Society of Antiquaries

The Society of Antiquaries is linked to Somerset House, where Lord Wigmere’s office serves as the setting for a decisive commission: the Heart of Egypt must be returned to its rightful resting place in Egypt. The Society is not presented through a detailed account of its membership or rules; its significance emerges instead from the institutional setting in which antiquities, authority, and the obligations of return meet.

Institutional Setting

Somerset House is the Society’s setting in the story, and Lord Wigmere’s office there is where Theodosia goes seeking him. On one visit, she climbs to the third floor, passes another office, and knocks at Wigmere’s door, only to find it unanswered. With the building seemingly quiet, she takes the lift down to Level Six, where she finds empty desks and abandoned offices. These details establish a working institutional environment, but do not identify the empty Level Six offices as belonging to the Society itself.

The Society’s association with Somerset House should therefore be distinguished from the Brotherhood’s operations. Lord Wigmere tells Theodosia that the Brotherhood has sent its operatives to Germany in pursuit of von Braggenschnott; the account does not establish that these operatives are Society staff. The setting brings the Society and Wigmere’s urgent work into proximity without making them interchangeable organizations.

Antiquities and the Politics of Movement

The story places the Society’s setting within a wider dispute over who may move and claim antiquities. Henrietta reports that von Braggenschnott has gained influence despite being deeply involved in smuggling antiquities out of Egypt. She also says that he assisted her in persuading local officials to let her take her discoveries out of the country and bring them to England. The episode presents official permission and illicit trafficking side by side, while leaving the Society’s own position on Henrietta’s export or the smuggling unstated.

That tension sharpens when the Heart of Egypt is entrusted to Theodosia for return. Lord Wigmere hands the artifact to her and asks her to take it back to its rightful resting place. The task makes return, rather than mere possession or transport, the decisive measure of what should happen to this object. The story does not attribute that judgment to a formal Society policy, but stages it in the Society-associated setting of Wigmere’s office.

The Return Commission

Wigmere explains that the Brotherhood has no available operative to carry the Heart of Egypt back: its agents are pursuing von Braggenschnott in Germany, and sending messages to them without compromising their cover would take weeks. He therefore asks Theodosia to persuade her parents to travel to Egypt and take her with them. She points out the practical obstacle of an eleven-year-old attempting to board a ship alone; Wigmere acknowledges that she will need her parents’ help and presses the importance of the mission for Britain.

The commission converts the office from a place where Theodosia expects to return an artifact into the starting point of a journey. It also makes the gap between institutional responsibility and institutional capacity explicit: the adults and agents normally positioned to act are unavailable, so Wigmere entrusts the task to a child. The Society’s setting frames this decision, while the stated reasons for it belong to the Brotherhood’s pursuit and the urgency of restoring the Heart.

Narrative Significance and Limits

The Society of Antiquaries has a narrow but consequential presence. Its association with Somerset House gives Wigmere’s office an institutional context, while the scenes there connect antiquarian work to disputes over export, smuggling, and return. Yet the narrative does not describe the Society’s governance, membership, collections, or direct participation in the pursuit of the Heart of Egypt. Its significance lies in the setting and the questions that setting brings into view: who controls an artifact’s movement, and whether possession can be justified when its proper destination is elsewhere.