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.

CHAPTER XIII

My numismatic haunts and providers have not, especially of late, been numerous. I once took a small lot of a house in Rathbone Place—a silver medaglia of Marguerite de Foix, Marchioness of Saluzzo, 1516, which came from Lyons, and a bronze piece of Ragusa in Sicily, found in the island of Sardinia, with others. But Messrs Lincoln & Son were my earliest furnishers, and they, with MM. Rollin & Feuardent of Paris, Messrs Spink & Son of London, and Mr Schulman, of Amersfoort, have mainly contributed to build up my unpretending cabinet.

The influence of Messrs Lincoln & Son in forming my taste was more or less considerable. Their stock was miscellaneous, and I perhaps incautiously suffered it to reflect itself in my collection. The firm indeed, after a while, thought that my lines were too general, for whatever series they put on view from time to time gave up its choicer elements to me; and eventually my good friends perceived that, although I was certainly not a specialist in one sense, I was in another. I took only the best; and this proved an invaluable safeguard.

For, by making a hard and fast rule, that no coin whatever shall be admissible in the presence of a defect or of imperfect condition, one shuts out the bulk of the objects submitted to notice. A thousand average lots in a dealer’s hands are not apt to yield above five per cent. of eligible purchases, which are not duplicates. In a continental stock the proportion would be much lower. The gold coins do not so signally fail; it is in the inferior metals, especially the billon and copper, that the difficulty lies.

I emerged, it is fair to own, from my researches and selections at the Lincoln establishment without serious damage or trouble, considering that I entered into relations with the house as a perfect stranger, and was in my numismatic infancy. They began, as time went on, to see that I was in earnest, and would at length scarcely allow me to buy any article likely to appear on farther examination unsatisfactory; and by a few exchanges of early acquisitions, on which they were generous enough to let me lose nothing, I stood in the end better than I perhaps deserved. Mr Lincoln has told me that he started on his numismatic career by advertising on the back page of the catalogues of his father, who was a book seller, a short list of coins on sale by him at the same address.

The strength and spirit, which the father infuses into his child, the latter is now and then prone to use against the giver; and I am afraid that I have appeared ungrateful to my original source of supply—in fact, my dry-nurses—inasmuch as I outgrew by insensible degrees their power of satisfying my wants, and directed my attention elsewhere.

Messrs Lincoln & Son filled in the groundwork of my scheme, and continue to fill up gaps at intervals; but it was impossible for me to shut my eyes to the fact, that the rate of progress, which my numismatic studies were attaining, rendered a restriction to a single firm out of the question. I could never have committed to writing my Notes, imperfect as they may be, on the Coins of all countries and periods with certain exceptions, had I not left the original groove, and entered the market, prepared to avail myself of every particular, which was to be gleaned both at home and abroad, alike in the shape of information, correction, and addition.

It was through the Lincolns I became acquainted with Mr Atkins, author of the two works on Tokens and Colonial Coins, and he introduced to me the name of Schulman of Amersfoort. This was about ten years since; and the result was that Schulman thenceforward sent me periodical consignments for selection and his well-compiled catalogues. From this quarter I derived, rather contrary to the expectation which I had been led to form, a highly valuable assortment of coins at fair prices. I surmise that a considerable proportion of my correspondent’s picked acquisitions has found its way to me. His parcels from season to season embraced an alarming and chronic percentage of hopeless specimens, notwithstanding my exhortations to him to be more select; and I am persuaded that this circumstance proceeded from the sender’s inability, in common with all the continental dealers, to distinguish and appreciate condition, as he has often offered a proof at a slight advance on the figure asked for an ordinary and mediocre example.

Schulman has been during his career in the constant habit of falling in with a variety of continental coins, which are scarcely ever seen in England; and as a rule his tariff is moderate enough—not quite so moderate, perhaps, as it used to be, especially the fine early copper, since he discovered my partiality for it.

