show of tulips.—florists.—passion for rarities in england.—queen anne’s farthings.—male tortoise-shell cat.—collectors.—the king of collectors.
yesterday i went to see a show of tulips, as it is called, about three miles from town. the bed in which they were arranged, each in its separate pot, was not less than fifty varas in length, covered with a linen awning the whole way, and with linen curtains at the sides, to be let down if the wind should be violent, or the rain beat in. the first sight of this long gallery of flowers was singular and striking; and faint as the odour of the tulip is, the many thousands which were here collected 229together, formed a very perceptible and sweet fragrance. the few persons present were brother florists, or amateurs of the science, and the exhibitor himself was a character quite new to me. never before had i seen such perfect and complete enjoyment as this man took in his tulips; he did not seem to have a single wish, or thought, or idea beyond them; his whole business from one end of the year to the other was to nurse them up, and here they were in full bloom and beauty. the price of one, he told us, was twenty guineas, another only ten; some were forty, fifty, as high as a hundred; there was one on which no price could be set,—he did not know its value,—indeed it was invaluable. we saw julius c?sar, and the great mogul, and bonaparte, and st george, and the duke of marlborough. “this,” said he, “is poor louis xvi.;—here’s pompey;—that’s washington; he’s a grand fellow!” and he looked up in our faces with a feeling so simple, and so serious, 230that it was evident his praise was solely designed for the flower. i ventured to admire one, and, as you may suppose, only betrayed my ignorance; it was a vulgar flower, and had no name; they told me it was streaky, by which term they meant that it was veined with colours which spread into the white part of the leaf, and faded away;—the very thing for which i had admired it. it seems, the perfection of a tulip consists in its form; the lips of the cup should just incline inwards, and just be tipt with a colour which does not diffuse itself. when i knew their standard of perfection, i began to see with the eyes of a connoisseur, and certainly discovered beauties which would never have been perceptible to me in my state of ignorance.
he and his man, he told us, sat up alternately to watch the garden; yet, notwithstanding their vigilance, some thieves had got in a few nights before:—“the fools!” said he, “they took about fifty yards of the cloth before they were disturbed, 231but never touched one of the tulips.” his man appeared to be as devoutly attached to the pursuit as himself. i never saw such complete happiness, as both these men felt in beholding the perfections of their year’s labour, such sober and deep delight as was manifest in every word and gesture.—never let me be told again that the pursuit of happiness is vain.
the tulip mania of the dutch never raged in england, whatever you might imagine from this specimen; yet i have heard of one old gentleman who never was half a dozen leagues from his birth-place during his whole life, except once, when he went to holland to purchase roots. there may be amateurs enough to make it not an expensive pursuit for the florist; and perhaps the number of persons, who, like us, give a shilling to see the exhibition, may be sufficient to pay for the awning; but i should think it can never be pursued for profit. the carnation, the ranunculus, and the auricula, have each their 232devotees, who have meetings to exhibit their choice specimens, and prizes for the most beautiful. these bring those flowers to a wonderful perfection, yet this perfection is less wonderful than the pains by which it is procured. akin to the florists are the columbarians or pigeon-fanciers, and the butterfly-breeders or aurelians.—even as any thing may become the object of superstition, an onion or a crocodile, an ape or an ape’s tooth, so also any thing does for a pursuit; and all that is to be regretted is, that the ordinary pursuits of mankind are not as innocent as that of these experimental minorites or minims.
there is, perhaps, no country in which the passion for collecting rarities is so prevalent as in england. the wealth of the kingdom, the rapidity with which intelligence is circulated, and the facility with which things are conveyed from one end of the island to the other, are instrumental causes; but the main cause must be the oddity of the people themselves. 233there is a popular notion which has originated, heaven knows how, that, a queen anne’s farthing (the smallest coin they have) is worth 500l.; and some little while ago, an advertisement appeared in the newspapers offering one for sale at this price. this at once excited the hopes of every body who possessed one of these coins, for there are really so many in existence that the fictitious value is little or nothing. other farthings were speedily announced to be sold by private contract,—go where you would, this was the topic of conversation. the strange part of the story is to come. a man was brought before the magistrates charged by a soldier with having assaulted him on the highway, and robbed him of eight pounds, some silver, and a queen anne’s farthing. the man protested his innocence, and brought sufficient proof of it. upon further investigation it was discovered that some pettifogging lawyer, as ignorant as he was villainous, had suborned the soldier 234to bring this false accusation against an innocent man, in the hopes of hanging him, and getting possession of the farthing. unbelievable as you may think this, i have the most positive testimony of its truth.
