Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

An observable difference still, this distinction would determine the differing fortunes of French
and English antiquaries as the nineteenth century wore on.
Before leaving Paris Turner bought some missals ‘of great beauty & at a low price’ but
was otherwise disappointed that there were not more antiquarian bargains to be had. 48 With the
collector’s callousness he remarked that he had been expecting ‘considering how much France
has of late years been convulsed, how many opulent families reduced to poverty & how many
monasteries plundered that articles of this description would be abundantly on sale’. 49 In time a
whole tide of antiquities would be loosed but not for the moment. Dealers and others were
perhaps holding onto their stock, aware that times were still uncertain. The Abbé de la Rue was
certainly of that mind. In April 1814 he warned Douce that the English had made a mistake in
sending Napoleon no further than Elba. ‘Il se retournera en tout sens pour troubler l’europe … il
faudroit Milton pour peindre le genie infernal’ [He will return from every direction to trouble
Europe… it would take Milton to depict his demonic genius]. 50
De la Rue of course was right and from March until July 1815 England was once again at
war. After the final victory of Waterloo there was a rush across the Channel on an even greater
scale than the year before. Dawson Turner held back until September. Walter Scott, however,
who, despite the fact that his wife was French had never before been abroad, set sail in August
for Belgium and was among the first British civilians to see the battlefield. His account of it
dwells heavily, one might say shockingly, on the quest for material souvenirs. It has been
suggested, by Stuart Semmel, that the often-remarked and in some ways puzzling failure of the
British to erect a monument in London, or anywhere else, to one of the greatest military victories
in their history, despite numerous schemes and competitions, was due to the fact that a trade in
‘found objects –relics’ satisfied the need for a material focus for the event. 51 One might go
further and say that the more personal, reciprocal and subjective relationship to the past and its
artefacts, represented at the Musée des Monumens Français and in the reactions to it, was not
merely content with personal souvenirs, but positively preferred them. The field of Waterloo,
48 Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f 237.
49 Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f237.
50 Douce/de la Rue letters, f46, 25 Avril, 1814.
51 Semmel, ‘Reading the Tangible Past’, p.24.
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