CHAPTER I

.

INTRODUCTORY.

‘A Museum of Nature does not aim, like one of Art, merely to charm the eye and gratify the sense of beauty and of grace.

‘As the purpose of a Museum of Natural History is to ... impart and diffuse that knowledge which begets the right spirit in which all Nature should be viewed, there ought to be no partiality for any

## particular class, merely on account of the quality which catches and

pleases the passing gaze. Such a Museum should subserve the instruction of a People; and should also afford objects of study and comparison to professed Naturalists, so as to serve as an instrument in the progress of Science.’—

RICHARD OWEN, _On a National Museum of Natural History_, pp. 10; 11; 115.

_Househunting.—The Removal of the Sloane Museum from Chelsea.—Montagu House, and its History.—The Early Trustees and Officers.—The Museum Regulations.—Early Helpers in the Foundation and Increase of the British Museum.—Epochs in the Growth of the Natural History Collections.—Experiences of Inquiring Visitors in the years 1765–1784._

[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. 1 EARLY HISTORY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

The practical good sense which had always been a marked characteristic in the life of Sir Hans SLOANE is seen just as plainly in those clauses of his Will by which he leaves much latitude, in respect of means and agencies, to the discretion of his Executors and Trustees. It is seen, for example, when, after reciting some views of his own as to the methods by which his Museum should be maintained for public use, he adds the proviso—‘in such manner as they (the Trustees) shall think most likely to answer the public benefit by me intended.’ He had a love for the old Manor House at Chelsea, and contemplated, as it seems, with some special complacency, the maintenance there of the Collections which had added so largely to the pleasures of his own fruitful life. But he was careful not to tie down his Trustees to the continuance of the Museum at Chelsea, as a condition of his bounty. They were at liberty to assent to its removal, should the balance of public advantage seem to them to point towards removal.

Chelsea was in that day a quiet suburban village, distant from the heart of London. As the site of a Museum it had many advantages, but it was, comparatively and to the mass of visitors and students, a long way off. The Trustees assented to a generally expressed opinion that whilst the new institution ought not to be placed in any of the highways of traffic, it ought to be nearer to them than it would be, if continued in its then abode.

[Sidenote: Edmund, Duke of Buckingham, to Duke of Shrewsbury.]

One of the first places offered for their choice was the old Buckingham House (now the royal palace). It was already a large and handsome structure. The charm of its position, at that time, was not unduly boasted of in the golden letters of the inscription conspicuous upon its entablature—

‘_Sic siti lætantur lares._’

Its prospects, as described not very long before by the late ducal owner, ‘presented to view at once a vast town, a palace, and a cathedral, on one side; and, on the other sides, two parks, and a great part of Surrey.’ Its fine gardens ended in ‘a little wilderness, full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ Yet it was close to the Court end of the town. But the price was thirty thousand pounds.

Another offer was that of Montagu House at Bloomsbury. Less charmingly placed, and architecturally less striking in appearance than was its rival, both its situation and its plan were better fitted for the purposes of a public Museum. [Sidenote: MONTAGU HOUSE AND ITS HISTORY.] It stood, it is true, on the extreme verge of the London of that day. Northward, there was nothing between it and the distant village of Highgate, save an expanse of fields and hedgerows. And for a long distance, both to the east and the west, no part of London had yet spread beyond it, except an outlying hospital or two. But there were already indications that the town would extend in that northerly direction, more quickly than in almost any other. The house had seven and-a-half acres of garden and shrubberies; and its price was but ten thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds.

Montagu House had been built about sixty years before for Ralph MONTAGU, first Duke of Montagu. A spacious court separated the house from Great Russell Street, towards which it presented to view only a screen of pannelled brickwork, having a massive gateway and cupola in the centre, and turreted wings, masking the domestic offices, at either end. The house itself was rather stately than beautiful, but its chief rooms and its grand staircase were elaborately painted by the best French artists of the day. And the appendant offices were more than usually extensive.

It stood on the site of a structure of much greater architectural pretensions, erected for the same owner, only twelve years before, from the designs of Robert HOOKE. That first Montagu House had been burned to the ground.

The offer of Montagu House was accepted by the Trustees and approved by the Government. It was found needful to make considerable alterations in order to adapt the building to its new uses. This outlay increased the eventual cost of the mansion, and of its appliances and fittings, to somewhat more than twenty-three thousand pounds. The adaptation, with the removal and re-arrangement of the Collections, occupied nearly five years. It was not until the beginning of the year 1759 that the Museum was opened for public inspection. When removed to Bloomsbury, it was but brought back to within a few hundred yards of its first abode.

