Collections

The late Hunter S. Thompson once said “once you get locked into a serious collection, there is a tendency to push it as far as you can.” Of course, he was talking about firearms and drugs, but the principal is the same. Sir John Soane and Hunter would have hit it off famously.

Born in 1753, the son of a bricklayer, Soane was a wealthy architect (he designed the Bank of England) and Royal Academy Member who also collected art and antiquities. His home was one of the finest private museums in London and was open it to anyone (“amateurs and students”) who wanted to see it.

When his wife died in 1815, Soane puttered about the house for another twelve years, adding to and rearranging his collections. After a falling out with his sons, both of whom he considered ne’er-do-wells, Soane pulled some strings and had an Act of Parliament passed to preserve his house and collections for all time. When he died in 1837, he left his house to the City of London with the stipulation that it be kept just as he left it, and be made a free, public museum.

My sister, who had visited a couple of years ago, told me about the place with a “you have GOT to see this”. So one afternoon we found ourselves on a quiet residential street in Westminster. Number 13 Lincoln Inn Fields is a nondescript town house with Corinthian columns in front and a small knot of people waiting to go in. We had no idea what to expect. What we found was a house jam-packed with treasure. The place just overwhelms you from the moment you check your bags in the front foyer. You sometimes read about eccentric older people who keep everything and have to maneuver around stack of newspapers piled to the ceiling. Soane had to maneuver around stacks of the stuff that dreams are made of.

Every room is crammed full of wonderful items. Sir John collected everything he could get his hands on in true Enlightenment style. The walls are covered with art, including paintings by Hogarth, Canaletto, a couple of very fine Turners, and a Watteau. A rare portrait of Napoleon as a young man hangs over the dining room sideboard. There are Greek sculptures, Roman busts, and Renaissance marbles all jumbled together, some on ceiling joists in the walk-in closets. If you don’t have a catalog or you don’t have advanced degrees in art history, you can’t tell if you’re looking at a real Greco-Roman bust or a copy from the neoclassical period. That’s not including the Asian art mixed in as well. Sir John had a high boredom threshold and something different competes for your attention wherever you look. What little wall space not covered by art is taken up by bits of classical architecture—a foot-long piece of the Parthenon pediment or a bit of intricately carved limestone from a Roman villa, circa 0 AD.

Every floor is crammed to bursting with beautiful things, including pantry holding shelves of small Greek, Roman, and Egyptian figures that originally were scattered about the house. I assume they have all been gathered together under lock and key because they would be too tempting and too easy to scoop into a pocket. At the bottom of the circular stair to the basement sits the sarcophagus of Pharoah Setti I. The size of a small sports car, carved from a single piece of alabaster, thin enough to let the light through and covered with hieroglyphs. Soane got it for a song when the British Museum turned it down. Shelves full of Egyptian pottery and figurines reach to the ceilings and don’t over look the mummy cases on the floor.

The museum is astonishing in its own right, but thing that kept bumping my thoughts is that this was this fellow’s house. Visitors were allowed in only during business hours and only in nice weather—this kept out people who just wanted to get in out of the rain. Every morning he would wake up in his bedroom under the watchful eye of a portrait by some old master, dress himself, and have breakfast amidst the treasures of empires. I can imagine him telling his butler, “Jeeves, I shall have my tea with the bust of Caesar this morning, and perhaps lunch in the sarcophagus.”

I always thought of myself as something of a packrat, but Sir John Soane’s house is in an entirely different league. I stand awed and humbled. I want to live there.

Aqua Sulis

The stone buildings stood, a stream threw up heat
in wide surge; the wall enclosed all
in its bright bosom, where the baths were,
hot in the heart.
--The Ruin
8th Century English Poem


One of the things that kept crowding into my consciousness was how old a country England is. We tend to think of US history as starting around 1776, but that seems just the day before yesterday in England. Our hotel in London was on Egeware Street, one of the old Roman roads into the city, and you could still find bits of the old Roman city wall if you knew where to look.


We had signed up for a bus tour of Bath and Stonehenge with a dinner stop at the village of Lacock in a pub dating from 1361, a hundred years before the War of the Roses. On the drive out of London, our guide kept up a running commentary, pointing out buildings and sights to visit when we got back as well as general chatter. “Prices for a flat in this part of London are less expensive than in the West End and by the way, that Tudor style building on the corner survived the Great Fire in 1666 and continues to be a home.” We wound our way through Chelsea, past churches and factories recycled into trendy restaurants, and past the Famous Three Kings pub (James I, Henry VIII, and Elvis).

Once we were out of the city, we passed canary-yellow fields of flowering canola, grown for oil seed, and pastures of spring lambs. Green hills falling away in ordered rectangles bounded by hedgerows. Villages and market towns, each with its Norman or older church, flashed past.