But I feel nevertheless that my collection owes a great deal to my Amersfoort correspondent. Our business has been necessarily conducted by letter. In 1889 I was at Utrecht, and went over to his place. I had previously called, when I was at Amsterdam, at Bom’s, and there I was shown the priced catalogue of a quite recent local auction. Against a silver daalder of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, of an excessively rare type, I observed my friend’s name as the purchaser for 105 gulden, and the first object which met my eyes in Schulman’s room was this very piece. I took it in my hand. ‘Ah!’ cried he, ‘that won’t suit you; I want 150 gulden for it.’ I laid it down again, implying in my manner a sort of apology. I made a few purchases, and left him.

He subsequently inserted the daalder in a catalogue at 135 gulden. He had tried the higher sum without success. I did not take any notice, and forgot all about it, till in a parcel sent on approval this was one of the items, the price 100 gulden. Allowing the usual discount, the piece remained with me at 90. I always cherished a suspicion that it was put into the sale in the Spuistraat by Master Schulman himself, and bought in.

My good friend acquired for me at Amsterdam a ¼ stuiver of Batavia, 1644 which he reported to me as beau. When it reached my hands, I was not altogether satisfied, nor did he reassure me, when he stated that my specimen was far finer than those in the museums at the Hague and at Batavia. The ¼ is considerably rarer than the ½. Schulman once advertised an example of the former at 10 gulden or 16s. 8d., describing it as ‘de toute beautè’; but I missed it.

I have had repeated arguments both with Schulman and Bom on the subject of a rather numerous and important class of Dutch coins, which almost habitually present themselves fleur de coin. I used to contend that these are re-strikes; but I have been assured over and over again that the Netherlands Government will not suffer any of the ancient dies to be employed for this purpose, and that they are jealously guarded at Utrecht. Schulman added, that he had endeavoured in vain to prevail on the authorities to allow him to take a few impressions of certain patterns of Louis Napoleon, which were never issued, and are almost unknown.

Like many of his foreign confrères, Schulman undertakes the compilation and conduct of sales by auction, and favours his clients with the catalogues. I have taken the line, under these somewhat delicate circumstances, of simply mentioning that if such or such a lot answers the printed description, and fetches so much or thereabout, I shall not object to it. I put no questions as to ownership; they do not concern me at all. I listen to a variety of tales about artificial sales and fictitious names; but the grand point is, that a coin is a coin, and if it is sold under unpropitious surroundings, it is likely to prove cheaper, and where it is misdescribed, it returns whence it came.

It was while I was at Utrecht, that I hunted through a huge mass of rubbish in the shape of obsolete currencies, and found at the conclusion that my bill only came to three-halfpence for a most beautiful double liard of Maria Theresa, struck for the Austrian Netherlands in 1749.

I had an interview at Brussels with a very pleasant fellow, who keeps, or at least kept, a curiosity-shop near Ste. Gudule. He had a few patterns and other pieces belonging to the first French revolutionary era, which I was glad to secure, and some bracteates, for which he asked £5, and as to which my courage failed me a little. I feared that they were too dear. He wrapped them up carefully, and said, ‘Take them with you, and if you do not care for them, let me have them back again.’ I had to return them with my acknowledgments, which were sincere. My misgivings were correct.

Once for all, it is well to explain that any ostensibly egotistical details, which are here given, have for their motive the guidance and enlightenment of new enterers on the scene, with which the writer has during nearly twenty years been agreeably and profitably familiar. If I had not exercised discretion in my relationship with foreign houses, I might have been overwhelmed by an avalanche of worthless rubbish, the refuse of the auctions. But by keeping a watchful eye and a tight hand over myself, as it were, I have retained only a limited residuum, which answers my purpose best on every account. The plan affords me illustrations in the best state of all the European schools of numismatic art, ancient, mediæval, and modern, no less than medallic portraits of the most celebrated men and women of all ages; and I ask the question advisedly: What advantage accrues to a private collector from possessing every minute variety of type, every mint-mark, and every date? The idea is surely a fallacy. The Mint and other public institutions may fitly preserve them for reference and record; but for individuals they appear to be surplusage.

Schulman obliged me with a set of his catalogues, about thirty in number, issued between 1880 and the present time, and I found them fruitful in suggestions. They are not bare lists, but, where it is needful, carefully annotated; and in the unavoidable absence of some originals I have experienced from them and other similar compilations the greatest assistance. The method, which the continental houses pursue in drawing up their accounts of the property on sale by auction or otherwise, constitutes the result a work of permanent reference and authority. Such is especially the case with those specified in the Bibliography to the Coin Collector, 1896. They are of course secondary evidences; but where one cannot describe a coin from the coin they are admirable, and in general trustworthy, substitutes. Our English numismatic catalogues are improving, but still lack the profuse and laborious detail, which is extended on the continent even to lots of minor significance.

