CHAPTER IX

FAMOUS COLLECTIONS

The "mania" in the 'sixties--Some wonderful early collections--The first auction sale--Judge Philbrick and his collection--The Image collection--Lord Crawford's "United States" and "Great Britain"--Other great modern collections--M. la Rénotière's "legions of stamps"--Synopsis of sales of collections.

To fail to emphasise the broadly democratic character of the world of stamp collectors would be to overlook an important aspect of the popularity of this science, or, as it is to the majority, the "hobby" of stamps. I have already indicated the dual side of the collecting in the 'sixties, when the boy-collector predominated in numbers, but the adult student had the influence that gave "Philately" or "Timbrologie" a permanent place among the recreative studies. A note on the "Postage Stamp Exchange" in _The Express_, in April, 1862, indicates the benevolent toleration on the part of the outside public and the press concerning the new "mania." "... We may mention that the mania has been increased in such a degree as to lead to the formation of a postage-stamp exchange, the locality being Change Alley, leading out of Birchin Lane. There every evening about fifty boys, _and some men, too_, may be seen industriously exchanging old disfigured stamps, most of which are carefully fastened in books. The earnestness and assiduity with which the 'trade' is carried on is very remarkable."

"'Some men, too,'" says Mr. Mount Brown in sending me the paragraph, "is very lovely." It would be idle to disguise the fact that the mantle of bare toleration of the "mania" has not been entirely discarded by the uninitiated, and it has been a very disconcerting privilege to have for chairmen at lectures on postage-stamps, at literary and scientific institutions, gentlemen who have introduced the subject by confessing that they had once been collectors themselves, _but that was when they were at school_. The press, however, has shown a greater respect for the substantial basis of scientific interest which underlies the hobby, and to-day _The Daily Telegraph_, which has led the modern journalism in the matter of regular specialised articles, has its column of "Postage Stamp" notes every week, and so too has _The Evening News_.

To-day, the press frequently discusses interesting new issues of stamps, and much publicity is now given to that _argumentum ad populum_, the remarkable prices which are constantly being realised in the stamp-market. Considering that stamp-collecting can scarcely be regarded as having started prior to 1860-61, the prices of stamps quickly attained respectable proportions. In _The Young Ladies' Journal_ of December 14, 1864, there is this paragraph:--

"We had almost heard nothing of late of the postage-stamp collecting mania, till suddenly the formidable announcement is made by advertisement that an amateur is ready to sell his collection--for what sum would it be thought?--nothing less than £250."

Had the doubting Thomas[17] (for I dare say gentlemen edited ladies' papers in those days, much as they undertake the duties of "Aunt Molly" and the "Editress's Confidences" in the ladies' journals of to-day) had the foresight to buy a collection worth £250 in 1864, it would have been worth not less than, say, £25,000, probably more, to-day.

The collecting of stamps has at all times in the history of Philately been enjoyed by young and old, by men and women of all ranks and stations. Kings have shared this pastime with the humblest of their subjects, and do so to this day. His Majesty King George V. once wrote of stamp-collecting to a friend that "it is one of the greatest pleasures of my life." A letter "enthusing" on the delights of stamp-hunting reached me the other day from a correspondent who claimed to be "only a working-man." There are few old stagers amongst collectors who have not encountered, and perhaps even been stimulated by, the boastful eagerness with which a youngster in his 'teens tells you of bargains got from Gibbons's books, or of a rare "snap," an unnoticed variety priced as the normal from Peckitt. For the Strand is full of bargains to-day, to the personal hunter who has the right knowledge.

