De Potter's Grand Tour (23 page)

She couldn't sleep that night, and she finally gave up and went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. While she waited for the water to boil, she stood in the doorway. The weather had cleared, and the terrace was lit with an icy glow from the full moon. As she listened to the water trickling in the fountain, she remembered the day she and Armand had come to see Grand Bois for the first time. Before even entering the house, they'd walked into the overgrown garden and seen the stone nymph lying on the ground. Armand had peeled back the tangled ivy from the figure, revealing the empty almond eyes, the fine sculpted wedge of her nose, her lips parted in a smile. “Bonjour, mademoiselle!” he'd said with a laugh, and as Aimée looked on, she'd felt a pleasant awareness of a new task ahead, as if the nymph were a living thing that needed to be cared for. And they had cared for her, at great expense—cleaned and repaired and returned her to her pedestal, where she gave the impression that she stood there pouring water back into the basin, backlit by the moon, just so her beauty could be admired, too pleased with herself ever to consider that one day she would be abandoned.

*   *   *

Through the next six months, Aimée slowly packed up the contents of the house. She hired a photographer to take pictures of the villa and grounds. Working with Ernestine, she prepared the linens for storage, boxed up the books and papers, and wrapped the collection of magic-lantern slides in newspaper. With François's help, she took down the paintings. On her own, she carefully emptied the gilt cabinet and packed the curios in shipping crates. She worked slowly, pausing to examine each piece. She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the pair of tear catchers before realizing that the dusty streaks were on the inside of the alabaster tubes. Wrapping the ivory elephant from the chess set, she saw that the tower on its back was chipped. As she was finishing, she suddenly worried that the strange metal figure with the broken shaft was missing. She told herself that she must already have packed it and forgotten.

On June 16, 1907, a close, hot day, their final full day in the villa, Aimée and Victor finished packing their trunks in the morning and then went to say goodbye to the neighbors. The next day they had their last tea in the garden, and Aimée went upstairs one last time. “Took leave of our rooms &
my bed
,” she wrote in her diary that night, scratching a thick line, as if she could force herself to accept her loneliness once and for all.

The servants lined up at the door to say goodbye. François promised to take good care of the garden. Young Ernestine cried loudly and periodically blew her nose with a great snort. Felicie looked on grimly. Aimée stayed cheerful, determined not to give away her feelings. She picked a big bouquet of carnations to carry away with her, and she and Victor left Cannes on the 6:00 p.m. train bound for Boulogne.

 

Constantinople

G
IVEN ALL THAT ARMAND WANTED
to communicate to his wife in his last two letters to her, it was understandable that he made just a brief reference to the disagreeable business that had occurred in Constantinople. He didn't have the desire to elaborate, especially since his hope was that the threats directed at him would be forgotten in his absence.

Aimée never knew that two influential men affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania were in Constantinople, both of them involved with excavations at the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur. She never learned about the controversy surrounding the discoveries at Nippur. And she couldn't have known that her husband had set up a meeting with the hope of winning an endorsement for the De Potter Collection.

Osman Hamdi Bey studied law in Paris but went on to devote himself to art and archaeology. He became director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum in 1881 and undertook important excavations at Nemrut Dayu. In 1884 he rewrote the laws to prohibit the export of ancient artifacts, and his permission was required for anyone seeking to excavate in the Ottoman Empire. He received an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania, presented to him personally by Professor Hermann Hilprecht in 1894. As a writer in
The Athenaeum
put it, “Now that the oversight of all the antiquities found in Turkey is in the hands of Hamdi Bey, he is the object of great attention from those who wish to share in their enjoyment.”

Hermann Volrath Hilprecht was an archaeologist and specialist in Assyriology. Hired as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1886, he oversaw the Nippur excavations from a hotel room in Constantinople. Hilprecht claimed personal credit for discovering thirty thousand cuneiform tablets that had, in reality, been discovered by an American, John Henry Haynes. Professor Hilprecht, the absentee director of the excavations at Nippur, discredited Haynes's work. According to gossip at the time, Haynes suffered a mental breakdown and returned to live in seclusion in the United States. But questions arose about Hilprecht's honesty. In 1904, the curator of General Ethnology at the University of Pennsylvania revealed that Hilprecht had appropriated a bronze goat's head from Nippur for his private collection. And early in 1905, Canon Peters, the original director of the Nippur explorations, charged Hilprecht with deliberately misrepresenting the evidence of the discoveries at Nippur.

