The early nineteenth-century cult of bibliomania was a bizarre episode, but one with long-lasting consequences. It culminated in the famous sale of the library of the 3rd Duke of Roxburghe, conducted by the auctioneer Robert Harding Evans, which took place in the dining room of Roxburghe’s house in St. James’ Square in June 1812. By then the duke had been dead for the best part of a decade. Contemporary gossip believed him to have been a shy and retiring man who had turned to book collecting having been disappointed in love..... MORE
Antiquarian book prices had climbed to unprecedented levels over the previous twenty years, but spectators nonetheless gaped as assorted aristocratic collectors and their agents pushed the bidding ever higher, and Roxburghe’s books sold one after another for astonishing prices. The fifteen Caxtons attracted special attention, and were pursued with particular determination by the 2nd Earl Spencer, well known as the greatest British book collector of the age. The climactic moment was reached with the sale of the so-called Valdarfer Boccaccio, Roxburghe’s copy of the editio princeps of the Decameron printed in Venice by Christoph Valdarfer in 1471, a copy then believed to be unique. It was routed by Spencer’s librarian the Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin with slovenly (but characteristic) illogicality as “the very scarcest book that existed.” Those present were nor disappointed by the spectacle which followed.
It was well known that the chief competitors were likely to be Spencer, the Marquess of Blandford, and the twenty-two-year-old 6th Duke of Devonshire, who had succeeded to the ducal title less than a year before. Dibdin could not resist describing the competition in terms of a chivalric tournament, and his account is full of talk of champions, battle axes, blows, and skirmishes. More disturbingly in the context of the rimes (the Roxburghe sale occurred just a few days before Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched into Russia), Dibdin’s account is also packed with references to generals, guns, and the effusion of blood. After the initial forays of the lesser contenders, the field was left open to the big three, and “the champions named stood gallantly up to each other resolving not to flinch from a trial of their respective strengths.” Events then took a dramatic turn, as described by Dibdin:
“A thousand guineas” were bid by Earl Spencer—to which the Marquis [Blandford] added “ten.” You might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned—all breathing well nigh stopped...every sword was put home within its scabbard—and not a piece of steel was seen to move or glitter save that which each of these champions brandished in his valorous hand. See, see!—they parry, they lunge, they hit: yet their strength is undiminished, and no thought of yielding is entertained by either…“Two thousand Pounds are offered by the Marquis”…Then it was the Earl Spencer, as a prudent general, began to think of a useless effusion and expenditure of ammunition—seeing that his adversary was as resolute and “fresh” at the onset. For a quarter of a minute he paused: when my Lord Althorp [Spencer’s son] advanced one step forward, as if to supply his father with another spear for the purpose of renewing the contest. His countenance was marked by a fixed determination to gain the prize—if prudence in its most commanding form, and with a frown of unusual intensity of expression, had not bade him desist. The father and son for a few seconds converse apart; and the biddings are resumed. “Two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds” said Lord Spencer! The spectators are now absolutely electrified. The Marquis quietly added his usual “ten”...and there is AN END OF THE CONTEST! Mr. Evans, ere his hammer fell, made a deep pause—and indeed, as if by something preternatural, the ebony instrument itself seemed to be charmed or suspended “in mid air.” However, at length down dropped the hammer.Sceptics scoffed when news of the sale emerged, the Times concluding that it was a “lamentably erroneous way of indicating the love of learning, to give immense prices for rare or old editions.” Even Dibdin, perhaps reflecting the disappointment of his patron Spencer, was prepared to admit that “the expectations formed of the probable price for which it would be sold, were excessive; yet not so excessive as the price itself turned out to be.”....
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