Having alluded to the wide differences in ages and in stations of collectors throughout the philatelic period 1862-1911, it will be interesting to follow the more notable collections in their vicissitudes. M. Alfred Potiquet, one of the very earliest collectors, whose catalogue is of extreme rarity in its first edition, was probably an almost solitary example of the collector of unused stamps only, in the first days of the hobby. It is strange that in these later days the collectors on the Continent, almost to a man, prefer used stamps. But to return to Potiquet: he was probably the first collector of importance to sell his collection outright, which he did about the time the second edition of his catalogue was issued by Lacroix. The collection was a small one, about five hundred stamps, all unused, and he sold the lot to Edard de Laplante in 1862 for five hundred francs, of which sum the purchaser had to borrow one half to complete the deal. But, if the reader considers that five hundred francs represents approximately £20, he will appreciate the purchaser's bargain when told that the collection included the New Brunswick 1s. (representing to-day £70); the Nova Scotia 1s. (£55-£65 to-day); the Natal 3d. and 6d. embossed in plain relief, which now are almost unattainable, except as reprints; Tuscany's 60 crazie (now worth £35) and the 1 soldo (£7 to £8); and the 4 and 5 centimes "Poste Locale" stamps of the transitional period of Switzerland, which catalogue at £100 and £10 respectively; and add to these many of the early issues of the Americas, the prices of which are now leaping up in the catalogues, and of which we know Potiquet to have had a good number, including the very rare error, the half-peso of Peru, printed in rose-red instead of yellow, through a transfer of that denomination getting mixed up in the making up of the lithographic stone for the 1 peseta. The above error is priced £13 used, but an unused copy would be worth very considerably more. He had also the 1 real and 2 reales of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company stamps, on _blued_ paper.

Who was the amateur whose collection was referred to in the _Young Ladies' Journal_ in 1864? It was possibly the "long cherished album" of that "worthy embodiment of Christian and gentleman," the Rev. F. Stainforth, the chief gems of which passed about this time into the possession of Mr. Philbrick. What price the reverend invalid (he survived the sale but eighteen months) received has not been handed down to us, but as Mr. Stainforth had been in the swim from the beginning, as he was a ready and high bidder for "any real or supposed rarity," and as his album was a general reference collection at the Saturday afternoon rendezvous at the rectory of All Hallows, London Wall, it goes without saying that it was rich in stamps that to-day would be of the greatest value. At least two of the St. Louis Postmaster stamps were included. The first "Patimus" British Guiana known was in the Stainforth collection, a rarity with the motto of the colony _Damus petimusque vicissim_, wrongly spelt "patimus," an error which, as Mr. Edward L. Pemberton pointed out, laid the colonists open to "the charge of selecting that which was beyond their ability to spell," but which was purely an engraver's error. The Stainforth collection was also rich in the American locals, and it was to this collection that Mr. Mount Brown was indebted for the useful lists of these stamps in his catalogues. From the little we know of the reverend gentleman's collection, we may be sure it would have well justified the remarkable price of £250 even in 1864 or 1865.

Few--very few--collectors of that period, and indeed of later times, withstood the temptations of a rapidly rising market or the emergencies of pecuniary embarrassments; many sold their collections when prices seemed to be great but were, as events have proved, still in their early stages. One collector retained his collection from 1859 to 1896: its owner, Mr. W. Hughes-Hughes, of the Inner Temple, started collecting in the former year, but ceased active collecting in 1874, from which time his album was latent until 1896--with the exception of some items lent for display at the London Exhibition of 1890. Happily for our instruction, Mr. Hughes-Hughes was one of those methodical men who keep a strict account of expenditures, and he had spent £69 on his stamp-collection in those fifteen years. In 1896 he sold that collection for £3,000. It was then cheap at the latter price, for it contained among its 2,900 varieties a yellow Austrian "Mercury" unused; a 4 cents British Guiana of 1856, on blue "sugar" paper; the 12d. black of Canada unused; plate 77 of the 1d. Great Britain unused; and, _mirabile dictu_, an unused copy of the 4d. red "woodblock" error of the Cape of Good Hope, a stamp which afterwards fetched £500. One could go on to the rare used stamps, and so "pile on the agony," but let it suffice for the present to say that the collection contained many gems, especially in those classic early issues of Victoria, Trinidad, Mauritius, France, Reunion (the 15 centimes), Mexico, Naples (the ½ Tornese in both types), Tuscany, Saxony, &c., the very names of which countries conjure up for the present-day philatelist visions of pocket-money for millionaires.

