by David Mason
The story of my own favourite auction triumph gets complicated because it operates on several of those levels. The auction I refer to here, with the attendant subtleties, included a rivalry between two dealers who had once been friends but no longer were by the time of the auction. It also includes one of the greatest examples in my experience of the kind of cooperation between a dealer and a librarian which can occur when both parties are operating in an area where they understand each other and each carries in regard to the other a professional respect and trust.
On viewing the offerings in the preview a few days before the sale I found a copy of Robert Service’s rare first book Songs of a Sourdough. The copy offered was bound in plain paper wrappers instead of the cloth it was issued in, making it appear to be a book missing its covers, which had had brown wrapping paper pasted on. It had come from the estate of Fay Fenton, a journalist who had lived in the Klondike, and it was immediately obvious to me that it was a proof copy and probably unique. It made sense to assume that she would have known Service and that he had undoubtedly given it to her. Service’s first book, for which he had paid the printing costs, at least for the first one hundred copies, was already a legendary rarity, selling even then for $2,000.00 or so.
Like many another hopeful scout, I had always been looking for it. For many years every time I went into the Old Favorites Bookshop, I went first to “S” in the Canadian poetry section hoping that one day it would be sleeping there, waiting for the handsome prince to come and wake it from its slumber. One day I walked in and there it was—priced $10.00—another example of why scouting is so exciting. It was a fine copy and I sold it for $2,500.00 the next day.
The people then in charge of Waddington’s book sales were a little short on experience and they had not realized that it was a proof copy and had it described as “in plain wrappers,” and had estimated it in the catalogue as selling in the $100.00 to $200.00 range. I knew it was worth very much more than that and left hoping that other dealers might go past it without seeing it, or if they did see it, would also be too inexperienced to know its importance. I knew that was unlikely, but….
I thought about it for some time and arrived at what I considered a proper retail value—$30,000.00 to $35,000.00.
But, unfortunately, I knew who would be very unlikely to miss it—my ex-friend Steven Temple. Still deeply hurt and smarting from his actions over the Canadian editions debacle, I was determined that he would not get it. But in spite of my continuing anger I knew he was far too good a bookseller not to know exactly what it was and what its value should be. His specialty at the time was Canadian Literature, and I had no doubt that he would be my most dangerous adversary.
I knew that my anger towards Temple was both childish and unbecoming but it was still there and my whole strategy was influenced by those feelings.
I figured it would take around $10,000.00 to buy it if Temple saw it, and I figured he would try to raise that amount, maybe by borrowing, or maybe by taking on a partner.
Given the threat from the competition and my financial state I wondered if I should contact Richard Landon and work on commission for the University of Toronto. If I did that and he commissioned me I would get only a ten percent commission for my trouble. But I had recently done that for a very scarce early Canadian literary title which was about a $1,000.00 book. Not caring much, but my still-hurt feelings demanding that I not let Temple get it because of his iniquities, I had mentioned it to Richard and got his commission, but it did not turn out well for me since Temple didn’t attend the auction and I had no knowledgeable competition at all. I bought the book for the University of Toronto at $90.00, making a profit of only $9.00 instead of the $900.00 or so I should have made. So with the Service it could work both ways. My cowardice could do me in as easily as my spite.
Checking my credit line I found I had a $15,000.00 limit, still unused, which was about exactly what I felt would have to be my uppermost limit if I bought the book on spec. So it would take all of my available resources of credit, an uncomfortable situation. Even though I firmly believed it was a $30,000.00—$35,000.00 book, any book in that range becomes problematic as any such price demands the resources to pay it. And, of course, when books get up in that price range customers are limited; one might sit on such a book for several years before a knowledgeable collector appears.
Two days before the sale I decided that I was too close to the edge and contacted Landon. By this time I was far more concerned with simply getting the book as opposed to any potential profit. The problem was that Landon was in England. I knew he usually stayed in London with Ian Willison, a retired librarian at the British Museum, but they didn’t have Ian’s phone number at the Fisher. On a hunch I phoned Marie Korey’s assistant at Massey College to find that Marie had left Ian’s number for any emergency. I phoned. It was evening there and Ian was home alone. He informed me that Richard and Marie were in the Lake district and that he expected them the next day. I explained my dilemma; a unique format of the first book of a very important Canadian writer (before you dismiss Service as a writer of doggerel you would do well to remember the poetry of Kipling). As we spoke Ian became more and more excited himself. My God, I thought, a real librarian, who actually cares about books and understands their importance! I hadn’t yet met Ian. The next year when I did it was at the Landon’s dinner table and I could see instantly that he was indeed that wonderful rarity, a real librarian who was a real bookman. To compound my pleasure at meeting him, he had known one of my youthful intellectual heroes, Colin Wilson, when they were both young and Wilson was writing The Outsider in the reading room of the British Museum.
We left it that he would have Richard call me as soon as he arrived. The next morning, the day of the sale, Richard did call. I explained the situation to him and said we couldn’t count on others making the same mistake that Waddington’s staff had. “What do you think it will go for?” Richard asked.
“I think it should go $10,000.00-$12,000.00,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go that high.”