I was brought into contact with the English representative of the Paris firm of Rollin & Feuardent in a perfectly accidental way. I had detected in a forthcoming sale at Sotheby’s, among a heap of miscellanies in a bag, a well-preserved double in piedfort of Henry III. of France. I pointed it out to Lincoln; but he missed it, and Mr Whelan was the acquirer. It was destined for a client, and I did not secure it; but the matter made Mr Whelan and myself acquainted, and we have been very pleasantly so ever since. His father was in the same line of business before him, and knew Edward Wigan and other men of that generation. I have already observed that the Agency in Bloomsbury is the resort of well-nigh all the most eminent hunters, not only for coins and medals, but for antiquities of every description.

It is not that I am able to speak of myself as a conspicuous figure in the circle, which frequents this spot, or as an appreciable element in the large mercantile transactions, which are conducted here and at headquarters. But I am indulgently tolerated, and now and then I find a trifle or two to my liking. Mr Whelan stands in due awe of my excruciating and almost outrageous passion for state, and looks upon me (with much good-nature) as a most difficult party to please and to fit. He is fully aware, how narrow my means are, and seldom tenders me, except as a compliment or for numismatic purposes, his grander bijoux. Yet in all my series there are some few, which I highly prize, and which came to me thence; and I may particularise a very rare British copper coin of Cunobeline, which brought £7, 17s. 6d. at the Montagu sale, but cost its former possessor £40, 10s. This fact did not appear in the catalogue.

The last time I met Mr Montagu was at Mr Whelan’s. I shewed him two pieces which I happened to have just had from Schulman; one was the Campen imitation of the gold sovereign of Mary I. of England, and far scarcer than the original; and Montagu admired them both. A few weeks, and he was no more. We had met at the Numismatic Society’s Rooms, where I attended a meeting as a guest; and I recollect Montagu pulling out of his pocket for my inspection a coin he had exhibited that evening to the members and others present. It was the unique half George noble of Henry VIII. discovered by Curt the dealer at Paris, sold by him to the Rev. Mr Shepherd for £90, and at the Shepherd sale in 1885 acquired by its late owner for £255.

The Montagu cabinet was naturally rich in pedigree coins, and had, I believe, all the English, although not all the Greek, rarities. It even possessed the five-broad piece of Charles I. by Rawlins, which fetched the extraordinary sum of £770. Spink & Son secured it at that price, and sold it to the British Museum for 10 per cent. profit. I was tempted by the Edward VI. half-crown and threepence, and by the James I. silver crown of the Quæ Deus type, which had been Bergne’s and Bryce’s, and which I preferred to the Exurgat one as superior in tone, while it was nearly equal in preservation.

The five-broad piece is said to have been given by the King on the scaffold to Archbishop Juxon; it is a pattern, and apparently unique. The type resembles that of the ordinary broad, of which there are impressions in silver. I have one of unusually medallic fabric.

I heard an odd story of a F.N.S. to whom some ignorant correspondent offered the noble itself—a piece of great value—and who pronounced it worth 6s. 8d.—the current rate at the time of issue, about 1528. The Forster example in 1868 fetched £17, 17s.

A rather distressing incident occurred to ‘Pedigree’ Wells of Piccadilly during his absence one day from business. He had in his window a coin advertised as ‘a three-pound piece of Charles I.’ to which the astute owner attached no price, leaving that detail to be regulated by the circumstances. A person entered the shop, and saw Mrs Wells, who was unversed in numismatic subtleties, and laying down £3, said, ‘I will take that coin in the window,’ which accordingly he did, greatly to Wells’s satisfaction, no doubt, and to the promotion of domestic harmony.

The hero of this small anecdote owed his sobriquet to his fertility of resource in providing his fine-art acquisitions with a genealogical tree.