Hying back to the Continent, the troubles in France led to considerable disruption of the philatelic life, and no doubt many collectors and their albums were parted. M. Oscar Berger-Levrault was the producer of the earliest privately printed lists of stamps. His firm of typographical printers, which had been established in Strasburg (the city of Gutenberg associations), had to move from Strasburg to Nancy, as a result of the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. The work of setting up, in a new centre, establishments for his four hundred workmen left M. Berger-Levrault no time for stamps from 1870 to 1873, and this lapse in the continuity of his collection was so serious a gap that he decided to sell, especially as he had to undertake long bibliographical researches into his family history. He has told us something of his collection, but not the price it realised in 1873. Here is a brief statistical outline:--

Contents of the collection, September, 1861 Stamps 673 " " " August, 1862 " 1,142 " " " April, 1863 " 1,553 " " " July, 1864 " 1,857

These figures are without counting varieties of shade. In 1870 the collection contained 10,400 stamps in all, including 6,300 unused, and more than 1,400 genuine essays. "I was only short of fifty postage-stamps known at that date," he writes, "as also a certain number of Australian stamps, with their various watermarks, which I had begun to study towards 1866, with my old friends and collaborators, F. A. Philbrick and Dr. Magnus."[18]

Here indeed was a collection, probably as near to the collector's elusive ideal of completeness as has ever been attained in a general collection. Writing from memory, in January, 1890, he gives the following list of special items he remembers to have been amongst the 6,300 unused stamps:--

Bergedorf Nov. 1, 1861 ½ sch. violet. 3 sch. rose. Saxony 1850 3 pf. Great Britain 1840 1d. V.R. Switzerland: Zurich 1843 4 rapp. " " " 6 rapp. " "Vaud" -- 4 centimes. " " -- 5 " Tuscany 1849 1 soldo. " " 2 soldi. " " 60 crazie. Naples 1860 ½ T. arms. " " ½ T. cross. Reunion 1851 15 centimes. " " 30 centimes. "Indies" 1854 ½ anna red. New Zealand 1855 1s. New Brunswick 1857 1s. Nova Scotia 1857 1s. British Guiana 1856 4 cents carmine. Peru 1858 ½ peso. Buenos Ayres April, 1858 3 pesos. " " " " 4 pesos red. " " " " 4 " brown. " " " " 5 " orange. " " Oct. " 4 rl. brown. " " " " 1 peso brown (:IN Ps). " " Jan. 1859 1 peso blue (:IN Ps). " " " " 1 " " (TO Ps).

"On the other hand, Spain, without its colonies, was represented in my collection for the period of 1850 to the end of 1856 by 79 unused stamps, 80 postmarked stamps, 8 essays of the Madrid stamp (bear), and was very complete." Even on the extenuated scale of the modern Gibbons catalogue, the total of varieties of the issues 1850-56 only numbers 125.

The first four-figure price for a stamp collection was obtained in 1878, when the magnificent collection of Sir Daniel Cooper, Bart., K.C.M.G., was transferred to the ownership of Mr. Philbrick, Q.C., for £3,000. Sir Daniel's public career, chiefly in connection with the promotion of "Advance, Australia!", is still well remembered, but it is significant of the character of the assemblages at Mr. Stainforth's rectory that this distinguished Australian should have been one of their most active promoters in 1861 and the following years. He was, with Mr. Philbrick, one of the founders of the Philatelic Society in 1869, and was the first of the line of distinguished occupants of the presidential chair of the now Royal Philatelic Society. It is only natural that, with his intimate associations with Australia, the early stamps of that continent and of New Zealand should figure strongly in his collection. It was he who supplied the data which enabled the young philatelic giant, Mr. E. L. Pemberton, to announce the existence of a pre-Rowland Hill stamped envelope in New South Wales, leading to the discovery of the embossed letter-sheets of Sydney, 1838.