By early June, Hilprecht was back in Constantinople. Armand arrived in the city with his touring party on Wednesday, June 7. All he knew about the dispute involving Hilprecht was that Mrs. Stevenson disapproved of his methods and had cut off all ties with the University Museum. Hilprecht, Armand believed, had successfully defended himself against allegations of misconduct. From the bits of news that reached Armand in Cannes, he assumed that Mrs. Stevenson had resigned under pressure from the trustees, and Hilprecht had emerged as an even more respected expert than he'd been prior to the dispute. He didn't know that Hilprecht had cheated and connived his way to the top of his field. And it didn't occur to Armand that he might have judged Mrs. Stevenson too harshly, or that after she resigned there would be no one left at the University of Pennsylvania who recognized the value of his collection.

Armand wasn't entirely new to the field of Assyrian antiquities. Back in 1898 he had written to Mrs. Stevenson, “My Dear Madame: I have just closed up my house in New York and in packing away some of my collections, I came across three tablets which I have had for a number of years and which were formerly in the possession of Clot Bey, in Cairo. When I purchased them, I was told by his son that they were acquired by him somewhere in Asia Minor, and no doubt they represent some period of Assyrian art. They would probably not go with my Egyptian Collection, but I thought you might be glad to have them on deposit in the Museum of the University.”

When Armand sent the tablets to Mrs. Stevenson, he didn't specify their exact provenance or date, and his tone was unconcerned. If she wanted them on deposit, she could have them. She accepted them, and they joined the De Potter Collection in Philadelphia, where eventually they were examined by the University of Pennsylvania's own Assyriologist, Professor Hermann Volrath Hilprecht—the same man Armand had arranged to meet on June 8, 1905, at a café in Constantinople.

*   *   *

Armand led his small party to the Seven Towers, where they were met by two carriages he had hired to drive them along the land walls to the Adrianople Gate. From there, the group proceeded on foot. They walked through the narrow streets to the old Forum Constantini, continuing on past the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II, and then skirted the north end of Maïdany, arriving at the Hagia Sofia. After trooping from the crypt to the dome and even putting their fingers in the notch inside the famous weeping column, they stopped for a lunch of mutton pilaf and compote for dessert. Then they strolled through the market behind the Parmak Kapoossy gate.

Leaving the Americans to shop for talismans and pipes and ebony spoons, Armand went straight to the café at the end of the alley. He was a few minutes early, but Professor Hilprecht was already there.

“Professor Hilprecht?” Armand asked, removing his hat as he approached the man.

“I have something for you, Mr. de Potter,” Hilprecht said, ignoring his greeting, “but first you have to tell me what he is meant to hold.” He gestured to the bronze on the table in front of him. Armand saw it was a plump figure, about four inches high, with an expressive face crowned by a copper wreath of ivy leaves and berries. The eyes and lips were enamel. In the left hand it held a staff, ornamented with a pinecone. The right arm was raised, as though in the midst of lifting something, but was broken off at the wrist. Except for this, the figure was intact.

“Why, it's a fine little statue—Greek, is it?” Armand said evasively. “I see there's a staff in one hand.” He had been expecting to give Hilprecht the iron figurine from the gilt cabinet as a gift. But it seemed Hilprecht had brought along a trinket from his own collection to exchange.

“He has a staff, yes. But what is he supposed to be holding with his other hand?”

“Perhaps a shield?” Armand proposed. Though he felt wary, conscious of being tested, he was prepared to show Hilprecht the greatest respect. Mrs. Stevenson had given up her authority at the University Museum because of some dispute about Hilprecht's credibility. But Hilprecht, not Mrs. Stevenson, was the expert who had been invited to advise the Ottoman Imperial Museum. And, like Armand, he was a collector himself. Armand had thought they would feel at ease with each other.

