The book auction: A dangerous playground where the passion for collecting meets the fever of gambling

“ But the book auction, which includes the sale of literary manuscripts and letters, continues to offer those very elements which first fascinated you. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself one of the habitual adventurers. Unsympathetic, misunderstanding friends may accuse you of being a book-auction fiend, but you will listen indulgently and let it go at that.
Most of the great books of the world have found their way to the auction room at one time or another. Bibliophiles of renown have sat restlessly out front bidding against one another. ”

“ Nearly every collector enters the auction field to enjoy its seductive pleasures some time during the period of his fever.
When you first go to an auction you firmly believe that prices are at their highest. The complaint of high prices is as old as the auction game itself. ”

“ But, when we think of the sport of book-hunting, it is to sales in auction-rooms that the mind naturally turns. Here the rival buyers feel the passion of emulation, and it was in an auction-room that Guibert de Pixérécourt, being outbid, said, in tones of mortal hatred, “I will have the book when your collection is sold after your death.” And he kept his word. The fever of gambling is not absent from the auction-room, and people “bid jealous” as they sometimes “ride jealous” in the hunting-field. Yet, the neophyte, if he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle. ”

“ But these auction rooms are a dangerous playground for the emotional, the weak, who really doesn’t need the objects on sale, whose eyes and voice seem to miss constantly proper telephonic connections with his central, his seat of thinking. Disastrous prove these auction rooms for those who bid without seeing properly what they are bidding for, who bid higher and higher because perhaps they do not want the other fellow to have the thing, or prompted by pure gambling instinct.
Fascinated by their surroundings, they are easily moved to action ”

“ Hardly a year passes but every book of first-rate importance and interest is knocked down to the highest bidder. No doubt there are still old libraries where, buried in dust and cobwebs, the folios and quartos lie undisturbed; but to turn the pages or examine the index of Book Prices Current is to have a vision before your eyes of whole regiments of books passing and repassing across the stage amidst the loud cries of auctioneers and the bidding of booksellers.
In the auction-mart taste is pretty steady. The old favourites hold their own. Every now and again an immortal joins their ranks. ”

“ The book-lover eliminates as far as possible the question of value from his walks abroad, and leaves his gold at home to be expended as opportunity arises in the auction-room, where open competition holds the market in a virtual equipoise, or in the shops of recognised dealers, who hold his commissions and are always on the look-out for important works. He is aware, however, that intrinsically good books are to be met with continually in all sorts of places, and it is these that he hopes to obtain, and from these that his library is most often recruited. ”

“ In the last analysis pretty much everything, including poetry, is merchandise, and every important book sooner or later turns up in the auction rooms. The dozen or fifty men present represent the bookbuyers of the world—you are buying against them. When you sell a book at auction the whole world is your market. This refers, of course, only to important sales. At other times books are frequently disposed of at much less than their real value. These sales it pays the book-collector to attend, personally, if he can ”

“ It is known that McLaughlin & Co. held unimportant book sales at 78 Maiden Lane in 1824, and late though this date is, it will have to stand as representing the earliest book auction sale in New York until newly discovered evidence reveals an earlier recorded one. [5]
It rarely happens that a really great collection of books is sold otherwise than at auction. The collector recognizes that the taste and judgment displayed by him in the acquirement of his library will, by the medium of the auctioneer's carefully prepared catalogue, be made evident to all succeeding generations of book lovers. ”

“ You could buy garden tools, tractors, chairs, setting hens or pianos. Anything that was offered was put on the block and sold to the highest bidder. There were items ranging from fifty cents to five hundred dollars.
[92]
Each sale was as fascinating as a circus to Jim. There was always a huge throng of people gathered under the big roof—men, women and children from all over the surrounding countryside. There is some form of contagious excitement at an auction. When the crowd surged forward to bid on some choice item, the tenseness and excitement of the group would grip Jim too. ”

“ It constitutes the fascination of the gambler's life: money is not what he wants—were he possessed of thousands to-day he would risk them all to-morrow—but it is that being perpetually on the brink of enormous wealth and utter ruin, he is compelled to realize at every moment the possibility of the extremes of life. Every moment is one of feeling. ”

