Essays In Appreciation
William E. Metcalf was Chief Curator of the American Numismatic Society,
where he specialized in coinage of the Roman and Byzantine periods. He also oversaw
operation of the Society's COINS database.
"My Most Unforgettable Character"
William E. Metcalf
My first encounter with Harry Bass took place in February, 1978. He had just
been elected President of the Society, and a search committee had reported to Council
in January on my own selection as Deputy Chief Curator. Harry wanted to lay eyes
on the selectee before committing to a working relationship.
Harry's first words, spoken in that commanding voice were, "Bill, I've got a
son your age." It was a brilliant stroke. Seven monosyllables defined what he
thought of our relationship, and in a sense we were to go through my own professional
adolescence and adulthood, with all the attendant difficulties.
Harry Bass was not an easy man to know, and I think he liked it that way. His physical
stature, his Texas style stood out in a crowd of Harvard and Princeton graduates.
He knew it, and he knew that it gave him a queer kind of edge, a certain air of unpredictability.
He was always, particularly in later years, fixed in his purpose, so it is hard to
think he said or did anything that didn't advance his own goals; still, I think he
had a lot of private fun with all of us.
The public Bass (the first non-New Yorker in memory to head the Society) was seen
by our membership largely through his photographs -- magnificent all, for during
his presidency he was in the vigor of high middle age -- and at our rather sparsely-attended
public meetings, where he was genuinely uncomfortable. His dominating figure was
diminished a little by a podium and a script, and members used to laugh with
him at his good-humored bungling of words like "antoninianus" and "trihemiobol";
they didn't know that a public stumble was likely to be followed by a phone call
for guidance (not for words in the dictionary, which he loved to look up and absorb)
or, just as often, one-upmanship ("What's the difference between adventitious
and fortuitous?").
One of Harry's last appearances in New York was in 1989, for a Coinage of the Americas
Conference on U.S. gold coins. This was perhaps the only occasion on which his coins
were publicly displayed. COAC is one of Harry's lasting legacies, and yet his personal
contribution to it -- in spite of unmatched knowledge of the detail of the gold coinage
-- is limited to a few generalities. On the other hand his personal engagement with
other savants of the field was by turns appreciative and contentious: he loved talking
to others as knowledgeable as himself, but was very proprietary about his own coins
and what he knew about them.
Whether any of this will filter into the scholarly record remains to be seen; Harry
felt more comfortable as a promoter of others' work than a producer of his own. Nowhere
is that more evident than in his major achievement, the ANS database and attendant
efforts that grew out of it. His original goal had been to put our magnificent library
on line, but the coins moved faster and more easily, and at this writing every entry
ever made is available outside the building in a way we could never have foreseen
when the effort began in 1979. The bibliographical resources are well along. All
are popular with audiences both amateur and professional -- a "vertical niche
of humanity," in his words -- and it is gratifying that he lived to see them
through at least their beginnings.
Harry's stamp, for good or ill, is on everything he touched, particularly the people
around him. Those who worked closely with him saw his every mood, for he was incapable
of dissimulation, and not everything they saw was pleasant. But the dominant memory
is one of a dynamo with a smile, who was amused by his success and enthused by the
prospect of more. The ANS has never been the same since Harry descended on it, and
it will never be the same again.