On March 18, 1872, there was held the first auction of rare postage-stamps at the rooms of Messrs. Sotheby, in Wellington Street, London. The experiment was made with what was described as a _portion_ of an American collection, and the only reason the _whole_ collection was not offered was that the time of the public was too valuable to spread over three days! A criticism in the columns of _The Philatelical Journal_ of April 15, 1872, attributes some of the prices, even then considered low, to the distrust of amateurs when the owner was bidding. I give a few of the prices realised. Lot 6 was the 15 cents error, United States, 1869, with the frame inverted: "This fetched a _good price_" in the opinion of the contemporary philatelic writer, being knocked down to Mr. Atlee for 36s. My friend, Mr. E. B. Power, in his priced work "United States Stamps," 1909, prices this stamp at $2,500 unused, $150 used. Lot 12 was a 5 cents Brattleboro: "a beauty, was bought in at £3; it would have sold well but for the owner's bidding," &c. I suppose a Brattleboro, especially "a beauty," would find ready competition in three figures to-day. Other lots _bought in_ were:--

Lot 15, St. Louis, all three varieties of the 5c. £2 13s. Lot 16, " " " " 10c. £2 7s. Lot 17, " 20 c., "unique" £6. Lot 18, " 20 c., "variety not unique" £8 12s.

The 5 cent St. Louis used is now catalogued at £25, and the 10 cent at £30; a _pair_ of the 20 cents, these stamps being part of the treasure-trove of the celebrated find of 1895, was sold in the 'nineties for £1,026. Some of the Blood locals were bought in, but Mr. Pemberton secured for £5 a copy of the very rare _pink_ Jefferson Market P.O. stamp.

"Here," says our chronicler, "occurred something amusing; the auctioneer probably fancied that as this was unique and exciting competition, it was a _handsome_ stamp, so as the bidding rose described it as 'beautifully engraved,' which created great laughter, for it was a foully hideous thing, and the engraving apparently done by a blind man with a skewer." Altogether there were many rare American locals, the majority of which fell to Sir Daniel Cooper, Mr. Atlee, and Mr. Pemberton. Then came "some miscellaneous lots, sets of used, &c., of which some fetched exorbitant prices, for instance, four varieties of 5 cents, green, eagle, Bolivia, were sold for 14s., the 5 cent lilac for 23s., the 10 cent brown for 17s. The early Luzons (Philippines), used, were good lots and the 5 and 10 cent 1854, with 1 and 2 rs., fetched in the aggregate £6 9s., so they were no bargain."

Lot 150 was the ½ T. Naples, arms type, bought in for 40s., and the cross type was bought in for 9s. Lot 160 was "a remarkably good 13 cent of the commoner type of the 1852 figure Sandwich Islands, which the owner boldly started at £6 and bought in for an additional ten shillings, _a very full price indeed_." Nevertheless it would have cost £90 or more to-day.

The record of this sale deserves more attention than I am able to give it here: the event was certainly one of extraordinary interest, though it was considered at the time something of a failure, and was not repeated. The next auction sale of stamps did not take place until sixteen years later. But I must spare a few lines for my chronicler's peroration.

"The results of this sale are so far satisfactory that they prove that Philately is not yet on the wane, _and never will be_. It is a young science, but before many years pass, we shall regard £5 for a valuable stamp as calmly as we do now the pound sterling for an ordinary specimen; and those who have been the mainstays of the dealers will undoubtedly find that their outlays, however extensive, will produce at least cent. per cent. What are we to think of the matchless collections of Mr. Philbrick, Sir Daniel Cooper, Mr. Atlee, Baron Arthur de Rothschild, E. J., and others, gathered together with unflagging toil and patience, but all of which contain practically unattainable things? And will not these in the course of years inevitably become of fabulous value?"

Four years after the Cooper collection was sold for £3,000, Mr. Philbrick, to the deep regret of all his British colleagues, sold his general collection (not the Great Britain portion) to M. la Rénotière in Paris, for the then record price of £8,000. At his death, which occurred so recently as Christmas, 1910, it would have represented the comfortable fortune of, say, £50,000! It would be a shorter task to say what was _not_ in this truly wonderful collection than to attempt a list of its gems, for the absentees were almost _nil_. The best idea of the strength of this collection must be gathered from the valuable papers Philbrick contributed to _The Stamp Collector's Magazine_ and _The Philatelic Record_, chiefly under the pseudonyms "Damus petimusque vicissim," "An Amateur," and several "By the author of the 'Postage Stamps of British Guiana,'" and by his collaborated work with the late Mr. W. A. S. Westoby, "The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great Britain." Here I may fittingly place on record a souvenir I recently acquired of this collaboration and close friendship between these two most renowned of the students of stamps, whose work is a classic in the literature of Philately, and is still constantly referred to, being only in some respects superseded by later authorities. The letter itself amply justifies publication in entirety here, as it throws an interesting light on the philatelic evidence before the Joint Committee on Postage Stamps appointed by the Postmaster-General, the "confidential" report of which was printed in 1885 ("Bibl. Lindesiana," p. 159).