“ Such is the source of the thing in our NATURE; but then comes the furious hankering after wealth—the desire to have it without WORKING for it—which is the wish of so many of us; and THIS is the source of that hideous gambling which has produced the contemptible characters and criminal acts which are the burthen of this volume.
We love play because it satisfies our avarice,—that is to say, our desire of having more; it flatters our vanity by the idea of preference that fortune gives us, and of the attention that others pay to our success; it satisfies our curiosity, giving us a spectacle ”

“ Winning the stake is so important that without it games of chance become very flat and most unimpressive, as forms of entertainment. How is this to be explained? Sometimes it appears as veritable cupidity, the “fascination d’acquérir d’un bloc, sans peine, en un instant.”438 The seductive chink of gold pieces is heard and visions of new names of wealth open before us, promising to deliver us from all burdens and dangers which in spite of their distance and vagueness we strive to get possession of by a single turn of Fortune’s wheel; the gold fever is at home in gambling dens. ”

“ It is these latter that give book auctions their zest. And the auction houses, if they only knew it, benefit also by the chance bargain, for it is this very thing that attracts the public.
On the other hand, the most experienced buyer never knows when he will have to pay a really high price. It is the average, after all, that counts. Yet here is a phenomenon which has always seemed peculiar to me. When times are bad and prices in Wall Street are tumbling, when Steel sells far below its worth and the oils go begging, rare volumes continue to command an ever-increasing price. ”

“ Now, look into the mind of the gambler—he wants to make money, contrary to nature, and unjustly. He wants to be rewarded without merit, to make a fortune in a moment, and without industry, vigilance, true skill, or self-denial. 'A penny saved is a penny gained' does not enter his creed. Strip the thing of its disguise, it is avarice, sordid avarice; and I call it weak avarice, because the gambler relies on chance alone, yet accepts uneven chances, and hopes that Fortune will be as much in love with him as he is with himself. What silly egotism! You admire the Kursaal, and you are right ”

“ Beating—like a human soul';
days when for one small gilded manuscript men would willingly exchange broad manors, with pasture—lands, chases, and blowing woodlands; days when kings would send anxious embassies across the sea, burdened with rich gifts to abbot and prior, if haply gold might purchase a single poet's book.
But, says the scoffer, these limited editions and so forth foster the vile passions of competition. Well, and if they do? Is it not meet that men should strive together for such possessions? ”

“ The gambler knows the folly of his act: no one so well! He knows that the bank must win, and in his cooler moments will demonstrate the matter clearly to you. But then comes this seductive imagination, like a syren, picturing to him gorgeous realities: he is dazzled, fascinated, and succumbs.
To resist imagination, to trample down temptation, a man needs strength of will; but this is precisely the quality men are most deficient in; and here, as almost everywhere, we find that vice is not, as Plato says, ignorance, but weakness! ”

“ I love auction rooms without catalogues, without plush chairs, where specialists have not been allowed to separate the goats from the sheep.
“Finds” are rare in our times when every grocer’s wife who inherited a library from her great uncle, the preacher, knows more about auction-room prices than the average collector of books; when every push-cart peddlar examines his ill-smelling day’s collection for antiques.
Books and works of art have become objects of speculation. ”

“ It is all very well for a book to become rare by the vicissitudes of literary fortune, but this machine-made rarity can only be prized by people who value their possessions merely because other people haven't got them. The old minor poet was frenzied and unbought ”

“ The examples which I have quoted will show you that it is not always immediately, nor even within a lifetime from their death, that the works of our greatest authors become valuable. 'Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts,' wrote Sir George Mackenzie, and for literary fame Time is indeed the ordeal by fire. We may look upon the auction-room as a Court of Claims to Literary Fame, but it is public opinion, backing the authorities who sit round the table, that determines each claimant's case. It is the book that makes the price, not the price that makes the book. ”

“ I know many a captain of industry who quietly hides away in the [Pg 80] secrecy of his strong box rare little volumes, such as Shakespeare quartos, small pamphlets by Shelley, and even first editions of Joseph Conrad. These rich men realize—and rightly, too—that such treasures will always sell at a premium, even though the market is tumbling and Wall Street is in a panic. Owners of precious books always find they do not have to wait for the chance buyer. Their volumes can be sent to the auction mart at any time, where they will realize, as a rule, their full value. ”

