But it was not simply that china was viewed as an appropriate distraction for women, particularly those of the upper classes; it was also usually regarded as personal – instead of family – property. Unlike jewels, classical antiquities or paintings, which would usually pass from father to son, pieces of china were rarely subject to the strict rules of primogeniture inheritance and could often pass quietly from mother to daughter, or from sister to niece. This had the advantage of potentially circumventing the restrictions on female ownership. Unmarried women, though often marooned in a social no man’s land, at least had the privilege of owning their possessions. Married women, in contrast, handed over the rights of ownership to their husbands. If they became collectors, by law they could not own any of the objects they collected, nor choose to whom they left them after their deaths. It was not until 1870 that the government passed the Married Women’s Property Act, which allowed women to own possessions they had acquired after their marriages, and it was another twelve years before the same right was extended to objects owned before marriage. Until these laws came into force, a woman’s possessions, like herself, were considered to be simply an extension of her husband’s property. A few pieces of china, however, were frequently considered to be unworthy of much attention; husbands often allowed their wives to dispose of such a collection as they wished. Bequeathed through the generations in this way, the best or favourite pieces could become heirlooms down the female line.
Collecting was what the Schreibers did together, and they worked side by side in every aspect of creating and developing their collection. But other women were not so fortunate as to have a family which sympathized with the all-consuming urge to collect. Many Victorian men believed that their wives, mothers and daughters would be unable to control themselves if they became too involved with the stimulating world of ‘things’. They feared that such obsession would lead to personal instability, the breakdown of domestic order and even sexual licentiousness. During the Great Exhibition of 1851, Punch highlighted a variety of dangerous impulses that might be prompted by the glittering displays. In one cartoon, middle-class ladies are shown resisting police eviction from the Crystal Palace at closing time with a defiant, even violent, show of solidarity, opposing ‘civil power at the point of a parasol’. In another, ‘The Awful Result of Giving A Season Ticket to Your Wife’ is a neglected and empty house. Worse still, in another cartoon, flocks of women are depicted relishing the highly physical, sexually charged atmosphere of the Exhibition as they ‘push, and pant, and pinch their way amongst each other’ to see the famous and fabulous Koh-i-Noor diamond.11 Over twenty years later, the idea that collecting was somehow at odds with healthy female instincts still lingered. A Punch cartoon of 1874 shows a dishevelled middle-class mother bemoaning the breakage of a valued vase. Her oldest daughter tries to comfort her as five younger siblings look on, but a family is apparently no consolation: ‘You child! You’re not unique!! There are six of you – a complete set!’ wails the mother disconsolately.12 The message was clear: left to their own devices, women could not be trusted to bring self-control and dignity to the collecting and display of lovely objects.
This discomfort with display and a woman’s part in it revealed all kinds of Victorian anxieties. During the eighteenth century, the capitalist spirit was frequently seen as a positive attribute which could keep in check other more unruly and immoral inclinations, and act as a counterweight to undesirable behaviour. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, attitudes towards conspicuous consumption had become much more ambivalent. Despite the growth of a commodity culture, the development of department stores, extravagant shopping habits and spectacular one-off events like the International Exhibitions, the Victorians’ response to the objects with which they liked to surround themselves was complex. The activity of creating wealth had acquired overtones of coarseness and taint, and the realities of commercial enterprise needed, at least in public, to be separated from the higher moral priorities of family and social or religious responsibility. The display of too many objects within the home ran the risk of being perceived as exhibitionism, which in turn could be linked to degenerate and even immoral behaviour. Women, in particular, who exhibited too openly a preference for ‘things’, for shopping and luxury and spending, could be portrayed as artificial and untrustworthy, and even sexually promiscuous.
In the light of these attitudes, it is perhaps no surprise that female collectors were often reticent about their activity and, officially at least, appeared to be thin on the ground: of the 131 ceramics collectors recorded in 1851 by Joseph Marryat, the first writer in English to address the history of ceramics, only twelve were women. Even though these numbers rose to thirty-three by the late 1860s, female collectors still represented only a fraction of the total.13 But for all the reasons we have seen, collecting was, in fact, not unusual among women. On the other hand, it was unusual for women to be high-profile collectors like Charlotte Schreiber and it was also rare for them to make large bequests to public museums to cement their place in collecting history. (It is perhaps revealing that, while Charlotte’s name is associated with the collection of English ceramics now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, it was Charles Schreiber who first proposed a permanent public home for it.) Nonetheless, collecting was a popular female pastime. It tended, however, to be a more private pleasure than it was among men, and it was often linked to the home education of children, particularly girls. It was often viewed as a welcome means of self-expression, rather than an historic investment, and it tended to be an aesthetic as much as a scholarly pursuit: Charlotte Schreiber’s collection is unique among Victorian women’s collections in the range, quality and extent of the documentation that she maintained.
