by David Mason
There were two titles I did know and which I ascertained were first editions. They were the three-volume first edition of Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico (1843) and the two-volume first edition of Conquest of Peru (1847), both important historically and both of which were in stunning, almost new condition. I was too inexperienced to know then that this was very unusual. That period, from the 1830s to the 1870s, was a period of some of the ugliest book production ever, especially in America where these were published. The cloth used in America at that time was ugly and cheap. It chipped easily at the extremities, cracked at the hinges, and the gilt titling usually was so shoddy that titles regularly became tarnished or simply disappeared. And the paper, because of the reactions of chemicals in the still time-untested experiments of papermaking from wood chips, often turned dark brown, and worse, became so brittle that turning a page could cause the page to snap into pieces and crumble like a stale cracker. Institutional libraries now find themselves needing to deal with these books, which are literally in danger of disintegrating at any handling whatsoever.
These two copies had none of these defects. In fact in the forty-some years since that auction, I’ve seen many copies of both those titles but never have I seen either in such fine condition. I guess they were included because they were technically Americana, even though they dealt with Central and South America. This is not so strange when one realizes that until after the American Revolution all books dealing with the western Hemisphere were considered Americana, including books on Canada. Even after the revolution there were many books which legitimately were considered both Americana and Canadiana (and there still are), but Prescott, being an American writing on Central and South America, was collected as such.
I decided my only hope of participation was to try and buy them. I asked my boss Jerry Sherlock what I should do and what he thought. “I haven’t a clue, Dave,” he said, not even attempting to hide his indifference; he was too busy preparing for his own fights with his competitors for the prized Canadian rarities to care about a couple of books that weren’t in his field. I was on my own.
And here, of course, is the lesson. None of the other dealers cared either, as I found out. Both books came up very early in the sale, luckily for me, because of the level of my anxiety.
Mexico came up and I can still feel the frozen, time-suspending terror I felt as the auctioneer said, “Now we have a set of Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. What am I offered? Let’s start with $15.00 for the three volumes. Do I have fifteen?”
I timidly raised my hand—my first bid at a real auction! I was both terrified and exuberant—indeed the only difference between then and now is that I lacked any sense of what I was going to do next—I lacked any sense of determination, which is the real key to an auction.
No one else bid. Ron McLean, the owner, and chief auctioneer then at Waddington’s and the best auctioneer I’ve ever dealt with, didn’t fool around. He barely paused, then knocked it down to me. I was stunned, still shaking with excitement, but aware that I had another book right after it.
“Okay,” said McLean. “Here’s the sequel, The Conquest of Peru. How much am I offered? $10.00?”
I raised my hand again. Ten seconds later it was mine too. I remember nothing else of that auction. No doubt there were many great struggles for the desirable Canadiana, but I missed it all, savouring my great coup. I got them only because no one else bothered to consider them, not the last time I profited from the carelessness of others. After much research and considerable trepidation I priced Mexico at $75.00 and Peru at $45.00. After around ten years, by which time the prices had risen to around $350.00 and $250.00 respectively, they sold. In case ten years seems like a long time I should say that in those days, with neither the customers nor the knowledge of how to acquire them, that was not at all unusual. From that and many other similar purchases I learned another very important lesson; a good book, especially in fine condition, will always sell. I believe it is foolish to expect it to sell immediately and I never fall into the trap, common to many dealers, of thinking I have failed if I don’t sell it the next day.
Of course a real businessman would point out—as my father, the banker, regularly delighted in doing—that any merchandise, even if you get it for free, which sits on a shelf in rented space for ten years is hardly a bargain, or even feasible for any real business.
That lesson, compounded some time later by a second lesson, caused me to formulate a system I have used ever since.
The second lesson occurred when I was much more experienced at auctions, but it was still a confirmation of the first. At Waddington’s they would often put up the least desirable books early on, the principle being that bidders, especially dealers, will bid carelessly before they have spent serious money. The more they spend the more serious—and cautious—they become. Sitting there at this auction the first lot was a set of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911-12), known as the Scholar’s Edition, probably the best general encyclopedia ever done and still the only encyclopedia that serious booksellers buy for stock. Like everyone else, I had assumed that one of the many collectors or dealers present, knowing that, would pay around $300.00 to $400.00, its going price then. But it was knocked down for $30.00 because no one had the sense to bid, all of us ignoring it because we were concentrating on the exciting rarities awaiting us. But really we were making assumptions, presumably assumptions based on logic and common sense, but our error was in entertaining the notion that common sense had any part in the equation.
