The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, No. 04 (April 1891)Various
General
The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, No. 04 (April 1891)
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
Passing from the back of this little room, we enter a very large one,
extending from the front to the back of the entire premises, with a
gallery on three sides above. Here we are joined by the younger Mr.
Jamrach, and here we stand amid the most bewildering multitude of
bric-a-brac and quaint valuables ever jumbled together: fantastic gods
and goddesses, strange arms and armour, wonderful carvings in ivory,
and priceless gems of old Japanese pottery. Merely to enumerate in
the baldest way a tenth part of these things would fill this paper,
and briefly to describe a hundredth part would fill the magazine. And
when we express our wonder at the extent of the collection, we are
calmly informed that this is only a part--there are more about the
building--four or five roomfuls or so!
We have come to St. George's-street expecting to see nothing but a
zoological warehouse, and all this is a surprise. That such a store
as we now see were hidden away in Shadwell would have seemed highly
improbable, and indeed we are told that very few people are aware of
its existence. "The museums know us, however," says Mr. Jamrach the
younger, "and many of their chief treasures have come from this place."
Among the few curious visitors who have found their way to Jamrach's
there has been the Prince of Wales, who stayed long, and left much
surprised and pleased at all he had seen. The late Frank Buckland,
too, whose whole-souled passion for natural history took him to this
establishment day after day, often for all day, could rarely resist
the fascination of the museum, even while his beloved animals growled
in the adjacent lairs. The Jamrachs do not push the sale of this
bric-a-brac, and seem to love to keep the strange things about them.
Their trade is in animals, and their dealings in arms and curiosities
form almost a hobby. Many of the beautiful pieces of pottery have stood
here thirty years, and their proud possessors seem in no great anxiety
to part with them now. A natural love of the quaint and beautiful first
led Mr. Jamrach to buy carvings and shells from the seafaring men who
brought him his birds and monkeys, so that these men soon were led to
regard his warehouse as the regulation place of disposal for any new
or old thing from across the seas; and so sprang up this overflowing
museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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