I may say that at a distance of nearly twenty years I yet keep that piece, which has become a very difficult one to procure in unexceptionable state—far more so than the twopence of the same type and date.

My son and I thus acquired an assemblage of numismatic monuments represented only by an unit. But it was not very long, before I revisited Lincoln’s, and doubled the collection at one bound by buying a half-crown of Queen Anne for eight shillings and sixpence. These two were my earliest investments, when I seriously began; but I must explain that I was not only fettered by lack of courage and the apprehension of contracted means, but by the fact of being in partnership with my son in the venture. His pocket-money and savings partly contributed to the revised and enlarged scheme; and in the earlier stages I am sure that progress was hesitating and slow. In the end, the estate of my partner was swallowed up; and whatever funds were required came from the other member of the firm.

In the case of what was a pure hobby at first and long after its original commencement, it is impossible to lay down the exact chronological lines or the order, in which certain coins or series were acquired. The English and Roman long united to monopolise my attention; my son ceased, as he grew older, to manifest an interest in the subject; and I found myself invested with a paramount discretion, held in check only by very slender means of exercising it. I may as well add here, that I deemed it best, under the circumstances, to return the amount, which the retiring sharer in the concern had sunk in purchases; and I was thus at liberty to do as I pleased.

I am speaking of a period, which seems nearly prehistoric. It was about fifteen years since, that I took over the entire responsibility in this affair, and found myself in possession of coins of various kinds, chiefly selected at the emporium in New Oxford Street, and representing a considerable outlay. I had discerned the errors of others in collecting, but I had not failed to commit one or two myself. I conclude that it is a very usual oversight on the part of the novice to neglect to measure his ground, and lay his plan, beforehand; it was so with me; I bought rather at random coins, medals, and tokens; and even under these wide conditions I vaguely calculated that from £150 to £200 would place me in possession of a cabinet, capable of vying with most of those in existence.It has been from no wish to exaggerate the importance of the initiative taken in 1878 under a casual impulse, that I have written down the foregoing particulars. But as I have uninterruptedly persevered from that date to the present in enlarging and improving the collection, and in communicating the fruits of my researches to the public, it appeared worth while to put on record the facts connected with the formation and development of the new taste. There have been men, who have gained a rank as numismatists far higher than any to which I can aspire or pretend, whose beginnings at least were not less humble and not less fortuitous.

When I affirm that a single season suffices to exhaust the patience or enthusiasm of many an amateur, it will supply some indication of my earnestness, when I state that at the end of three years I had barely emerged from my novitiate. I still retained my loyalty to Lincoln, but I made occasional investments elsewhere. I had abandoned the ambitious notion of comprising medals and tokens in my range, but on the other hand, through the miscellaneous nature of Lincoln’s stock and his large assortment on sale of foreign coins, I conceived the possibility of admitting a few chosen specimens of the various Continental series. I resembled a ship without a compass; I had never had under my eyes any guide to this family of monuments, and I could only estimate its extent and cost from the selection put before me. How necessarily imperfect, nay fragmentary, that was, I did not learn till long afterward. The foreign section of the New Oxford Street stores constituted my Continental side in its first state, not so much as regarded condition, as variety and completeness. For somehow my furnishers began to understand my views touching character and preservation, and although I have throughout my career felt bound to change specimens from time to time, I apprehend that the preference for fine coins set in with me unusually early, and saved me from a good deal of loss and annoyance.

Under the auspices of the same firm I extended my lines to Greek coins. Lincoln happened to have placed on view about 2000 pieces in silver, and I took all that struck me as being within my standard—I forget how few. About the same time I added to them some in gold and copper. I thenceforward, during many years, was in the habit of selecting from the series immediately in hand whatever interested me, and this is another way of saying that my possessions were growing considerable. My grand safeguard was my peremptory principle of rejecting everything, no matter how rare or otherwise valuable, which did not rise to my fastidious qualification; and the greater the choice submitted to me, the more stringent became my application of the rule. It was in pure self-defence. My pocket-money, so to speak, was extremely limited; and I thus closed the door against a deluge of rubbish or of mediocre property. I laid down for my own government the paradoxical maxim, that if a poor man buys at all, he can afford to buy only the finest things. That is to say, he should never acquire what does not represent the outlay or, if possible, a profit on it. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a quicksand, and I saw no other practicable outlet in the event of realisation.

