Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves

by Jacqueline Yallop

  Robinson watched the visitors arrive. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays, entrance was free, but the rooms were enormously crowded; on the remaining weekdays, an entrance fee of 6d ensured more space for those who wanted to study quietly. From an average of a thousand visitors a day on free days, attendance on paying days fell to fewer than eighty, but still annual visitor figures for the mid-1850s hovered around the 100,000 mark. During the same period, at the much larger and more established British Museum, figures were sliding rapidly from a peak of over 2 million in the year of the 1851 Great Exhibition to around 300,000. The ideal of public access that had been heralded by the Crystal Palace event seemed to have dissolved and the grand galleries of the British Museum were once again viewed by many as the exclusive haunt of scholars and the wealthy. The six rooms at Marlborough House, in contrast, appealed to the middle classes and the temporary displays were a lively source of entertainment for everyone from serious students to families.

  For Robinson, this popularity was a matter of pride. When the Marlborough House rooms were first opened in 1852, Henry Cole had featured an exhibition of ‘False Principles in Design’, popularly nicknamed the Chamber of Horrors, a practical demonstration of how not to do things that was supposed to stand as a warning to British buyers and manufacturers: ‘a gloomy chamber hung round with frightful objects in curtains, carpets, clothes, lamps and whatnot’, wrote one reviewer, a mess of decorative excess and offending aesthetics.1 By showing people how terrible the worst objects could be, this brash display was supposed to elevate public taste and put the moral case for design reform. It was a clear indication of what Cole thought the museum was about. But in his short time in post, Robinson had set to work rearranging the galleries, reorganizing the showcases, making the exhibitions more varied and, quite deliberately, changing the emphasis of the museum from Cole’s focus on educating artisans to his own vision of providing a more general public with the chance to admire the old, rare and beautiful. He was not without sympathy for Cole’s general principles of education, but he wanted visitors to use works from history for ‘the gradual and progressive cultivation of the judgement, until it assumes almost the readiness and certainty of intuitive conviction’. In his view, the Chamber of Horrors had no part in a museum: ‘the object of the Museum is to illustrate the history, theory and practical application of decorative art,’ he claimed, making sure that alongside ‘objects of utility’ there were also ‘works avowedly decorative’.2 He wanted to show the best – and not the worst – drawing visitors with the expectation of delight rather than from disgust or curiosity.

  It was the beginning of a battle of philosophies that would divide Cole and Robinson throughout their work at the museum, and would finally highlight the gap between the museum’s rhetoric about collecting, and what it collected in practice. Henry Cole displayed occasional enthusiasm for antiquarian objects and pieces of fine art, and he showed characteristic energy in acquiring some of these works for the museum. But, for him, they were always a means to an end. His acquisitions were always made with a view to the larger cause of design reform, and the museum displays were always created with an eye on education. Robinson delighted in beauty and craftsmanship – at heart he was a connoisseur. He wanted the museum to be more than a training ground; he hoped to create a collection that aimed to foster aesthetic appreciation rather than to deliver design rules.

  Robinson argued that the museum he had in mind would serve not only the art student or the general public, but also ‘the collector, whose pursuit it is. . . clearly a national duty to countenance and encourage’.3 For Robinson and his friends, collecting needed to be at the heart of things. There was a sense in which it was much more than an individual preoccupation – it was ‘a national duty’. As we have seen, museums all over the country were emphasizing their public value; there is no doubt that Henry Cole viewed South Kensington as a national crusade. But Robinson was suggesting that it was not only beautiful objects themselves that were important, but also the very ‘pursuit’ of collecting them. Tracking down objects, studying them, comparing and treasuring them was much more, for Robinson, than an enjoyable habit. It was at the root of the emerging museums network; it was the underlying mechanism that made everything else possible. In statements like this, Robinson was able to give his ransacking of European salerooms a gloss that highlighted its public benefit. But more than that, he was staking a claim for each and every collector, putting their activity into a wider context that gave them influence within the political, economic and social manoeuvring that was striving to make Victorian Britain great.

  As Robinson watched the visitors come to Marlborough House, there was also some sadness. He could feel how things were changing. Just south of Hyde Park on quiet rural land, Henry Cole was working on his site for a grand project – the building of a permanent museum. He had the support of Prince Albert, who was hopeful that the new building in South Kensington would be the catalyst for the utopian Royal vision of a magnificent ‘Albertopolis’, a series of striking buildings amid landscaped parkland, drawing together London’s learned and artistic societies. So enthusiastic was the Prince, in fact, and so keen to play his part, that he had begun to design the new museum himself. And with his energy and influence, added to Cole’s determination, things had progressed quickly. Plans had been drawn up and measurements taken. In just a few more weeks, building would begin.

