Bernard Quaritch’s Wellington consignment sale, 1893

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIV, Issue 1, 1 May 1981, Page 13

Bernard Quaritch’s Wellington consignment sale, 1893

WALLACE KIRSOP

The part played by ‘consignments’ or ‘invoices’ from British booksellers and publishers in supplying the United States and colonial markets during the nineteenth century has received little attention from historians and bibliographers. It is easy to suggest reasons for this comparative neglect. Apart from George L. McKay’s American Book Auction Catalogues 1713-1934: a Union List 1 there has been no systematic attempt until recently to provide an inventory of the surviving printed sources of information about the sales organized in the ports of destination. Elizabeth Webby has now given us a list not only of the catalogues that have escaped the destruction so often the fate of these ephemeral productions but also of the newspaper advertisements that document day by day the diversity of the trade in books in the Australian colonies before 1850. 2 While there is some prospect that the pre-1890 volume of the New Zealand National Bibliography will record the known catalogues for this period, the second half of the nineteenth century in Australia remains a formidable challenge. An additional cause of ignorance of a complex phenomenon is the need to have access to archival records in both Britain and the places to which the books were consigned. Given the usual elimination of the early correspondence and ledgers of many of the relevant firms, it is not surprising that researchers have been attracted to other topics, notably the beginnings of local printing, publishing and bookselling, in preference to one that carries with it suggestions of London disdain for distant and exploitable colonial customers.

The story is not as simple as one could be led to suppose by the fact that some of the chief consigners like Bohn and Routledge had a strong interest in the remainder trade and in cheap publishing. In lieu of a more ambitious sketch of the whole subject that has already been presented elsewhere, 3 it is enough to note that consignments, that is cases of books selected in Britain to meet the presumed requirements of overseas buyers and sent essentially as a speculation for sale, mostly by auction, on the spot, had a genuine function in periods when and in places where booksellers hardly existed or were poorly organised. The Australian colonies between 1820 and

the late 1850 s are a significant example of such a situation before the Melbourne George Robertson and Walch of Hobart made effective arrangements to buy books in London and to sell them via trade catalogues, monthly advertising journals and trade sales to smaller retailers in the colonies. In this perspective the consignment sale is a recognizable stage in a progression that passes through the heyday of the great wholesalers to the establishment of antipodean branches of the major British publishers in the 1880 s and 1890 s. 4 However, as the North American experience indicates quite clearly, speculative invoices continued to arrive well beyond the time when they were needed.

In the New Zealand context the existence of a regular flow of consignments in the early years of colonization can be verified from newspaper advertisements and from a small group of catalogues preserved in the Turnbull Library 5 and in the Victoria University of Wellington Library. 6 Not infrequently books were listed and sold cheek by jowl with merchandise of all kinds, for the consignment trade embraced everything thought saleable in the colonies. On 3 July 1854 J.H. Wallace offered ‘sundry household effects’, ‘prints and gunny bags’, ‘oil paintings, plated ware, jewellery, books, stationery, musical instruments, guns, pistols, rifles, a theodolite’ and other goods in the one catalogue. 7 The lots of books, sometimes sent by unnamed sellers, 8 sometimes consigned by well-known firms like Routledge 9 and Smith, Elder and Co. 10 , were quite varied in character because at least two markets, individual bookbuyers and retail booksellers, were being aimed at. Thus the offerings could include single copies of many titles or multiples of a relatively restricted selection of recent successes in Britain. The choice was essentially that of the consigner, as Edward Marston made clear in his reminiscences:

I soon discovered that books were wanted in these Colonies, so I made a practice of going round among the publishers to whom I was already so well known, and I selected, monthly, such books as I deemed suitable for these markets. I made them up into cases of the value of about £3O each, which I consigned to my correspondents in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. 11

It was normal for the printing of generally rudimentary catalogues to be done in the place of sale, for example in Wellington at the Independent office. 12 However, the James Smith auction list of 8 December 1853 was printed in Sydney by T. Daniel, the date clearly being added after the invoice reached New Zealand. 13 For—perhaps inevitably—the early settlements in the North and South Islands were seen as natural extensions of the Australian market by members of the trade quite adept at transplanting British ways to the Southern Hemisphere. Consignments were not always

auctioned either, as an advertisement from the Dunedin Daily Telegraph indicates:

