MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
AFORTNIGHT ago I wrote an ankle in which I referred, disparagingly perhaps, to stamp collectors. That article, as I had hoped and expected, produced a healthy reaction. Mr. H. A. Tresidder, in a letter published in last week's Spectator, after reproving me courteously for lack of tolerance, makes the engaging suggestion that philately represents a " sublimation of the hunting instinct." Mr. Robson Lowe, in a letter published in the same issue, struck a jarring, and to my mind almost an angry, note. After accusing me of uttering " deliberate lies," he expresses the hope that I shall soon be dead. I do not admit Mr. Lowe's criticism nor do I share his hope. Yet most of the letters which I received privately were written in sorrow rather than in anger. There were those who contended that it was crude and cruel of me to deride a hobby which brought comfort to many unoccupied or lonely people. There were those who protested that stamp collecting was one of the most innocent pastimes in which children could indulge. There were those who drew my attention to the fact that many eminent and active people have been noted philatelists, a circum- stance which I admit and regret, even as I regret that William Pitt suffered so much from gout. One correspondent was so kind as to send me a sheet of postage stamps and to ask me to tell him " honestly " whether I did not regard them as works of art. I replied, in all honesty, that I did not regard them as works of art ; even the Primavera would not look well if reduced to * inch wide and inch high. I remain uninfluenced by these kindly suggestions and reproofs. I still contend that to devote time and money to the collection of dirty pieces of paper which other people have licked is a pastime unworthy of the highest human faculties. The word " philately," which was unfortunately coined by Monsieur Harpin in 1864, has a double meaning : it can, owing to the presence of that precise and privative alpha, also signify " a passion for the purposeless."
* * * * Among the letters which I received was one from a pernickety, although youthful, friend of mine, for whose taste and intelligence I have an affectionate respect. He reproved me for lack of pre- cision, pointing out that no Sickert, at present, would cost £5,000. That is one of the things that I hold against Collectors ; they think in sums ; they have no appreciation whatsoever, of the coloured phrase, even as they have no understanding of the wide white wings of the imagination. My friend implied in his acid little letter that the reason why I did not care for collectors was that I had a soul ill-attuned to collections. Now that simply is not true. No man enjoys exhibitions more than I do or visits them more frequently. I rejoice in museums and picture galleries, provided only that I am allowed to view them in my own manner. Gone are the days when I was impelled by my elders or my own conscience to walk through picture galleries, catalogue or Baedeker in hand, examining each picture one by one. I have now learnt that the human eye and brain cannot take in more than ten pictures a day, and that the physical exhaustion entailed by any more extensive survey leads to dis- appointment, wastage and pain of soul. It would seem, indeed, that the enlightened directors who now control our museums and our art galleries have realised this physical fact, and have taken pains to direct the attention of the visitor, now to one chosen object or picture and now to another. What gratitude we all felt to Sir Kenneth Clark during the war for his courage and sympathy in providing us with at least one picture in the National Gallery week by week ?
I am glad to observe that the authorities who control the British Museum have been obliged by hard necessity to adopt a similar method of exhibition. In the Edward VII gallery are now dis- played, and admirably displayed, some of the smaller treasures which the museum owns. An hour spent in that gallery will provide even the most hardened philistine with instruction and delight. The main attraction is, of course, the display of objects found in the Anglian ship-tomb at Sutton Hoo and presented to the nation
by Mrs. Pretty. There one'can see the great sword with its elaborate harness of clasps and buckles encrusted with garnets and blue and white glass. There also is the clasp of the great purse, exquisitely designed in the same material. And among the treasures buried with this forgotten chieftain are objects which -came from every quarter of the then known world. A Coptic bowl is there, having come from Egypt twelve hundred years ago. Byzantine silver bowls are there, and a wide silver dish bearing the control stamps of the Emperor Anastasius I. In other cases one can admire the relics of our Anglo-Saxon civilisation, marvelling at the high standard reached in pottery and, above all, glass design, surprised by the extent to which the dim ind distant epoch was in touch with the wide world, bringing cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean and bronzes from the Nile. How curious are the small possessions of these unknown men—the draughtsmen made from the teeth of horses, the chevron beads and necklaces which spread outwards to the hyperboreans from the warm cincture of the Mediterranean. As one passes from case fa case the centuries slide past one ; here is the strange shield discovered in the River Witham near Lincol.p and which appears as if it had been fashioned by Lalique in 1901 ; herd is the bronze figure of an archer found in Queen Street, Cheap- side, in 1842 ; and here again a deed signed by William Shakespeare, or Nelson's private log from the Victory, or Lord Haig's order of the day in 1918. * * *
The arts of other continents are also shown. Beyond a case containing massive Tang figures one comes upon a brilliant Aztec skull in crystal and a sacrificial knife from which the blood poured down the runnels of the fierce pyramids of Mexico. Yet it must be admitted that in all this wealth of barbaric or cultured jewellery and carving it is the Greek things which hold supremacy. There is the Portland vase, so small, so valuable ; there is the magnificent bronze portrait of a philosopher which was discovered at Brindisi and which dates from the third century before Christ ; there is the great bronze bowl which Lord Elgin brought back from the Piraeus and to which his descendants have since restored the bright gold myrtle leaf which rests twinkling upon its lip ; and there is the remarkable griffin's head which came from Rhodes and which is dated by the experts asq far back as the seventh century B.C. It needs but a short hour to see these lovely things, and as one leaves them and passes out again into the noise and drabness of Blooms- bury one carries with one the exhilaration of beauty and the sense that art is in and out of all the centuries. As I walked that after- noon towards Oxford Street I saw in a shop window a sheet upon which were displayed many ugly but expensive stamps. And I felt that even if Mr. Robson Lowe's wish were to be fulfilled this evening I should still believe that one Greek vase is worth all the postage stamps that were ever bartered or designed.
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I have seen it stated that special stamps will be issued, and special post marks affixed, to celebrate the release of the atomic bomb upon Bikini Atoll. Mr. Lowe would contend, I suppose, that this ghoulish experiment in stamp speculation proves his contention that philately embraces " in some form or other all the arts," even the art -of destruction. But surely this wholly artificial creation of rare stamps deprives this hobby of all claim to be a " sublimation of the hunt- ing instinct." It is, I believe, a commonplace among sportsmen that the lusts of the chase are only aroused when there is some- thing to chase ; no hunter ever thinks of slaying rabbits in their hutches or goldfish even in a porphyry urn. The artificial creation of rarity, which has been practised by some South American and other postmasters, appears to me to rob the hobby of the philatelists even of the sporting element. I suppose that the more austere philatelist would disapprove of such practices, and would only collect stamps which were real stamps affixed to real letters or parcels and properly licked on the back. But somebody, I suppose, will buy the Bikini stamp and pay good dollars for so doing. I should feel ashamed to belong to such a sect.
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