I farther satisfied myself that it was highly imprudent to engage in the purchase of Greek and Roman coins at inflated quotations, especially Greek silver and Roman second and third brass, in the face of the continual finds, which forced the prices downward, and reduced a specimen, perhaps, from £20 to £2 at a jump. There is absolutely no security for the buyer within these lines, and I make it my policy to wait, and complacently look on, while lots are adjudged to others at figures beyond my estimate. In the Greek copper and the Roman first brass in fine patinated state, one is tolerably safe. Of all the series I am fondest of the former, and indeed any early money in that metal, whether classical or continental, is my weak point, provided that it is as nearly fleur de coin as may be. An immaculate first brass of one of the more interesting Augusti or (better yet) AugustÆ, with a picturesque reverse, rejoices the eye; and it is no prejudice to it, if it is rare!

I remember that it was not long, before I rebelled in my own mind against the not uncommon practice of placing the Greek and Roman money on a footing of equality, and appreciated the discernment of those, who limited their researches to the former. For it struck me that, if you take out of the reckoning the republican series, which is really Hellenic in its origin and style, and a few early aurei and first and second brass recommendable by their personality or their interesting reverses, there is not such a great residuum of solid importance left behind. The mere rarities of the later period I do not count; they correspond to the Greek coinages, when the latter merge in the Asiatic types. But of the Greek of the fine and finest epochs alone there is more than enough to satisfy and impoverish half a dozen such collectors as myself, if we merely selected our favourites.

I had added to my cabinet a tolerably large number of foreign specimens, when I paid a short visit to Italy in 1883. Five years had passed since the episode of the butcher’s pennies, and since the day when I made my maiden purchase of Lincoln, and he with commendable discretion extended his hand for the money, before he surrendered the coin. We have learned to understand each other a little better, and he does not object to a running account.

I did not enjoy the opportunity of making exhaustive researches; but the localities, of which I gained experience, yielded little enough for my numismatic purposes. The Italian impressed one with the notion, that he not merely laid no stress on preservation, but did not comprehend to the full extent what it signified. I have a remembrance of having recrossed the Channel with a handful of examples, which I might better have left behind me, and which I have long since renounced. Some came from Milan, where I met with a most urbane individual, whose stock was principally Milanese, and very poor Milanese, too. At Venice I ascended a very dark and mysterious staircase leading out of the Piazza, with the highly unpleasant sensation that a poniard or a trap-door might be in reserve for me, when I was ushered by my conductor into an apartment, where I was invited to sit down and inspect sundry trays of gold coins. But the light was so dim, that I could not distinguish the state, hardly the type, and I ignominiously retired, putting down two lire, by way of footing, for a silver teston of Henry IV. of France.

Otherwise there was exceedingly little of any note, so far as my observation went. I obtained a coin or two at a depÔt on the Piazza and one or two knick-knacks at another, where there was the usual apocrypha about the total ruin of the seller by the acceptance of rather less than a moiety of the original demand. Venice is in this respect slightly Oriental. Sir Robert Hamilton gave me an entertaining account of his experiences at Constantinople, where he was asked the equivalent of a guinea for something, and at the conclusion of a protracted negotiation, crowned by a cup of coffee, the price descended to the clown’s ninepence.

It was three-and-twenty years, since I had posed as the historian of the Republic, and the sparing degree, in which I had been in the meantime enabled to secure specimens of its coinage, partly prepared me for the apparent difficulty of procuring this class of money in good state. I brought away from Venice itself absolutely nothing beyond a silver soldino of the fourteenth century doge Giovanni Dolfino; but at Milan and Bologna I succeeded in finding a couple of early gold ducats. I did not visit the Museum, nor was I so fortunate as to find Count NicolÓ Papadopoli at home.

I scarcely recollect how it happened; but I had heard of the Count as a prominent Venetian numismatist, and I threaded some of the less agreeable thoroughfares of the city, including the clothes-market, in search of his palatial residence on the Grand Canal. Both the Cavaliere his secretary and himself were absent; but I left my address, and ever since he has honoured me with his interesting and valuable publications on the theme, which he so well loves.

A jeweller in Bologna, of whom I took two or three pieces, offered me a double gold crown (doppio di oro) of Giovanni Bentivoglio II., the type without the portrait, for 150 lire. It seemed to me too dear. I was right. A year or two after, I got it in Piccadilly for less than half.

