Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves

by Jacqueline Yallop

  More significantly, it was Roach Smith who was instrumental in helping Mayer acquire a number of complete collections that firmly established his reputation as one of the most influential collectors in the country. The first of these, the Faussett collection, had been assembled by Bryan Faussett of Heppington in Kent, an eighteenth-century churchman and amateur archaeologist. Faussett collected thousands of Roman and English coins, and had so many duplicates that he was able to melt down 150lbs of bronze to be cast into a bell. His real interest, however, was graves, and he spent all his time between writing sermons and visiting parishioners excavating Anglo-Saxon barrows in the woods and downs across Kent. He opened up over 630 graves in an eight-year period during the 1760s and 1770s, amassing a collection of grave goods, from plain hammered-metal bowls to intricate brooches. Unlike many amateur archaeologists of the time, he kept painstaking journals of all his excavations, sketching the sites as he found them, and recording every detail of his discoveries in five substantial volumes which were kept with the objects at his house.9

  By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the collection had been forgotten. Faussett had died and the objects were simply gathering dust in the family home. Strolling in Kent in 1842, Roach Smith found himself close to Heppington and found the name half-familiar. Eventually, he managed to recall the details of an eighteenth-century work, Nenia Britannica: or, a sepulchral history of Great Britain; from the earliest period to its general conversion to Christianity. This was, as its title suggests, a wide-ranging survey published in 1793 by another Kent clergyman, James Douglas, who was also an officer in the Corps of Engineers. Douglas used his military expertise to survey barrows and other archaeological sites, and was one of the first antiquaries to meticulously record, draw and publish his findings to a high standard, laying the foundations for the work of the Victorians who followed. In Nenia Britannica, he recounted something of Faussett’s collection, being the first to realize that the objects were Anglo-Saxon. Roach Smith recalled the description of Faussett’s work, his archaeological explorations, and the diversity of his collection and he decided to pay a visit, unannounced, on whichever surviving relatives he could find.

  Roach Smith was taking a chance. He had no idea whether the collection still existed, what state it might be in or what Faussett’s descendants might make of his unsolicited inquiries. But he was fortunate enough to receive a warm welcome from Henry Godfrey Faussett, the collector’s grandson, who was delighted that someone was, at last, taking an interest in the family treasure. Henry spoke enthusiastically about his grandfather’s achievements and spent hours showing Roach Smith boxes and drawers and shelves full of the antiquities that he had collected from local sites. The two men pored over slips of glass and pottery, over amber and amethyst beads, brooches, axes and spearheads, keys and daggers. Henry Faussett was eager that the collection should finally receive official recognition and urged Roach Smith to spread the word about what he had found. Roach Smith needed little encouragement. He was astounded by the quality and variety of the objects packed into the churchman’s study and, when he finally left the Faussett house, as dusk closed in over the pale Kent hills, he promised to return with a delegation from the British Archaeological Association.

  Henry Godfrey Faussett was never to see the collection receive the attention it deserved, however. The British Archaeological Association did indeed inspect the finds and confirmed Roach Smith’s evaluation of the objects as important and valuable, but no one in the Association could find the time or the money to publish the details of the collection and nothing more was done. Other collections became newsworthy instead, and when Henry Godfrey Faussett died, eleven years after Roach Smith had visited, interest in the Faussett finds had largely waned. It looked as though the collection might once more lapse into obscurity. Although the terms of Henry Faussett’s will urged that it should be sold complete and intact, no public organization could be persuaded to find the £700 Faussett’s heirs were requesting, despite the actual value of the collection being much greater. In 1853, Franks made four attempts to persuade the British Museum to make the purchase, but without success. The Department of Antiquities had an annual purchase grant of £3,000 but this was stretched by a previous liability of £550, and, without extra funds from the government, the museum was unwilling to commit to the Faussett sale. Even though the Society of Antiquaries sent a series of protests, and complained that ‘there is a strong probability that it will be purchased in France; and that it will be a disgrace to England that English objects thought worthy of being purchased in France, should leave this country’, the museum once again declined.10 A trustees’ meeting just a month later confirmed a request to the Treasury for a special grant of £86,000 to build and fit out the Round Reading Room in the Inner Courtyard. They perhaps thought better of asking for yet more money to acquire the Faussett collection, and were no doubt unwilling to jeopardize the ongoing programme of building work. The opportunity was lost.

