If you looked in my wallet thirty years ago you would have found lists. PG Wodehouses and Pevsners, Lloyd’s syndicates and books by other authors – perhaps Dornford Yates and Leslie Charteris – a compulsion inherited from Uncle George.
“When eventually the coronation was over, and after all the constructions in the Abbey had been dismantled, the furniture and furnishings, such as the chairs which the peers and peeresses had sat on, and the golden carpet which the Queen and the dignitaries around her had walked on, in fact everything which had been made for the occasion, was offered for sale to the public to defray some of the expenses. The policy was to distribute these things as widely as possible so that the maximum number of people could have a memento. Thus you were allowed only one or perhaps two chairs, or a very limited amount of carpet, and so on. But some special things were reserved as a reward for those who had played special parts.
Thus I was offered the purple velvet cushion on which the Queen had been seated for her anointing and her crowning and for other ceremonies. Not that it was a gift or free reward or fee, as such things often used to be; I had to pay the Ministry of Works £16 for it. But it was, I suppose, a bargain considering that I could probably have resold it to a collector of coronation souvenirs for a hundred times that amount. As a matter of fact I ceded it for the same amount as I paid for it to the Chapter of the College of Arms, of which as Garter, I was chairman. Since then it has normally reposed on the empty Earl Marshal’s throne in the Court Room there, in a plastic envelope to keep out dust and moth.
I did not part with it lightly, but it was too big for me to house and I was therefore glad to find it such a decent home. After all it is a very rare and meaningful object, having, as far as I know, only been sat on by a char-lady from the Ministry of Works, the Duchess of Norfolk and the Queen! Few cushions have such an exclusive history.
Looking back I wonder how I ever brought myself to let it go because I have always been an avid collector of inanimate objects of almost every kind – for example of pebbles, birds’ eggs, butterflies and sea-shells when I was a child, and match-box tops, stamps and ancient Egyptiana in my youth. As I grew up it was bric-a-brac, memorabilia and souvenirs, with some china, glass and books and then, when I had gained experience and a little knowledge, I progressed to trinkets, baubles and bibelots, then objets de vertu and objets de vitrine, some of modest value, others of no value at all except to me. Next it was pictures, old pictures, “oilers” as they used to call them in the Portobello Road and finally good, or at least better, pictures of the sort which auctioneers describe as “old master paintings”, and though I had at one time stacks of them there was not, I think, a single masterpiece among them.
In addition to this mountain of antique odds and ends, I inherited from my father and my mother almost enough pretty ornaments, heirlooms and furniture to fill a house.
There were only two prerequisites regarding the collectables which I acquired myself – they either had in my eyes to be beautiful or else to my mind interesting. After that the only factor governing my acquisition of them was not surprisingly the cost, which was sometimes only pence, often shillings, occasionally a few pounds, and rarely £100 or more. The most I ever paid was £1,000, for a painting which I have not yet parted with and possibly never will.
The condition of my acquisitions, of whatever kind they were, did not really matter very much to me so long as they could be repaired, and this I usually did myself competently, and sometimes perfectly since through long practice I eventually became a skilled restorer.
Where are they now, those hundreds of minor works of art and other pretty things? Over the years I have disposed of most of them, in auction rooms to dealers, either because I did not have room to house them, or in order to raise money to buy more. Some I have given away and many have been stolen (one dealer took away a small van-load and was never seen again), or nearly stolen, by those smart gentlemen known in the antique world as knockers – a word I hesitate to use here since it has another meaning – who knock on your front door and later depart with armfuls of your prized possessions, having coaxed them from you by hook, crook, or fat wads of five-pound notes. But in spite of that my home sweet home still sometimes reminds me of a junk shop.
I am glad I have never been a professional dealer because I would probably have been a failure; I always bought the things I liked, not necessarily what the public likes. Dealers buy to sell; I bought because I could not help it. Most of us have a hobby or little faiblesse of some sort and mine was being a jackdaw. Nevertheless I have sometimes done well when it came to unloading my treasured possessions from time to time. The most rewarding bibelot in my collection was a medieval carving I bought for £50 before the war and sold fifteen years later for £5,000. On balance, however, I would say I have done no better than to break even, but for that and the joy of owning, if only for a little while, so many delightful things, I must thank my lucky stars.”
(To be continued)
The Hon, Sir George Bellew, KCB, KCVO, KStJ, FSA.