  But Robinson was fond of the rooms at Marlborough House and did not want to relocate, particularly not to the backwater that was South Kensington. ‘Everyone predicts ill luck to the move to Kensington on the score of distance,’ he grumbled in a letter to Cole, pointing out what the popular press had already highlighted: that the new site was unfamiliar, isolated, difficult to access and little more than ‘wilds and swamps’.4 What’s more, Cole’s plans were so vast and disparate that it was not at all clear how it would all fit together. There were proposals for a Patent Museum and for manufacturing displays but also for an exhibition of exotic foods like French snails and Chinese birds’ nests, and of animal products, including a case showing silkworms at work. There was to be a huge plaster cast of Michelangelo’s David and an extraordinary range of objects that apparently could not find a home elsewhere. There was even to be space on the second floor for fish hatcheries, with the runs of salmon and trout announced in the newspapers. The proposed museum seemed a curious mix of the fairground atmosphere of the International Exhibitions and the old-fashioned jumble of curiosities that had inspired the Wunderkammer. It lacked a sense of historical progress and threatened to confuse, and overwhelm, the visitor. Once Cole’s Chamber of Horrors had been put away, the rooms at Marlborough House were well focused, with planned collections and organized displays. For a museum of its time, it was remarkably clearsighted. It demonstrated the growing sense of professionalism among curators and rigorous principles of scholarship. Much of this was Robinson’s work. He liked the intimacy and coherence of Marlborough House, and was sure that the new museum would be a disaster, nothing better than a ‘motley, medley chaos. . . assimilated in an illogical and bewildering manner’.5

  Entangled with Robinson’s discontent about the new museum was a lingering feeling that at the same time his own role was being overlooked and undervalued. He was travelling extensively to seek out objects: in 1854 alone, he had acquired over 1,400 new pieces. He was writing and lecturing vigorously on the collections; he was making contacts. Delighted by the growing number of visitors, he was constantly refining the rapidly expanding displays, and he was bombarding the board with requests for money to make acquisitions. He had taken responsibility for most of the collections, added a couple of titles to his role and had brought some of Europe’s finest objects to the rooms in Marlborough House. His work with the Fine Arts Club and networks of private collectors also allowed him to see the wider influence of his activity. His buying on behalf of the museum was changing the market, pushing up prices rapidly. During the museum’s five years at Marlborou
gh House, the value of its collections rose so much that Robinson was able to report happily that he had ‘speedily doubled or trebled’ the original investments. There was also, however, a downside to this, as the competitive Robinson was quick to recognize. As the market boomed, the museum needed to keep pace, he said, with ‘a host of wealthy amateurs, who, unfettered by the delays and difficulties impeding all governmental action. . . step in, and, by the power of ready money, triumphantly beat out of the field the unlucky curators of our public collections’.6 It was clear that the mutual, and complex, relationship between the museum and the private collector, and the markets they shared, was developing quickly. And in this cut-and-thrust environment Robinson felt that his collecting skills were needed more than ever.

  Since he was of such benefit to the museum, Robinson could see no reason why his salary, at least, should not be raised in recognition of his contribution. At the beginning of March 1855, he wrote to Henry Cole to ask for more money. Acknowledging his young curator’s energy and enthusiasm, Cole agreed promptly to the pay rise. But he just as promptly regretted it because, less than six months later, Robinson was writing again to demand another raise.7 The collections were continuing to thrive under his hand and his devotion to them was evident. His every thought was about the objects he might bring to Marlborough House and improvements he might make to the displays. He had completed two scholarly catalogues, ‘with critical or theoretic illustrations for the information of the student’ and more and more visitors were coming to see what was being achieved.8 He believed he had a convincing case for promotion and, with a successful precedent behind him, Robinson was confident. He could not see how Cole could fail to reward him again.

  But weeks passed, the builders moved on to the site in South Kensington and still there was no official answer to Robinson’s request. Slowly the iron frame of the new museum grew into the London landscape, the grass around became muddy with the tramp of workers’ boots, and still Robinson waited. He was angry and puzzled. He wondered if Cole and the museum board had somehow overlooked his request in the flurry of activity caused by the building project. But when he tried to raise the matter again, he received only awkward and evasive answers. He was convinced that Cole could do more and he grew increasingly frustrated and cross. Worse still, he could not bring himself to admit the heart of the matter. It was true that he was indispensable to the growing museum. It was clear that it needed his scholarship. He may well have deserved better remuneration for the work he was doing. But more immediately apparent than any of these arguments – to Robinson and to his disapproving bank manager – was that he was in desperate need of the extra money for which he was asking.

  Robinson had never lived cheaply. He aspired to keep a household that suited his sense of refinement and announced his success. On accepting the job in London, he had taken on both a substantial and elegant townhouse in York Place, Portman Square, along with the requisite number of servants, and a wife. Marian Elizabeth Newton, the daughter of a successful Norwich tradesman, was quiet and undemanding. As far as we know, she did not share Robinson’s taste for stalking antiques shops and dealers in search of costly pieces of bric-a-brac, nor his habit of spending money on European travel. But nevertheless, with a household to support, Robinson’s costs escalated and, within a few years of marriage, the first of seven children arrived. Robinson’s expenses were rising along with his sense of frustration. It was not just that he felt he deserved more money; he needed more money.

