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Left at home in Providence were the 3,000 toy soldiers that form the nucleus of her collection and that she began assembling on her European honeymoon after marrying John Nicholas Brown, scion of one of Rhode Island's richest families. The bride returned home with a parade of toy soldiers. Today she downgrades her early purchases, feels that only half a dozen are real collector's items. Far more choice and valuable are the books, paintings and prints, ranging from tailors' plates to one vista of Wellington's funeral that opens out to 88 ft., which she began buying in order to identify each soldier's uniform.
Her husband bore it all until Easter week of 1967, when he discovered that the walls of their 18th century mansion were literally buckling under the five-ton weight of the collection housed upstairs. In an operation referred to by the family as "the Second Battle of the Bulge," one-third of the entire 15-ton collection was transferred and donated to Brown University (which John Nicholas Brown's great-great-grandfather founded). The rest will follow, when the university finds the space; but the memories will remain. "I truly believe," says Anne Brown, "that no category of human endeavor has been pictured more than the military profession. And why? Because over the years, the men who themselves had no urge to endure the heat of battle—the artists and poets and composers—felt in their hearts a debt of gratitude to the military men who had earned them the privilege of living in peace. So they made these men immortal."