I Brought The Ages Home by Charles Trick Currelly

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I read Charles T. Currelly’s autobiography, I Brought The Ages Home, a number of years ago. I found it to be such an interesting book - he was a real life Canadian Indiana Jones, leading archaeological digs and acquiring artifacts. He describes the late 1800s/early 1900s in Canada as a time full of promise and opportunity.

Charles T. Currelly (January 11, 1876 – April 10, 1957) was the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1914 to 1946, and acquired much its initial collection. As he passed away over 50 years ago, his autobiography fell into the public domain (note: on December 30, 2022, the general term of copyright protection in Canada changed from 50 to 70 years after the death of the author, but this did not affect works that were already in the public domain). I created an ebook version, as it’s an interesting public domain work that I haven’t seen shared elsewhere and we all benefit from a work with some historical importance being freely available (see /create-epub-from-paperback/ for how it was created). A scanned copy of the book is available from archive.org.

I have many fond memories of the ROM - I was a member when my children were young, and wandering its collections was a regular activity, particularly on weekends during winter months.

Here’s an excerpt that provides an inside look at how a cultural institution like the ROM was built out:

We had been working in this way for about a year, when I received a letter from London stating that a member of the Chinese legation had a collection of six hundred pieces of Chinese porcelain in London. They were insured for a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and we could have them for ten thousand in gold, if paid by a certain date. I had every reason to believe that the man who wrote me knew what he was talking about. He said they were marvellous pieces, and that it was a chance that we would never get again. When things seem too wonderful, however, one is suspicious. Why were they not auctioned? Porcelains were bringing very good prices indeed, and the market was in every way favourable. I puzzled over it from every point of view, and every one led to the conclusion that there was something wrong. It seemed incredible, the more one thought of it, that a member of the Chinese legation in London should be willing to sell for ten thousand dollars a collection on which he was paying premiums to cover twelve and a half times that sum.

One morning I received a telephone message from Mrs. H. D. Warren. She was at the station, just arrived from London, and she wanted to see me. She came up bringing the photographs of the collection: she had seen it, and was deeply impressed with the beauty of the pieces. The puzzle about the financial side of the matter still remained, but we finally arranged for her to cable ten thousand dollars, deciding to sell part of the collection and to keep part of it for the museum. I was greatly worried, as I felt that with our already heavy debts we could carry very little risk. About ten days later the morning paper announced a revolution in China, which made everything clear. A rich mandarin of the legation selling his collection would attract attention, and where possible government loans and other affairs were to be considered, his collection was a small matter; yet even ten thousand dollars was not to be let slip. In due course the collection arrived, and nearly took my breath away. We sold two hundred pieces for the ten thousand dollars, and four hundred superb specimens came into the possession of the province for nothing. Today the value of these four hundred pieces is enormous, single pieces being worth many thousands.

Photo: Charles Trick Currelly, on expedition in Egypt. C. 1903-4, from https://www.rom.on.ca/people/charles-t-currelly

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You can download the epub here: I Brought The Ages Home by Charles T. Currelly epub

I hope you enjoy it!