Genre:

Extract, Letter, Spoof

Publications extracted:

New Monthly Magazine

Subjects:

Collecting, Gender

    The narrator describes the fashion for having drawing-rooms 'lumbered with every species of trumpery rubbish known by the name of nick-nacks and curiosities', and refers to his wife's desire for pre-eminence in this respect. Among the items she has collected are 'wild beasts', which led the narrator to compare his rooms to 'Noah's Ark'. There are also shells, gemstones, 'geological specimens arranged in frames by Mr. Mawe [...] and everything, in short, that can be either named or imagined, provided always that it be neither useful nor ornamental' (107). The narrator confesses: 'I actually look forward with pleasure to the time when, my means becoming exhausted sooner than my wife's rage for collection, my museum must come to the hammer' (108).