The Book-Hunter in London | Page 7

enterprising bibliopole was lately offering 'useful old books,' etc., at
3s. 6d. per cwt., free on the rails, provided not less than six
hundredweight is bought. 'To young beginners,' he states, 'these lots are
great bargains'; but whether he means young beginners in literature or
young beginners in trade, is an open question. In either case, 'useful old
books' at the price of waste-paper are a novelty. There is a certain
amount of danger in the wholesale destruction of books, for posterity
may place a high value, literary and commercial, on the very works
which are now consigned to the paper-mill. Unfortunately, posterity
will not pay booksellers' rent of to-day. Just as those books which have
the largest circulation are likely to become the rarest, so do those which
were at one time most commonly met with often, after the lapse of a
few decades, become difficult to obtain. In one of his 'Echoes' notes,
Mr. G. A. Sala tells us that, in the course of forty years'
bookstall-hunting, he has known a great number of books once
common become scarce and costly--e.g., Lawrence's 'Lectures on Man';
Walker's 'Analysis of Beauty'; Millingen's 'Curiosities of Medical
Experience'; Beckford's 'Vathek' in French; Jeremy Bentham's works;
and Harris's 'Hermes.' Possibly the disappearance of these and many
other books may be attributed to certain definite causes. For example,
in the early years of this century one of the commonest books at 1s. or
1s. 6d. was Theobald's 'Shakespeare Restored'; but fifty years later it
was a very rare book. The interest in Shakespeare and his editors had
become quite wide-spread in literary circles, and literature in any way
bearing on the subject found ready purchasers.
Just as the disappearance of certain books sends their prices up
considerably in the market, so the unexpected appearance of others has
just the reverse effect. Until quite recently one of the scarcest of the
first editions of the writings of Charles Dickens was a thin octavo
pamphlet of seventy-one pages, entitled 'The Village Coquettes: a

Comic Opera. In two Acts. London: Richard Bentley, 1836.' So rare
was this book that very few collectors could boast the possession of it,
and an uncut example might always be sold for £30 or £40. About a
year before his death, Dickens was asked by Mr. Locker-Lampson
whether he had a copy; his reply was: 'No, and if I knew it was in my
house, and if I could not get rid of it in any other way, I would burn the
wing of the house where it was'--the words, no doubt, being spoken in
jest. Not long since, a mass of waste-paper from a printer's warehouse
was returned to the mills to be pulped, and would certainly have been
destroyed had not one of the workmen employed upon the premises
caught sight of the name of 'Charles Dickens' upon some of the sheets.
The whole parcel was carefully examined, and the searchers were
rewarded by the discovery of nearly a hundred copies of 'The Village
Coquettes,' in quires, clean and unfolded. These were passed into the
market, and the price at once fell to about £5. The most curious things
turn up sometimes in a similar manner. A little sixpenny bazaar book
('Two Poems,' by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, 1854) was
for a long time extremely rare, as much as £3 or £4 being paid for it
when it occurred for sale. Suddenly it appeared in a bookseller's
catalogue at 2s., and as every applicant could have as many as he
wanted, it then leaked out that the bookseller, Mr. Herbert, had
purchased about 100 copies with books which he purposed sending to
the mill. Even 'remainders' sometimes turn out to be little gold-mines.
The late Mr. Stibbs bought the 'remainder' of Keats's 'Endymion' at 4d.
per copy. We do not know what he realized by this investment, but
their value for some years has been £4 and upwards.
[Illustration: The late Henry Stevens, of Vermont.]
The subject of book-finds is one about which a volume might be
written. Every 'special' collector has his fund of book-hunting
anecdotes and incidents, for, where the rarity of a well-known book is
common property, there is not usually much excitement in running it to
earth. The fun may be said to begin when two or three people are
known to be on the hunt after a rare and little-known volume, whose
interest is of a special character. To take, as an illustration, one of the
most successful book-hunters of modern times, the late Henry Stevens,

of Vermont. Until Mr. Stevens created the taste for Americana among
his fellow-countrymen, very few collectors considered the subject
worth notice. And yet, in the space of a quarter of a century, he
unearthed more excessively rare and unique items