And that was the lesson. Don’t assume that the obvious will occur. Don’t assume that people, even dealers, will assess everything sensibly and act accordingly. Once, as we were packing up at the end of a book fair, I idly picked up a book from a neighbour’s table. It was a good book on the Klondike which everyone knew was a $200.00 book. This man had priced it at $15.00. No one had bothered to look at the price during the entire fair since we all assumed that he too would be aware of its value. Same lesson. Ever since that day I have always used the system that those two incidents taught me, and I never deviate no matter how boring the material or how broke I may be. I look at every book and never reject a book, even the ones I’m not interested in, unless or until I have a satisfactory reason for doing so. There are
books one can reject because of serious condition problems but even those need to be studied closely in case their intrinsic value or rarity could justify today’s high cost of restoration. So I am always prepared. After viewing two to three hundred lots your memory will be faulty so I depend on my notes. Therefore, when a book reaches $200.00 and my note says $300.00 I will drop out if the bidder is a friend or a client, otherwise I go up to the limit as noted. I cross out any book I don’t want at any price and, using my code, I note the minimum under which I will not allow anyone else to buy that lot.
All dealers have a code, used to provide themselves with details of purchase, etc. while hiding it from others. Many dealers enjoy attempting to break their colleague’s codes. Sometimes such information can be helpful, but I think the real motivation is simply for the fun of it, like solving a puzzle.
These codes are usually formed from a ten-letter word with no letters duplicated—that informs a dealer what they paid for a book. It is usually accompanied by the date and the initials of the dealer they bought it from. This allows them to consider discounts or deals when they are sick of looking at a book.
I have two codes, one of which, after so many years, I can read as though it were the actual numbers. In fact, so deep is it imbedded in my brain I can actually add totals in code as easily as if it were the real numbers. This is a necessary defense and I do all my written business using it. And here’s one reason why. Once, I was sitting behind a close friend, another bookseller at an important auction, and as this dealer turned around to say something I could see written beside the next item in their catalogue the notation “So and So [a very prominent
London dealer] $15,000.00.” He obviously had a commission from that dealer. What a slip, I thought. If that dealer hadn’t been a close friend, and if that prestigious London dealer had been guilty of some perceived sin against me, even jealousy, it could have proved a very costly mistake for my friend and his London client.
Ward-Price, the old firm on College Street, held occasional book sales generally handled by a man called Lee Pritzger, who lived out around Hamilton and came in to run the sales.
Things would be bundled at Ward-Price sales and it was necessary to carefully count the books in any bundle before and after the sale, even though the lots were always tied together by string.
Once I bought a lot, its only desirable book a fine early T.S. Eliot. When I went to pick it up, the Eliot was missing, even though the lot was still securely tied together.
I told the man in charge “There’s a T.S. Eliot title missing from my lot.”
“How could that be?” he wondered.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe my lawyer might, though.”
Off he went, returning a few minutes later, handing me the Eliot. “It must have slipped out of the lot,” he said, carefully not looking at the still tightly tied bundle.
Yes, indeed. I heard quite a few instances of that curious “slipping out” of books from Ward-Price lots, escapes worthy of Houdini, one could say.
I attended many Waddington’s auctions over the years. A very colourful part-time dealer, a school teacher named Robert Russell, had come to an arrangement with Waddington’s and took to running their book sales.
With Russell in charge of the books, the sort of “slippage” found at Ward-Price took on a whole new meaning, culminating some years later when the publisher Charles Musson consigned what in a later magazine article he called a priceless collection of four thousand books formed by his grandfather, the original Charles Musson, and the whole collection slipped out of the bundle, so to speak. Some four thousand books, lost in this “slippage,” later appeared at Memorial University of Newfoundland, donated by Bob Russell who, coincidentally, had received an honourary degree from the university.
Even those of us who knew Russell well remained skeptical of Musson’s accusations. Amongst other things, Musson claimed there were many first editions of Charles Dickens inscribed to the original Musson, who hadn’t even founded his company until 1903, when Dickens had been dead thirty-three years.
Musson also claimed that the collection had resided at his cottage in some thirteen or fourteen wooden crates for some years. A curious way to deal with a priceless collection, some of us thought, storing it in a cottage, unheated for six to seven months of the year and infested by mice and other rodents. Not to mention that such crates might hold fifty to sixty books each at most—more would make them impossibly heavy—but certainly very many less books than Musson contended were stolen.
At an auction any number of things are going on of which you are completely oblivious. For instance, you, a stranger, will be getting checked out at the preview by dealers, trying to decide if you might be a threat to their interests. They were, also unbeknownst to you, watching you to see what items you looked at. If you looked more than fleetingly at anything which they believed to be in their territory, they took note.
Some people seem to think they can go to an auction and need only outbid a known dealer to get a bargain. Such people could be in for a rude surprise. For a hundred years or so, any outsider who entered, say, Sotheby’s or Christie’s in London thinking that way might leave with books for which they had paid three or four times the value, because the English book trade believed that auctions were their territory and they made any fool who didn’t accept that pay very dearly.
Here is an example of what can happen if a dealer follows the old rule of always watching and always trying to figure out what’s going on.
One evening I went with a couple of dealer friends up Bayview Avenue to a new auction which was small enough that you could easily preview it in the hour before the sale. While we were looking at the material I checked out the other viewers, as I always do. I noticed one man was meticulously examining every item with great concentration. It seemed strange to me that a man who I had never seen in any bookshop should be acting like a sophisticated connoisseur, so he kept my attention.
