He had directed that his
collection of art objects be removed to the museum, and that the
house and such portion of its contents as the museum did not care for
be sold for the museum's benefit. I had already notified Sir Caspar
Purdon Clarke of the terms of the will, and the museum's attorney was
present when it was read. He stated that he had been requested to ask
me to remain in charge of things for a week or two, until
arrangements for the removal could be made. It would also be
necessary to make an inventory of Vantine's collection, and the
assistant director of the museum was to get this under way at once.
I acquiesced in all these arrangements, but I was feeling decidedly
blue when I started back to the office. Vantine's collection had
always seemed to me somehow a part of himself; more especially a part
of the house in which it had been assembled. It would lose much of
its beauty and significance ticketed and arranged stiffly along the
walls of the museum, and the thought came to me that it would be a
splendid thing for New York if this old house and its contents could
be kept intact as an object lesson to the nervous and hurrying
younger generation of the easier and more finished manner of life of
the older one; something after the fashion that the beautiful old
Plantin-Moretus mansion at Antwerp is a rebuke to those present-day
publishers who reckon literature a commodity, along with soap and
cheese.
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