Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (47 page)

It was not until 1896 that the book was finally ready. It was entitled
Oriental Ceramic Art
and it ran to ten volumes, a monument to Bushell's scholarship and nineteenth-century American publishing. Each volume was lavishly bound in yellow cloth, backed with yellow silk, with silk bands to act as markers, each one tipped with a fine bone handle. Alongside the coloured plates, there were over 400 black and white illustrations, and each book in the limited edition of 500 was carefully numbered and recorded; subscribers' names were printed on the title page in return for their $500 investment. The finished article was exactly what Walters had hoped for. But, while Bushell now had this lavish achievement to his name, marking him out across the world as an intellectual heavyweight, his American employer did not live to see the project complete. Walters died two years before the catalogue's publication, in November 1894, with a reputation for ‘judgement that was authoritative on all questions of art' and leaving behind him an incomplete masterpiece.
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Even before
Oriental Ceramic Art
was published, the book was attracting attention. Collectors all over the world became aware of Bushell's work, and watched with interest as the project evolved, not only intrigued to know what was in Walters' collection, but also interested to see what impact the catalogue would have. In America, particularly, others were eager to replicate Walters' ambitious venture and to have their own collections recorded in a similar way. The quiet scholar from
Peking was in demand, and it was another wealthy American businessman, Heber Reginald Bishop, who was next to employ Bushell's services for posterity.

Bishop, who had made a fortune first in exporting sugar from Cuba and later in gas, iron and the railways, had a taste for jade. He had known Bushell for some time – probably through his connections to Walters – when in 1889 he asked him to begin a catalogue of his jade collection. This was not a particular speciality of Bushell's, but he already knew something of the long and complex tradition of jade-working, and recognized that ‘there is much to be gathered from Chinese sources' to illuminate Bishop's pieces.
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He agreed to become involved and Bishop, inspired by
Oriental Ceramic Art
, made the long journey to China to see what they could unearth together. From his home in New York, he travelled overland to Vancouver, before setting sail for Yokohama in Japan and on to Hong Kong, continuing to Shanghai before finally arriving, many exhausting weeks later, in Peking.

Fortunately, the journey proved worthwhile. Bishop and Bushell purchased a wealth of spectacular jade objects, from practical but delicate vessels to pendants and ornaments designed for emperors; from flower holders and head rests to sceptres and screens, many with elaborate pierced and relief decoration. Traditionally, Chinese jade was a special material, invoked by poets to reflect the colours of nature and revered as a ‘singing stone' because of its resonant qualities. It was reserved for imperial use. Workers laboured in a special compound of the palace enclosure, under close supervision from officials; the pieces they made were banned from sale to the outside world – so it was not an easy thing for an American visitor to collect. It took guile and bartering skills, Bishop's apparently bottomless purse and Bushell's long-standing network of loyal contacts to extract some of the pieces from their hiding places and amass a shipment to go back to New York.

