I was, a few evenings ago, looking over Arnold’s “First Report of a Book-Collector.” I had just given an old-time year’s salary for a manuscript poem by Keats, and I was utterly bewildered by reading this: “Only a few months after I began collecting, more than one hundred pages of original manuscripts of Keats that were just then offered for sale came in my way and were secured at one-fifth of their value.” If the price I paid for one page is any criterion as to the value of one hundred pages, Mr. Arnold is by now a very rich man; and elsewhere in his “Report” he gives a list of books sold at Sotheby’s in 1896 at prices which make one’s mouth water.
- Chapman’s Homer, 1616, £15;
- Chaucer’s Works, 1542, £15 10;
- “Robinson Crusoe,” 1719-20, £75;
- Goldsmith’s “Vicar,” 1766, £65;
- Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village,” 1770, £25;
- Herrick’s “Hesperides,” 1648, £38;
- Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” 1667, £90.
But why continue? The point of it all is his comment: “If the beginner is alarmed by these prices, let him remember that such are paid only for well-known and highly prized rarities”; and remember, too, that this is the comment of an astute collector upon the prices of only twenty years ago.
It is, however, only proper to bear in mind, when referring to English auction prices, that the “knockout” may have been, and probably was, in operation. This time-honored and beneficent custom results in enriching the London book-dealer at the expense of the owner or the estate whose books are being sold. The existence of the “knockout” is pretty generally admitted by the London dealers, but they usually couple the admission with the statement that no reputable dealer will have anything to do with its operations. It is always the other fellow who is in the ring. Reduced to its simplest terms, a “knockout” consists of a clique of men who agree that certain books (or anything else) shall be bought at auction without competition. One book, or class of books, shall be bought by A, B will buy another, C another, and so on. At some convenient time or place after the books have been delivered, a second auction is held and they are again put up. This time there is real competition, but the profits go into a pool which is equally divided among the members. This custom has taken such a strong hold on the trade that it seems impossible to break it up. Should a private person bid at a sale at which the scheme is intended to operate, he would get, either nothing, or books at such a price as would cause him to remember the sale to his dying day. There is nothing analogous to it in this country, and it was to escape from its operations that it was decided to sell the great Hoe collection at Anderson’s in New York City a few years ago.
Most of the books then sold realized the highest prices ever known. Many of the London dealers were represented,—Quaritch, Maggs, and several others came in person,—and the sale will long be remembered in the annals of the trade.
After the above explanation it is hardly necessary to say that “Book Auction Records,” published by Karslake in London, has no value whatever as a guide to prices, in comparison with “American Book Prices Current,” to the compilation of which the late Luther S. Livingston devoted so much of his time—time which we now know should have been spent in doing original work in bibliography.