One of the rainy-day attractions in my childhood home (Northampton, England)

was the Abington Park Museum. The whole thing was housed in an old manor

house — lots of dark wood panelling & creaky worn oak staircases –

terrifically atmospheric. My favorite exhibit was the mummified hand of an

ancient Egyptian, shriveled and black, taken from some tomb, I suppose.

Also the bits & pieces of Civil War (the English one, not the American) dug

up from local fields — musket, cannon balls, caltrops, and so on. For

girlie interest, there was a terrific collection of costumes from past

centuries. Also a collection of Victorian toys and games — lovely old

19th-century dolls’ houses & the like. At the time, of course, I’d rather

have been home reading “Just William,” but the place made an impression on

me none the less, and I probably, in some indirect & involuntary way,

learned something from it.

Well, yesterday we went to visit some old friends in Stamford, Connecticut.

It was rainy & the kids were fidgeting, so my friends suggested we take them

to the local museum (which neither friend had visited for decades). So off

we went.

What a disappointment! The museum seemed to have no collection at all — we

couldn’t find one, anyway. It was given over mostly to kiddie play rooms

and displays of bogus “conceptual art.” One of the latter consisted of a

room with hundreds of bits of wood scattered on the floor, some tied up in

bundles. I thought it was a construction zone, but no, there was the

portentous little placard on the wall: “Shingles and Shims,” the artwork

was called.

The city fathers of Stamford should be utterly ashamed of themselves. This

is a large, wealthy municipality, home to several major corporations, on

whom it levies heavy taxes — as, of course, it also does on local

home-owners. This is the best they can do by way of a local history

collection? It’s a disgrace.