MEDICAL, SURGICAL, and other Scientific Books, selected from the Stock of F.F. Bailliere, Book Importer and Publisher in Ordinary to the Victorian Government, Melbourne, London, Paris, New York, and Madrid. A carefully selected invoice of Practical Scientific Books from the above stock are now on sale in Dunedin, in charge of a gentleman authorised to receive orders, and otherwise act on Mr. Bailliere’s behalf; and, as his stay in Dunedin is limited, gentlemen are invited to inspect them at their earliest convenience. On view at Messrs. COTTERILL & DERMER’s, Chemists, Manse-street. 14

Bailliere, Melbourne member of a family dynasty firmly established in the Old and New Worlds and in the seats of imperial power, 15 was one of the first subject specialists to enter the antipodean bookselling fraternity. To this extent his consignments cannot be equated with the rather indiscriminate unloading of remainders and cheap series practised by the London tradesmen normally supplying the colonial market. Another exceptional figure of the pioneer period was Edward Lumley, a London bookseller and publisher rather cavalierly dismissed by Marston as a purveyor of remainders. 16 Lumley’s interest in the consignment business endured over three decades to the early 1870 s and encompassed not only Australia and New Zealand, but also —and chiefly —the United States of America. His invoices were quite unusual in that they included old and even antiquarian books of some value as well as new and cheap ones, as can be seen from the catalogues, now in the Grey Collection of the Auckland Public Library, of sales conducted in Wellington in 1848, 1850 and 1851. 17 Invariably the catalogues themselves, prepared under Lumley’s supervision and printed in London, were more informative, even about provenances, and accurate than local rush jobs. The scope and nature of Lumley’s operations require further exploration. 18

Similarly, Bernard Quaritch’s consignment ventures of the last two decades of the nineteenth century need to be seen as something other than the cheap speculations of the 1850 s. Much better documented, 19 this concerted attempt by the great London firm to find new markets for what one of its South American correspondents correctly designated as ‘surplus stock’ 20 involved sending cases of books with accompanying printed catalogues to the English provinces, to other European countries, to the United States of America, Argentina and Chile, to South Africa, to India, Burma, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Japan, and to Australia and New Zealand. For various reasons —political upheavals, economic depressions, inadequate allowance for local collecting

patterns —the experiment was far from successful overall. Often the invoices did not realize Quaritch’s valuation. Depending on the results obtained initially a particular place would be persisted with or abandoned. Wellington came in the latter category, and it is instructive to observe through this case the almost predictable difficulties of remote dealings with faceless colonial customers of uncertain knowledge, taste and gentility. 21 The Wellington invoice catalogue and associated papers are contained in the seventeenth volume of a collection made up of Quaritch auction and consignment sales. Other material in the

volume concerns Singapore, Valparaiso and Yokohama. A brief MS note at the beginning summarizes what was to be a protracted business. The consignment was sent on 11 November 1892, but the auctioneer’s settlement was not received till 25 April 1895. Valued at £IOO the books were sold for £95.125.3d., of which, after the deduction of all charges, Quaritch was able to credit £76.195.2d. net. A pungent comment on the auctioneer explains the extraordinary delay and suggests why nothing further was sent to New Zealand: ‘Macdonald an untrustworthy man, only obtained our money by repeatedly writing and eventually through A. H. Turnbull.’

Two cases of books were consigned to T. Kennedy Macdonald & Co. of 3 Panama Street, Wellington by the S.S. Tongariro. A catalogue (no. 53 of Quaritch’s consignment series) was included, but, as usual, the auctioneer had to have his own wrappers printed (at a cost of £1.125.) with details of the date and conditions of sale. Three of the catalogued lots were not found in the cases when the books were unpacked. The rest were put up for auction on the afternoon of 19 January 1893. A MS note on the recto of the upper wrapper indicates that unsold items were subsequently disposed of on ‘9th February and 28th June 1893 and privately’.

Macdonald, who had firm personal control of the company incorporated on 15 October 1891, 22 made all appropriate efforts to advertise the consignment. On 16 January 1893 the New Zealand Times announced:

This was repeated on 17 and 18 January, and on the day of the sale a longer advertisement drew attention to individual items and concluded: Notwithstanding the extremely valuable character of this consignment, many of the books being quite unique, our instructions are exceedingly simple—to sell every volume without reserve —Mr Quaritch’s object being to test New Zealand as a market. We strongly urge every lover of books in the City to attend the sale.