[Sidenote: CONSTITUTION OF THE MUSEUM TRUST.]

We have seen that according to the plan for the government of the institution which SLOANE had sketched in his Codicil of July, 1749, there would have been a Board of Visitors as well as a Board of Trustees. But, by the foundation Statute, enacted in 1753, both of these Boards were incorporated into one. Forty-one Trustees were constituted, with full powers of management and control. Six of these were representatives of the several families of COTTON, HARLEY, and SLOANE, the head, or nearest in lineal succession, of each family having the nomination, from time to time, of such representatives or ‘Family Trustees,’ when, by death or otherwise, vacancies should occur. Twenty were ‘Official’ Trustees, in accordance, so far, with SLOANE’S scheme for the constitution of his Board of Visitors; and by these two classes, conjointly, the other fifteen Trustees were to be elected.

The Official Trustees were to be the holders for the time being of the following offices:—(1) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Lord Chancellor, (3) the Speaker of the House of Commons, (4) the Lord President of the Council, (5) the First Lord of the Treasury, (6) the Lord Privy Seal, (7) the First Lord of the Admiralty, (8 and 9) the Secretaries of State, (10) the Lord Steward, (11) the Lord Chamberlain, (12) the Bishop of London, (13) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (14) the Lord Chief Justice of England, (15) the Master of the Rolls, (16) the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, (17) the Attorney-General, (18) the Solicitor-General, (19) the President of the Royal Society, (20) the President of the College of Physicians.

[Sidenote: Act of 26 Geo. II, c. 22, Clauses 4–8.]

To the first three of these Official Trustees Parliament entrusted the appointment, from time to time, of all the Officers of the Museum, except the Principal Librarian, who is to be appointed by the Crown, on the nomination of the ‘Principal Trustees,’ as the first three Trustees—the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker—have always been called.

The following fifteen persons were the first _elected_ Trustees, under the Act of 1753:—The Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Willoughby of Parham, Lord Charles Cavendish, the Honourable Philip Yorke, Sir George Lyttelton, Sir John Evelyn, James West, Nicholas Hardinge, William Sloane, William Sotheby, Charles Grey, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Birch, James Ward, and William Watson. [Sidenote: Records of British Museum, in MS. ADDIT., 6179.] The first meeting of the Trustees under the Act was held at the Cockpit, Whitehall, on the 17th of December, 1753.

The first ‘Principal Librarian’[55] was Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, a member of the College of Physicians, and eminent, in his day, as a cultivator of experimental science. Some magnetic apparatus of his construction and gift was placed in the Museum soon after its opening, and attracted, in its day, much attention. He received the appointment after a keen competition with the more widely-known physician and botanist, Sir John HILL. The first three ‘Keepers of Departments’ were Dr. Matthew MATY, Dr. Charles MORTON, and Mr. James EMPSON. Dr. KNIGHT retained his post until 1772.

MATY and MORTON succeeded in turn to the office of Principal Librarian, and their respective services will have a claim to notice hereafter. EMPSON had been the valued servant and friend of Sir Hans SLOANE. He is the only officer whose name appears in SLOANE’S Will. He had served him as Keeper of the Museum at Chelsea for many years.

There is, in one of the letters of Horace WALPOLE to Sir Horace MANN, an amusing account of an initiatory meeting of the original Trustees, held prior to their formal constitution by Parliament. It is marked by the writer’s usual superciliousness towards all hobbies, except the dilettante hobby which he himself was wont to ride so hard. ‘I employ my time chiefly, at present,’ he wrote to MANN, in February, 1753, ‘in the guardianship of embryos and cockle shells. Sir Hans SLOANE valued his Museum at eighty thousand pounds, and so would anybody who loves hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese.... We are a charming wise set—all Philosophers, Botanists, Antiquarians, and Mathematicians—and adjourned our first meeting because Lord MACCLESFIELD, our Chairman, was engaged in a party for finding out the Longitude.’

‘One of our number,’ continues WALPOLE, ‘is a Moravian, who signs himself “Henry XXVIII, Count de REUSS.” The Moravians have settled a colony at Chelsea, in Sir Hans’ neighbourhood, and I believe he intended to beg Count Henry the Twenty-Eighth’s skeleton for his Museum.’ This distinguished foreigner does not appear in the parliamentary list.