“ Remembering a bibliopole's sincere care in gathering his treasures, the taste and tenderness he spends upon them, the actual individuality of the owner of which they partake, and which they proclaim with startling fidelity so long as they are together, an auctioneer's sale of a private library seems one of the cruelest things in the daily annals of a city. Yet if not transferred, in numbers or in the mass, to some benign shelter, the darlings of bygone hours are sure to be launched friendless on the rough chances of trade. A second-hand book is verily-91- a pitiful thing. ”

“ Whither are our treasures to be scattered? Will they find kind masters? or, worst fate of books, fall into the hands of women who will sell them to the trunk-maker? Are the leaves to line a box or to curl a maiden’s locks? Are the rarities to become more and more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices? Some unlucky men are able partly to solve these problems in their own lifetime. They are constrained to sell their libraries—an experience full of bitterness, wrath, and disappointment. ”

“ The amusement has its obvious perils, but the presence of gentlemen in an auction-room is a relief to the auctioneer and to the owner of the books. A bidder must be able to command his temper, both that he may be able to keep his head cool when tempted to bid recklessly, and that he may disregard the not very carefully concealed sneers of the professionals.
In book-hunting the nature of the quarry varies with the taste of the collector. One man is for bibles, another for ballads. Some pursue plays, others look for play bills. ”

“ It is not meant by this that all auction rooms are infested by brigands, who leave no chance for fair-play, and that all who ever enter them come out regretting the attempt to buy by a system that appeals to the public for its square dealing. Not at all, the best artistic investments are often made at public sales, but rarely, alas, by the inexperienced novice who has but a limited knowledge of art, and is besides wholly unfamiliar with the ways of auction rooms. ”

“ There is plenty of worthless old furniture for sale, as there are worthless "Old Masters" asking for buyers. Americans are the greedy collectors who raid the market with their unlimited dollars and pay sensational prices for the prize pieces to adorn their town houses in New York or Chicago.
Collecting is a fascinating hobby. I have found pleasure hunting for antiques far away from the heated atmosphere of Christie's auction-rooms. The joy of the chase is great, and the habit grows upon you. ”

“ The battle between the auctioneer, acting as the representative of the out-of-town bidder, and some ardent book lover personally attending the sale, for the possession of a particularly coveted work, often provokes genuine enthusiasm. It is finally knocked down to the highest bidder at the point where competition ceases, and this is often much below the limit named by the buyer. The wise purchaser at auction, when assured of the honorable standing of the house with which he deals, will not hesitate in sending liberal bids, for by so doing he will gain much and lose little. ”

“ They have to walk weary miles and wait long weeks to get upon the track of their treasure; to use all their knowledge of art and men to circumvent the malignity of dealers; to experience the extremes of trepidation and of hope; to deny themselves comforts, and perhaps food, that they may pay the price which has at last, after infinite dispute, reached an irreducible minimum; and the pleasure of their possession is in the ratio of their pains. But the man who enters a sale-room with the knowledge that he can have everything he wishes by the signing of a cheque feels none of these emotions. ”

“ Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys the industry—for no man will drudge for cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred; or practise a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indifference, he makes or loses five hundred in a night.
II. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gambler; there is no air there that he can breathe. ”

“ Fastening with a strange power upon characters of a peculiar make, and turning them into grist for the gambler's mill, no prudent person will deem it safe. Indeed, the history of every gambling den in the great cities of our own country, as well as in other lands, shows that the passion for cards, and the hope of winning money by them, often becomes an utter overmastering infatuation, almost worthy the name of insanity, which renders the victim reckless of the claims of honor, religion, and the tenderest affections of our nature, and drags him down relentlessly to his doom. ”

“ What less than this is it, when a man will stake that property which is to give his family bread, and that honor which gives them place and rank in society?
When playing becomes desperate gambling, the heart is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have smouldered to ashes; [Pg 22] and a thorough-paced gamester could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his stakes amid murder and pocket gold dripping with the blood of his own kindred.
III. Gambling is the parent and companion of every vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society. ”