The Well-Furnished Home

John Andrew Nevin loved his work. Like many another dedicated careerman, he wanted to take some of it home with him. The only trouble was that John was a caretaker in London's rambling Victoria and Albert Museum, and the treasures he watched were not his. Finely fashioned furniture from another century, antique jewelry as delicate as a butterfly's wing, miniatures from Persia, figurines of ivory and jade from lands whose very names were magic--John loved them all and hated to leave them at the end of a working day. Little by little, beginning back in 1930, he developed the habit of taking a few of the smaller bibelots with him as he left for the Chiswick house he shared with his wife Mary.

As the years passed, and the museum officials seemed either not to notice or not to care, John began taking somewhat larger things home with him. One sizable antique table journeyed from the museum to Chiswick in several installments, most of them hidden in John's trouser leg. Like the other objects in John's home, it received the tenderest care and affection, for John and Mary were both proud of their private museum. Unfortunately, the-public museum from which its beauty stemmed in time grew suspicious. Recently, on a tip from the museum, police raided John's house and found it furnished with some 2,000 objets d'art pilfered over the past 24 years. John did his last-ditch best to save some of the pieces by stuffing them into a vacuum cleaner or hiding them in a toilet tank, but it did no good: in fact, by this last-minute greediness some valuable items were ruined. The police hauled the rest of the lovely things back to the museum and turned John and Mary over to a magistrate.

Last week, bereft, treasureless and unemployed, the 58-year-old art lover was awaiting trial for stealing. His wife was charged with receiving stolen goods. "I couldn't help myself," said John. "I was attracted by the beauty."

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