  Joseph Mayer, however, was much taken by the thought of the collection. As early as November 1853, when staff at the British Museum were still, in theory, negotiating for the pieces, he wrote a friendly and enthusiastic note to Franks, forewarning that he was in the market: ‘Hurrah! For the Faussett Collection. I hope you will get them – not hearing from you I wrote to the Revd Faussett to ask about them if you refused them.’ If he managed to make the acquisition, he knew he could claim to have saved the treasure for the nation: ‘they ought to belong to the national collections and may yet when I have done with them,’ he said.11 In the end, he moved quickly, and with a sensitivity to public relations’ opportunities. Three days after the collection was finally and formally rejected by the British Museum, Mayer travelled to Kent to pay a first instalment and, with Roach Smith’s help, he had the objects parcelled up and put on a train to Liverpool. He then approached Thomas Wright, an eminent historian, to give a lecture at the town’s Philharmonic Hall to the British Archaeological Association about Anglo-Saxon antiquities in general, and the Faussett collection in particular. And he sponsored Roach Smith to begin work on publishing the Faussett archive – the journal notes, observations and sketches – in an illustrated volume that placed the collection in its historical context.

  Mayer had always been competitive. As a youth, he had revelled in all kinds of sports, admitting a particular fondness for bear-baiting. The purchase of the Faussett collection was an opportunity to take on his rivals, and declare victory. Acquiring such a complete set of objects was a substantial triumph in itself, but it was all the more pleasing to Mayer because he had more or less trumped the British Museum, highlighting its deficiencies and putting himself forward in its place as the saviour of a national treasure. By afterwards supporting learned research about the collection, Mayer consolidated the impression of his success, and aligned himself with modern, forward-thinking antiquarian scholars such as John Evans. He emphasized the distance between himself and dilettante, amateur collectors whose studies and drawing rooms were cluttered with random historical objects. He was no longer confined to Walter Scott’s model or Daniels’ fashionable portrait, but was beginning to cut his own distinct path, creating a unique identity as a collector.

  Mayer’s purchase of the Faussett collection was a strong declaration of his intent to invest everything he had in collecting. The acquisition not only demanded the considerable financial outlay of £700, but more significantly it demanded that Mayer reveal his ambitions to his fellow, and rival, collectors. He seemed inspired and excited, more than daunted, by the prospect of such high-profile collecting, and for a while he seemed to relish the attention that came with the Faussett purchase. Many of his friends wrote to congratulate him on the success, and Roach Smith was particularly delighted, seeing more clearly than others how the acquisition might secure Mayer’s place in history: ‘the work will inevitably bring you GREAT returns in honourable fame. . . I am SURE of this:-many will envy you; and many will regret they are not in your
position. There are chances, my dear Sir, which occur only once in an age, & the Faussett collection was a CHANCE OF CHANCES.’12

  But Roach Smith was wrong. This was not a ‘once in an age’ opportunity, at least not for Mayer. Only a year after acquiring the Faussett finds, Mayer again swelled his collection by acquiring a large number of objects at once. In 1855, he bought the classical and medieval ivories, some Mexican pottery and a large amount of prehistoric metalwork from the Hungarian Fejérváry collection, which belonged to Franz Pulszky, an exile living in London. Again the British Museum declined to buy the pieces, reluctant to spend its limited budget on little-known medieval Byzantine ivories at the expense of such museum mainstays as classical sculpture. Its refusal to buy drew renewed and widespread criticism from antiquarians, archaeologists and the press: the Art Journal accused the trustees of ‘incapacity of judgement’ in failing to secure the ivories.13 When Mayer stepped in to purchase everything for £1,500, he was able to present himself, once again, as some kind of national champion, at least to the scholarly community.