The auctioneer’s advice was echoed editorially in the same issue: Book-lovers and others interested should not fail to attend the sale of rare books to be held by T. Kennedy Macdonald and Co., Limited, at their rooms this afternoon, commencing at 2 o’clock. The collection, which is one of the best that has yet been offered in the city, and which comprises many rare and beautiful illustrated works, is a trial consignment sent out by Mr Bernard Quaritch, the well-known London bookseller. Being desirous of testing the market here, Mr Quaritch has given instructions that every volume is to be sold without the slightest reserve. There should be keen competition for the various lots at this sale.

A report on the sale the next day claimed that it was ‘very largely attended’ and that there was ‘considerable competition for the lots, every line being quitted at satisfactory prices’. 23 Certainly, the result was more comforting for Quaritch than that of his last Melbourne sale on 16 February 1892 in the depth of the depression. 24 The inclusion in the 24-page catalogue sent from London of a series of advertisements for the firm’s General Catalogue in whole or in part and of an invitation to ‘all men outside of England who want books’ to take Bernard Quaritch as their agent 25 is consistent with the exploratory character of the consignment. However, it is doubtful whether much thought had been given to the specific needs and requirements of the New Zealand market, which Quaritch knew chiefly through such exceptional customers as Sir George Grey 26 and A. H. Turnbull. Turnbull himself, in reporting on the sale, saw few grounds in the prices realized for repetition of the experiment apart from the interest shown in the erotica. 27

In comparison with Quaritch’s General Catalogue the contents of all his various consignments of the eighties and nineties were meagre fare for an advanced or even tolerably serious bibliophile. The firm’s own facsimile reprints and other publications tended to bulk large alongside other illustrated nineteenth-century works and remainders of a superior but rather showy kind. A scattering of practical books on diverse subjects, a handful of earlier imprints, a certain sometimes misplaced emphasis on orientalia, a few examples of local colour, some respectable curiosa, these belonged to a more or less standard formula. In the Wellington invoice books

of local interest were almost entirely absent unless one counts the Rev. John Inglis’s Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language (lots 38 and 39, 7 copies in all sold for Is. each), 28 James Atkins’s Coins and Tokens of the British Possessions in Europe, India, and other dependencies of the British Empire (lot 61) and, in a small group of titles on Japan and the North Pacific, H. A. Tilley’s fapan, the Amoor, and the Pacific, with notices of other places comprised in a voyage of Circumnavigation in 1858-1860 (lot 72). The eighteenth century is represented by Gay’s Complete Works (Dublin, 1770, 4 vols 12°—lot 31), Pope’s Complete Works (1788, 6 vols B°—lot 63*) and, much more surprisingly, Faujas de Saint-Fond’s Recherches sur les volcans eteints du Vivarais et du Velay (Paris, 1778—10 t 138). 29 Among the ‘very curious’ items vied for with enthusiasm by Turnbull’s fellow citizens were Robert Burns’s Merry Muses (1827, 12°—lot 12, 18s.), F. C. Forberg’s Manual of Classical Erotology (1887 —lot 30, 17 s.) and Perfumed Garden of the Sheik Nefzaovi; or the Arab Art of Love in XVI Century (Cosmopoli, 1886—lot 63, £2). All in all, however, and even up to its high-spots like Sir Frederick Madden’s edition of Silvestre’s Universal Palaeography (1849-50, 4 vols —lot 179, £10), this was a quite predictably typical offering.

Alexander Turnbull was to find himself involved as more than a spectator in this affair. Despairing of being paid, Quaritch wrote to his good customer on 27 November 1894 seeking his help with the Macdonald account. On Quaritch’s file, between this request and Turnbull’s reply of 24 January 1895, is inserted the original of the celebrated letter of July 1892 announcing his intention to start a Milton collection. 30 The relevance of the latter to this file can only be the paragraph: ‘By this mail I am sending you a catalogue of books sold by auction in this town with the prices affixed; it might interest you to peruse it’. Was this the original inspiration of Quaritch’s venture? In any case Turnbull was not slow in acting on behalf of his bookseller in 1895:

I am in receipt ofyour letter of27th November referring to the shipment ofbooks you made to Mr. McDonald in 1892. I have seen Mr. McDonald who informs me that a lc. sales have gone forward to you with proceeds but that there still remains a small balance which he will send to you at the end of this month when he transfers his business. The facts of the matter are these. Mr. McDonald is of rather shady a character and is not fit to be entrusted with the charge of other people’s money: He is very plausable [sic] & a good speaker so he is being assisted by the Government who have just provided him with a good billet. I shall see Mr. McDonald again before next mail goes & find out if what he says regarding the proceeds is correct. I can take no action against him without your special power of Attorney which I think there is no necessity for just yet. 31

