COLLECTING ANTIQUES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 25, 21 April 1927, Page 14

COLLECTING ANTIQUES

OLD RELICS FOR NEW RICH The active resentment of peasants of Segovia, a province of Central Spain, at the piecemeal removal of an ancient cloister, bought for re-erection in America, affords material for a bantering editorial in “ The Times,” of which portion is as follows: ” We can appreciate the desire of the American magnate to decorate his Californian home with antique spoils. Did we not drag that needle of Cleopatra’s from its warm sands through the cold waters to adorn our northern capital? We had, perhaps, fine reasons. We did it to enrich life for those who cannot travel. .But, with whatever mitigation, we have committed the offence of carrying off the relics of otljer peoples’ past. Yet we know how the villagers felt. Americans, whose cities change before their eyes, do not know what it

feels like to lose a landmark. Those Spaniards, for all that they heard in the liturg:es about the transitoriners of earthly things, had no idea the world was quite so unreliable. They took their stand in the cloister lest the hills themselves be bought for export next. The shock was severe, and it is natural to wish to offer them some consolation. In the first place, it was their ancestors’ fault. The cloister was bought by the Americans from a farmer ‘ ignorant,’ says the New York ‘Times,’ ‘of its real value.’ What was he doing with it? The answer is found in the political upheavals of the eighteen hundred and thirties and the sequestrations of Church properties. Work was bungled that had ended thus. Next let the villagers think that, after all, cloisters are small beer in Spain, but wine, nay, liqueur, in California. Not theirs to guess what incredible adventures may yet await those ancient stones, nor what world-wide renown they may achieve after ten quiet centuries if ever they are lent for son > movie scene. But they go to be civ - ished. They will have a monopoly uI tenth-centuriness—a poor thing in philosophy of their new home, but their own. And they will be well treatedIt is some years since a cast of Venus de Milo was sent by a wealthy art-loving son to decorate the city hail of his far-western home town, and the city fathers sued the railway compahfor the damaged condition of tne statue, and the railway company paid up. Less is expected of old things today, least of all of cloisters from the dark ages. There will be some to do it reverence, and it will find Califor* nia a land not wholly alien, but rich m the familiar names of and tne lingering memories of Spain.”