A pause. I knew I had to say more.
“Listen, Richard, if it goes for $12,000.00 or less it’s yours. But I have to tell you if it goes higher I’m going to go on for myself. I want that book.”
Another pause. “What do you think it’s worth, Dave?”
“I think it’s a $30,000.00 to $35,000.00 book,” I replied. “And I think I can sell it for that pretty easily. And I’m going to buy it if you don’t.”
A longer pause.
“Okay Dave. I don’t have any money [by which he meant that his budget was exhausted]. Just buy the book. I’ll get the money somehow.”
I had an unlimited bid, every dealer’s dream. This is what can happen when a system of trust exists between two knowledgeable people, a trust which had developed over many years.
An unlimited bid—almost unheard of. An unlimited bid contains unlimited power in its essence, a wonderful feeling. Of course, I didn’t really have an unlimited bid, as both Landon and I understood—without it needing to be said. He was trusting to my professional expertise. If some unknown fool had crazy ambitions I was expected to realize that and desist if necessary. Still, up to $25,000.00 or so I was free to act. We had both understood this without any need to state it.
When I entered the saleroom that night it was full. I surveyed the crowd, noting several western dealers whom I knew would covet it too, and of course the entire eastern trade was there including the one I saw as my real competition: Temple. I felt an almost benign affection for the lot of them. Poor guys, I thought magnanimously. Their dreams of glory so soon to be shattered. It was sad.
I looked, as I always do, for a spot where I could observe my presumed probable competitors without being seen myself. I sat two rows back and on the other side from Temple. The two most dangerous western dealers who were also plainly in view—including their hands,
which you need to monitor closely, since they are used not only to bid but give off the most telling indications of intention.
The Service came up very early. Ron McLean, a very astute man and the best auctioneer I’ve ever encountered (his son Duncan is not far behind him), announced the lot number, adding in a manner he often adopted—where he pretended to be dumb—that someone had told him that the next item might be unique.
“What do I know?” he asked with a shrug. “It’s estimated at $100.00—$200.00,” he said slyly, “so in case that unique stuff is true, I guess I’ll start at $200.00. Do I have $200.00?” He knew very well what he knew and I’m sure he expected exactly what happened to happen.
The room erupted, arms in the air everywhere, McLean pulling in bids as fast as he could call them, the place chaos. I didn’t bid; I watched. Sure enough, the west was bidding frantically. Then Temple raised his hand and kept it up imperiously, the gesture presumably intended to tell all of us that it was futile to thwart him, but telling me that he had indeed obtained money, a loan or a partner or both. The bidding died down in the $3,000.00 to $4,000.00 range—as always, an indicator of lack of imagination. I entered at around $4,000.00. There was only Temple, his arm still pompously in the air, and a couple of others. By $5,000.00 it was just me and Temple. He couldn’t see who he was bidding against, but at $7,000.00 he started to get nervous—this wasn’t going the way he’d planned. At $8,000.00 he started lowering his arm, then it went up again, then down, then up again—but each time more hesitantly on the up part. McLean watched us both intently, back and forth, a small smile on his face, continuing now in $500.00 increments.
Down came Temple’s arm, a look of intense frustration on his face; a pause, up again, one more try, the hope born of desperation. I bid instantly every time, hammering it home. Finally at $10,000.00 Temple was at his limit and showed it. After a few seconds he made his last desperate move, one more bid, hoping his opponent’s level was also $10,000.00. I raised my pencil one last time and Temple slumped in his seat, defeated. It was mine at $11,000.00!
There was silence for a moment and then the entire room erupted in loud applause. I had always believed such applause at an auction to be vulgar and ludicrous. Imagine cheering just because some fool spends a lot of money?
But, curiously, this time I did finally see the sense in that just acknowledgement of the victor’s superiority. In this case it clearly wasn’t the money spent they were applauding; it was my cleverness and courage they were celebrating. I positively basked in it. Then Ron McLean joined the game. A born actor, as are all great auctioneers and great salesmen of all sorts, he knew how to play a crowd. He knew how to turn any result to his advantage, to create a feeling that anyone could do it.
“That’s David Mason who bought that,” he announced. “I can remember when he would come in here as a kid to buy a wall full of books for $10.00 or $20.00. Who would have thought then that he’d be spending $11,000.00 for a single book today?”
Ron was still playing the room. He was telling them all that they too could be applauded. You too can be world famous here tonight, all you have to do is stick your arm up and keep it up and we will cheer for you too.
And so, the University of Toronto got a unique copy of the most famous book of poetry ever published in Canada. But I got the glory—and this story.
Chapter 15
Learning My Trade 3:
The Art of Appraising
The appraisal of personal archives is an art, not a science.
It is my intention that the following anecdotal accounts demonstrate not only my increasing expertise as an antiquarian bookseller, but also my increasing sophistication in the understanding of the importance of history and tradition. I also hope to demonstrate the incredible importance of personal papers as sources in the study of human history.
Of all my activities as a bookseller, archival appraisals have taught me more about the importance of tradition and continuity than anything else. That’s why I now refer to myself as essentially conservative.