Turnbull’s distaste for Macdonald, former M. H. R. for the City of Wellington and future M. L. C., 32 may well have been inspired by the auctioneer’s politics, whose demagogic and non-patrician character is engagingly exhibited in the detailed report of the opening of his campaign for the 1890 elections. 33 The ‘good billet’ was no doubt his appointment as supervising valuer for lands. 34 Not content with speaking to Macdonald Turnbull wrote to him on 13 February 1895 reminding him of Quaritch’s complaint. Receipt of the consignment had been acknowledged on 2 February 1893, the proceeds of the sale had been promised by the next mail, but nothing more had been heard: ‘Will you kindly furnish me with a statement of how this consignment now stands & what proceeds are due to my friend’. 35

The collector’s insistence on a prompt reply was effective, since David Brand, Macdonald’s auction clerk, wrote to Quaritch enclosing the account of the sale and a bank draft on 21 February 1895. Two years’ silence and lack of action are covered in a rather perfunctory apology: ‘we regret the delay in closing this matter, which has arisen through purchases not completed, and the fact of changes having taken place in the Firm’. Writing to Quaritch on 5 March Turnbull was able to report: ‘Mr McDonald informs me that he has sent you final a/c sales & proceeds; if this is so I can do no more for you in the matter unless you instruct me’. 36 This time the residual suspicion was unjustified and the affair ended there.

The combination of parsimonious buyers and a dilatory agent was fatal for Quaritch’s New Zealand experiment. On the other hand the Turnbull connection was to continue to prosper for the ultimate benefit not only of the London firm but also of a society that had scholars and bibliophiles as well as politicians and businessmen. 37 In the bibliographical partnership of a favoured customer and a trusted bookseller there is much more to be hoped for than in the marginal resource of sporadic consignment sales. Bernard Quaritch did not need his Wellington sale to achieve such a relationship with Turnbull, but, quite clearly, he saw his colonial and foreign invoices as means towards such considerably more satisfying ends. 38

REFERENCES 1 New York, 1937 (reprinted Detroit, 1967, including supplements of 1946 and 1948). 2 ‘A Checklist of Early Australian Booksellers’ and Auctioneers’ Catalogues and Advertisements: 1800-1849’, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand

Bulletin, 13 (November 1978) 123-48; 14 (May 1979) 33-61; 15 (November 1979) 95-150. 3 W. Kirsop, ‘Consignment Sales and Britain’s Nineteenth-Century Colonial Book Trade’ in Library Association of Australia. Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Conference held in Tasmania, August 1977. Libraries in Society (Hobart, 1978) p. 90-106. 4 This last phase has been chronicled rather than analysed in depth in Frank Eyre’s Oxford in Australia 1890-1978 (Melbourne, 1978). 5 Most are to be found in a volume (titled Sale Catalogues ) of 45 miscellaneous sale catalogues from the years 1853-1855 as nos. 4,5, 11, 13, 17, 27, 38, 39, 45 and an unnumbered item between nos. 18 and 19. Some other catalogues in the collection include stationery and a few books. In addition there are four separately classified catalogues of auctions conducted by Johnston and Co. (1853, 1854, 1855) and Bethune and Hunter (1865). The 1853 Johnston catalogue is a duplicate of no. 45 in the pamphlet volume, which is subsequently referred to as Sale Catalogues. 6ln a volume (titled Wellington Sale Catalogues, 1854-55 0 f sale catalogues from the Fildes Collection: nos. 1,2, 4 and 7, which are duplicates of Sale Catalogues, nos. 13, 17, 11 and 5 respectively. The Fildes volume is subsequently referred to as Wellington Sale Catalogues. Almost all of the catalogues in both libraries seem to have belonged originally to J. J. Taine, who was Horace Fildes’ maternal grandfather. See K. A. Coleridge, ‘Horace Fildes and his Collection’, New Zealand Libraries 38 (1975) 254-69. 7 Sale Catalogues, no. 13; Wellington Sale Catalogues, no. 1. 8 For example Sale Catalogues no. 4 (Bethune and Hunter auction, 25 November 1853) and no. 38 (P. M. Hervey & Co. auction, 19 December 1855). 9 Sale Catalogues, unnumbered item between nos. 18 and 19 (Bethune and Hunter auction, 6 September 1854). 10 Johnston & Co., Catalogue of Books . . .Stationery. . .to be sold . . . 29 th day of June, 1855 (Turnbull Library). 11 E. Marston, After Work; Fragmentsfrom the Workshop of an old Publisher (London, 1904) p. 51.