In quieter moments, the two men also found time to agree a way of working on the catalogue and it was settled that Bushell would go to America for three months the following year to study the jade and help Bishop put together a publication. For Bushell, it was quite an undertaking. Still in the middle of writing his catalogue for Walters, it meant another long voyage overseas, new and demanding research and the challenges of working with another opinionated American tycoon. It was an intimidating prospect, and there were no doubt moments when Bushell felt he would have preferred things to have remained as they had been before Bishop's arrival – unhurried days of calm study in and around Peking's familiar monuments and undisturbed buying from trusted traders. Unfortunately, the process of publication turned out to be just as tortuous as Bushell feared: it was ten more years before he had amassed the information he needed about the collection, finished working with Bishop on the text, and completed ‘procuring specimens of interesting ancient pieces' on the American's behalf.
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The final two-volume catalogue was not published until 1906; in the Preface, Bishop praised his British colleague ‘for the great assistance given to me, from first to last, in this work and all my studies of Oriental Art'.
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However daunting the task might have seemed, Bushell had little choice but to take it on: he needed the money. Bishop agreed to pay £300 for Bushell's work in New York writing the catalogue entries, an amount which was equivalent to half the doctor's annual salary. It was a financial lifeline. Beyond the day-to-day routine of medical consultations, government paperwork, the social life of the Peking compound and his reading and writing, a stalling world economy and general financial uncertainty had left Bushell broke. Just a few weeks after Bishop's visit to Peking, the collapse of the Oriental Bank took with it the family savings, and any kind of security Bushell
and his wife might have hoped for. ‘We are well-nigh ruined,' Bushell admitted plaintively to Bishop.
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But even the agreement with Bishop was not enough to do more than ease immediate financial worries. In the longer term, Bushell realized that he would have to find additional income to ensure some reserves for the future and funds for his collecting. He was forced to consider what he could sell: his knowledge and expertise. There was already the work for the extraordinarily wealthy like Bishop, acting as researcher and adviser, but he guessed there was also the possibility of acting as an agent for other, less wealthy, collectors who might be willing to pay him to buy in China on their behalf. With the resourcefulness of the impecunious, Bushell was soon contacting friends, colleagues and friends of friends to tender his services. He knew he had plenty to offer: there were still very few Europeans who had spent any length of time in China, or who knew as much as he did about its culture and there was hardly anyone who was as familiar with the markets, or as friendly with the traders. Indeed there were no other collectors in such a privileged position to acquire the finest Chinese objects.

Bushell's persistence paid off, and before long he was supplying a number of clients from a variety of backgrounds and with a range of interests: coins for Sir James Stewart Lockhart, Registrar General and Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong; archaeological specimens for Sir Aurel Stein, a British adventurer and explorer in Central Asia; and porcelain for Alfred Trapnell, a humble metal smelter from Clifton in Bristol. He kept his activities low-key, and was loath to advertise himself as any kind of established dealer, but nevertheless the business grew. As with his own collecting, Bushell was thorough in his research and wise in his buying, and no doubt his customers were delighted with the carefully chosen pieces he packaged up to send to them. But, even with a core of loyal paying clients, money was still tight and, having started to
profit from his talents, Bushell began to see that with some astute buying and selling he could put an end to his financial woes for good. Perhaps inspired by the example of the American entrepreneurs with whom he was now working, Bushell abandoned the Victorian suspicion of ‘trade' and decided to branch out into perhaps the most lucrative of his activities: playing the London art market.

The fashion for blue-and-white china, particularly pieces from the K'ang-hsi period, had not passed Bushell by. He may have been thousands of miles away in Peking, but he was aware that large amounts of money were changing hands in London showrooms for things he saw every day on local market stalls. The opportunity seemed too good to miss. Setting himself up to trade was not without awkwardness, however. Bushell collected antique and exclusive ceramics for himself and he selected similar pieces for his private clients, but the market in England for ‘Old Nankin Porcelain' was apparently so voracious that just as much money was to be made from contemporary reproductions with none of the cultural history that Bushell so valued. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with such modern Chinese pieces, but, designed to look like antique K'ang-hsi wares and ‘well calculated to deceive the unwary', they were part of a dubious trade designed to make quick profits out of enthusiastic but naïve collectors.
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It is clear that Bushell had reservations about what he was doing: during a series of sales at Christie's during the 1880s, he was careful to remain anonymous, appearing in the catalogues simply as ‘A Gentleman in China', and never attending the sales himself. He was no doubt conscious of his dignity as a public servant, but the secrecy about his identity also suggests, I think, a certain embarrassment in exploiting a fashion purely for profit, even though there were plenty of other dealers doing just that. As a gentleman doctor and government representative, Bushell would have been wary of being seen as just another dealer, which
could well have undermined his social standing. As a scholar and a collector, too, he might have wanted to keep this kind of business separate from his renowned work on high-quality pieces. However, as a financial experiment the venture was a success. One auction alone, in August 1888, brought Bushell over £600 (more than his annual salary), and it seems likely that over the decade he managed to earn as much as £10,000, a considerable supplement to his doctor's income.
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But by continuing to feed a market that was already frequently unscrupulous, confused and opaque, the sales can also be seen as something of a lapse on Bushell's part, no doubt driven by necessity, but nonetheless threatening to undo the work of long years spent trying to dissociate the serious collecting of Chinese objects and the study of their contexts from the frivolous dictates of popular fashion.