"11, EARL'S AVENUE, FOLKESTONE, "_December 29th_.

"MY DEAR PHILBRICK,--

"After seeing you on Saturday I wrote a letter to Mr. Jeffery saying that you had told me the substance of what passed, and that I most thoroughly endorsed what you had said about forgery. It was not the difficulty of forging a stamp which constituted their protection, so much as the difficulty of disposing of the stamps when forged.

"I further said that if they determined on having a surface printed series not combined with embossing they must allow me to point out what I considered to be a fatal error in all Messrs. De La Rue's designs, and this was the introduction of a lined background, the lines of which were almost coincident with the lines of shading in the head. The merit of Bacon's design was that he had a light head thrown up by a dark background, and I could scarcely point out an instance where surface-printed stamps had not either a solid background or none at all, like the Hungarian of 1872. As they would possibly not like a solid background I suggested to them to adopt a standard profile of the Queen's head, and for all the stamps up to 1s. to reduce it by photography to the size of the head on the 2d., and for those above they might reduce it to a larger size, so as to keep the same likeness through all, and to put it on a plain white ground, and I sent them a 2d. from which I had removed the lined background like as I have done in the 1d. annexed.

"That if they would excuse my making a further suggestion it would be that for all the stamps up to 1s. about four colours would suffice, if the framings were made different and distinctly visible, ... thus:--

------------+------------------+-----------------+----------- { ½.| pink {1d.| blue { | {6d. Green { 1½d.| like the {2d.| like the { 2½d. | olive {9d. { 3d.| present 5s. {4d.| 2s. { 5d. | {1s. ------------+------------------+-----------------+-----------

"I have had a very courteous reply from Mr. Jeffery, thanking me much for the letter, and saying he would lay it before the Committee at the next meeting.

"I forgot to mention one thing I said. That I knew that stamp collectors were not regarded with too much favour by the authorities, who were inclined to regard them as too curious and desiring to look into mysteries into which even angels were forbidden to look, but that they ought to take a very different view, for we were the greatest protectors against forgeries of stamps that they could have. Not one came out, but was immediately denounced in the publications circulating amongst collectors and the forger's trade stopped.

"I have written you a long lot of twaddle, but I have tried to sound the trumpet of the Philatelist--what Bunhill Row will think I do not know nor care; I said their manufacture was good--the best--but that the least said about their designs and colours the better. I also said that as to the lettering I agreed with you that it was practically useless _if_ the stamp was properly obliterated and the saving slips done away with.

"The kind of stamp I suggested that they should have the design made of as a trial was the 2d. head turned the other way, when they could see the effect.

"Ever yours very affectionately, "W. A. S. WESTOBY."

I am not entering upon any details of the Philbrick collection, for the most I could give would be a bald citation of an almost untold list of rarities. Imagine--if you can--a complete list of all known stamps up to 1880, imagine also some of the rarities not merely in duplicate or triplicate, but in the course of advanced plating of the settings (especially in British Guiana), and you may get some idea of what was in this great collection--and is still preserved in the collection of M. la Rénotière. His two used "Post Offices" of Mauritius were the first known copies of these rarities, and were at first considered to be an error of the inscription "Post Paid" of 1848, instead of a distinct issue of 1847. They came from the correspondence of a M. Borchard, whose widow found no fewer than thirteen of the twenty-five copies now known. The first pair was exchanged for a couple of "Montevideos," which had, in the eyes of the lady, so M. Moëns tells us, "the supreme advantage of having a place indicated for them in the Lallier album, where the 'Post Office,' like many other stamps, were not indicated." The two stamps were used on one envelope, and were postmarked together with one impression of the "Inland" handstamp, the 1d. specimen having the left upper corner defective. M. Albert Coutures, a youngster of twenty, secured the stamps in the "swap," and afterwards (October, 1865) parted with them to M. Moëns through the medium of a Bordeaux merchant, M. E. Gimet. The price Moëns paid must have been a mere trifle, as he parted with them to Mr. Philbrick on February 15, 1866, for a few pounds. The record of these stamps Nos. 1 and 2 in Moëns's "A History of the Twenty Known Specimens, &c.," is therefore briefly--

Year. Owner. 1847 Borchard. 1864 (?) Coutures. 1865 Gimet. 1865 Moëns. 1866 Philbrick. 1882 La Rénotière.