The city of Bath, a world heritage site since 1987, sits on low hills in the valley of the Avon River. The site of Britain’s only hot spring, it has been a place to go to ever since some achy bone-weary Celt flopped down in a warm boggy pool and discovered his aches and pains went away. The Celts built a temple to their Goddess Sulis, and basked happily in the warm mineral-rich water until the Romans happened upon the place shortly after they invaded. By 60 AD, the Romans had built a spa and a temple to Minerva. Minerva, the Roman version of Athena, became associated with Sulis and the whole complex was named Aqua Sulis. Clever chaps, those Romans, they kept the shrine, adding to it and making it more grand over 300 years. They just changed the god being worshipped; expediting the conversion of the Celts from their savage pagan ways to more enlightened Roman pagan ways. The lesson was not lost on early Christians either, many of the old churches and cathedrals in the countryside are centered in a grove of yew trees, sacred to the barbarians. Same church, different god, makes Sundays easier to tolerate, at least everyone knew where to go.

Bath has drawn travelers and tourists since the hot springs were rediscovered in Elizabethan times. Jane Austen lived in Bath for several years, locating Persuasion in and near the city. Ironically, she actively disliked the city, claiming it stifled her muse. Dickens was a regular visitor, and Bath is a locale in several works. To accommodate the crowds of tourists (today over three million a year), the town fathers rebuilt most of the inner part of the city in the mid 1700’s. Downtown is a confection of a city in buff colored limestone. A curious mixture of classical and Georgian, narrow streets wind past three-story row houses, each level sporting a different style of column—Ionic at ground level, Doric on the second floor, Corinthian at the third. Busts of Minerva and other deities adorn the front porches.


Buses disgorge tourists and day trippers in front of Bath Cathedral. Technically it’s an abbey since no Bishop resides in Bath, but who’s counting. Built from the same buff stone as the rest of the downtown, the cathedral features stone ladders carved into either side of the doorway. Angels climb upwards, taking care to hold their robes aside (tricky things, robes) so as not to trip themselves up. The presumed goal, a full choir of angels, adorns the wall above the rose window. I’m not entirely sure what the allegory is here, at least one angel on each ladder is headed down. While the abbey needs some serious restoration, you can still sense the whimsy.



The buildings around the actual Roman baths are replicas; nothing remains but the bath itself complete with the original Roman-installed lead lining. The hot spring, rainwater that fell centuries ago and percolated deep in the earth over many miles, still flows through a Roman-built tunnel system and into the main bath. Signs warn visitors not to swim in, drink, or otherwise touch the water. The official reason being it is not treated-that’s as may be, but the warm water also harbors a population of amoebas with the nasty habit of occasionally entering body openings or scratches of hapless tourists and eventually eating their brains.


We entered the main bath plaza through a well-kept museum. Statues and altars dedicated by rich people to Minerva-Sulis show how busy this place must have been. An entire Roman Legion chipped in for a life-size statue of their unit emblem, a wild boar, in thanks for victory over the barbarian hordes in some forgotten battle. Small stone and clay figurines of Minerva fill a case. They were manufactured by the locals and sold to visitors to leave as offerings. The locals gathered them up periodically and resold them. The figures were probably recycled dozens of times.


The museum has heaps of coins spanning nearly 400 years of Roman rule recovered when the main bath was drained in the 1800’s. Along with the coins the workmen found curse tablets, folded lead sheets about the size of a Post-it Note. Requests for Minerva to strike down one’s enemies, they were tossed into the water to be read and presumably acted upon by the goddess. The best one displayed is from a disgruntled bather asking Minerva to bring down hell-fire on whoever stole his clothes while he was swimming.

One museum case has fifty or more ring signets, each slightly smaller than a dime, made of amber, topaz, or other semi-precious stone and exquisitely carved with dolphins, horses, birds, or people. One theory is that these were offerings, but a second school of thought and the one that sounds right, is that they were the ring stones, held in their settings with wax. Bathe in a geothermal hot spring, the wax melts, and oh damn! I’ve lost my signet.

I think it was the curse tablets and the lost ring stones that brought the place to life for me. Real people came here, swam and soaked in the warm waters, bought souvenirs, ate their lunch. The spring still flows, the warmth still rises.



I dropped a quarter in a corner of the pool. For Minerva.

History in a Box

The one thing everybody tells you about the world’s great museums is “don’t try to do it all in one day”. I worked at the Smithsonian for six years and still only saw a fraction of what they had and understood less. So here I was in London with a whole day to spend at the British Museum, desperately trying to heed the advice. I had been here five years ago, with an hour before a mad dash to the airport. Back then, I made a beeline to the Rosetta Stone and feasted my eyes until my wife dragged me to a cab.

This time would be different—a whole day to spend and a million (minus one) things to see. I was going to see stuff, learn stuff until I bled from the ears. All I needed was a plan, the plan I had needed since this trip was conceived.

