So far back as 1908--since when my collection has much improved--I had the pleasure of exchanging photographs with a great connoisseur of old pewter, and I was very gratified when he wrote to me as follows:
“There is so much that is worse than valueless in most collections; so much unnecessary repetition, that large collections become irritatingly monotonous. Although your pieces are often repeated, the repetition represents always an interesting variation; and this feature contributes the element of evolution which is always interesting, and without which no collection is complete or satisfactory. I congratulate you, therefore, upon your possessions, and think you have done remarkably well during the short time. Could you let me see the two ‘salts’ marked on the photo?”
I sent the two “salts,” and he remarked, “The little one is particularly interesting as it is a reversible one, the only specimen I have seen.”
That special “salt” is the queer looking little thing in the centre of the salt group, and I am giving it more space than its size or appearance seem to warrant. It was first caught sight of in a shop at Leeds, where a broker had it filled with black varnish into which he was dipping his brush, while he was giving an artistic touch-up to some of his stock. The hunter spotted pewter, and after some little chaff was told he could have it if he would bring something that would do for holding the varnish; this he bought at a shop not far off, and the change was soon effected. It is a curious specimen, for whichever way it stands it will hold the salt, but in its present position it will hold more than twice as much as when it is placed the other way uppermost.
The results of my hunting and advertising not keeping pace with my ambition for more, I secured the assistance of a friend in Ireland, who proved to be a friend indeed. He had a dog which was constantly jumping on the sofa and chairs, so he called him Zacchæus because “he was everlastingly telling him to come down.”
Have you heard of “Phil the Fluter”? I had not until I heard our friend warble of the wonderful effect the execution of that phenomenal flautist produced upon his hearers, but I imagine the charm attained would be as comparable with that of my Irish friend as modern is to antique, while he has a tongue that would “wile a bird off a tree.” Like Father O’Flynn he’d “a wonderful way wid him, the young and ould sinners were wishful to trade wid him.” I am not digressing but adorning the tale to point the moral. With his cheery manner he succeeded all the time to such an extent that I had to wire him “Hold! enough.” Later when other collectors sought my help to get them Irish measures he reported “Too late, the Jews have been round and bought up the lot. Why did you stop me just when I was getting my hand in?” Explanatory of my reason for cancelling my early instructions, let me give the following. I was impatient to make a show, so told him to buy all the pewter plates he came across. A few days after seventy arrived in two filthy dirty sacks, the state of which corresponded fairly well with the appearance of their contents. He apologised later for the condition of the sacks which “he had borrowed from a place where they had just skinned a dead horse.” Some of these plates bore marks and a few others crests, but as the former owners had a strange custom of polishing the backs with sand, the marks were mostly rubbed off, and as they never cleaned the fronts, my getting that consignment into exhibition form required some trouble and expense, but as the Tommy said after getting C.B. for being absent without leave, “It was worth it.”