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.