A singular entry in one of the sale catalogues of Edward Jeffery, of Warwick Street, Golden Square, under 1788, is a property described as "the lounging books of a gentleman," in the near vicinity of which we come across "the Parliamentary and constitutional library of a man of fashion."
Of course, where a famous or capital assemblage of literary treasures is for sale, it is quite proper and expedient on every account to connect with it the name on which it confers, and which may even confer on it, distinction. But it is different when Mr. Jones is changing his lines, or Mr. Brown is removing into the country or out of it, or the executors of the late Mr. Robinson have given instructions for the submission of his effects to the hammer. Qu'importe? Who cares?
The composition of an average auction-room, where the property is miscellaneous, is a curious and not unedifying study. One beholds a large, closely-packed room, where the atmosphere is not too salubrious, and yet the names which the auctioneer proclaims as those of the buyers are not numerous, are not even in all cases the names of persons present. The reason is that booksellers or their representatives often attend sales for the sake of watching the market or of noting the prices, and are on the spot when a lot occurs which suits them, or for which they have a commission. It is not perhaps too much to say that if the company should be reduced by 75 per cent. the quotations would remain unaltered, for a certain proportion are dummies beyond a moderate figure, and a certain proportion never open their mouths. The latter are spectators, or proprietors, or individuals whose biddings are given from the rostrum by proxy. An experienced dealer will probably guess for whom the salesman or his clerk is acting, and will be guided by such a hint in his own course of proceeding.
Where the goods on sale are of a prevailingly low standard, the scene varies in compliance with the circumstances, and the purchasers' names in the priced catalogue are almost without exception the names of booksellers, who make their account by going in for heavy lots and rough stuff—an excellent vocation thirty years ago, but now a fairly forlorn hope and quest. The bargain is no longer to the man who can buy for a shilling and sell for a pound, but to him who has the courage and means to buy for fifty pounds what he can sell for five times fifty by virtue of his knowledge and connection.
To watch carefully and studiously a big sale such as that of the Ashburnham library, of which two out of three portions are now scattered, is a bibliographical, if not a commercial, education in little. We attended in person throughout, and observed with interest and profit the curious working, unappreciable to those not practically versed in books, and acquainted with the result only through paragraphs in the newspapers. A spectator with some preparatory training could see how and why certain lots fetched such and such abnormal figures; and a leading agency in this direction was the unfortunate employment—unfortunate for himself, not for the owner or the auctioneer—by a leading buyer of an agent who had to win his purchases from men stronger than himself. Thus the Caxton's Jason, instead of bringing perhaps £1000, ran up to more than twice that sum, while, if it was re-sold under different conditions, it might not even reach the lower amount. Still more striking were the offers for such things as the first English edition of More's Utopia (£51), a volume which has repeatedly sold for a couple of guineas; while, on the other hand, a handsomely bound copy of Bourrienne's Memoires in ten volumes went for 11s., and other ordinary works in proportion.
The names in the booksellers' ledgers and in the auctioneers' catalogues as buyers of old or scarce literature are not by any means necessarily always the names of collectors. They are often those of middlemen, through whose hands a volume passes before it reaches its ultimate destination—passes in many cases from one of these channels to another. This is, of course, another mode of saying that the number of actual book-holders on their own permanent account is comparatively limited, and so it is. A call on the part of two or three persons for a particular class of work or subject immediately puts the whole trade on its mettle; everything directly or indirectly connected with the new topic is bought up or competed for with extraordinary and abrupt eagerness; the entire fraternity is bent on supplying the latest demand; and prices rise with proportionate rapidity to an extravagant height. The market consists of a couple or trio of individuals, who might be insensible to the excitement which they have occasioned if it were not for the offers from all sides which pour in upon them from day to day; and in a season or so it is all over; quotations are as before; and the running is on something different. Books of Emblems, Catholic Literature, Gardening and Agriculture, Occult Sciences, Early Poetry, Old Plays, Americana, Bewick, Cruikshank, the modern novelists, have all had their day. But the cry and the want are largely artificial. The customers are few; the caterers are many. Such a criticism applies only to the rarer and costlier desiderata.
