The Book-Hunter at Home | Page 2

that you could when I was
a young man,' says the elderly bookseller, with a knowing shake of his
head. Can't you! Then mankind must have changed strangely since the
period of this sage's youth. Bargains, and rich ones too, in everything
that is bought and sold, are made every day and will continue to be
made so long as human nature endures, bargains in books no less
among them.

The rich finds of which the aged bookseller dreams are bargains only in
the light of present-day prices. As a matter of fact, the great majority of
them were not really bargains at all. He may bitterly lament having
parted with a copy of the first edition of the 'Compleat Angler,' in the
'sixties for twenty guineas, but he overlooks the fact that that was then
its market value. Had he asked a thousand pounds for it, his sanity
would certainly have been open to question. 'Why, when I was a boy,'
he says, 'you could buy first editions of Shelley, Keats, or Scott for
pence.' Precisely: which was their current value; by no stretch of the
imagination can they be considered bargains. His business is, and has
always been, to buy and sell; not to hoard books on the chance that they
will become valuable 'some day.' Neither can it be urged that 'people'
(by which he means collectors) 'did not know so much about books
fifty years ago.' Collectors know, and have ever known, all that they
need for the acquisition of their particular desiderata. If they were
ignorant of the prices which volumes common in their day would
realise at some future period, why, so were the dealers and every one
else concerned! Judging by analogy, we have every reason to believe
that many volumes which we come across almost daily on the
bookstalls, marked, perhaps, a few pence, will be fought for one day
across the auction-room table.
The chief reason why the elderly bookseller no longer comes across
these advantageous purchases is that he has passed the age (though he
does not know it) at which bargains are to be had. But bargains are not
encountered, they are made. It is the youthful vigour and enthusiasm of
the young collector, prompting him into the byways and alleys of
book-land, that bring bargains to his shelves.
So, if you are young and enthusiastic, and not to be deterred by a series
of wild-goose chases, happy indeed will be your lot. For over the
post-prandial pipe you will be able to hand such and such a treasure to
your admiring fellow-spirit, saying: 'This I picked up for n-pence in
Camden Town; this one cost me x-shillings at Poynder's in Reading:
Iredale of Torquay let me have this for a florin; I found this on the floor
in a corner of Commin's shop at Bournemouth; this was on David's stall
at Cambridge, and I nearly lost it to the fat don of King's'; and so on

and so on.
Bargains, forsooth! Our book-hunter was once outbid at Sotheby's for a
scarce volume which he found, a week later, on a barrow in
Clerkenwell for fourpence! The same year he picked up for ten
shillings, in London, an early sixteenth-century folio, rubricated and
with illuminated initials. It was as fresh as when it issued from the
press, and in the original oak and pig-skin binding. He failed to trace
the work in any of the bibliographies, nor could the British Museum
help him to locate another copy. David's stall at Cambridge once
yielded to him a scarce Defoe tract for sixpence. But this being, as
Master Pepys said, 'an idle rogueish book,' he sold it to a bookseller for
two pounds, 'that it might not stand in the list of books, nor among
them, to disgrace them, if it should be found.' A copy has recently
fetched twenty guineas.
Doubtless every bibliophile is perpetually on the look-out for treasures,
and it is essential that he learn, early in his career, to make up his mind
at once concerning an out-of-the-way book. He who hesitates is lost,
and this is doubly true of the book-collector. More than once in his
early days of collecting has our book-hunter hesitated and finally left a
book, only to dash back--perhaps a few hours later, perhaps next
day--and find it gone.
Once upon a time a spotlessly clean little square octavo volume of
Terence, printed in italics, caught his eye upon a bookstall. One shilling
was its ransom, but it was not the price that deterred him so much as
the fact that every available nook and corner of his sanctum was
already filled to overflowing with books. 'A nice clean copy of an
early-printed book,' he mused. But early-printed books were not in his
line--then;