Morgan's bronze Eros from Pompeii, and the various cases of
porcelain from a score of collections. But without extra allurements I
should have been drawn again and again to this magnificent museum.
Two of the principal metropolitan donors--Altman and Hearn--were the
owners of big dry goods stores, while Marquand, whose little Vermeer is
probably the loveliest thing in America, was also a merchant. In future
I shall look upon all the great emporium proprietors as worthy of
patronage, on the chance of their being also beneficent collectors of
works of art. This thought, this hope, is more likely to get me into a
certain Oxford Street establishment than all the rhetoric and special
pleading of Callisthenes.
The Frick Gallery was not accessible; but I was privileged to roam at
will both in Mr. Morgan's library and in Mr. H. E. Huntington's, in each
of which I saw such a profusion of unique and unappraisable autographs
as I had not supposed existed in private hands. Rare books any one with
money can have, for they are mostly in duplicate; but autographs and
"association" books are unique, and America is the place for them. I had
known that it was necessary to cross the Atlantic in order to see the
originals of many of the pictures of which we in London have only the
photographs. I knew that the bulk of the Lamb correspondence was in
America, and at Mr. Morgan's I saw the author's draft of the essay on
"Roast Pig," and at Mr.
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