To-day their "weight in gold" would, of course, represent but an infinitesimal fraction of their market value.

The Image collection was sold in the same year as the Philbrick albums. Mr. W. E. Image was yet another of the _vieille garde_ of Philately, though he ploughed a lone furrow during the early years of his collecting, which began in 1859. His collection, sold for £3,000 in 1882, deserves to be especially noted, as it was in one sense the basis of the great national collection now at the British Museum. The late Mr. T. K. Tapling, M.P., was the purchaser, and so magnificent was his new acquisition that he at one time thought of parting with his own and continuing the Image collection. At this juncture, the death of Mr. Tapling's father enabled him to amalgamate the two collections, his own with that of Mr. Image, and to launch out upon the grandly conceived collection bequeathed in 1891 to the nation.

Mr. Image at first compiled his collection almost entirely by correspondence, and did not see the inside of a dealer's shop until the 'seventies. He is said, however, to have never refused a good specimen of a stamp he lacked, save on one occasion, an historic one. Moëns offered him for £240 the two Post Office Mauritius, but he declined, as he hoped to get another chance at a more moderate figure. That was in the 'seventies. Image lived to the advanced age of ninety-six (b. 1807), and within a few months of his death a copy of the 2d. Post Office alone was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson for £1,450.

But if he lacked the "Post Offices," there was an abundance of other rarities. Philbrick travelled to Bury St. Edmunds to see Image's wonderful unused 6d. orange of Victoria ("beaded oval"), a stamp which in the Mirabaud sale (1909) fetched £140. The copy from the Avery collection attained in 1910 a price still higher. British Guiana, Guadalajara and the American locals were amongst the specially strong sections of this collection.

There have been so many really important collections formed since the Philbrick collection that almost any entry into details becomes invidious in a brief review. The collections of to-day are, as I have indicated, on a more broadly historical basis than was general in the early days of the study, though even the collections of Dr. Gray, Sir Daniel Cooper and Judge Philbrick, and others, were on a sound basis of historical research. Philately has had no more precise or more able historians than Judge Philbrick and his collaborator, Mr. W. A. S. Westoby, while to Dr. Gray we are indebted for the history of most of the English essays of the first period.

But the collections of Lord Crawford have carried the historical and scientific aspects of Philately to more profound depths, and the stamps have been collected on a more lavish scale to provide ample reference material not only for present but future study. Condition, too, has received more attention, and is now a primary consideration. The collections are mostly arranged in countries or groups, and few suspect the wealth of material as yet not disclosed, among the sections which have not yet been publicly displayed. The United States collection, when shown to the New York Collectors' Club a few years ago, opened up a new aspect of Philately to the collectors in the States, and gave an effective stimulus to the serious side of collecting in America. The collection is very fully written up in the Earl's own writing, much of which was done on board his yacht, the _Valhalla_. The collection contains practically all that could be got together to illustrate the postal history of the United States, and makes the mention of particular items useless. The _unique_ envelope of Annapolis, however, is especially noteworthy, and also the 10 cents, black on white, adhesive stamp of Baltimore, of which but three copies are known.

Of Great Britain, too, Lord Crawford has a large number of well-filled albums, including some extraordinarily large blocks ("part sheets" would describe them better) of the imperforate line-engraved stamps. There is nearly a complete sheet of the 1d. black "V.R." (219 stamps out of the 240), a part sheet of the ordinary 1d. black (175 stamps), and all but six rows of a sheet of the scarce 2d. blue, "no lines," which was the companion stamp of the 1d. black, and was issued on May 6, 1840.