another vulgar notion is, that there is no such thing as a male tortoise-shell-coloured cat. some fortunate person, however, has just given notice that he is in possession of such a curiosity, and offers to treat with the virtuosos for the sale of this rara avis, as he literally calls it. they call the male cats in this country thomas, and the male asses either edward or john. i cannot learn the reason of this strange custom.
the passion for old china is confined to old women, and indeed is almost extinct. medals are in less request since science has become fashionable; or perhaps the pursuit is too expensive; or it requires more knowledge than can be acquired easily enough by those who wish for the 235reputation of knowledge without the trouble of acquiring it. minerals are now the most common objects of pursuit; engraved portraits form another, since a clergyman some forty years ago published a biographical account of all persons whose likenesses had been engraved in england. this is a mischievous taste, for you rarely or never meet an old book here with the author’s head in it; all are mutilated by the collectors; and i have heard that still more mischievous collections of engraved title-pages have been begun. the book-collectors are of a higher order,—not that their pursuit necessarily implies knowledge; it is the love of possessing rarities, or the pleasure of pursuit, which in most cases actuates them;—one person who had spent many years in collecting large paper copies, having obtained nearly all which had ever been thus printed, sold the whole collection for the sake of beginning to collect them again. i shall bring home an english bookseller’s catalogue as 236a curiosity: every thing is specified that can tempt these curious purchasers: the name of the printer, if he be at all famous; even the binder, for in this art they certainly are unrivalled. the size of the margin is of great importance. i could not conceive what was meant by a tall copy, till this was explained to me. if the leaves of an old book have never been cut smooth its value is greatly enhanced; but if it should happen that they have never been cut open, the copy becomes inestimable.
the good which these collectors do is, that they preserve volumes which would otherwise perish; and this out-balances the evil which they have done in increasing the price of old books ten and twenty fold. one person will collect english poetry, another italian, a third classics, a fourth romances; for the wiser sort go upon the maxim of having something of every thing, and every thing of something. they are in general sufficiently 237liberal in permitting men of letters to make use of their collections: which are not only more complete in their kind than could be found in the public libraries of england, but are more particularly useful in a country where the public libraries are rendered almost useless by absurd restrictions and bad management, and where there are no convents. the want of convents is, if only in this respect, a national misfortune.
the species of minor collectors are very numerous. some ten years ago many tradesmen issued copper money of their own, which they called tokens, and which bore the arms of their respective towns, or their own heads, or any device which pleased them. how worthless these pieces must in general have been, you may judge, when i tell you that their current value was less than two quartos. they became very numerous; and as soon as it was difficult to form a complete collection,—for while it was easy nobody thought it 238worth while,—the collectors began the pursuit. the very worst soon became the most valuable, precisely because no person had ever preserved them for their beauty. will you believe me when i tell you that a series of engravings of these worthless coins was actually begun, and that a cabinet of them sold for not less than fifty pieces of eight? when the last new copper currency was issued, a shopkeeper in the country sent for a hundred pounds worth from the mint, on purpose that he might choose out a good specimen for himself. some few geniuses have struck out paths for themselves; one admits no work into his library if it extends beyond a single volume; one is employed in collecting play-bills, another in collecting tea-pots, another in hunting for visiting cards, another in forming a list of remarkable surnames, another more amusingly in getting specimens of every kind of wig that has been worn within the memory of man. but the king of collectors is a gentleman in one 239of the provinces, who with great pains and expense procures the halters which have been used at executions: these he arranges round his museum in chronological order, labelling each with the name of the criminal to whom it belonged, the history of his offence, and the time and place of his execution. in the true spirit of virtù, he ought to hang himself, and leave his own halter to complete the collection.
you will not wonder if mean vices should sometimes be found connected with such mean pursuits. the collectors are said to acknowledge only nine commandments of the ten, rejecting the eighth.[16] at the sale of a virtuoso’s effects, a single shell was purchased at a very 240high price; the buyer held it up to the company: “there are but two specimens of this shell,” said he, “known to be in existence, and i have the other;”—and he set his foot upon it and crushed it to pieces.
16. in the original it is said the seventh. the catholics reject the second commandment, and make up the number by dividing the tenth into two. their seventh therefore is our eighth, and has accordingly been so translated.—tr.