  Within a few years, several other important collections came Mayer’s way. In 1857, he acquired medieval antiquities and a range of objects from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries belonging to W. H. Rolfe, a friend of Roach Smith’s and an antiquarian from Sandwich. And, in 1868, he bought up the collection of his exhausted friend Joseph Clarke who had written plaintively to Mayer, explaining that ‘I am utterly tired of collecting anything. . . if you but come and see me. . . and take the pick of my collections nothing would delight me more.’14 Through such acquisitions, the range, variety and sheer size of Mayer’s collection was growing at speed, filling his rooms and establishing him as a figure among the community of collectors.

  By purchasing existing collections wholesale, Mayer was able to build on other collectors’ work and expertise, and save on a great deal of bartering and research. He certainly had an eye to the future: his negotiations for both the Faussett and the Rolfe collections made much of his intentions to save them from obscurity and keep them intact, emphasizing the public-spirited nature of his motives. But there was also perhaps something obsessional about Mayer’s bulk acquisitions. The cut-and-thrust of the hunt itself clearly excited Mayer as much as the final ownership of the objects; the overwhelming desire to possess was a driving force. Such intense collecting was later to be described – especially by Freud and other twentieth-century psycho analysts – as ‘fetishistic’. But it can also be seen as typically Victorian. At a time of imperial ambitions and unprecedented industrial expansion, Mayer’s wholesale collecting could be viewed as part of a compulsive urge to do things bigger and better, to bring as many elements as possible under one protective umbrella, to control, to regulate and to extend. Those collecting on this scale shared many of the same motives and priorities as those championing rapid industrialization, competitive free trade and mass-production; Mayer’s collection was as much an expression of the age as cotton mills or railways.

  As with the Industrial Revolution, such progress was not without its pitfalls, however. Mayer was not an especially wealthy man; he had not inherited any fortune. None of his ledgers or account books survives, and there has been some speculation that he perhaps traded in diamonds, or was fortunate in some kind of financial speculation. But as far as we know he had to rely solely on the income from his jewellery business to fund his collecting. The scale and ambition of what he achieved convinced many that he must have had some other mysterious source of funds, but such wealth was an illusion created by the magnificence of the collection. Mayer lived simply, traded successfully – and invested everything he had in his objects. When he could not quite afford what he wanted, he turned once again to his friends for help. But large-scale collections necessarily require large-scale expenditure, and, in his overwhelming desire to acquire, Mayer sometimes underestimated the costs of his activity. His collecting had an element of brinkmanship about it and once or twice, perhaps inevitably, he came unstuck.

  When the Bram Hertz collection of classical sculpture, cameos and over 1,700 gems came on to the market in 1856, priced at £12,000, Mayer put together a consortium of Liverpool businessmen to help him acquire it. He pressed and cajoled them into partnership, tantalizing them, so he thought, with the promise of rare and handsome objects which they could display in their home town. He presented the purchase as a civic duty, part of the growing movement to establish municipal collections. Here was the chance for private individuals to make an act of public generosity. But most Liverpool businessmen were not like Mayer. They were not particularly taken by the idea of collecting. Although the £12,000 was promised, and formal ownership of the collection was transferred into Mayer’s hands, the consortium quickly crumbled, leaving him with a treasure trove he could not pay for.