The appraisal of books is very different from the appraisals of papers. We are required to appraise books at what the government refers to as “fair market value”—the price that demands a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom prudent, knowledgeable and in possession of all relevant facts. I will leave books for the moment and dwell on papers, for it was through the appraising of papers that I learned much of what I know about archives and formed the habit of looking at everything, books or paper, from the perspective of what they contribute to our understanding of humanity’s historical record.
Appraisals began when our government—in a rare display of common sense—decided that people who owned significant treasures ought to be encouraged to donate such things to the country. This encouragement mainly occurred through the issuing of tax receipts so that donors could be financially compensated when they considered our common heritage and left their valuable artifacts to the nation. No doubt this started with fine art and historical objects, but by the late 1960s, with the flood of money the government began to bestow on universities to provide them with the capacity to deal with the oncoming baby-boom generation, it had spread to education, literature and politics.
This government largesse initiated much spending, a lot of it pretty stupid. One university, which I won’t name, purchased the entire stock of two different bookstores. One was a Canadian store, and the proprietor had been dead for several years, which meant over the years scouts had plucked the best of his stock. The other was a large American shop whose shelves, emptied after that sale, were filled again the next day from the company’s warehouse. The university was concerned with quantity, not quality. The duplicates of nineteenth-century American fiction alone, filtering back into the Canadian trade for years, were priced at $1.00 a book, and still no one wanted them except me. I built up a large stock of nineteenth-century American fiction that still sells regularly, and not at $1.00 a book either. This was a continuation of my early poverty-induced system of concentrating on what others ignored. It’s still paying off. A further point arises here: it was this huge accumulation of unwanted American fiction from which I learned how to properly collate a book. In those days they were just rounding out the publication of Blanck’s Bibliography of American Literature (Yale University Press, 1965–69). I used this bibliography to teach myself the collation of books, and it was a very painful process. A leaf where it shouldn’t be, or not where it was called for, tortured me for months until, as always with my learning process, one day everything seemed to fall into place and become clear. Another point also became clear: the literature of any country is what endures because of its intrinsic value as literature. That many writers in BAL are unknown to the general public does not lessen their contribution. I tell my writer friends, “If you’re good, you’ll be found someday in BCL (the not-yet-completed Bibliography of Canadian Literature) even if ninety-nine percent of the world has forgotten you.” Though I must admit I’ve yet to meet a writer who thought this just compensation. At least, I’ve never seen one smile happily when I say it.
Buying entire bookstores is foolish. Any knowledgeable bookseller could point out that eighty to ninety percent of the stock of an old, long-established bookstore will be dead stock—fillers—and of little value. Still, some years later a president of that university told me how proud he was of the librarian who had so astutely thrown away probably many tens of thousands of dollars on what was essentially junk. These universities had needed instant libraries, which is what had led to such excess. This also illustrates a common delusion held by some librarians,
that they could simply go out there with no training and do what a bookseller spends a lifetime doing: buying wisely. Any competent bookseller could have earned himself a decent yearly wage supplying good books to these libraries and still saved those institutions money. People who think that professional training counts for nothing se
t themselves up for the sort of opportunists who are everywhere in society, waiting and watching for such fools.
Curiously, among private collectors the occupation most
susceptible to this delusion is made up of medical people. Doctors, for some reason, seem to think that just because they have mastered the art of healing humanity they can master the intricacies of finance and business in all its forms and compete with people who do it for a living. There’s no mark like the mark inside. Still, doctors, the best ones that is, whose view of life has been initiated and then fuelled by not just their experience but their study of man, are easily the most congenial of collectors. For a man who tempers his experience of misery and death with philosophy and learning becomes even more civilized. The best example of this axiom I’ve seen is Sir William Osler.
The catalogue of Sir William Osler’s great collection on the history of medicine not only unmistakably conveys Osler’s greatness, but also his humanity. And it is wonderful reading too. Meant to be his annotated record of his collection, it can, in fact, be read as a commentary on man’s struggle against the darkness of ignorance and prejudice. I often pick it up at times when I suffer from doubt or despair and find that it rejuvenates my sense of purpose and my pride in the accomplishments of humanity.
These university spending sprees also included purchases of writers’ papers, but then the money ran out. Universities continued to want writers’ archives, but they no longer had the money to buy them. Writers, already painfully aware of their probably lifelong struggle to survive—at least until they wrote the great Canadian novel—found that they couldn’t sell their papers, so they had to be content with accepting tax receipts in the forlorn hope that they might earn enough in that year to at least not pay taxes on their pitiful earnings. In case anyone might think I am merely trying to be funny, let me say that I have seen the financial records of many, many writers in my years of appraisal work, and the financial return for all that talent and effort is often appalling. To see the six-month royalty statement of a serious writer for a book after its initial surge has run its course, where the cheque wouldn’t buy a meal in a decent restaurant, is not uncommon. I, at least, find this depressing. And if it’s depressing for an appraiser, imagine how the writer must feel. Years of suffering over a work of art and still needing real jobs like teaching or journalism to feed their families. The more I’ve seen, the more I have come to respect the French, who understand that a nation’s culture is as important as any other aspect of the nation’s well-being and support their artists accordingly.
