Record Season In The Rare Book Market

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29016, 3 October 1959, Page 3

Record Season In The Rare Book Market

[By JOHN WAYNFLETE] (Reprinted from the Financial Times)

IN PASSING In a competition for the most misused word on the New Zealand air, “infer”—in the verb and adjective forms —would probably win, especially in the months when Parliament is broadcast. “Infer” is so often used for “imply,” and “Inference” for “implication.” “Imply” and “infer” refer to things half said. A speaker (or writer) implies, or implicates, what he does not fully express. A listener (or reader) infers, or deduces, the full meaning from what is expressed. An amusing illustration given in A. P. Herbert’s “What a Word!” is this: “If you see a man staggering along the road you may infer that he is drunk, without saying a word; but if you say, ‘Had one too many?’ you do not infer but imply that he is drunk.”

Although a number of fine printed books were sold at auction, it was manuscripts, of one sort or another, which dominated the 1958-59 season in the rare book market. The Dyson Perrins sale in December was easily pre-eminent (£326,620 —a world record for a single day’s book sale—with an average price of £6,532 for 50 lots). But a sufficient number of illuminated and other manuscripts—that is, manuscripts prized more for their beauty than their content —came into the market to provide two further full-dress sales at Sotheby’s; while at Christie’s the £32.000 paid (by a consortium of London dealers) for the handsome Llangattock Hours on December 8 was within a thousand pounds of the record held since 1929 by the Bedford Hours (now in the British Museum), and was only eclipsed by the extraordinary series of rockets—nine five-figure prices, with £39,000, £36,500 and £33,000 at the top—which went up next day in New Bond Street. The earliest manuscript to appear on the market was a fiveleaf fragment of a Latin Gospels, written in Italy in the 7th century, which the late Mr Otis T Bradley, of New York, had bought for £2OO since the war and which made £7200 when his distinguished collection of early Bibles and prayer books came up at Sotheby’s in February. The supply of Oriental manuscripts and miniatures has also been satisfactory, with pride of place going to the Mughal album presented by Surajah Dowlah to Clive of India, which brought the Earl of Powis £l9OO. Yet although the stratosphere of the manuscript market belongs to beauty, the prices achieved during the season for manuscripts of subject interest and for autograph letters have been almost equally remarkable. The Brudenell Codex of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, c. 1450, not a pretty thing nor of any considerable textual importance, but complete and handsomely pedigreed, went to Hans P. Kraus at £15,200, after a breathless tussle with his fellow New York dealer John F. Fleming. A collection of eight recently identified manuscripts in the autograph of the poet John Chalkhill (fl. 1600) brought £l4OO, which makes £450 (at Hodgsons’) for a recently discovered contemporary (though not autographed) manuscript of Donne’s Poems seem almost a bargain.

The original of Dr. Johnson’s well-known letter to his goddaughter, Jane Langton, reached £1250 at Christie’s, while music was well represented in several Sotheby’s sales, with Beethoven strictly fortissimo: £2200 for a three-page letter about "Fidelio,” £3700 for four leaves of sketches for the “Hammerklavier Sonata,” Ruskin, one of the most prolific correspondents who ever lived to is moving up fast: 48 letters Peter Bayne brought £440 at Christie’s, 61 to Lady Waterford £1.050 at Sotheby's, which celebrated the hundredth anniversary of ‘‘The Origin of Species,” by

getting £l,OOO for the manuscript of A. R. Wallace’s Linnacan Society address on its fiftieth. The opening of their season also saw the conclusion of the six-year dispersal of the great Andre de Coppet collection of autograph letters and historical documents, consigned from New York and particularly rich in Napoleonica, most of which has gone to Cuba. This tenth sale brought the de Coppet total to £196.454. A handful of recent examples will show that more modern writers are sharing in what, under powerful pressure from American dealers and institutions, might almost be called a boom in literary manuscripts and letters; an unpublished short story by Richard Jefferies, £320;

MUSIC New Stories of Grand Opera. By Gladys Davidson. Werner Laurie. 244 pp. Index. « Gladys Davidson already has many volumes about opera and ballet to her credit. As everyone knows, such books frequently have the air of being put together with paste and scissors; but it may be said at the outset that Miss Davidson obviotisly does not go to work in that way. Her latest book is really fresh and original, and she is able to communicate some of the pleasure she has felt so keenly in hearing and studying opera. The works chosen belong to many periods, and a number of those included are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers. Something may be known about the libretto of Gluck’s “Armide;” but how many will have heard the story of Mozart's "Clemency of Titus” or of Meyerbeer’s “Dinorah”? The modern operas given are also interesting; Miss Davidson has selected de Falla’s “Life is Short” and Stravinsky’s “Soldier’s Tale.” The book is well illustrated with photographs from recent performances at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and Sadlers Wells. Admirers of Robert Halpmann will be pleased to see a study of him together with Moira Shearer and Terence Longden at the Edinburgh Festival of 1954. Mr Helpmann is cast as the Devil in “The Soldier’s Tale.”

two Sherlock Holmes episodes, £2lO and £250; 33 lots of Ernest Bramah manuscripts, £3125; Henry James’s 122 letters to Elizabeth Robins, the actress, £2400; Barrie’s letters (252) to his old friend T. L. Gilmour, £900; 21 letters of D. H. Lawrence, £320; notes for eight articles in T. E. Lawrence’s hand, £600; a collection of letters of Arthur Machen (an almost completely “uncollected” author today), £620.

Yet if manuscripts were in the ascendant, the season will be remembered also for a number of rare and interesting printed books. Christie’s sale from the libraries of the Marquess of Exeter and Major J. H. WellerPaley (£56,891) included a fine and nearly complete copy of Caxton’s illustrated “Myrrour of the Worlde,” 1481, which went to New York at £14,000, and a ravishing copy of Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” 1590-96, the two volumes in contemporary vellum, which stayed in England at £4OOO.

Sotheby’s now seemingly annual sale devoted to Americana saw the Florio translation of Cartier’s Newe Fraunce, 1580, bring £4200; and in the same rooms appeared a passable set of the four Folios of Shakespeare, consigned from Minneapolis, which has now returned to private English ownership. Two stars in the Otis Bradley collection were the first edition of the Authorised Version, 1611, which brought £2500, and the “editio princeps” of the New Testament in Greek, 1516, with a presentation inscription from its editor, Erasmus, to Saint John Fisher (£2BOO, now in Illinois). The second highest price achieved by a single English book was the £BOOO paid at Sotheby's by Messrs L. and P. Robinson for a copy of the first edition of Littleton's “Tenures,” 1481: not only a very rare book but an exceptional copy, bound by its printer, John Lettou. Flower and bird books with coloured plates were in good supply and continued to make high prices: for example, Redoute’s “Roses” £lBOO, his “Choix des Belles Fleurs” £1250. and Thornton’s “Temple ol Flora” £6OO. Scientific books were scarcer and more expensive than ever. There was a noticeable dearth of fine literary first editions: though the late Michael Sadleir’s final collection (after several en bloc sales during his lifetime) provided a feast for the more sophisticated, illustrating as it did the autumnal refinement of a uniquely influential collecting taste.

Among contemporary writers it was undoubtedly John Betjeman’s year, first in the Sadleir sale, then in the Kolkhorst library, also sold at Sotheby's. T. S. Eliot's “Prufrock,” 1917, his most expensive title, this year reached £35; a presentation copy of Somerset Maugham’s rarest, “A Man of Honour,” 1903, £5l. Betjeman beat the latter score more than half a dozen times—seemingly “not out.”

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