  Despite his profession as a jeweller, Mayer was no connoisseur of gems, and the Bram Hertz collection was probably overpriced: ‘the British Museum people would have niggled about as many hundreds as he has given thousands for it!’ confided a sceptical Joseph Clarke to Roach Smith.15 Nonetheless, Mayer was devastated when the deal fell through: ‘I cannot bear the idea of breaking up and scattering a collection,’ he complained.16 But he could not find the necessary funds to make the purchase alone and he had to part with things. Within a few months, some of the Bram Hertz collection was back on the market, followed a year or two later by a two-week auction at Sotheby’s. For Mayer, the sale was heartbreaking. The collection was dispersed, just as he had feared and, to make matters worse, the £10,011. 2s. 6d. achieved by the sale left Mayer with substantial losses, after commission, of almost £3,000, which, as Clarke remarked, ‘I am afraid prey on his spirits’.17 Only the diligence and goodwill of Mayer’s loyal friends, and of Roach Smith and Clarke in particular, managed to salvage anything at all from the disaster. When the collection came under the auctioneer’s hammer, they bid for a number of gems which, before long, found their way back into Mayer’s hands.

  As the Bram Hertz affair made clear, relying on the support of other people to build a collection could be perilous. It was helpful to be able to draw on an extensive network of contacts and friends, but collecting could never just be about the large-scale public purchases, the notices in the press and the ambitious acquisitions. It was a personal and sometimes a painful quest; it demanded sacrifice, dedication and sensitive attention. Mayer was always destined to be a great collector. For all his high-profile purchases, and the gratification of buying intact existing collections, he also took his time over much smaller acquisitions, spending blustery evenings on site at archaeological excavations, waiting to barter for the smallest of Romano-British finds. He walked out on wet Sundays along the banks of the River Dee and across the Wirral, talking to villagers about whatever they might have turned up; he rescued dozens of Roman artefacts when the London, Midland and Scottish railway cut a new line through to Lancaster. He was constantly and intensely on the lookout for objects. Better still, luck was clearly on his side, giving him the opportunity to make rare and inventive acquisitions, and taking his collection into the realms of the spectacular.

  The first moment of luck came when Mayer was on a visit to London in 1845. He was invited to a tea party given by the wife of an old friend, and, as the slices of cake were passed around, he was introduced to a Mr and Mrs Wedderburne, an unexceptional elderly couple. There was no immediate reason for Mayer to find them of any interest, but the grapevine of collectors’ gossip suggested that Wedderburne had once worked for Wedgwood, travelling for forty years to promote the company and sell their wares, overseeing their outlets and advising on the ceramic trade. When the opportunity arose, Mayer drew Wedderburne away from the company. Wedderburne was jovial and obliging. As we have seen, very few people at this time thought Wedgwood worthy of much attention and Wedderburne was unused to meeting anyone who cared for his stories. He was happy to entertain Mayer with anecdotes, but the more he went on, the more surprised he became at Mayer’s attention. He ventured into
increasing detail, emphasizing his technical knowledge of factories and sales figures, as far as he could remember them. He talked about the history of the works, expressing opinions as to which periods had seen the finest ceramics being produced at the Etruria factory in Stoke-on-Trent, and he described his day-to-day experience of selling, the accounting procedures, the tricks of getting Wedgwood into the big stores and to the front of the shelves. The more Wedderburne told, the more attentive and enthusiastic Mayer became. The more of the minutiae he remembered, the more delighted Mayer seemed to be.

  Wedderburne could not help but be pleased and flattered by such attention, and after a long conversation he was lured into making an admission. He had been chief clerk and adviser to Wedgwood’s London warehouse when it was shut down. Losing impetus after the death of its founder, Josiah, trade with Europe had slowed towards the end of the eighteenth century and the breaking up of the London premises had become inevitable. Wedderburne, who had spent so many years developing the business, had watched in dismay as pieces from the company’s most successful and productive years were cast aside and sometimes smashed; great packages going to auction to be sold at bargain prices. And so, in a moment of sentimental folly, he had stepped in himself to buy up a vast quantity of the best and oldest examples, rescuing some of Wedgwood’s most special objects, so that they could be safely stored and protected for the future. But the cost of his intervention had almost ruined him. He had not been a wealthy man, he explained, and his expenditure had made him considerably and uncomfortably poorer. His savings had dwindled, he was stretched by household expenses, and all he had to show was an attic packed full of old and unfashionable Wedgwood china.