From doctor to scholar to dealer, Bushell's life in Peking had taken a number of unexpected turns. He remained in post there for thirty years and never lost his affection for the city, his fascination with its buildings and delight in its objects. But what was a treasure trove for a learned collector was not always so ideal for family life, and Bushell's wife and children had to suffer the hardships of foreign living without the benefits of his diverting interests. Florence was resourceful, positive and loyal, and remained firmly by her husband's side throughout the three decades, but the infant mortality that was ever present in Victorian England was yet more of a fear in Peking. Even a doctor's family suffered, and in the winter of 1892, Sir Robert Hart, Inspector General of Customs in China, wrote: ‘We are once more sorrowing for the Bushells who have just lost their little two-year-old daughter Dorothy, the fifth I think to die out of six charming children'.
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Thankfully, the Bushell's youngest child, a boy, managed to survive into adulthood, but the years of sadness and loss in the Bushell household were long, and Bushell's exhilarating
days in the grounds of ancient palaces were tempered by many agonizing nights at the bedside of a dying child. When his own ill-health finally forced him to retire from government service and return to Britain in November 1899, he knew the voyage home was a final one. He would not be returning to China again. As the ship pulled out of the harbour at Shanghai, there was the sorrow of parting and regret at the things that would remain undiscovered, but also a sense of relief at having come through something of a trial.

Bushell anticipated using his retirement to reinvigorate research on his personal collection and to begin work on what would become
Chinese Art
. In preparation, he wrote to South Kensington asking for the return of a group of Chinese bronzes which he had collected during the 1880s and loaned to the museum for display. He was formal and reserved, even curt. Since his early visits to the museum as a young man, the staff had changed and he now felt only a professional courtesy to those dealing with his request. Besides, he was eager to begin installing his collection in the house he had taken in Upper Norwood, south London. At the museum, the request was completely unexpected, and the staff were horrified. Accustomed to loans metamorphosing into donations, they had had no expectation that Bushell might actually want his objects back; it was noted with obvious dismay that ‘the return of these bronzes will make a serious gap in our Chinese collection'.
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George Salting advised the museum to try to buy the pieces instead, and, since this seemed the only option, hurried arrangements were made to organize a sale and thus preserve the displays.

Bushell, however, was ‘not at all willing to part with the collection'.
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He had plans for it. He entered into a tetchy correspondence with South Kensington, defending his right to the bronzes. In the end, he only agreed to consider the idea of a sale because it was ‘put to him that if purchased by us, his name
would be attached to the objects which would form an important collection'.
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Like many collectors, the idea of having his name publicly linked, for posterity, to an assortment of beautiful pieces was too tempting for him to resist. There was fame in it, beyond the usual expectations of a government administrator, and there would be clear evidence for future generations of his pioneering role in understanding Chinese art. Bushell may have been unpretentious and modest, but he was not without enormous pride in his collections, and the museum's offer to publicly recognize his contribution turned out to be irresistible.

There were further negotiations. Bushell insisted on keeping some weapons and a large vase ‘because it was a present to me', but he agreed to sell the rest of the objects for £400.
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This in turn upset the museum, since George Salting had valued the collection at only £350 and budgets were, as ever, under pressure. It looked like a stalemate, but the museum was only impoverished, not foolishly stubborn. It was acknowledged that ‘it is improbable that an equally favourable opportunity will occur of purchasing such a collection' and in the end the sale was agreed before Bushell's return to England; museum staff finally accepted his valuation on the grounds that, since he had not wanted to sell in the first place, ‘we cannot well ask him to reduce his price'.
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Florence, who had gone to London ahead of her husband to prepare their new home, accepted delivery of the vase and weapons as Bushell was leaving Peking; the remaining pieces were left, to the museum's relief, to form the core of the galleries' Chinese display.