We had a controversy in Bloomsbury on one occasion about a gold Athenian stater sent to me on approval. All gold Athenian staters are ipso facto doubtful. Whelan condemned it. Canon Greenwell, who was present, was not sure. I shewed it to Dr Head; and he supported Whelan. The coin was returned. At another time I obtained from a dealer who avouched, and still avouches, it to be absolutely genuine, a gold ῆμίεκτον of the same State; and at this Whelan equally shook his head. But I took it to be right, and retained it. The fact is, that the Athenians struck gold very sparingly, and there have been modern attempts to supply the deficiency.

One leading inducement to fabricate pieces lacking in series or of signal rarity has been the cheapness of labour and the more limited conversance with the discrepancies between originals and copies or absolutely fictitious examples, partly arising from the absence of means of communication among numismatists in various countries. These inventions or contrefaçons were calculated, again, for different markets. The false gold staters of Nicomedes II. of Bithynia, which are executed with unusual skill, and the far less clever imitations of the Athenian gold, could only answer the purpose, where they found an English or French customer able to pay a handsome price for the means of supplying a hopeless or almost hopeless lacuna in his Greek cabinet. But those of such common coins as the tetradrachms of Athens or Alexander the Great appealed rather to still more inexperienced buyers, whom a low figure was apt to tempt; and these even occur plated or washed with silver.

Whelan once amused me and himself by submitting to atmospheric treatment a large copper coin of the Two Sicilies—a 10-grana piece of Ferdinand IV. 1815. He offered it to me, and I declined it, because the surface was unsatisfactory in my eyes. He said nothing; but about three months later he brought it to me from a window sill, where it had been taking an aërial bath of rather prolonged duration; and the effect was certainly surprising. All the repellent aspect of the superficies had vanished. I took it, and laughed, when he told me that there was only a shilling to pay for a quarter’s incessant scientific manipulation.

I have been studiously frugal in my adoption of Oriental coins, because, frankly speaking, I have no faith in them as an investment. But I have retained a few early acquisitions, including a square gold mohur of the Emperor of Hindostan, the famous Akbar, and a dinar in the same metal of the good caliph, Haroun el Reschid. Whelan helped me to both these. The latter formed part of a parcel of such pieces, the property of a Parsee at Calcutta, and sold in London. The dinars of El Reschid were rather numerous, and were not recognised. The British Museum got several, and I got the finest. How were the public to guess that they were connected with so celebrated a personage, when the catalogue described them as of El Reschid?

There also remains with me a gold dinar of the 13th century, of the last Caliph of Bagdad. My learned friend, Mr Michael Kerny, deciphered for me many years ago the inscriptions in the older Arabic character in the inner circle on either side. They read: Praise to God Mohammed the Apostle of God God bless him and protect the Imăn there is no God but God only He has no Peer al Mustansir b—illah Prince of the Faithful by the grace of God.

An ill-starred Swede visited England, or rather London, several years ago, and endeavoured to find a customer for a rather weighty package of old currency of the Northern Kingdoms, which he had borne with him across the sea, and after fruitless essays elsewhere he tried Whelan. The latter did not see his way, and the stranger re-embarked for his native country with his burden, so to speak, on his back. On the floor in Bloomsbury Street, however, he left two small pieces (schillings of Christian IV. 1621 and 1622), which, as Whelan had no idea who he was, or what his address, he presented to me.

He gave me, too, a fine 5-lire piece of Napoleon I. 1808, struck at Milan. What a gain it is to be thought poor and deserving!

Many have been the good turns, many the valuable hints and items of information, and many, again, the pleasant hours, which I have spent in Bloomsbury Street. There is a huge black cat there, which is very friendly with habitual visitors; it used to make a practice of squeezing itself into Sir John Evans’s bag, and remaining there, while he stayed.

At Bloomsbury Street is one of my numismatic libraries of reference, to which I have long enjoyed free access. The custodian is not only well versed in coins and other curiosities, but is a reader and a repository of much entertaining literary and theatrical anecdote. I know that I take more than I give; but Whelan now and again consults me about an old book or a continental coin, which he does not happen to have seen.

