Hugh MacNair Kahler

“ For, with my own savings, one Christmas in the Arthur Period, I bought, as a gift to both parents in common, no less a treasure than a genuine Garfield toothpick-container—the miniature, in genuine pressed glass, of a silk hat, which, inverted, stood for a decade in the centre of our table on all occasions of state, and which, with its original content of toothpicks, including four showing signs of actual use, I reluctantly disposed of to the buyer for Queen Mary’s collection at a price which both modesty and my gentleman’s agreement forbid me to confess. ”

“ He lifted himself to see more clearly; was it—could it be—that he felt the yearning of those sundered parts, the shame and longing of the porte-chapeaux for that ravished becket? Had his sympathy, his passion for noisette à cheval refined his perceptions to a delicacy so incredible, so splendid? He dallied wistfully with the thought and put it from him. Not even Jambes des Femmes could have attained a receptivity so exquisite. ”

“ The antiquer first locates an antique-shop, which he does by walking along a street until he is struck in the nose by a peculiarly fusty odor, faintly resembling recently disinterred boots, and finds the proprietor sitting in a gloomy corner of the shop writing, or pretending to write, in a ledger and giving an excellent but unconscious imitation of a large spider observing the approach of a juicy bluebottle fly. ”

“ Are you mad, signore? It is robbery! The thing is good for nothing! It would be dear at sixty lire!”
“Signore,” declares the dealer earnestly, “your words are an insult. That Pope is worthy of a museum. Look at it, signore! In the large establishments you would pay six thousand lire for it. Signore, I am experienced in the buying and selling of antiques. In selling it at six hundred lire, I am giving it away.”
The customer shakes his head pityingly. “Poor little one,” says he, “that Pope’s head is a forgery. It probably cost six lire. In buying it at all you must have fallen among thieves.” ”

“ The 14th of February is a red-letter day in the history of antiques and antiqueing; for the exhaustive researches and diligent labors of the members of the Academy have not only awakened untold numbers of people to the refining value of something really old, but have cleared up those highly important [viii] moot points; that is, when does a thing cease to be merely old and become an antique; and when is an antique not an antique? ”

“ I am sure that if G—— had persisted in continuing her search for the missing cup-plate, even though she had to travel on crutches, she would eventually have been successful. Therefore I say that the secret of antique-collecting is persistence.
It is persistence that brings to light the unexpected treasure. It is persistence that effects unexpected results. It is persistence that enables the antique-collector to secure for fifty cents or one dollar a genuine antique that is worth from one hundred to five hundred dollars until it is put up for sale at an auction, when it isn’t worth so much. ”

“ A golden-brown glow on a painting is a sign that it was painted back in those good old roistering, swashbuckling days when the most sincere fighters and the noisiest drinkers wore lace frills around the bottoms of their short plush sport-clothes. ”

“ The average Italian antique-dealer will crowd into a given space, say, four wooden candlesticks made to represent four angels, two or three Venetian glass mirrors, a Savonarola chair, seventeen pieces of china, three wooden chests containing fifty-six square feet of surface and eleven miles of worm-holes, a dozen venerable and tattered altar cloths, made by ancient weavers and embroiderers in Naples in 1919, and a few wrought-iron odds and ends removed from a palace in the purlieus of Pisa by a prominent palace-wrecker. ”

“ Eben S. Twitchett has. Time, the great revealer, shall one day let in full light on the storerooms where his treasures are laid down, to-day as yesterday. What will Time see there? Ah, that is for each forward-looking antiquer to determine for himself. I cannot bring myself to share too many of my secrets, even now. And the true antiquer would regret a guidance too exact; the allure of the avocation lies, for the select few who find the true spirit of the art, [26] in the very element of doubt. One may lay down the wrong thing; it may never achieve the quality of an antique. ”

“ The latter shops, of course, are of the greatest importance to the itinerant or catch-as-catch-can antique-hunters; for it is only in them that one stumbles on something rare and costly that has lain hidden in a shop-corner, regarded by the shopkeeper as a mere piece of junk—something, for example, like one of Marie Antoinette’s crown jewels or a piece of genuine fifteenth-century arras tapestry or one of Henry the Eighth’s marriage certificates or a coal scuttle which was used by Madame du Barry—something that can be bought for a dollar and a quarter and sold for ten thousand. ”

“ What could be simpler and yet more beneficial to the patron than to add the signature of an Old Master to a painting and let the patron discover it for himself? Many of the most priceless Old Masters in existence have reached America in this way, and many a millionaire’s home would be a gloomier place to-day were it not for this simple but pleasure-giving little device.
There are certain technical points about antique-collecting in Europe that are easily picked up by the antique-collector in two or three years’ time.
Venetian glass, for example, breaks more readily than ordinary glass. ”

“ And the portraits which are on sale in every Parisian antique-shop are sometimes most valuable because the general unpleasantness of the aristocrats which they represent serves to make every beholder wonder why the French Revolution didn’t start exterminating aristocrats about a hundred years sooner.
At any rate, the superior shop-filling ability of the Italian dealers is one reason why it is far easier to indulge one’s passion for antiqueing in Italy than in France. ”

