- Chapter 6 kicks off with another epigraph from Randolph Henry Ash—this one an excerpt from a poem called The Great Collector. It's not hard to guess which character is being foreshadowed here: by now we all know that Mortimer Cropper, the world's most famous and most well-funded R. H. Ash scholar, is obsessed with collecting whatever Ash memorabilia he can find.
- We open in a gaudy 1980s bathroom that's full of pink fixtures and loud wallpaper. Crouching in the bathroom is the one and only Mortimer Cropper, who has snuck out of the guest room where he's staying for the night and is quietly making illegal copies of letters that were written by Randolph Henry Ash.
- Next up is a detailed description of exactly what Cropper's up to. We also soon learn that he's a guest in the home of one Mrs. Daisy Wapshott, whose husband's mother seems to have been the godchild of Randolph Henry Ash.
- Mrs. Wapshott has a small bundle of letters that Ash wrote to his godchild, and although Cropper feels pretty sure that he can convince Mrs. Wapshott to sell, he's making copies just in case.
- The next morning, Cropper chats with Mrs. Wapshott over breakfast and slowly but surely makes his pitch. When he leaves in his ostentatious car—"a long black Mercedes, of the kind more normally seen driving dignitaries in countries behind the Iron Curtain" (6.21)—he feels sure that the letters will soon be his.
- As he drives, Cropper fantasizes about the autobiography that he sometimes thinks of writing. As he does, we readers are transported into Cropper's unwritten biography. In it, we read about his early life, and we also learn about the family connection that first sparked his interest in Randolph Henry Ash.
- Back at his hotel, Cropper reviews a list of other R. H. Ash memorabilia that he plans to track down during his stay in England, and, as he muses over his plans, we learn more about his academic achievements.
- It turns out that Cropper wrote the definitive biography of Randolph Henry Ash—and that he did so by retracing many of Ash's own footsteps, recreating all of the poet's "major journeys" and imagining what they would have been like for Ash himself (6.40).
- We get a long excerpt from Cropper's biography of Ash—this one a scene from Ash's honeymoon with his wife, Ellen.
- Eventually, Cropper does some more puttering around his room: he rereads his copied letters, makes a telephone call to Beatrice Nest, and convinces Beatrice to have lunch with him.
- Then, in the chapter's final scene, Cropper takes a packet of photographs out of a locked case.
- Although we're not told exactly what's in the photographs, it's pretty clear that they're porn. We get pretty clear sense of how Cropper plans to pass the time until lunch.