It is really deplorable that owners, or their executors and legatees, should suffer thus. Nobody grudges dealers their fair profits, nor does any one deny that a dealer, like anybody else, is entitled to pick up bargains because he knows what the other side doesn't know. But for dealers to combine at an auction in order to prevent a vendor from having more than a tithe of the known market value of his goods is another matter. We make no direct allusion to this particular sale. We did not see the catalogue or the goods, and it is—at any rate for the purposes of argument—conceivable that the best books may have been in very bad condition. Nor do we suggest that there are not dealers in London who keep outside rings and do not take part in "knock-outs." But everybody knows that there are rings in all the important collectors' trades, and that these rings frequently put up at auctions—and the country auction gives them their best chance—the merest simulacrum of competition bidding and retire to share out the loot among themselves. In the new volume of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's Diary there is an account of the beginnings of the late Sir Hugh Lane's career, given to Mr. Blunt by Sir Hugh's aunt, Lady Gregory:
She apprenticed him to Colnaghi at a hundred a year, where he learnt his business of picture-dealing. He began his fortune, she tells me, by an accident. He happened to hear of a picture which was for sale in some remote country place, and travelled down to look at it, but, having no money to buy, although there was almost no bidding, he was obliged to let it go for a very small price. When the sale was over, the bidders, who were all professional dealers, went to a public house, and he with them, and it then turned out that they had been standing in together not to bid, and they held a private sale of the picture among themselves, dividing the price realised between them, and as Lane was known to belong to Colnaghi's he was included in it, and got £160 as his share.
We have heard, we remember, that the picture was a Hals; at all events this illustrates the sort of thing that happens. Not long before the war there was a considerable disturbance about the operations of an alleged ring at Christie's; there were rumours of knock-outs in which picture-dealers shared out enormous sums. It was widely argued that this sort of operation should be legally defined as fraudulent and legally punished. That nothing came of the agitation, in the light of the fact that every honest man (which includes dealers who have been forced into rings) sympathised with the agitators, suggests that investigation opened up more difficulties than had been suspected.
People are again urging a legal remedy. It appears to us that it would be impossible to enforce a law preventing rings and knock-out auctions. Nobody can compel men to bid against each other if they have an agreement—verbal and private—not to, and though large gatherings for a knock-out might occasionally be detected (but proof of guilt would be difficult), two or three are entitled innocently to gather together and can easily do so for purposes not entirely innocent. An occasional bad sale in London is bound to occur so long as rich private buyers continue their modern practice of not attending sales. We don't think anybody complained about prices when the Huth Library or Lord Vernon's rarities were sold, and we have been to many quite ordinary sales in Chancery Lane or Bond Street at which scarcely anything went for less than the owners had probably paid for it a few years ago. There are usually quite enough outsiders present to keep prices up, and it is only by accident that an agreeable little collection sometimes goes at a sacrifice. Moreover a private buyer, if he bids, is not harried as he is in some minor rooms where other commodities are sold; and some of the biggest dealers, if present, act entirely on their own. Such as the conditions in London are we cannot see much hope of change, unless and until (as we said) there is a return to the days when peers of the realm bid against each other for the jewels of the Roxburgh Library and their friends stood by them betting on the results. But the most calamitous occurrences, those which take place away from London, might easily be avoided if owners or executors would have a little sense. It is hardly conceivable that Lord Foley took really expert advice about his books; it is certain that if he knew anything about the market in old books he would never have had his put up at a local auction. Persons disposing wholesale of valuables, books, pictures, or china, from country houses should never allow them to be sold in the country. At Messrs. Sotheby's or Hodgson's, though a bad patch may now and then be struck, books would never go for the prices fetched at Ruxley Park; and when a really important collection comes up the big American buyers are almost invariably present, and the only comment likely to be made on prices is that there seems no end to their possible inflation.
Last month we stated in this place that we had recovered a few copies of No. 1 of The London Mercury. These are now exhausted. We shall have no more copies, and if people send us money for No. 1 we shall only be at the pains of returning it. We would advise those who are anxious to get No. 1 to take steps to secure it privately, by advertisement or through secondhand booksellers. We have still a certain stock of No. 2, and new subscriptions may still begin as from that issue. We repeat our invitation to readers who will be wanting binding cases for Vol. I. to let us know.