I owed to my excellent acquaintance my introduction to Lord Grantley, whom I first met under his roof and from whom I have received kind help in my work and otherwise. His lordship, however, does not quite follow the same lines as I do. He is understood to be engaged in deciphering and elucidating the Merovingian or Merwing series—one, about which we have learned a good deal of recent years, and have a good deal more, I apprehend, to discover.

I knew the late Mr Cockburn of Richmond in consequence of having met him at Dr Diamond’s at Twickenham House. He was a Fellow of the Numismatic Society, and when I first became acquainted with him possessed a small cabinet. He hinted at an intention of discontinuing the pursuit, and even of realising. He next offered me the collection for £800. I had to let him understand that I had not so much money to spare; but I ascertained that he had been a buyer in bygone years, and had certain desirable items in his hands. I timidly inquired whether it would be possible to select a few desiderata, and Mr Cockburn agreed to that proposal. He had many coins in poor state, and many which were duplicates; and by concentrating my strength, such as it was, on the best things, I procured for about £70 nearly all that I wanted. Two Anglo-Saxon pennies which puzzled me a little, and as to which the British Museum authorities did not give me a reassuring opinion, I unfortunately missed. The residue Cockburn sold en bloc to Montagu, and when the latter parted with the said two pennies in a sale of duplicates, I had the satisfaction of seeing them printed in the catalogue in capital letters! They might have come to me at £2 the couple. I thanked the British Museum, and applauded its discrimination.

It appears, by the way, to be almost going too far to say that the portrait on the later groat and on the shilling of Henry VII. is the earliest resemblance of an English king as distinguished from a conventional representation; for surely the bust on the groats of Richard III. makes a distinct movement in the same direction; and even on the money of Edward IV. there is discernible a commencing tendency to realism.

Apart from the English coins, Cockburn had purchased in the course of time about eighty Roman second brass, which he insisted on selling in the lump, although I frankly told him, that very few would suit me. I gave him £5 for them, selected a dozen or so of the finest, and let Lincoln have the remainder for £4, 7s. 6d.—his own valuation.

Cockburn did not seem to sell for profit, and I admired his independence. He professed to pass on to me at cost price. For the sovereign of Edward VI. (4th year) he had paid £5 to Lincoln; it was f.d.c.; and for an equally fine Biga farthing of Anne he charged me on the same principle 26s. Other pieces, as the half-groat of Mary I. at £8 and the pattern shilling and sixpence of the Commonwealth by Blondeau at £16, struck me as dear enough. For eight varied cunetti in mint-state he charged 16s. His Anglo-Saxon pennies were not unreasonable; Harthacanut at £3 was the highest; a halfpenny of Edmund of East Anglia was judged to be worth £1.

Had not Montagu swooped down on the quarry, I might have left yet less behind me in a few weeks. I was snugly nibbling at it.

The name, which deserves on some grounds the greatest prominence in these numismatic memorials—that of Spink & Son—not inappropriately crowns the list of my auxiliaries and caterers. I cannot recollect the precise circumstances, under which I first approached the firm—then in Gracechurch Street only; but I quickly discovered its enterprising spirit and friendly sentiment. It was a house, which had not at that period—about 1886—long devoted special attention to the numismatic side; and through the possession of capital it rapidly came to the front. The stock of coins of all kinds grew in a marvellously short time only too varied and abundant, and under the auspices of Spink & Son, who behaved toward me as a person in humble circumstances with the utmost generosity and kindness, my collection developed in such a degree as to become almost serious, considering that this was another new outlet for my limited funds, and the largest of all. I had originally conceived the notion, which soon enough proved itself a chimerical one, that by investing my pocket-money to the extent of £150 or so over a course of years in these instructive relics of the past I should satisfy all reasonable requirements, and pose as the owner of a rather conspicuous cabinet. My riper conclusions pointed to £4000 as the minimum, under the most advantageous and careful management, for a representative gathering like mine in first-rate state, an amount equivalent with good husbandry to £10,000 under normal conditions, where folks exercise too little circumspection, or are in too great a hurry. The moral may be, that no man should mount a hobby in the dark. I have persevered, where many would have, I am sure, despaired. But I imagine that the motive for early relinquishment is not by any means the unexpected outlay so often as the distaste arising from errors of judgment and the annoying sense of imposition. The cost to myself in labour and thought has been quite equal to that in cash; but I have thus steered clear of the dangers, which beset inexperienced and desultory collectors. If you lean upon other people’s knowledge, you have to buy two articles instead of one.