12 For example Sale Catalogues, nos. 4, 13, 17. 13 Sale Catalogues, no. 5; Wellington Sale Catalogues, no. 7. Most of the books included seem to have no particular antipodean association, but ‘Power’s New Zealand’ (presumably W. J. T. Power, Sketches in New Zealand, with Pen and Pencil, London, Longman, 1849) and ‘Mitchell’s Australia’ (T. L. Mitchell, Australian Geography . . ~ Sydney, J. Moore, 1850 and 1851 —Ferguson 5460 and 12663) are both present in three copies dispersed over different lots. 14 Daily Telegraph (Dunedin), 13 March 1863, p.3d. 15 See Dictionnaire de Biographie Franfaise, IV, cols 1304-7, andJ.-8.-M. Bailliere, Famille Bailliere, Paris, 1885. 16 Cf. Marston, op. cit., p. 326. 17 Call numbers GNZ/017/L95. The spaces left for giving the sale date and the auctioneer’s name have been left blank. Each catalogue bears pencil annotations by Grey (e.g. of prices of items that interested him). 18 For some more details see W. Kirsop, art. cit., p. 99-101. A more substantial account will be presented in the Sandars Lectures in 1981. 19 In the Quaritch archives. I am much indebted to Messrs P. N. Poole-Wilson and E. M. Dring of Bernard Quaritch Ltd for granting me free access to this material and for allowing publication of my discoveries. 20 William Mac Kern writing from Buenos Aires on 6 June 1885. 21 For a general account of the Quaritch consignment trade, see W. Kirsop, art. cit., p. 101-4.

22 See Memorandum and Articles of Association of T. Kennedy Macdonald & Co., Limited . . . (Wellington, 1891) in Articles of Association, v. 2, no. 6 (Turnbull Library). 23 New Zealand Times, 20 January 1893, p. 2e. 24 Cf. W. Kirsop, art. cit., p. 103-4. 25 P.[22] —[23]. The last numbered lot in the sale —194—is on page 21. 26 See E. H. McCormick, The Fascinating Folly: Dr. Hocken and his Fellow Collectors (Dunedin, 1961) p. 14, 16. 27 Cf. E. H. McCormick, op. cit., p. 30, and his Alexander Turnbull: His Life, His Circle, His Collections (Wellington, 1974) p. 119. 28 The generally careful cataloguer twice has ‘Ancityumese’. 29 One of the relatively rare French works published by subscription in the eighteenth century to include a printed list of subscribers. 30 Cf. John Milton. An exhibition of seventeenth-century editions, Wellington, The Alexander Turnbull Library, 1974, p. [v]; McCormick, The Fascinating Folly, p. 27; Alexander Turnbull, p. 111. The copy kept by Turnbull is in his Letterbook, 1891-1900, p. 163 (Turnbull Library, qMS). 31 See also A. H. Turnbull, Letterbook, 1894-1898, p. 73 (Turnbull Library, qMS). 32 M. H. R., 18 December 1890-1 December 1891 (resigned); M. L. C., 22June 1903-31 May 1911 (resigned). Cf. The New Zealand Parliamentary Record . . . (Wellington, 1913) p. 51, 95. 33 T. K. Macdonald, The Political Campaign. Mr Macdonald at the Opera House. Thursday, October 30th, 1890 (Wellington, 1890). Supplement to the Evening Post of 17 November 1890. 34 1895-1901, according to his entry in Who’s Who in New Zealand and the Western Pacific, 1908 (Wellington, 1908) p. 115. 35 A. H. Turnbull, Letterbook, 1894-1898, p. 77. 36. Ibid., p. 87. The original is not in Quaritch’s consignment file. 37 Macdonald personally was, it would seem, no enemy of books. I acquired his copy of C. T. Jacobi’s The Printers’ Handbook (London, 1887) from a Melbourne bookseller in 1978. 38 I should like to thank the staff of the Alexander Turnbull Library and Miss K. A. Coleridge for their help and guidance in Wellington libraries.