Chapter 20 - Page 2

but that the genuineness of this piece
was unquestionable. He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you
please; it was a document which traced this plate's movements all the
way down from its birth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he
paid for it--from the first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had
gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He
said that the whole Ceramic world would be informed that it was now in
my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid. [Figure
8]

There were Masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. Of course
the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that old
sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which is
the despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of this
gem cannot and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged to
leave out the color. But I've got the expression, though.

However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time with these
details. I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but
it is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any
department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen
started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from
exhaustion. He has no more sense of the flight of time than has any
other lover when talking of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on the
bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering
ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about
whether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine
or spurious.

Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about as
robust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating Japanese pots
with decalcomanie butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at
the elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote a book called THE BRIC-A-BRAC
HUNTER, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to
call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles;
and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his
"tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning his
book with a picture of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent
attitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk
shop."

It is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, easy to despise
us; therefore, let these people rail on; they cannot feel as Byng and
I feel--it is their loss, not ours. For my part I am content to be a
brick-a-bracker and a ceramiker--more, I am proud to be so named. I am
proud to know that I