This thesis has no immediate bearing on Spink & Son, who never urged me to purchase anything against my judgment, and were always prepared to exchange a coin, if I altered my mind about it. They certainly put aside all pieces likely to be of interest to me, but the interest was not invariably commercial. It might be an example, which I desired to register, just as I was in the habit of doing with Early English Books; and when I had taken my note, and did not care to invest, the bargain was open to the next comer.

A signal feature and facility in transactions here I have found to be the prompt exhibition with the marked price of every purchase and all purchases within the briefest possible interval. Coins are no sooner acquired, than they are placed on view with the exception of certain specialities, which are temporarily laid aside, till one or two clients have had the opportunity of seeing them. I have long rather undeservedly been on this favoured list; and I believe that no coin, thought to be in my way, has been sold during some years past, till I have refused it. I had the unexpected good fortune to meet here with the thaler of Nicholas Schinner, Bishop of Sion, 1498, absolutely f.d.c., and the Kelch thaler of Zurich, 1526, nearly as fine. The Zurich thaler of 1512, with the three decapitated martyrs, was reported from Germany, and alleged to be in mint state; but when it arrived, I identified it with the indifferent example in the Boyne sale, and of course rejected it accordingly. Such coins as these have a future.

I had put in my pocket, and taken home, just prior to the issue of the monthly catalogue, a gold Russian coin attributed to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, one of the numerous suitors of our Queen Elizabeth; but it was a century later. Still I might have liked it, had not a telegram from Russia arrived, and induced me to surrender the piece to some one, who evidently felt a peculiar interest in it. I was less considerate to the Prince of Naples, who is forming a private cabinet, and who ordered a rare grosso of the Roman republican era (13th century), which I had forestalled. It was fleur de coin, and I could not make up my mind to let it go, even to so exalted a personage. The most striking point is, that I had merely signified my wish to have the coin, and that Spink & Son might have sent it to the Prince, on the plea that I had not actually bought it.

I occasionally have the pleasure of making my good friends a slight return for their consideration. They had obtained at a sale for fifty shillings in a lot two examples of the very rare mezzo scudo struck in 1530 in the name of the Florentine Republic with the monogram of the Standard-Bearer for the year, just prior to the establishment of the Medici family in power. They shewed both to me, and permitted me to select the better for 30s. I then pointed out that at the Rossi sale in 1880 one had fetched £10, 5s., and recommended them to mark the remaining specimen £7, 10s., at which figure a foreign dealer jumped at it. At the Boyne sale in 1896 a third was carried to £8, 10s. by the same individual. The piece is remarkable as the heaviest denomination so far struck in Florence in silver.

Piccadilly, to which the Coin and Medal Department has been transferred, constitutes my second library of reference, as Spink & Son have spared no cost to bring together all the most valuable and important numismatic books and catalogues in all languages. This has formed a largely serviceable and welcome element in my connection with the firm, and has conferred on me without the slightest expense all the advantages attendant on the personal possession of the volumes. The English collector of foreign coins has, as a rule, as slight an acquaintance with these rich sources of information as I should have had in the absence of such facilities.

The monthly Numismatic Circular has tended in a direct and an indirect manner to draw Spink & Son into closer touch with holders and purchasers of coins everywhere; and the prospect of being able to examine, if not to acquire in all cases, an incessant volume of these interesting monuments seems to me likely to go on improving. I shall return to the subject of the Circular in a succeeding chapter.

A characteristic injustice was perpetrated on this firm by a divine, who honoured it with an order for a certain early English silver penny, and to whom, though a stranger and in the country, the coin was sent, packed up in the customary manner, on approval. The reverend gentleman reported in due course that it arrived at his address broken in half, and declined to pay for it. There was no absolute plea of negligence in the method of enclosure; the client authorised its transmission to him; and he did not even propose to defray the cost or part of it. The dealers took him before the magistrate, and the latter decided in favour of the client on the ground that the coin was a very old one, and had lasted long enough. Verily, as there are land thieves and water thieves, there are paid magisterial owls as well as unpaid.

CHAPTER XIV