The collections of Mr. Leslie L. R. Hausburg, have, next to those of the Earl of Crawford, attracted widespread attention and the unstinted admiration of philatelists. They have hitherto dealt chiefly with the Australasian portions of the British Empire, but latterly have been extended to a number of foreign countries. Mr. M. P. Castle, J.P., has formed several great collections, as will be noted in the list of sales which concludes this chapter, and Mr. Henry J. Duveen has one of the three finest collections of Mauritius, including the superb "Post Offices," both unused, from the Avery collection, and a matchless block of four, unused, of the 1d. Post Paid, for which wonderful item its possessor paid £1,000. These "Post Offices" are the ones which in 1910 carried the record price for this popular pair of rarities up to £3,500. Mr. Duveen's Switzerland collection is also a very notable one, and contains the block of double Genevas, and the part sheet of "large Eagles" from the Avery collection, and the beautiful block of fifteen Basle "doves," which was the subject of a recent find in Berne. Baron Anthony de Worms is the owner of a fine collection of Great Britain and the collection _par excellence_ of Ceylon. Mr. Harvey R. G. Clarke's collection of New South Wales is justly celebrated, and in the less costly countries the honours of possessing the most perfect collections are distributed by no means exclusively among the very wealthy. In stamp-collecting the personal search is often more productive than lavish expenditure without personal effort.

In America there are some collections of great note. That of Mr. George H. Worthington has been referred to elsewhere. Mr. Henry J. Crocker, a San Francisco magnate, had the misfortune to lose about £15,000 worth of his stamps in the disastrous fire which followed the earthquake of 1906. This included eleven out of forty-three of his albums, but luckily his greatest work, the Hawaiian collection, was safely in England at the time of the catastrophe. A wonderful collection of Japanese was completely destroyed. Mr. Crocker has no fewer than sixteen of the Hawaiian "Missionaries"; outside of the British Museum, his is the only copy of the 2 cents, Type I.; he has four used copies of the 5 cents, two of them being on the entire envelopes; and there is a unique item in an unbroken strip of three 13 cents "Hawaiian Postage" on entire. Two of the stamps are Type I. and the other Type II.; he has also an unused and two used copies of each type. Of the "H.I. & U.S. Postage" 13 cents stamp there are two specimens, one of each type used together.[19]

Of other American collections, that of Mr. Francis C. Foster, of Boston, impressed me as much as any that I have seen across the Atlantic. Mr. Foster has been interested in stamps probably longer than any other living collector in the United States, and his collection now comprises the United States, the possessions, and British North America. In the general issues of the Republic he has a superb set of the _premières gravures_, and all the early issues are extensively shown, together with the beautiful proofs and essays associated with them. The Confederate States Postmasters' stamps include the 5c. Athens used on the envelope; the 5c. and 10c. Goliad; and the Livingston, Alabama. The late Mr. Thorne, an old New York collector, showed me his collection in 1906, which was of great proportions and was exclusively composed of blocks of four, a state in which he had the greatest difficulty in obtaining even many modern stamps. His collection, or some of it, has been disposed of by auction in America. The late Mr. J. F. Seybold, of Syracuse, had the credit of fostering the cult of collecting the used stamps on the entire envelope or letter, which from the historical point of view is extremely useful. His collection, however, was bought for about £5,000 by Mr. J. T. Coit, and subsequently realised nearly £7,000 at auction.

Of the great collections of the Continent, that of M. Philippe la Rénotière is the greatest ever brought together, but its owner has not been in the habit of exhibiting it, and the number of living philatelists who have seen even portions of it must be extremely few. He has certainly got together in the aggregate a collection greater than the Tapling one, and he has absorbed in the process the albums of Sir Daniel Cooper and Judge Philbrick, and has had the pick of all the greatest collections which have come on the market for many years. It was estimated years ago that he must have spent a quarter of a million of money on the collection,[20] and as he commenced about 1864, the extent of his treasures has brought him to be regarded as a philatelic Comte de Monte Cristo. The unique British Guiana 1 cent stamp of 1856 is in this collection, together with five Post Office Mauritius, including one of the _two_ known copies of the 1d. unused. Other great rarities are mostly represented by several copies.

