Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (24 page)

A few years later, in early 1880, she instructed one of her French contacts, a dealer named Fournier (possibly the son of the Fournier who had disappeared during the violence of the Paris Commune) to buy on her behalf a small figurine. Charlotte had glimpsed the piece only once, briefly, as it lay unregarded in a display window, but she was immediately sure it was sixteenth-century Spanish. Fournier disagreed. Since he was being paid for his trouble, he continued to act on Charlotte's orders, but he maintained that the piece was nothing more than a modern reproduction. He wrote to her, warning her that she was likely to be disappointed, and finally he brought the figure to her rooms at the Hotel Drouot in Paris. The minute she saw it, Charlotte knew she was right. And her instincts were, once again, impeccable. After some straightforward research, she was able to show beyond doubt that the piece was special, and a bargain: ‘It proved to be, as I anticipated, a very fine specimen of Spanish Cinquecento art, and we were wonderfully fortunate to obtain it for about £8. It was worth quite 3 times as much, but the ignorant French dealers did not know it.'
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Charlotte's journals are full of small incidents like these, where her scholarly approach to collecting bests even experienced dealers. And it was not just with ceramics that she could show off her skill. She was fascinated by the variety and history of board games and before long had acquired all kinds of counters and draughts and dice. Still cherishing the gift from her mother many years before, she also collected fans which had been a popular, and exclusive, fashion item across Europe since the sixteenth century, and which had the added advantage of folding easily for transport in the big red bag. Individual fan leaves in silk, linen or animal skin, supported on wooden, ivory or mother-of-pearl sticks, were printed with historical, political or social illustrations: Charlotte's collection included a scene from the coronation banquet of George II in 1727, maps, landscapes and pastorals, biblical stories such as
Moses in the wilderness and a spangled black gauze fan made to mourn the death of Louis XVI.

In September 1880, she was in Munich when something else caught her eye – her first set of playing cards. Hand-painted and early-printed playing cards featured all kinds of suits, from coins, cups and bells to acorns, sceptres and cudgels, as well as a variety of royal households that often extended beyond king, queen and knave to valets and maids. The Germans were the most imaginative and lively of early card-makers, and Charlotte was immediately captivated by the intricate designs. But the cards were expensive, even after some spirited negotiating, and Charlotte was strong enough to refuse them and return to her lodgings for dinner. Her resistance did not last, however. After desert had been served and eaten, she set off back through the quiet streets to the shop and bought three complete packs and two fragmented sets, ‘for which I am ashamed to say we paid £10'.
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It seemed inexcusably extravagant. Charlotte was used to paying well for things that she knew were fine pieces and a sensible speculation, but with the cards she did not feel confident that her knowledge was strong enough to justify such expenditure. ‘I am so inexperienced as yet in this branch of collecting, that I do not know if they are worth anything,' she admitted to her journal. Yet they were more than just a whim; she bought them because she liked them, but also as part of her ongoing collecting education, as an investment in her future as a collector as much as in the cards themselves. ‘I must pay to learn,' she reminded herself.

This commitment to developing original areas of collecting, and backing it up with thorough scholarship, identified Charlotte with the increasing community of collectors who were moving away from the idea of simple connoisseurship (where collecting was largely a matter of personal taste) towards a more professional approach, based on wide learning. The work of men like J. C. Robinson and Augustus Franks in the public museums had set a
standard of collecting – and an ambition for the collector – that began to be seen also among private collectors. Just ten years after its foundation, the more ambitious members of the Fine Arts Club, including Charles Schreiber, had become frustrated with its emphasis on socializing and dilettante connoisseurship. They felt its more serious aims were becoming lost, and set about founding a more scholarly offshoot which was established in 1866 as the Burlington Fine Arts Club and which operated alongside the original club as a refuge for the most committed collectors. By the 1880s, when Charlotte was beginning her research on playing cards, this impetus had grown. It was no longer enough simply to be enthusiastic. The influence of the museums and the increasing number of collectors in new fields meant that those who wished to distinguish themselves needed to demonstrate originality and a commitment to extending their knowledge. While Charlotte may have been excluded from professional collecting by her gender, she nonetheless developed a rigorous and independent approach that made her professional in everything except the fact that she was not usually paid for her work.

Before very long, Charlotte had begun to master her new field of study, and to collect playing cards feverishly. She admitted to her diary that, within days, the thought of finding new patterns and designs ‘now occupies me very much' and she was tormented by the urgency of age and lost opportunity, afraid that ‘I have begun too late to make my collection a very handsome one'.
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But her fears were unfounded. With characteristic thoroughness, she soon added a detailed knowledge of playing cards to her lengthening list of specialities, and her international collection of over 1,000 packs, from Poland and Russia, Denmark, India, Java and Japan, as well as Italy, England, France, Germany and Spain – with designs featuring everything from seventeenth-century Latin grammar to the military science of fortification – proved good enough in the end for the British Museum.

Charlotte's purchases could be modest: £10 for the playing cards; £7 for the figurine and sauceboats; £8 for a piece of Spanish fifteenth-century art. In these cases at least, her bargains might have cost a lot more, but she could not always be trading on her knowledge to find things that had been overlooked, and most of Charlotte's transactions were at more or less market value. And even though she chose to collect in many areas that were unfashionable or relatively unknown, her collecting still cost her a great deal in comparison with everyday items. In the 1880s, when Charlotte was buying her first playing cards, the annual farm rent on an acre of decent land was between 15 shillings and £1, while, on the railways, excursion and season ticket fares around the home counties were set at under a penny a mile; a gross of quills, packed in a box, cost less than 2d; and a ton of large coal could be had for around 8 shillings.
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While collecting was gradually becoming more accessible and widespread, it was still not within everyone's reach. Certainly, those hoping to buy as often as Charlotte did needed both a healthy income and an unshakeable commitment to building a collection.

