to gratify that
passion. In a brief year or so they are connoisseurs. They join in
the plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old
pictures, good old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling
suites of the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by a
jackdaw dream of accumulating costly discrepant old things.

I seem to remember my uncle taking to shopping quite suddenly. In
the Beckenham days and in the early Chiselhurst days he was chiefly
interested in getting money, and except for his onslaught on the
Beckenham house, bothered very little about his personal surroundings
and possessions. I forget now when the change came and he began to
spend. Some accident must have revealed to him this new source of power,
or some subtle shifting occurred in the tissues of his brain. He began
to spend and "shop." So soon as he began to shop, he began to shop
violently. He began buying pictures, and then, oddly enough, old clocks.
For the Chiselhurst house he bought nearly a dozen grandfather clocks
and three copper warming pans. After that he bought much furniture. Then
he plunged into art patronage, and began to commission pictures and to
make presents to churches and institutions. His buying increased with a
regular acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes
that came to him in the wild excitements of the last four years of his
ascent. Towards the climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with
large unexpected purchases, he shopped like a mind seeking expression,
he shopped to astonish and dismay; shopped crescendo, shopped
fortissimo, con molto espressione until the magnificent smash of Crest
Hill eroded his shopping for ever. Always it was he who shopped. My aunt
did not shine as a purchaser. It is a curious thing, due to I know not
what fine strain in her composition, that my aunt never set any great
store upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded bazaar of
Vanity Fair during those feverish years, spending no doubt freely and
largely, but spending with detachment and a touch of humorous contempt
for the things, even the "old" things, that money can buy. It came to
me suddenly one afternoon just how detached she was, as I saw her going
towards the Hardingham, sitting up, as she always did, rather stiffly
in her electric brougham, regarding the glittering world with interested
and ironically innocent blue eyes from under the brim of a hat that
defied comment.