Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental
journey, the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle
sadness. It was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio
had any love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy,
platonic sort--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or
Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa.
Although Tom Folio was not a collector--that means dividends and bank
balances--he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with
a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare
Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an
undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling,
though he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly
have drunk any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's
time. These things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense;
in a spiritual sense he held possession of them in fee-simple.
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