The Chairman of the preliminary meeting so airily described by WALPOLE, continued, under the definitive constitution of the Trust, to take a leading part in its administration. It appears to have been by Lord MACCLESFIELD that the original ‘Statutes and Bye-laws’ of the Museum, or many of them, were drafted.’

[Sidenote: THE REGULATIONS FOR ADMISSION AND STUDY.]

In the form in which they were first issued, in 1759, these statutes directed that the Museum should ‘be kept open every day in the week, except Saturday and Sunday.’ [Sidenote: 1759–1803.] For the greater part of the year the public hours were from nine o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. On certain days, in the summer months, the open hours were from four o’clock in the afternoon until eight—so as to meet the requirements of persons actively engaged in business during the early part of the day. But the publicity was hampered by a system of admission-tickets which had to be applied for on a day precedent to that of every intended visit. The application had first to be made, then registered; a second application had to follow, in order to receive the ticket; and the ticket could rarely be used at the time of receiving it. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, ff. 36, seqq.] So that, in practice, each visit to the Museum had commonly to be preceded by two visits to the ‘Porter’s Lodge.’

The visitors were admitted in parties, at the prescribed hours, and were conducted through the Museum by its officers according to a routine which, practically and usually, allowed to each group of visitors only one hour for the inspection of the whole. Special arrangements, however, were made for those who resorted to the Museum for purposes of study. [Sidenote: _Statutes and Regulations_, part ii, § 3.] To such, say the statutes, ‘a particular room is allotted, in which they may read or write without interruption during the time the Museum is kept open.’

[Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, as above.]

The aggregate number of persons admitted as visitors—exclusive of students—was, for some years, restricted to sixty persons, as a maximum, in any one day.

In order to give the reader a definite and clear idea of what was seen, in 1759, by the earliest visitors to the British Museum, in its rudimentary state, some sort of ground plan is essential, but the merest outline will suffice for the purpose.

There were at Montagu House two floors or stories of state apartments. The upper floor was that which was first shown, after the formation of the Museum.

The visitor, having ascended the superb staircase painted by LA FOSSE, passed through a vestibule and grand saloon (_A_ _B_) furnished with various antiquities, into the ‘Cottonian Library’ (_C_), and thence into the ‘Harleian Library,’ which occupied three rooms (_D_, _E_, and _F_). He then entered the ‘Medal Room’—containing the coins and medals of the SLOANE and COTTON collections (_G_); the ‘SLOANE Manuscript Room’ (_H_); and the room containing the chief part of the antiquities (_I_)—

[Illustration:

_Rough Diagram, showing Principal Floor of the original British Museum of 1759._ ]

Then the visitor, passing again through the vestibule (_A_) and great saloon (_B_), entered the rooms _K_, _L_, and _M_. _K_ contained the minerals and fossils of Sir Hans SLOANE’S collection; _L_, the shells; _M_, the plants and insects. Thence he passed into _N_, which was devoted to the bulk of the SLOANE Zoological Collection, and into _O_, containing artificial and miscellaneous curiosities.

Descending to the floor beneath, by the secondary staircase between _N_ and _O_, the visitor then entered the small room _P_, which contained the magnetic apparatus given by Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, and the rooms, _Q_ and _R_ devoted to the reception of the greater part of the Royal Library, restored by HENRY, Prince of Wales, and augmented—but with extreme parsimony—by several of the Stuart monarchs, whose additions to the shelves were, indeed, much oftener made of books given, than of books bought. He then passed into SLOANE’S Printed Library, which occupied the whole of the spacious and handsome suite of rooms _S_, _T_, _V_, _W_, _X_, and _Y_, and (passing through the Trustees’ Room _Z_,) entered the room _A A_, containing the EDWARDS Library; ending his tour of inspection in the room _B B_, in which was arranged the remainder of the old Royal Library, the main portion whereof had been seen already in _Q_ and _R_.

[Illustration:

_Rough Diagram, showing Ground Plan of the original British Museum of 1759._ ]

When the combined Museum and Libraries, thus arranged, were first opened to the inspection of the curious Public in 1759, the collections enumerated in the Foundation Act of 1753 had, it is seen, already received some notable increase by gifts. [Sidenote: EARLY HELPERS IN THE FOUNDATION AND GROWTH OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] The first donor was the House of Lords, by whose order the historical collections of Thomas RYMER, royal historiographer, and editor of the _Fœdera_, were given to the Trustees, immediately after their incorporation. [Sidenote: 1755–57.] Then followed, in 1757, the gift of the Royal Library and that of the Lethieullier Antiquities from Egypt. [See