The characteristics and frequent surprises of auction figures largely proceed from the pressure brought to bear from without by bidders who are in the background, who often possess slight bibliographical knowledge, and whose resources enable them to furnish their representatives with generous instructions. These competitors are usually restricted to prominent sales, where the capital items are numerous, and the name of the proprietor is that of a departed celebrity, or at all events, where certain copies, whether of manuscripts or printed books, are submitted to public competition after a lengthened period of detention in the hands of the late holder. The Ashburnham sale (now completed) afforded abundant proof of the influence on the market of a collector who began to form his library before many of us were born, and who succeeded not only in securing many treasures at present almost beyond reach, but in doing so at fairly moderate prices. But even when the late Lord Ashburnham went to what was in his time considered an extreme figure, he or his estate generally gained. For example, his Parzival and Titurell, 1477, which cost Mr. Quaritch £30, and was sold to his Lordship for £45 or less (Lord Ashburnham did not object to a discount), was reacquired by the former for £81, and the set of Walton's Angler, which is understood to have cost £200, realised four times that amount.
The auction mart, where literary property of all kinds changes hands, possesses its slang vocabulary, and knows alike the Frost and the Boom—not to mention the Fluke. In the notices which occur in the press the public sees only one side, only the high quotations. The public are of course, as a rule, destitute of bibliographical knowledge, and so is the normal journalist. He marches into the room after some sale, asks for the priced catalogue, scans the pages, and makes notes of the highest figures, which are as often as not misprinted by him in the organ by which he is employed. He does not say that a lot which was worth £20 went for £2, or that one which would usually fetch £2, brought £20 by reason of some mentioned technicality, because he does not know. A man who has devoted his life to the study of books and prices is aware that there are occasions when very ordinary property realises silly prices, and that there are others when the rarest and most valuable articles are given away. Sometimes, again, the company is not unanimous enough, and a sovereign's worth may go for more than a sovereign, or, if there is perfect friendship among those present, a first folio Shakespeare may drop at a dozen pounds; but then there is, you know, the court of appeal, which reassesses the amount to be finally paid. Not invariably. We have our very selves not so long since, on a hot Saturday afternoon, sat at the auctioneer's table, and made nearly a clean sweep of a library of old English plays, where the maximum bid was eighteen pence, and there was a buzz through the room when one, no better than the rest, was accidentally carried to 14s.
But to the artificial inflation of prices in our salerooms there is more than one side and one key. There was not so long since an instance at Christie's, and a second at Sotheby's, where the high quotations were entirely due to the competition of a so-called interloper, who bade, as he thought, on the judgment of the room, and was signally handicapped. Again, something has ere now been carried to a prodigious figure owing to an unlimited commission inadvertently given to two agents. The old Duke of Wellington once gave £105 in this way for a shilling pamphlet, and even then the bidding was only stopped by arrangement. However, of all the miraculous surprises, the most signal on record was one of the most recent—the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896, already alluded to, where the prices realised for books in very secondary preservation set all records and precedents at thorough defiance. The phenomenon, if it could be referred to any cause, arose from the peculiar atmosphere and surroundings; it was a bonâ fide old library, formed partly by the Freres of Roydon Hall, Norfolk, and partly by their relative Sir John Fenn, editor of the Paston Letters, and a rather noted antiquary of the eighteenth century. It was all straight and fair, so far as one could see; there was no "rigging," and the competition was simply insane. A portion of the Paston Correspondence struck us as cheap by comparison at £400; it was that which was offered at Christie's some time since, and bought in at about the same figure.
There were one or two singular errors in the catalogue. An Elizabethan edition of Sir John Mandeville's Travels was ascribed to 1503 and the press of Wynkyn de Worde, and the Tylney Psalter, belonging to the fifteenth century, was stated in a note by a former possessor to be of the age of Richard Cœur de Lion. One of the most unaccountable blunders in an auctioneer's catalogue which we can call to mind was the description of a Sarum service book as a grammatical treatise. But solecisms of various kinds are periodical. A German book is said to be printed at Gedruckt, and a copy of Sir John Mandeville in Italian is entered as Questo, that being its compiler's frugal method of giving the title (Questo e il libro).
