BLESSED is the man who has a hobby! declared Lord 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, innocent recreation,” good old Isaac Walton said 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 mementos of bygone days, conscious that though the bait may be small, the catch may be large—besides, there is the fun of 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 collectors, 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 overthrown, 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 collections 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.” Anatole 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 entertainment, or of furnishing a pastime: it has its utilitarian one as well.

There is an undeniable and 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 become 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 pleasure 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. Rather, when he finds an object at hand, he considers it from many points of view—its historical value, its significance in the development 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 connoisseurship will depend upon knowledge. Those persons who are absolutely indifferent to the whys and wherefores 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 likely ever 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.”

Now, it often happens that we find a collector-in-embryo—one who has a desire to start a collection, but fancies it an undertaking requiring very special qualifications—asking: “How could I hope to become a collector when I know so little about the subject I think I should be interested in? Then I fear good things cost too much, and that real bargains have long ago vanished from the mart.” To such a 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 connoisseurship, just as it is one of its 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 at hand for study than he could learn, so far as helpful knowledge fitting him to judge is concerned, from volumes on the subject. While this contact with actual objects is necessary in developing a connoisseurship (one may have it visually in museums or have access to private collections; the shops, too, will teach one much), all the accessible writings on the subject should be consulted, as comparative study increases the interest and confirms or corrects one’s personal deductions and opinions.

Supremely fine examples of old furniture, china, silverware, bronzes, miniatures, and the like, have not often 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 collectors 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 art objects 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 discouraged. For instance, the author continually finds within the boundaries of New York city alone numerous objects that any collector of limited means could acquire with rejoicing heart. One day it is a yellow Wedgwood mustard-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 Umetada, signed, for half as much! It adds to the interest of collecting that while the collector soon learns where to look for things, he constantly meets with them also where they are least expected, and the country holds as many treasures hidden away for the keen collector as does the metropolitan stronghold.