Some one referred me to Schweitzer’s exhaustive work on the Coins of Venice, and, Count Papadopoli sending me periodically his numismatic labours, I was encouraged to draw up the sketch of the ‘Coins of Venice,’ which appeared in the Antiquary in 1884, as part of a scheme for reproducing my History on an improved basis.

The advance of the subject by stealthy degrees to the foreground and to a conspicuous place in my studies and employments, had its agreeable and its serious aspect. It was a pursuit, which consumed time, and while it entailed endless outlay, yielded no return. Still I had such a genuine relish for it, that I did not allow myself to be disheartened. It may give some idea of my disinterested, perhaps enviable, ardour, if I mention that I revisited Milan, at the expense of a long detour, to get a silver coin of one of the Medici, which I considered on second thoughts worth having at nine lire. It served me a good turn, for when a London dealer seemed disposed to shed tears on discovering that an assistant had sold me a similar piece for the same money (7s. 6d.), I exhibited my prior purchase, and he was consoled. It exemplifies the singular nicety of appreciation among the experts, that a third and fourth came to me at a subsequent date at 8s. each. With others I have not been quite so happily placed. A party bought a scudo of Ferdinando I. dÉ Medici, 1587, in his cardinal’s dress, in a lot at a sale, and gave it up to me as a favour for 15s., which made him a present of the residue; I was the obliged, and said not a word. He assured me that the other items were worthless, yet he did not throw them in. I bowed and withdrew. I have ever found it so.

All my successive departures in this as in other doings have depended on chance. Both at home and abroad I have often stumbled unexpectedly on the means of filling a gap, and have quite as often congratulated myself on the command of just knowledge enough to avoid mistakes and snares. Not always. For I once found myself at St Peter’s, Guernsey, with nothing to do, and visited so often the only place in the town, where there was any semblance of coins, that I felt bound to pay my footing, and gave 10s. for a silver London penny of Ethelred II.—a very fine specimen, but a very common piece. I subsequently bought another of a different mint in London for 4s. I added the Guernsey acquisition to my travelling expenses, with a private determination to avoid for the future these pitfalls.

I never committed myself very seriously. At Brighton, strolling about I fell in with a Jew, who had a very fine early rupee, which on reference to his scales he estimated at eighteenpence. I bought elsewhere a greater rarity—a double rupee of the last century—for four shillings. One of the finest Anne farthings of the common Britannia type, 1714, which I have seen, was the fruit of a visit to a depÔt in Hastings, and the demand for it was not unreasonable—twelve shillings. At a corner shop in Bournemouth, the Hebrew proprietor was from home; but his consort waited on me. ‘Any old coins, madam?’ ‘Well, no,’ she thought not—yet, stay, she would shew me a shekel or two—family relics, and not for sale. She retired, and presently produced them. I told her that they must be of great and peculiar interest to her and her husband, and I disappointed her, I think, by not seeming eager to possess them. She muttered something sotto voce about seven guineas; whether that was a figure at which she would risk Mr ——’s displeasure by parting with each or all of the heirlooms, I do not know. They were all false.

The shekel, which belongs to my collection, once had a rather startling adventure. An acquaintance, a clergyman of the Establishment and an University man, asked leave to see it. I handed it to him, and as if he had cabman’s blood in his veins, he instantaneously placed it between his teeth. A significant gesture from me arrested his action. On taking his farewell he mentioned that he should shortly send one of his sons to look through my coins. I bowed, and I subsequently declined the proposed honour in writing. How could I tell that the teeth of the offspring might not be sharper than those of his intelligent papa?

The ignorance of the average man in everything, which does not concern his immediate calling, is well-nigh inconceivable. I held in my pocket an unusually well-preserved example of a bell-metal piece of the First French Revolution, when I was calling on a friend, who by training and descent should have acquired a tincture of conversance with such matters. He paid me the compliment of begging to be permitted to see the coin, eyed it for a moment, and then threw it across the table to me.

A relative, who was distinguished by his fulness and variety of information, and who, if he sinned, did so in the direction of not under-estimating the few relics which he personally owned, used to be fond of telling me, that he possessed a complete numismatic history of the Revolution in France, and when I appeared in the first instance curious on the subject, he displayed a handful of defaced copper or bell-metal pieces which, had they been better, represented only an instalment of a very large series.