  For a young man establishing a family and a professional career, it was not unusual to find daily expenses running over budget. But Robinson’s collecting could be seen as something of an extravagance and, in the mid-century, this kind of excess was subject to a raft of moral judgements that, if turned in Robinson’s direction, could have threatened his future. Profligacy, bankruptcy, financial disaster and the lack of good moral character they suggested fascinated Victorian writers such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, who kept the spectre of ‘living beyond one’s means’ firmly in the public eye. The plot of Dickens’s Little Dorrit, published between 1855 and 1857, at the same time as Robinson was making his overtures to the museum authorities, highlights the shame, personal decline and poverty that accompany bankruptcy, while almost a decade later, in Our Mutual Friend (1864–5), the contrast between the simple living of the impoverished Mortimer Lightwood and the glittering, unpaid-for interiors of the Lammle household has a clear moral message: ‘how often have I pointed out to you that it’s the moral influence is the important thing?’ asks Lightwood’s friend Eugene Wrayburn.9 Too overt a display of possessions was not only an indication of suspect taste, but also of dubious character. The glut of objects on show in the Lammle household acts to conceal both their lamentable financial situation and their sinister intentions:

  The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs, and if it ever whispered from under its upholstery ‘Here I am in the closet!’ it was to very few ears. . .10

  Robinson needed to take care that his collecting did not come to be seen as simply an expression of wanton spending and lack of moral fibre. Nor would he have wanted to get caught up in the Lammle fashion for objects merely as display. To maintain his course towards serious, meaningful collecting, it was imperative that he steady his financial situation.

  Disappointed with Cole and obstructed by the board, Robinson continued to wait. If he could not succeed in increasing his regular salary, then the obvious next step was to sell some of his collection to supplement what he earned. But such a move was not to be taken lightly. Souvenirs of his youth in Paris; bargains from French and Italian junkshops; finely framed paintings and mirrors; jewel-coloured tapestries – they all meant something special to him. In the spring of 1855, Robinson was still, at thirty-one, a young collector. In time, he would become accustomed to the idea of changing his collection, of selling on some pieces to buy others, of investing for profit. His own preferences would evolve as his knowledge increased. At this stage, he found such a prospect difficult to contemplate. It seemed like a betrayal of the idea of the collection that he was still building. Daunted by such a step, nothing much happened.

  The weeks and months passed, and no letter came to signal an upturn in Robinson’s fortunes. The final touches were put to the building at South Kensington, and articles quickly appeared in the press to mock it. Reporters marvelled at its ugliness and its spirit of utilitarianism. Prince Albert’s giant structure, clad in iron and looking like a cross between a beached ship and an oversized oil drum, was ridiculed as ‘a threefold monster boiler’.11 And the name stuck. Robinson shuttled backwards and forwards between Marlborough House and the new South Kensington site, ‘The Brompton Boilers’. He moved objects and arranged displays. With the criticism of the Prince’s design ringing in his ears, he battled with the weaknesses of the clumsy architecture: leaking roofs and poor drainage; galleries that baked in summer and were brittle with winter cold. Hastily, he had to move the plaster casts from their planned home upstairs as the floors groaned and buckled under the weight. But in June 1857, despite all the doubts and disturbances, he stood proudly at the opening of the new museum, holding himself tall and straight for the curious eyes of the press and public, stupefied for a moment by the enormity of what had been achieved and feeling his future unfolding before him.

  The opening of the new buildings at last prompted the chequewriting hands of the board into action, and Robinson settled into his new professional home with a slightly improved salary of £450 a year, the dual responsibility of Librarian-Curator and an assistant. This was a comfortable living: probationary police officers were paid only £10 a year, a chaplain could expect a salary of around £30 and a letter sorter at the General Post Office earned £90 a year, about the same as a senior teacher, although solicitors and barristers could expect to earn as much as £1,800 a year by this time. But in the context of Robinson’s professional collea
gues, the pay rise was minimal, far from the £600 a year, plus accommodation, enjoyed by the curators at the British Museum or the £750 salary granted to the Keeper of the National Gallery.12 Moreover, it still did not pay the bills. There was no choice: some of Robinson’s collection would have to be sold.

  I have not found a record of exactly what Robinson chose to part with at this time. Certainly, the core of his collection remained intact, but even so the process was a wrench. Characteristically, he took refuge from the distress of the sale, and the frustrations of life at the museum, in the showrooms of Europe’s antique dealers. The museum may have been unwilling to raise his salary substantially, but it was prepared to fund continuing research trips abroad. Robinson undertook a series of yearly expeditions, each lasting several months, and each yielding ‘an infinity of treasures. . . at fractional prices’. In the summer of 1857, just after the museum opening, Robinson took off to Dresden and Vienna. By the summer of 1859, he was back in Italy on the trail of ‘cartloads of majolica ware, innumerable cassoni, terra-cottas, and bronzes’. He was in the mood for aggressive collecting. The spoils of Italian cultural life ‘must be diligently fought for’, he asserted, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the crusade to find new objects and writing home enthusiastically that ‘Florence has not had such a raking out as this within the memory of man’.13