With few opportunities to join the male-dominated art and collectors’ clubs, those women who did enjoy collecting had to find more informal ways to meet to discuss their enthusiasm, exchange information and arrange for the buying and selling of objects. Compared to male networks, the female equivalents were small and distinctly less powerful, but nonetheless they brought like-minded collectors together to share ideas. Charlotte’s journals are littered with references to helping out her sister collectors. In November 1869, for example, she spent ‘two very pleasant hours’ with Mrs Haliburton, a widowed china collector who became a regular visitor and correspondent, and in June 1884 she called on Lady Camden, in Eaton Square, to discuss china. By the 1870s, Charlotte was already being recognized as an expert and she was able to use her unusual level of access to the male worlds of curating and dealing to act on behalf of her female friends both at home and abroad. In October 1873, while in Rotterdam, she called at Boor’s Bazaar ‘to execute a commission for Mrs Haliburton’, and a few months later she took a ceramic mould to elicit an opinion from Augustus Franks at the British Museum on behalf of a friend, Dorothy Neville, another active collector.
Charlotte’s women friends clearly recognized that she had battled her way into the male bastions of the collecting world. Her collecting was undertaken on a different scale from almost any other woman of her time, and this was what set her apart. She herself often refers to her collecting in her journals as ‘work’, an indication of just how serious and consuming a matter she considered it. And the male establishment certainly did not view her collecting simply as a genteel lady’s hobby. Augustus Franks was a close friend and collecting confidant. The two shared regular discussions about their objects, and frequently bought and sold pieces between themselves. Franks was, according to Charlotte’s son Montague, ‘a constant visitor at her house’. When she was abroad, Charlotte mixed as an equal with museum professionals: in Tarragona in 1870, the director of the museum took time to show her personally ‘all over the antiquities collected there’, and in November 1874 she was shown around the Utrecht Museum by its founder, Monsieur Van Huckelm, ‘a most well-informed and agreeable man. . . making this collection. . . quite wonderful’.14 In the 1870s, when the china craze was at its height, the Lond
on dealers Mortlocks, based in Oxford Street, even relied on Charlotte as a ‘runner’, asking her to use her European connections to purchase blue-and-white ceramics on their behalf. Mortlock openly admitted ‘that nearly all he knew about China he learned from her’, something which, as Charlotte’s son acknowledged, was ‘a marvellous tribute indeed, from the professional to the amateur’.15 In spite of being a woman, Charlotte was respected, and even feted, as a collector. So completely did she challenge the conventions of what female collectors could achieve that few of her companions, male or female, could boast such success. Few kept up such an energetic life of travelling, research and bartering; few made so many confident and profitable deals; and few demonstrated such commitment to collecting as a way of life.
CHAPTER TEN
The Gourd-shaped Bottle
Charlotte and Charles Schreiber made twenty-three foreign trips between 1869 and 1882, spending around half of each year, and sometimes more, travelling in Europe. This had the advantage of being cheaper than maintaining an appropriately large and fashionable household in England, and they were eager to see the sights in the towns and cities they visited. But the driving force by far was their collecting. Prices abroad tended to be more reasonable, even for British wares, and Charlotte’s journals reveal how the Schreibers sought out shops and dealers, private collectors and museums, in a constant rush to view, compare, buy and sell objects. Whatever the length and tribulations of a journey, it was usually just a matter of minutes before Charlotte was out into the streets of a new destination, continuing her search: in August 1869, for example, she bemoans arriving so late in Gouda that they were ‘barely in time to save daylight to ransack the old dealers’ stock’; on 8 March 1872, they disembarked from the night train in Amsterdam and immediately ‘took a carriage and went straight to Van Houtum’s to see what he might have’.1 The Schreibers continued their collecting at a similarly frantic pace during the months back in England, but the attention given to the European crusade in Charlotte’s journals indicates just how absorbing and exciting it was to be collecting abroad at this time.
As we have seen, Europe was ready for collectors. Thanks to the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the revolutions and political instability that accompanied nationalist movements in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Hungary and Poland; changes to the old structures of royalty, nobility and the church; growing urbanization; shifting patterns of wealth; fashionable commercialism and economic fluctuation, there had never been a better time to be collecting. In Holland, the Schreibers hoped to pick up the distinctive blue-and-white ceramics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century delftware, or even ‘original’ blue-and-white that had been imported from China. Such pieces had been popular as domestic furnishings in the seventeenth century but had since dropped out of fashion and been relegated to back rooms and store cupboards, junkshops, auctions and markets. In Dresden, the Schreibers were on the trail of more ceramics, in particular from the renowned Meissen works, but they were also offered ecclesiastical relics and the entire interior decoration of a local church. In Belgium, they were shown choice examples of oriental china, imported from Japan, Chelsea ware that had made its way from Britain, and an ornamental metal picture frame that had once graced the palace of Louis XIII of France. All over Europe, objects that had been hidden away in homes, castles and churches were coming on to the open market, while new and expanding trade routes were moving objects across the Continent, and even the world.
