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

C’est ainsi que peu à peu, se développant dans le sens de la cathédrale, y vivant, y dormant, n’en sortant presque
jamais, en subissant à toute heure la pression mystérieuse, il arriva à lui ressembler… et il en semblait, non
seulement l’habitant, mais encore le contenu naturel. [Thus, little by little, growing up in sympathy with the
cathedral, living there, sleeping there, hardly ever going out, submissive always to its mysterious force he came to
resemble it…and he seemed not only its occupant, but indeed its own natural content.] 2
Like a snail or an oyster (and similarly physically unprepossessing) Quasimodo is the shape of
his shell, impossible to understand without it and unable to exist for long apart from it. The
relationship between the animate and inanimate is perfectly reciprocal.
Such cases in real life were rare, but they did occur and this chapter will consider one
such. It will also return to Hugo and to his romantic interiors. It begins, however, with a
consideration of the popular idea of the romantic interior and an overview of the antiquaries on
which the thesis focuses considering the extent to which they were engaged, or not, in the
creation of such places. It will consider the conception of these interiors in literature and in life,
suggesting that they were often created out of an exchange between the two, while in France they
contributed to the newly emerging idea of ‘Bohemia’. The discussion will deal first with private,
then public and finally sacred romantic interiors, concluding with a brief discussion of how such
spaces changed during the period from 1789 to 1851.
The principal previous study is Clive Wainwright’s The Romantic Interior. It comprises
accounts of interiors that were for the most part on a much larger scale than those discussed here.
Wainwright does devote two chapters to Walter Scott’s home, Abbotsford, which will be
considered below, but his principal concern is to document the construction and the contents of
the house, not to interpret it in relation to Scott’s persona as author or as antiquary. Tracy’s and
Harrison’s studies are similarly devoted to descriptions of which objects went where and how the
antiques trade functioned. 3 All three represent pioneering studies of a subject long thought too
poorly documented for serious analysis and I am indebted to them. I have nevertheless attempted
to go further in my own particular direction, developing these factual accounts into a critical
2
Hugo, Notre Dame, p. 247.
3
Tracy, Continental Church Furniture in England: a traffic in piety and Harris, Moving Rooms: the trade in
architectural salvage.
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