After the viewing my friends and I went out to eat before the sale and, it not being a significant sale, I relaxed and allowed myself a couple of drinks, something I would usually never do, for a lengthy sale demands intense concentration and instant decisions, sometimes involving real money. It is also unwise to place yourself in a position where you need a visit to the washroom at an inconvenient time during the sale.
Back at the sale all of us were in a jolly mood, not really dangerous for pros in that kind of sale. My earlier focus of interest was seated in the row ahead of me so I was curious to see how he might conduct himself. At previews everybody is equally important. It is common to see people who looked at everything in an apparently knowledgeable manner who then bid on a few items but missed everything by dropping out at a very low level, thereby demonstrating their entire lack of understanding and any sense of the value of things.
At about the fourth lot in the sale the auctioneer said, “Now we come to the Canadian whaling log and drawings.”
The whaling log—what whaling log? I hadn’t seen any whaling stuff, nor any manuscript. As the floorman lifted a large bundle, string-tied, I turned to the colleague beside me.
“What’s the whaling thing?” I said, a bit confused. “I didn’t see that.”
“I don’t know, I didn’t see it either,” he replied.
The dealer on the other side of me shrugged, “Me neither. I must have missed it too.”
Suspicious.
The bidding began and who should start bidding but my strange, over-attentive gentleman of earlier. That son-of-a-bitch, I thought. He hid it under the table. I’m going to buy that, I thought, whatever it goes for. I started bidding too. When the only other bidder, that unknown gentleman, finally dropped out, it was mine. I think it went for $200.00, not a fortune then, but not a small amount either.
“What was so good about that?” one of my friends asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I had a hunch. I’ll find out later whether I was smart or stupid.”
Examining it the next day, I found it was a hand-written diary/log of a seaman from Quebec who had shipped out on a New England whaler in the seventies of the nineteenth century. It was incomplete but substantial, including quite a few drawings in a competent hand of ships and scenes of whaling.
It turned out that the only Canadian connection was that the man had been from Quebec and shipped out from there. I shopped it around to some Canadian institutions first, but no one wanted it. So I raised the price to reward myself for my cleverness and nerve and sold it to one of the many New England institutions who collect whaling history.
I was very pleased with myself and secretly thanked the two or three drinks I had had, which no doubt contributed to my sense of adventure and to the nerve to follow my hunch.
I got, if I remember, $4,000.00 for having the confidence to trust my instincts. And so I should have, for I could just as easily have lost my investment.
And, of course, I never again saw that mysterious unknown man who thought he could outsmart the pros by hiding something under the table. But ever since I have paid as much attention to the people at the previews as I have to the material.
So if you think auctions are logical and straightforward you should think about that story before you venture into unknown territory. Why do you think it is that knowledgeable librarians or collectors never bid for themselves at auctions? They always hire a dealer at the usual 10% commission, which must be one of the great bargains in all bookselling.
One of the most relevant of such auction anecdotes I know was t
old me by Justin Schiller, the acknowledged pre-eminent children’s book dealer of the world.
Two copies of the true first edition of Alice in Wonderland came up in Paris—the 1865 printing which so dissatisfied Lewis Carroll because of the inferior printing of Tenniel’s illustrations that he had suppressed it. His publisher had withdrawn the entire edition, excepting the very few copies sent out before publication. They sent the whole edition to America, where it was issued with a new title page as the first American edition. So rare is the real first edition (there are twenty-two recorded copies of the 1865 Alice, of which only five were then still in private hands) that the new, 1866 printing is generally referred to as the first edition, the true first edition being almost unobtainable.
Two copies of the 1865 Alice, as it is generally referred to amongst the cognoscenti, came up at a sale in Paris run by Drouot, the major Parisian auction house.
There are so many bizarre details in this anecdote I hardly know where to start. Both these copies were extraordinary.
One of the copies of Alice had ten of the original Tenniel drawings tipped in and was then believed to be Carroll’s own copy since it had markings in it in the purple ink Carroll habitually used. The other copy was inscribed by Carroll to Dinah Mulock Craik, the Victorian novelist who wrote John Halifax, Gentleman, and it was rendered even more important because her husband, a partner in Macmillan, was Carroll’s editor. Not only two copies of great rarity, but both copies enhanced by stunning associations.
Both copies were together as the last lot in a sale which mostly contained very early and important books in other fields.
These Carroll books had been purchased by the great dealer Dr. Rosenbach and sold to a collector named Eldridge Johnson. How Johnson handled these priceless treasures is so amusing and eccentric that I cannot resist recounting it. Johnson would travel with them on his yacht, carried in a solander case and he would place them in a special waterproof safe he had anchored in his stateroom. If ever the ship were to sink a huge buoy attached to the safe with a long thick rope would rise to the surface. On the buoy, in bright red letters, was painted “ALICE,” so that the world could locate the safe and rescue these priceless treasures. The Alices would be saved even if the humans weren’t. Who said collectors are eccentric?
