'No,' I said.
He concentrated hard. 'Ah! The lights!'
'Good, good, Algernon.'
We lit two candles and the oil lantern before switching the electric off. I suppose there's no point in rubbing these details in too much or you'll not read on but I have to say it.
You'll all have made this mistake. What's the point in looking at Old Master paintings by neon or tungsten- filament glare? Dolphins don't do well in pasture land. Stick them in an ocean and you'll never see any living thing so full of beautiful motion. Give antiques the kind of light they're used to and you're halfway there. And for heaven's sake space the flames about the room. Never cluster natural flamelight. It's no wonder people get antiques wrong.
I sat myself down and took the time. I uncovered one small silver object. He prowled about, peering at and over it, for all the world like an amateur sleuth. I observed this weird performance with heartbreak.
'Time's up.' I covered it. This is the nightmarish bit.
We sat in silence broken only by my drumming fingers, the tick of the clock and the squeaks Algernon's pores made as sweat started on his fevered brow.
'Go on, Algernon,' I encouraged. 'Any ideas?'
'Erm.' He glanced to judge the distance to the door. 'Erm. It looks… sort of… well, a spoon, Lovejoy.'
'Precious metal? Plastic? Wood? Gilt?'
'Erm… silver?' he guessed desperately. 'Caddy spoon?'
'Certainly.' He beamed with relief. Examine antique silver in the correct light and even Algernon can spot it. 'Yes.' I even smiled. 'By…?' He didn't know. 'Three giant steps back, Algernon.' His face fell a mile while I rose and uncovered all the little silvers.
He missed Hester Bateman, whizz-kid of 1785. He missed the stylish Sam Massey, 1790, and the appealing work of Charles Haugham, 1781. He had omitted to learn a table of hallmarks, and thought that a superb artistic piece of brilliant silverwork from Matthew Linwood's gnarled hands was plastic.
'Compare this lovely silver shellfish,' I ended brokenly, 'with the three in the museum tomorrow. His best work's 1808 to 1820. Look up the history of tea drinking. I'll ask you tomorrow why they never drank tea with milk or even sugar in the seventeenth century, and suchlike background gems.'
'Yes, Lovejoy,' he said dejectedly.
'And go round the shops that sell modern spoons. Right?' He opened his mouth. 'Never mind why,' I said irritably. 'Just do it.' I keep telling him there's no other way to learn how to spot crap, gunge and dross. I saw his blank face and wearily began to explain for the hundredth time.
You teach a beginner about antiques by seeing if he has any feeling for craftsmanship.
It's everything. Antiques aren't alien, you see. They're extensions of mankind through time. It may seem odd that love instilled into solid materials by loving craftsmanship is the only creation of Mankind to defeat Time, but it's true. In holding antiques you reach across centuries and touch the very hands of genius. I don't count plastic cups or ballpoint pens stamped out by a machine. Fair's fair. Man is needed.
First you look round the local furniture stores to see new furniture. Then lampshades.
Then shoes. Then modern mail-order catalogues. Then mass-produced prints and paintings. Then books. Then tools. Then carpets. Then… It's a terrible, frightening experience. Why do you think most modern furniture's so ghastly? And why's so much art mere dross? And fashions abysmal? And sculpture grotty? Because of Lovejoy's Law of Loving - a tin can is a tin can is a tin can, but a tin can made with loving hands glows like the Holy Grail. It deserves to be adored because the love shines through. QED, fans. Most of today's stuff could last a thousand years and never become antique simply because love's missing. They've not got it. The poor things were made without delight, human delight.
Therefore, folks, into your modern shopping precincts for a three-day penance of observation. And at every single item stop and ask yourself the only question which ever mattered: 'Does that look as though it was made with love, from love, to express love?' Your first day will be bad. Day Two'll be ruinous. Your third day will be the worst day of your life because you will have probably seen nothing which gets a Yes. Score zero. Nothing you see will have been made with love. It is grim - unbelievably, horrendously and frighteningly grim.
Now comes Day Four. Go, downhearted and dismal by now, into your local museum.
Stand still quite a while. Then drift about and ask yourself the same question as you wander. Now what's the score? You already know the answer.
It's the only way to learn the antique trade. Look at rubbish, any cheap modern crud on sale now. You'll finish up hooked for life on what other people call antiques, but what I call love. Laugh if you like, but antiques are just things made full of love. The hands that produced them, in factories like flues from Hell, by some stupendous miracle of human response and feeling managed to instil in every antique a deep hallmark of love and pride in that very act of loving.
That's why I'm an antique dealer. What I can't understand is why everybody else isn't.
I ended my explanation. Algernon was goggling. He's heard it umpteen times.
Algernon failed that whole evening miserably. He failed on the precious early Antoine Gaudin photograph I'd borrowed. He failed on a rare and valuable 'Peacock's New Double Dissection and History of England and Wales', 1850, by Gall and Inglis of Paternoster Square ('What a tatty old jigsaw, Lovejoy!'), and a child's George IV
complete teaset, almost microscopically small - the teapot's a quarter of an inch long -
brilliantly carved from hardwood and very, very costly. Of this last Algernon soared to his giddiest height yet, asking brightly, 'What kind of plastic is it, Lovejoy?'
I slung him out after that, unable to go on. I'd not laid a finger on him. Willpower.
The world would have to wait with bated breath for Algernon's judgement of paired water ewers, Wedgwood and Bentley polished black basalt, which I'd borrowed to include in his test. But I was especially keen not to hear him on the film transparency of a tortuously elaborate weapon by that genius Minamoto Tauguhiro. I couldn't bear hearing him say it was a fancy dagger for slicing bread.