The collection of the late M. Paul Mirabaud, a wealthy Parisian banker, was exceptional for the beauty of the condition of the stamps it contained, and at the auction sale many of the stamps fetched prices much beyond the standard quotations of the catalogues. The Swiss portion, which formed the basis of a most sumptuously illustrated work written in collaboration by M. Mirabaud and the Baron A. de Reuterskiöld, was sold privately.

The following synopsis of the chief sales of collections (whether by auction or privately) covers only those which are known to have realised £1,000 and upwards; there are many more which have doubtless been sold for amounts well into four figures, but the transactions, or at any rate the amounts, have not been disclosed. The amounts given below must not in every case be taken as the exact purchase price; where not exact they are approximate.

-------+----------------------+------------------------------+------- YEAR. | COLLECTION. | CHARACTER. |AMOUNT. -------+----------------------+------------------------------+------- | | | £ 1878 |Cooper. |General. | 3,000 1882 |Philbrick. |General. | 8,000 1882 |Image. |General. | 3,000 1885 |Burnett. |General. | 1,000 1890 |Caillebotte. |General. | 5,000 1891 |Colman. |British Colonies. | 2,000 1894 |Winzer. |General. | 3,000 1894 |Castle. |Australia. |10,000 1894 |Philbrick. |Great Britain. | 1,500 1895 |Harrison. |United States. | 1,330 1895 |Harbeck. |General. | 3,000 1895 |W. Cooper. |General. | -- 1895 |J. E. Wilbey. |General. | -- 1896 |Hughes-Hughes. |General. | 3,000 1896 |Ehrenbach. |Germany. | 6,000 1896 |Earl of Kingston. |British Empire. | 1,800 1896-7 |Blest. |New South Wales, New Zealand, | 4,750 | | and Queensland. | 1897 |F. W. Ayer. |General (dispersed gradually).|45,000 1897 |Dr. Legrand. |Part of General. |12,000 1898 |Russell. |General (unused, strong in | 4,600 | | British Colonies). | 1898 |H. L. Hayman. |General. | 4,000 1899 |Pauwels. |General. | 4,000 1900 |M. P. Castle. |Europe. |27,500 1901 |W. T. Willett |Great Britain (with Nevis). | 2,000 1902 |Major-Gen. Lambton. |British Colonies. | 3,400 1902 |C. Hollander. |South Africa. | 1,500 1903 |J. N. Marsden. |General. | 2,350 1903 |E. J. Nankivell. |Transvaal. | 3,000 1904 |P. Fabri. |General. | 3,000 1904 |A titled collector. |Selection of great rarities. | 4,700 1904 |Prince Doria Pamphilj.|General. | 2,000 1905 |M. P. Castle. |Australia. | 5,750 1906 |W. W. Mann. |Europe. |30,000 1906 |A. Bagshawe. |Straits Settlements. | 2,000 1907 |V. Roberts. |Cape Colony, Queensland, &c. | 3,800 1907 |Tomson. |West Indies. | 6,800 1908 |P. Mirabaud. |{Switzerland, £8,000 }| | |{Rest of Collection, £22,000 }|30,000 1909 |Sir W. B. Avery. |General. |24,500 1909 |J. W. Paul, jun. |General. |11,400 1909 |J. F. Seybold. |General. | 5,000 1911 |Miguel Gambin. |Argentina. | 6,000 -------+----------------------+------------------------------+-------

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Earlier in the same year this boudoir gossiper had answered no fewer than three correspondents, "Mercury," "Daniel," and "Milly" at one shot thus: "We cannot encourage 'exchanging foreign stamps,' for we do not see the smallest good resulting from it. This foreign stamp-collecting has been a mania, which is at length dying out. Were the stamps works of art, then the collecting them might be justified. Were they, in short, anything but bits of defaced printing, totally worthless, we would try to say something in their favour. There are now so many lithographic forgeries in the market that he is the cleverest of the clever who can detect the spurious stamps from the true."--_The Young Ladies' Journal_, April 27, 1864.

[18] The pseudonym of Dr. Legrand.

[19] See further "Postage Stamps of the Hawaiian Islands in the Collection of Henry J. Crocker," described and illustrated by Fred J. Melville, London, 1908.

[20] "The Stamp Collector," by W. J. Hardy and E. D. Bacon, 1897.

X

ROYAL AND NATIONAL COLLECTIONS