COLLECTORS' ROMANCE

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 5

COLLECTORS' ROMANCE

BIG BIDS FOR BIBLES. When the enormous annual output of Bibles is borne in mind the prices of “second-hand” Bibles, even two or three centuries old, are very low, writes Mr. A. C. R. Carter, in the London Daily Telegraph: Yet if one could find that an ancestor had hidden a couple of volumes of the Gutenberg and Fust (1445) Bible among some old medicine bottles in a disused cupboard—as happened. in the Hopetoun seat at Queen a Ferry Castle —one would discover treasure indeed. Long called the Mazarin Bible, because the earliest example to be definitely known as issuing from Gutenbergs Press at Mainz was found among the ~ famous cardinal’s treasured books, it has often been acclaimed at auction, the culminating triumph being the Rosen-, bach bid of 106,000 dollars (£21,800) for the Melk Monastery copy, sold in 1920. Sixteen years .before, .in New York, the vellum copy in the Hoe sale . had brought 50,000 dollars. Yet in 1847 American indignation was strong because James Lenox, of New York, had been “mad enough” to pay £5OO for an example’offered at Sotherfey’s. Even New England Puritans denounced this “exorbitant” purchase, and it was some months before Lenox could pluck up courage to clear the relic from the New York Custom House. . It is now an object of admiration in the Lenox Library at New York. In my day I have witnessed many stirring scenes when rare Bibles have ap-. peared, and I count the most dramatic to be- that in the Huth sale, 20 years ago, when the late Alfred Quaritch gave £5BOO for a first Gutenberg Bible, costing 190 guineas in the Sir Mark Masterman Sykes’ sale, 1824, and sold to Alfred Huth for £2715 in. 1873 by the famous Bernard Quaritch. Now young Quaritch had often spoken in terms ’of reverence about his first schoolmaster, Charles Jerram (brother of the admiral), and it occurred to me to invite Jerram to accompany me to the sale. Alfred Quaritch did not espy his old friend until the bidding for the Bible had reached £5900. As he afterwards told us 4n dinner for three at the old Cafe Royal, he was thinking of retiring from the contest, but when he saw Jerram ho said .that his “blood was up.” The remark was appropriate, as the old schoolmaster reminded him that in 1884 Alfred's father, Bernard, had written to him to say that he had just paid £3900 for Sir John Thorold’s Gutenberg Bible, after “unscrupulous dealers have bid me up, but I hope to stand any loss.”- Young Quaritch had always longed to go into the army, but his father said, “You must go into my business,” and ended it. As Jerram mused in 1911, “He apparently gets as much fighting as he wants now.” No copy appeared at the Huth sale of that “Wicked Bible,” issued in 1631, with the ‘not” omitted from one of the Commandments, aa the printers discovered to their cost. But James Lenox, already mentioned, wrote the only business letter of his life- on a Sunday in 1855 to instruct his agent to buy oua that had been* saved from the burning, and this', fob, is now in New York*