We walked through the front doors and into the courtyard. The new roof connecting several buildings made this the largest enclosed space in Europe and I was going to need every inch of it. Pat and Ariel found seats at a table by the food court and planned to sally forth to various rooms as the spirit moved them. Me, I was going to keep moving till I dropped or my brain went into overload. Whichever came first. As I stood admiring the three story tall Haida and Tinglit totem poles by the lunch counter, right next to the first century Roman equestrian statue, a plan finally formed. I would ask a guard what to see. After all, who better knew the ins and outs, the wheat from the chaff than someone who spent their working life amid the treasures of a thousand empires representing two million years of human history? Whatever else you may say about the Brits, they are a nation of collectors. It seemed that everyone with enough where-with-all to go abroad spent their time looting antiquities. On return, they handed it over to the British Museum.


“Excuse me, I was here several years ago and only had time to see the Rosetta Stone. Could you recommend three or four items on your favorites list?” I had the spiel down pat and asked several guards. I figured I would take the high scores and hit those. Surprisingly, they all had the same response: the Parthenon Sculptures, the Lion Gate of Ashurnasirpal II, the Mummy Room. One guard added the Enlightenment Room, and another said not to miss the Portland Vase. “When I retire, I’m taking it with me.” That was good enough for me and off I went.

I wandered into the Enlightenment Room for starters and was completely bowled over the sheer amount of stuff on display. Grecian urns floor to ceiling, a statue of Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess tucked away in the corner. Tahitian war clubs and Australian boomerangs collected by Captain Cook, even a piece of bark cloth made by Fletcher Christians (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame) Polynesian wife. Books everywhere. A copy of the Rosetta Stone with the sign “Please touch” and the legend on the side “Captured in Egypt by the British Army, 1801” which justified its being in London…”we nicked it off them what nicked it off the Egyptians.”



A few steps away Ancient Greece began in earnest. The stacks of Greek vases in the Enlightenment Room were a mere appetizer compared to the riches offered in the Greek wing. A marble wine mixing bowl big enough to bathe in with exquisitely carved swans whose intertwining necks formed the handles.


An entire transplanted temple, and pride of place, the Parthenon Sculptures. They used to be known as the Elgin Marbles but political correctness dictated the name change. Lord Elgin was the Royal representative to Greece back in Georgian days. He bought the entire north frieze of the Parthenon from a Turkish dealer who apparently had stolen them outright. A bone of contention between Britain and Greece ever since, it appears that it will never be resolved. I for one am glad of the theft, since they are at eye level and although somewhat fragmentary, take your breath away.





Walking out of the gallery, took me through the next check on the list, the Gate of Ashurnasirpal II. Ten foot tall lions with human heads, made from stone they loomed over us mere mortals, looking ready to bring back the glory of the Assyrians. The statues have five legs, and depending on how you view them, are either striding into eternity or ready to pounce on the emperor’s enemies. Blocks of cuneiform writing listing the triumphs and battles of Ashurnasirpal II stand beneath the legs. I couldn’t help but think of the Shelly poem Ozymandias, “look upon my works ye mighty and despair”. Look upon my works ye mighty and find the men’s room.

A brief stop to check with the wife in the snack bar with a spin through the Aztec, Maya, and Toltec gallery (I told you they have everything from everywhere) to see the Aztec lightning god and a modern Mexican paper mache sculpture of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse hanging from the ceiling, and it was off to Ancient Egypt and the Mummy Room.



I’m amazed there is anything left anywhere in Egypt. Mummies, sarcophagi, mummy cases, canoptic jars for storing various internal organs, grave goods, the Sphinx’s beard, more mummies, human, falcon and cat—a cultural avalanche of all things Egyptian. Tucked into corners, almost as after thoughts, were everyday items used by real people and placed in the tombs for use in the afterlife. Combs, copper mirrors, even a pair of dice if the afterlife got boring. By the time I stumbled out, my head was spinning.




I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to the floor plans, but it seemed the Egyptian stuff lead directly to the Roman stuff. Case after case of it. If the Brits got it, they want you to see it. Dozens of marble busts of various emperors and their ladies, the men all looking stern and politic, the women all with the same half smile. Weapons, arrowheads, and a Centurion’s armor, complete with brass buckles. I bet if he knew where it was going to end up, he would have used more polish. I walked right past the Portland Vase on my first pass and had to backtrack to find it. About the size of a gallon milk jug, deep cobalt blue and two thousand years old, it was made by blowing a blue glass bubble and dipping it into molten white glass to cover. A master gem cutter spent the better part of a year cutting off the white to show a story of a seaside wedding. You can almost see the movement, feel the joy.



They were right; you can’t do it all in a day. You can’t even do some of it in a day. You could spend years and still not absorb it all. I’m sure there are wandering tribes of feral scholars, looting the vending machines in the basement for food and feasting their souls the rest of the time.