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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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II - DR. MUNRO'S BOOK ON THE MYSTERY |
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_ II - DR. MUNRO'S BOOK ON THE MYSTERY Dr. Munro's acute and interesting book, Archaeology and False Antiquities , {6} does not cover the whole of its amusing subject. False gems, coins, inscriptions, statues, and pictures are scarcely touched upon; the author is concerned chiefly with false objects of the pre-historic and "proto-historic" periods, and with these as bearing on the Clyde controversy of 1896-1905. Out of 292 pages, at least 130 treat directly of that local dispute: others bear on it indirectly. I have taken great interest in this subject since I first heard of it by accident, in the October or November of 1898. As against Dr. Munro, from whose opinions I provisionally dissent, I may be said to have no locus standi . He is an eminent and experienced archaeologist in matters of European pre-historic and proto-historic times. Any one is at liberty to say of me what another celebrated archaeologist, Mr. Charles Hercules Read, said, in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one else: a person designated as "---," and described as "a merely literary man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate." {7} But though "merely literary," like Mr. "---," I have spent much time in the study of comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples. Mr. "---" may not have done so, whoever he is. Again, as "practised people" often vary widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that "the antiquities" are "as readable as print,"--if by "antiquities" he means antiquities in general. At the British Museum I can show Mr. Read several admirable specimens of the art of faking, standing, like the Abomination of Desolation, where they ought not. It was not by unpractised persons that they were purchased at the national expense. We are all fallible, even the oldest of us. I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and disputed "antiquities" of the Clyde sites, and in that case, his opinion that they are a "curious swindle" is of the most momentous weight. But, as to practised opinion on antiquities in general, Dr. Munro and I agree that it is really very fallible, now and again. The best authorities, he proves, may read antiquities differently. He is not certain that he has not himself, on occasion, taken "fakes" for true antiques. {8a} The savants of the Louvre were lately caught by the notorious "tiara of Saitaphernes," to the pecuniary loss of France; were caught on April 1, 1896, and were made poissons d'Avril , to the golden tune of 200,000 francs (8000 pounds). Again, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy betted a friend that he could not hoax them with a forged palaeolithic drawing. They lost their bet, and, after M. Lartet's death, the forged object was published, as genuine, in the scientific journal, Materiaux (1874). {8b} As M. Reinach says of another affair, it was "a fumisterie ." {8c} Every archaeologist may be the victim of a fumisterie , few have wholly escaped, and we find Dr. Furtwangler and Mr. Cecil Smith at odds as to whether a head of Zeus in terra-cotta be of the fifth century B.C. or, quite the contrary, of the nineteenth or twentieth century A.D. Verily all "practised people" do not find "antiquities as readable as print." On the other hand, my late friend, Dr. A. S. Murray, Keeper of Classical Antiquities in the British Museum, "read" the Mycenaean antiquities erroneously, placing them many centuries too late. M. de Mortillet reckoned them forgeries, and wrote of the discoverer, Dr. Schliemann, and even of Mrs. Schliemann, in a tone unusual in men of science and gentlemen. The great palaeolithic discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, the very bases of our study of the most ancient men, were "read" as impostures by many "practised people." M. Cartailhac, again, has lately, in the most candid and honourable way, recanted his own original disbelief in certain wall-paintings in Spanish caves, of the period called "palaeolithic," for long suspected by him of being "clerical" impostures. {9} Thus even the most "practised people," like General Councils, "may err and have erred," when confronted either with forgeries, or with objects old in fact, but new to them. They have not always found antiquities "as readable as print." Dr. Munro touches but faintly on these "follies of the wise," but they are not unusual follies. This must never be forgotten. Where "practised people" may be mistaken through a too confirmed scepticism, the "merely literary man" may, once in an azure moon, happen to be right, or not demonstrably wrong; that is my excuse for differing, provisionally, from "practised people." It is only provisionally that I dissent from Dr. Munro as to some of the points at issue in the Clyde controversy. I entered on it with very insufficient knowledge: I remain, we all remain, imperfectly informed: and like people rich in practice,--Dr. Joseph Anderson, and Sir Arthur Mitchell,--I "suspend my judgement" for the present. {10} This appears to me the most scientific attitude. Time is the great revealer. But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment, and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde controversy are "spurious"; are what the world calls "fakes," though from a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them "forgeries." They are reckoned by him among "false antiquities," while, for my part, I know not of what age they are, but incline I believe that many of them are not of the nineteenth century. This is the extent of our difference. On the other hand I heartily concur with Dr. Munro in regretting that his advice,--to subject the disputed objects at the earliest possible stage of the proceedings, to a jury of experts,--was not accepted. {11a} One observation must be made on Dr. Munro's logical method, as announced by himself. "My role, on the present occasion, is to advocate the correctness of my own views on purely archaeological grounds, without any special effort to refute those of my opponents." {11b} As my view is that the methods of Dr. Munro are perhaps,--and I say it with due deference, and with doubt,--capable of modification, I shall defend my opinions as best I may. Moreover, my views, in the course of seven long years (1898-1905) have necessarily undergone some change, partly in deference to the arguments of Dr. Munro, partly because much new information has come to my knowledge since 1898-99. Moreover, on one occasion, I misstated my own view, and, though I later made my real opinion perfectly dear, some confusion was generated.
{7} Munro, p. 178. {8a} Munro, p. 55; cf. his Lake Dwellings in Europe , Fig. 13, Nos. 17, 18, 19. See Arch. and False Antiquities , pp. 21, 22, where Dr. Munro acknowledges that he had been taken in. {8b} Munro, pp. 41, 42. {8c} Munro, pp. 275-279. {9} L'Anthropologie , 1902, pp. 348-354. {10} Munro, pp. 175-176. {11a} Munro, p. 152. {11b} Munro, pp. 28, 29. _ |
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