The same gentleman had similarly acquired in the vicinity of Leicester Square at prices, which struck him as favourable to the buyer, some very rare and desirable examples of Greek numismatic art, including a Syracusan medallion or dekadrachm. On being informed with suitable delicacy that his purchases were forgeries, he was almost equally balanced between a sentiment of wrath against the vulgar broker, who had swindled him and a stealthy suspicion that his informant desired to wheedle him out of really valuable possessions.

He cherished some old halfpence of the early Georges, which he found in his boyhood in a hollow tree in Kensington Gardens. So far, so good. They were not coins; it was a strictly personal association. The interest died with him.

But two of the drollest accidents, which ever happened to me, succeeded each other on the same morning. I entered a money-changer’s in Coventry Street, and inquired for old coins. The bureaucrat was as short in his address as he was in his stature. ‘What did I want?’ ‘I did not know till I saw them.’ ‘He had no time to waste on such matters.’ I apologised for my intrusion; he looked at me, and then he pushed a bowl of money toward me. In a minute or so he joined me in a search, and we somehow entered into conversation. He found that I was literary. ‘Had I ever heard of Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon? It was his favourite book.’ I handed him ninepence, shook hands with him on the strength of his revelation, and departed, labouring to look grave.

I had no sooner emerged from that singular experience, than I encountered another. A party in Wardour Street had a similar inquiry put to him, and he laid before me an assortment of metallic monuments, which I investigated for some time without meeting with a solitary item worth pricing. On intimating so much in a polite manner, the owner impressed me with a persuasion that he intended to spring over the counter, and seize me by the throat; but I met the crisis by demonstrating the impossibility of purchasing duplicates and of always finding desiderata even in the choicest stocks; and his phrensy began to abate. He seemed a decent fellow—a watchmaker by his calling; and I pulled out my watch, and invited him to examine it. It required cleaning and regulating. ‘Clean it, and regulate it, then,’ said I, ‘and I will call for it in ten days.’ We parted on the best terms.

I have certainly obtained in the by-ways here and there, at home and abroad, occasional plums. I owed to a silversmith in London my £5 piece of Victoria, 1839, with a plain edge, without the Garter, and with the original reading. It cost me £8. 5s. But I have slowly arrived at the conclusion that the orthodox merchant is the most satisfactory on the whole—the safest and the cheapest.

When I was a boy, the Kenneys introduced me to Captain Hudson, a retired East India commander, who resided in one of the best houses at Notting Hill, while that locality was sufficiently agreeable and select. Hudson stands out in my retrospective view as the donor of some very special Guava jelly, and as the proprietor of a £5 piece of Victoria—of course of 1839. He shewed it to me as a great compliment one day, and it made me look upon him as a personage of unbounded wealth. Yes; it was very good on his part to let a little lad like me take it in his hand. I often think of Captain Hudson, and wonder, whether my specimen and his are the same.

The auction-thief is only too familiar a feature in the sale-rooms, where portable objects of value are exhibited. At one establishment there is a standing notice, inviting information as to more or less recent larcenies of property, which it becomes the privilege of the auctioneer to make good at a fair assessment. Books are perhaps the commonest and safest game, as the room is more frequently, prior to the commencement of the sale, left to take care of itself. But coins have been occasionally appropriated by enthusiasts, whose impatience precluded them from waiting, till the time came. One person used, during quite a lengthened period, to select with unerring judgment from every sale in Wellington Street the best lot, and when he was at last detected, his genuine ardour was shown by the fact, that the whole of his selections were found at his residence intact. It was really hard on the offender to place before him treasures, for which he might on demand have been prepared to sacrifice his little finger, and expect him to incur the risk of some one else carrying them off, unless he secured them beforehand. The firm dealt tenderly with him—no doubt, on this ground, and merely offered him a piece of advice, which was that he should not throw himself again in the way of temptation. The delicacy of the circumstances was appreciated by Messrs Sotheby and Co.At one of the coin-sales in Wellington Street four successive lots were purchased by Lincoln, Rollin, and Money, the last a term applied, where cash is paid down at the time. Lincoln bought the second as well as the first, and in the catalogue the entry was Do. Some one reconstructed the sequence, and made it run:

I crave pardon for this undoubted ineptitude.