“ It is a mistake to clutter, as even the most cadavre of amateurs is aware. A touch here; a touch there—and for the rest, no cluttering! I have always considered the Metropolitan Museum a dismaying example of cluttering. One work of art is enough for one room. When I remodelled the Rockford collection of Chinoiseries I selected just one antique absinthe-colored jade Buddha, which was exactly an inch and three sixteenths in height, half an inch wide and three eighths of an inch in thickness. ”

“ Other antique-collectors cannot account for it; but he himself ascribes it to a trimonthly subcutaneous injection of the special furniture polish from his own laboratory. With the charming simplicity that always characterizes his speech and acts, he declares that if one wishes to place himself en rapport with an Indian, one lives like an Indian; if one wishes to familiarize himself with the gorilla, one lives the life of a gorilla as nearly as possible. ”

“ Although he has never lost interest in the borers, his early love for entomology has been abandoned in favor of his second love, antiques. He has devoted himself to the study of antiques with the enthusiasm which has always characterized the activities of the Kilgallen family. His tall, somewhat wooden figure and his rich mahogany-colored features—due, probably, to his somewhat eccentric but constant use of furniture polish as a face lotion—are familiar to antique-dealers from Odessa to Otaru and from Edinburgh to Eski-Shehir. His knowledge of antiques verges on the supernatural. ”

“ In his dreams he became a figure of romance, pinch-waisted, nobly whiskered, an illustration from a time-stained page of “Godey’s Lady’s-Book,” a man who could bear, with corseted grace, a name like Jambes des Femmes! ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to point out that the antique-dealer is usually thoroughly conversant with the value of his possessions, that being his chief business in life. Still, he sometimes makes a mistake, as do such highly respected oracles as Senator William E. Borah, David Lloyd George, and Benito Mussolini; and it should be the aim of every true antique-hunter to encourage him to make all that he can. ”

“ Let me say again, the Collector’s Eye overlooks nothing, and the great point is, not to follow the fad, but to anticipate it. There is not a single class of antiques that I did not collect long before the amateurs began to “pay prices” for such things, and I am now principally engaged in collecting the antiques of the future. I know better than anybody else what the priceless old things of the future will be, because I have formed the habit of picking them up at the time when they are thrown out. ”

“ Like me, they will stoop no longer to the facile, shameful processes of searching, in cobwebbed bins and attics, for antiques which any novice must recognize, at a glance, as old. Like me, they will even smile at the enthusiasms of those who scratch in the dust and crow, like barnyard fowl, at each inevitable discovery. ”

“ The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities counts itself fortunate to have secured the services of the world’s greatest expert on antiques in the preparation of this book and in the collecting of the enormous mass of data which is always open to any member of the Academy or to any antique-collector in good and regular standing. ”

“ Our Society hopes that when she gets the money she will endow us; and we have written her to that effect; but probably she is busy just now.
I myself found a gem of a pewter inkwell in a little Parisian shop one day, properly marked and battered and time-worn. It had a cylinder for ink, a cylinder for sand, and a space for pens; and its age was declared by the dealer to be one hundred and fifty years. By haggling exhaustively with him, I beat him down from one hundred francs to fifty francs, and bore off my prize in triumph. ”

“ He wanted more. I remembered my relic. This man, to my untutored eye, seemed artless and even a little contemptible—an opinion in which, I perceived, my mother concurred. [He possessed then, as now, that remarkable faculty of the gifted antiquer for convincing vendors of his complete simplicity.] I might persuade him, I reflected, that the bristles were human hair; it seemed unlikely that he [21] could be expert in such distinctions, unless he had been, like me, a barber’s son. I shall not soon forget his cry of joy as his eye fell on my scraper. ”

“ But a little matter of fifteen or twenty-five thousand dollars should be nothing to amateurs in antiques, especially when such sums are merely matters of conversation and cost the converser nothing at all.
The foregoing story, and the thousands of others like it that constantly go the rounds in Paris and Rome and other antique centres, are all true; but certain of the ignorant view them with suspicion. They should never be viewed with suspicion because all the people who tell them almost always state that they happened to friends of personal friends of theirs ”

“ Some of the most experienced antiquers carry little bottles of alcohol in their breast pockets; and when they are investigating a picture with great care, they slyly produce the bottles and surreptitiously pour alcohol over it in order to find out whether or not the colors run. If they run, the picture is new. If they do not run, the picture is old. So, at least, the experts say. The idea is excellent; but happily the dealers have learned that if they cover a painting with a sort of transparent glue, it will resist the action of alcohol and confound the experts. ”

“ Your prices, signore, would make a cow weep.”
“Then name me a price,” insists the proprietor. “Come, name it and let me hear.”
“Sixty lire!” shouts the customer defiantly.
“Sixty lire!” wails the proprietor. “Presence of the Devil, signore, I paid five hundred lire for that object. I am a poor man, signore, and the thief of a Government takes everything away in taxes—the luxury tax and the tax for the wounded and the export tax. One must live. Come, signore, give me five hundred and fifty lire and take it.”
“Madonna!” cries the customer in a rage. ”