MARGINAL COMMENT .
By HAROLD NICOLSON
OPENING an illustrated paper this morning, I came across a page of photographs which aroused within me feelings of rage and sorrow. It depicted a sheet of unused postage stamps which
had been discovered by chance at Dalkeith Palace. There were forty-eight twopenny blues of 1840 and fifty-five red-brown pennies of 1841. The Duke of Buccleuch, whose steward or secre- tary had more than a hundred years ago purchased these stamps, had expended upon the purchase no more than 12s. 7d. The stamps are now valued at £5,000. I do not in the very least begrudge the present holder of the title this unearned increment ; I am in fact delighted that in these difficult days any Duke should make any money at all ; what enrages me is that there should exist people in the world who are prepared to pay many thousand pounds for the possession of two slips of adhesive paper. It seems that the value of these ugly rows of postage stamps is enhanced by the fact that they represent an unused block, with the side and bottom margins intact. Nobody contends that the stamps are in themselves objects of aesthetic delight ; nobody argues that the fact that they con- stitute an unused block in any way. enhances their beauty ; nor does anybody even seek to pretend that the presence of intact margins, both at the side and on the bottom, represents more than a fortuitous and quite unimportant instance of survival. Yet there are people in the world who are prepared to pay for these two scraps of paper a sum which would endow a respectable scholarship or purchase a fine Sickert for the National Art Collections Fund. The history of these stamps is in itself a dull history. When Rowland Hill reformed our postal system he engaged William Mulready, R.A., to design a stamped wrapper in which letters should in future be enclosed. He at the same time introduced adhesive postage stamps on which the head of Queen Victoria, drawn by Henry Corbould, appeared backed with gum. The Mulready wrapper proved unpopular and was within the first few weeks withdrawn from circulation: the Corbould adhesive stamp endeared itself from the outset to the British public and was therefore engraved upon steel plates by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon and Petch. Philately was born.
I have never made friends with a philatelist and I do not want to. It seems to me that to become excited by a 2d. Tyrian phim, or an unused Mauritius postmark, or a British Guiana 2 cents 1850, is to become excited by objects which are totally unworthy of man's unconquerable mind. The stamp collection accumulated by M. Philippe Renotiere von Ferrari realised when eventually dispersed the immense sum of £402,965. A British Guiana 1856 one cent fetched £7,343 ; a Mauritius 1847 went for £2,338 ; and a Baden 9 kreutzer green was sold for £1,816, not because it was a stamp of outstanding beauty but because it had been printed by mistake. To pay such immense sums of money for tiny, unusable, frail, ugly and wholly meaningless objects seems to me to suggest a mind which is adhesive and small. No philatelist can really contend that the blurred and murky rectangles which he loves possess any possible artistic or historic interest. The only reasonable defence which I have heard advanced by stamp-collectors as a justification for their unhappy acquisitive mania is that little boys who swap stamps learn geography more easily and quickly than other little boys who do not swap stamps. Even this futile and pathetic argument does not con- vince me. How many of those who pore over stamp catalogues really obtain an insight into geo-politics? They could tell you the size, colour and perforation of a British Guiana ; but if you asked them to define where that country was and whether it would indeed be suitable for Jewish immigration they would know nothing of its location, its climate or its economics.
I have spent many hours watching with horror and contempt that curious open-air exchange and mart which the Parisian philatelists established before the war in the Champs Elysees. A few school- boys, it is true, would pass from huckster to huckster buying or exchanging little pieces of blue or red or brown paper. That was harmless • enough. But twining in and out of the crowd one would observe the adult collector, furtive and prying, acquisitive and thrifty, examining under a pocket magnifying-glass the perforations, inden- tations and cancellations of these ugly little things. Around them Paris spread her rich treasures of intellectual and aesthetic delight ; but they would stand under the trees gaping myopically at a Reunion, 1862, blue (error); their minds were narrowed as their eyes, their souls were restricted to an area of *-inches wide and j-inches high. The passers-by would gaze at these strange huckster- ing men with amused indifference ; and they, if for one moment they raised their eyes from the little rectangles beneath their magni- fying glasses, would assume a self-righteous air and would smile with that unctuous smile of inner and corporate justification such as I have observed upon the faces of other erudite minorities, let us say nudists, or Buchmanites, or Soviet Commissars. Although a tolerant man, I would stare at these complacent creatures with hostility ; to me it seemed that they were unworthy of human dignity or of that wide adventure which is life upon this lovely earth ; to me it seemed-that they were spending much time and money upon a search which was unprofitable except in a cash sense and destructive of all valuable human gifts. It may be that I am being unfair to a worthy, if esoteric, section of the human family ; it may be that philatelism develops certain useful mental qualities such as accuracy, observation and memory ; every man has a right to his own hobby ; yet I resent hobbies which make no contribution whatsoever to useful knowledge or to physical or mental health. I shall remain angry with philatelists until I die.
It may be that, if this page falls under the myopic eye of any philatelist, he will be hurt by what I have written. I do not beg his pardon ; he can find all the comfort which he desires from the reflection that, whereas in my article I have heaped scorn upon the price paid in 1922 for a British Guiana one cent 1856, I was in my ignorance unaware that this stamp was in fact unique. The feeling of superiority which this will give him will salve his wound. I must confess also that my prejudice against philatelists extends to other collectors of objects which, even if beautiful in them- selves, are not beautiful, but only interesting, in the mass. I knew a don at Oxford once who collected things which were without a name or which, even if they possessed a trade name, were anonymous to the general public. He had a shelf on which were collected such objects as the things-one-opens-soda-water- bottles-with or the-pression-corks-which-one-puts-into-champagne- bottles. His display was curious rather than beautiful. I knew another man who collected jade. Few things are more satisfactory than a fine jade figure here and there ; but to see three hundred pieces of jade arranged in glass cases seemed to suggest, not that the man liked or understood jade, but that he did not really know what jade figures were meant to be or mean. It is a curious fact, moreover, that people who collect objects, even lovely objects, have seldom any decorative taste ; they display their treasures in the wrong order and in unsuitable surroundings ; one derives the impression that their hearts are filled, not with pleasure at the beauty of the things they possess, but with a morbid yearning for the things which they do not possess. The enjoyment which they derive from their own collections is doubtless a scholarly enjoyment ; but it is also possessive.
* * *
The same perplexity assails me when I consider bibliophils. It is amusing to see and handle a copy of Glenarvon in the exact form in which Byron first opened it. But I have no wish whatsoever to possess first editions. It may be eccentric of me, but I like to read, and even to mark and index, the books which I possess ; I much dislike books in their original wrappers, in bad print, or above all uncut. I am assured by my bibliophil friends that such an attitude is uncultured, philistine and crude ; yet it is a satisfaction to me to consider how much time I have saved in life by not searching for Victorian yellow-backs in the Charing Cross Road. The collector's instinct is not, perhaps, as disreputable as it appears to my un- tutored mind ; but I thank Providence in his mercy that I .do not possess it.
Previous page