By 1883, the bouts of illness that Charles had long been suffering had become more serious and protracted. Charlotte was alarmed, and, when a three-month trip to the south coast failed to have much effect, the doctor prescribed a bracing sea voyage. The Schreibers set off on their longest, and last, journey together, taking the slow ocean route to Cape Town where the climate was said to be good for ailing health. This time, there was no opportunity, or desire, to collect. There was not a bowl or fan or plate that could distract Charlotte from the aching fear of losing her husband; the showrooms of Paris and the bustle of Italian auctions seemed a world away. For eleven tense months, Charlotte was too busy acting as nurse to think of much else, but, despite
her care, her husband's alarming symptoms refused to be assuaged by South Africa's warm air. And when it became clear that Charles's health was in fact getting worse, she took the decision to return to London, to the support of family and friends.

Charles never made it home. He became steadily weaker as the steamer travelled slowly up Africa's Atlantic coast. Confined to his cabin, he could not eat and hardly seemed to know that Charlotte was by his bed, holding his hand. He died finally at Lisbon on 29 March 1884. Charlotte could comfort herself only with the thought that it was ‘within an appreciable distance of home'.
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She was seventy-two years old, and her eyesight was failing fast. She felt more bewildered and alone than she had ever done in her life. Her second husband's illness and death seemed to drain her characteristic energy and optimism and on her return to England she went to live with her youngest daughter Blanche, in Cavendish Square, welcoming the comfort of family. Looking back wistfully on ‘the days that were over; dreams that were done', she did not have the will to continue the European crusade alone: ‘So ends my
life
on earth,' she wrote. ‘It has been a very happy one, and I have much to be grateful for.' Even so, she did not neglect the collection. There was still much that could be done without the habitual travelling. After decades of actively pursuing objects across a continent, Charlotte set her mind now to the quieter tasks of sorting, cataloguing and arranging. She recognized that this was just as important as the work that had gone before and she welcomed the more contemplative aspects of life of a collector. Indeed, in her bereavement, her collection became more to her than ever: ‘that is the only thing that gives any relief to my sadness,' she noted.
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It was shortly after Charles's death, in May 1884, that Charlotte had her first serious discussion with staff at South Kensington about giving the best part of the collection of English porcelain to the museum as a memorial to her husband. Over the years, she
had loaned many pieces for exhibition and display, and had spent many hours in the galleries studying. Charles himself, possibly with an eye on posterity, had raised with his wife the idea that they might donate some of their collection to a public museum. The thought, noted Charlotte, ‘was not a new one to me', and the museum, in its turn, was delighted at the prospect of acquiring such a unique collection of china.
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In preparation, Charlotte cleared the two largest rooms in the house and arranged the pieces on seven long tables. Then staff from South Kensington arrived to take stock of what might be on offer and, with her husband no longer around to advise, Charlotte turned to Augustus Franks to help finalize the details of the bequest.

In the months that followed, Franks became an even more familiar face at Charlotte's home, calling on an almost daily basis to work with her on cataloguing the English ceramics and to help select the best pieces for South Kensington. When he could not spare the time, Charlotte went to him instead in the offices of the British Museum. It was clear evidence that, in her old age, Charlotte had become a respected collector, one of the most influential of her time. With Franks' help, a catalogue was written and printed, although not before Charlotte succumbed, even at such a late stage, to making the occasional extra purchase as a last-minute addition to the collection. She found it hard to break the habit of looking for treasure: ‘Really I must stop these morning rambles into curiosity shops,' she chastised herself after a dark November day spent shopping. ‘I shall be ruined – another £5 – but then it is all going to the South Kensington.'
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There was satisfaction for Charlotte in securing her treasured pieces a good home, and there was a certain pleasure in seeing her lifetime's collecting honoured by such a robust institution, but all in all she found the process of transferring the collection unsettling and troublesome. She could not sleep. When the terms of the agreement were finally settled in October 1885, it was a relief:
‘now that I have got the load of the settlement of the collection off my mind, all else seems trifling', she wrote, and promptly went to see a workman about dealing with her blocked drains.
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A month later, on 19 November, the collection was finally packed and sent to its new home at South Kensington. It was a poignant parting. ‘I close this sad volume with my adieux to the collection,' she wrote, perhaps even then unaware of what a singular slice of history she had just bequeathed to the nation.
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Over the next ten years, Charlotte campaigned vigorously for causes ranging from Turkish refugees to London cabbies, funding a Cabmen's shelter at Langham Place, off Oxford Circus. But her collecting years were behind her. Her journal entries finally stumbled to a halt and her days were filled with the comfortable, unremarkable routines of any wealthy Victorian matriarch. She died, almost totally blind, on 15 January 1895, at the age of eighty-two. Her more ephemeral and quirky pieces – the fans and the playing cards – she left to the British Museum. During the last years of her life, she worked with staff there on the fans in particular, publishing books on both English and European designs: the Worshipful Company of London Fan Makers awarded her the Freedom of the Company, one of only two Victorian women to be honoured in this way by livery companies.
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One piece in particular was displayed as a highlight in the immense labyrinth of the British Museum's galleries: an eighteenth-century English fan, given to the museum by Charlotte in 1891 and celebrating the magnificent and chaotic firework display that marked the temporary end of the War of Austrian Succession in April 1749. With the design etched in paper, coloured by hand and mounted on ivory sticks, the fan showed rockets bursting over a huge makeshift palace erected in St James's Park. Meanwhile, across London, the English ceramics were installed at South Kensington. The rest of Charlotte's collection was handed
down to her children, particularly her son Montague and daughter Blanche, who both inherited their mother's interest in collecting.