The Schreibers travelled from north to south, taking advantage of a changing Europe. But for all the riches to be had elsewhere, it was in France that the network for collectors offered most. As Robinson had discovered as a student in Paris during the 1840s, by the middle of the century, the French had already discovered a widespread interest in collecting. In Germany, in contrast, undisturbed collections of treasures from the Middle Ages and Renaissance continued to languish quietly in the houses of the nobility. But in France, in the aftermath of the Revolution, greater instability created a much more vigorous marketplace in which similarly impressive objects changed hands frequently. ‘The French Revolution,’ according to writer and critic Jules Janin, ‘began to break everything, to destroy books, to cut paintings in pieces. . . to melt gold and silver. . . to sell – at auction even – the marbles of tombs.’ This, however, was not the end of the story. What was cast out was usually immediately rescued, Janin went on to explain, by ‘a whole army of antiquarians. . . whose life and fortune are spent in collecting these scarce remains, in saving from oblivion these precious remembrances’.2 Medieval and Renaissance art works could be picked up cheaply in junkshops and market stalls – everything from sixteenth-century furniture to prints by Dürer or Rembrandt, from armour and ceramics to marriage caskets. Across France, church silver pulled from the altars now appeared in auction rooms, and family collections were broken up and sold. Within a generation, a treasure trove of previously hidden, often completely unknown, objects became available: silver and tableware that had belonged to princes and nobles; paintings, tapestries and jewellery; precious religious objects and even entire walls, altarpieces and massive doorways torn from churches, private chapels and monasteries. Some of Europe’s most beautiful and valuable pieces were now appearing for sale to anyone who could afford them.
By the 1850s, when the fashion for the leftovers of the French ancien régime had really taken off, Paris was the heart of the collectors’ circuit. Calling at a renowned dealers in Utrecht in 1869, Charlotte found there was ‘absolutely nothing’ because ‘he had 84 cases packed up for Paris’, and visits to the curiosity shops of Alicante in March 1870 were equally unsuccessful because ‘the best things’ were all kept back to be sold to the French capital.3 The violence of the Commune in 1871 interrupted Paris’s preeminence but the setback was temporary. By May 1872, Charlotte was noting that ‘all the great English dealers’ were again gathering at the Paris sales, and not long afterwards she was delighted to be finding so many promising shops. ‘We enjoyed our chasse very much,’ she observed.4
The Schreibers’ peripatetic lifestyle was not always so enjoyable, however. Charlotte’s journals include plenty of accounts of days when nothing was bought. The couple were sometimes ill, and frequently tired. The stock of worthwhile objects was often exhausted and dealers could be obstructive, rude or even mad. Disappointment was commonplace.
The story of Charlotte’s gourd-shaped bottle at first appeared to be one such disappointment. It was February 1873 and, unusually, Charles was alone on a short trip to dealers in Holland, leaving his wife at home. We know very little about Charles as a partner in the couple’s collecting. Charlotte’s journals provide her point of view, and, although she sometimes records her husband’s opinion – referring to him always as C. S. – we learn little of his character. We discover most about his often precarious state of health, the apparently constant headaches, sore throats, inflamed eyes, undefined pains and exhaustion that may have been symptoms of an underlying and untreated condition. He was clearly as enthusiastic about collecting as his wife, however, and it may even have been his encouragement which first inspired Charlotte’s interest. Beyond this, it is difficult to be sure of the nature of his contribution.
As a scholar, it is likely that he shared in the research that made their collecting of such value, but he never published anything. The impressive catalogue of the collection of English ceramics at the Victoria and Albert was written after his death and bears his wife’s name. Like Charlotte, he clearly had an interest in politics and was elected MP for Cheltenham in 1865, but he lost the seat three years later and did not stand again until 1880, when he became MP for Poole without distinguishing himself on any particular political issue. Apart from his parliamentary role, he did not work. Charlotte herself suggests that he was often at a loose end: after a visit to the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, she noted: ‘Having no profession, no pursuit at this particular moment, I cannot describe how pleased I wa
s to see how heartily he threw himself into the spirit of all around him.’5 I could find no other contemporary accounts of him and in his portrait he appears unremarkable, even insipid. It is only from his anecdotal role in incidents from Charlotte’s collecting life, such as the story of the gourd-shaped bottle, that we get any sense of his perspicacity, dedication and skill as a collector.
The trouble with Charles Schreiber’s Dutch trip was that he had bought too many things. His boxes and cases were full and heavy. Although he had already made arrangements to send as much as he could back to England, without Charlotte and her big red bag, he found he could not carry all the remaining purchases alone. Worse still, he found himself amongst the plinths and shelves of a cluttered showroom in Rotterdam known as Kryser’s, and he wanted to buy more: a large Wedgwood bowl and cover, which had been partly decorated in Amsterdam in 1808, and a strange bottle, also apparently Wedgwood, but shaped like a gourd and decorated with a painted landscape bright with flowers. Charles clearly felt he had to have both pieces, even at the risk of leaving things behind, and so he negotiated with Kryser. But when it came to finding space for them in his already overstrained luggage, he realized that he had overreached himself. All he could do was ask Kryser to put the purchases to one side so that he could collect them on a future visit. It was not the ideal solution, because they were two of the finest pieces he had managed to unearth during the trip, but he knew that he and Charlotte would be back in Rotterdam before the spring was out.
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