“Why would Bacchus hold a shield, Mr. de Potter?” Hilprecht asked with obvious impatience.

It made sense, once Professor Hilprecht pointed it out, that the figure was Roman. Armand, caught off guard, had failed the test. He had come to talk with Hilprecht about the De Potter Collection. But Hilprecht didn't want to hear about the collection. He wanted to expose Armand as a man so ignorant of the art of the ancients that he couldn't tell the difference between a Roman imitation and a Greek original. The meeting suddenly seemed like a trap, and it was too late to escape.

“Maybe he is supposed to be holding a plate of fruit?” Armand suggested. “An apple? A bunch of grapes?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. de Potter, use your eyes for God's sake! He's thirsty. Does he look thirsty?”

“I suppose so.”

“Why do you think he looks thirsty? What evidence do you have? If you don't mind my saying, I have the distinct impression that you see only what you want to see.”

This last comment was delivered dismissively, and Armand understood the insult's broad implications. Had Hilprecht heard about the incident at Jaffa? Did he know that Armand was on the verge of insolvency and desperate to sell his collection at a profit, thus making him more dependent on Hilprecht for an endorsement? Maybe Hilprecht didn't want to give an endorsement. Maybe he saw Armand as a competitor and a threat to his own dealings.

Armand wasn't in the café with Hilprecht for long, since he had to return to his group and lead them to the sultan's palace. But he had enough time to order a coffee, which he then ignored. He had enough time to accept Hilprecht's Roman Bacchus in exchange for Armand's iron figurine with the broken shaft—a piece Hilprecht thought “very peculiar,” though he evidently considered it valuable enough for him to go through with the trade. Hilprecht didn't need more than a minute or two to wrap up the figurine in a sheet of newspaper and to mention, by the way, that he'd finally gotten around to examining the three Assyrian tablets in the De Potter Collection. He hoped Armand hadn't gone into debt over them. They were lovely tablets, weren't they? Unfortunately, it was Professor Hilprecht's responsibility to tell Armand that all three tablets were forgeries. It should have been obvious, since the forgers used alabaster in two of the reliefs, while Iranian sculptors would have used limestone. The third tablet was indeed limestone, but it was light gray limestone, stained to imitate the dark tone of the ancient limestone. Once the staining was removed, it became clear that the relief was copied from the ruins of Persepolis. All three tablets were modern copies. Hilprecht had been intending to write up an appraisal for Mrs. Stevenson, but then Mrs. Stevenson had resigned and withdrawn her financial support for the fifth expedition to Nippur. There would be no fifth expedition because of the petty controversy arising from his having dared to pocket a bronze goat's head for his own collection. Mrs. Stevenson had resigned over a goat's head! Hilprecht didn't bother to admit that he had stepped down from the chairmanship of his department. That was beside the point. At issue were the three fraudulent tablets that Armand had tried to pass off as authentic to the University Museum. Maybe he had made an honest mistake. But if he'd made the mistake with the tablets, what other mistakes had he made? Wasn't there something about a scarab ring that had been misdated? Don't fret over the scarab ring, Mr. de Potter—that was a minor error compared with the three forged tablets. Were there other forgeries in the collection? Was the remarkable illustrated sarcophagus authentic? Could Mr. de Potter be certain? If the sarcophagus was a fake, God forbid, the implications were dire. How about the bronze figure of Osiris? How about the little iron statue with the broken shaft that he just traded for Bacchus? Professor Hilprecht regretted that he would have to send a report to the museum trustees. In the meantime, he had consulted with the estimable Hamdi Bey, who pointed out that in Cairo, where Armand claimed to have bought the tablets, forgers were everywhere, waiting to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists who saw only what they wanted to see. Hadn't Armand purchased most of his antiquities in Cairo? There's food for thought … and on that note, Professor Hilprecht had to hurry and carry his package back to his hotel, for he was due at the Imperial Museum to consult with Hamdi Bey himself about an urn found during the last Nippur expedition.
Elveda, Mr. de Potter, guten Tag, gloria Deo optimo maximo, my brother.