As we have entered the 21st century technology has changed the ways much of business is transacted. One example is the way auction houses and the dealers and collectors who buy, can operate. Today the buyer can view auctioneer’s catalogues on line, each lot illustrated, and can request a more detailed description and images if required. The buyer can bid on line without attending the sale and after paying electronically can arrange collection and delivery of purchases by courier. Many auction houses now engage more specialist staff in different fields which may mean not so many bargains are found; better prices are achieved for the vendors, but of course it has all come at the cost of higher commission rates for buyers and sellers. Years ago, things were very different.
Rodney Marshall’s story goes well back into the 20th century. Rodney had once been employed as a clerk in a warehouse, a humdrum job he didn’t enjoy, but his salary paid the bills. He enjoyed reading, but new books were expensive, and so on his days off, he would often go to a local auction sale and buy a cheap box of books. It gave him a selection of reading material at little cost. Gradually, over time he began to realise that occasionally some of the books he bought were scarce and of some value. He could travel to a nearby city where antiquarian booksellers would give him a generous price for them, which in turn augmented his salary.
He studied the shelves of these booksellers and looked at the prices pencilled in the volumes. Then he found a directory of second-hand booksellers and wrote away to them requesting catalogues which many of them specialising in different fields produced. His knowledge soon began to grow. He learnt that condition could often be of paramount importance. Modern first edition collectors desired books still in pristine dust jackets and collectors of 19th century first editions wanted them in the original cloth bindings. He learnt that some books were sought after for their illustrators and some early books and atlases were highly valued by the print sellers who removed the prints and maps to mount and frame and sell individually.
When the warehouse was taken over by a bigger national company several members of the staff were made redundant, including Rodney. Having had a number of successes with his finds in local auctions, he decided to take the plunge and become a “runner” as those were termed who bought in local provincial auctions and sold on to the big second-hand bookshops. In fact, in the trade he soon became known as “Rodney the Runner”.
He now travelled to auctions further afield, but also began to find he was in a competitive business. There were other runners too and sometimes, if it was advertised that rare books were included in a sale, bookshop owners would turn up and it was hard to compete. On one or two occasions he was inveigled into going into the “ring”, a corrupt and illegal practice where only one dealer would bid thus buying the lot cheaply. The other interested parties would then privately re-auction the books amongst themselves and the difference between the saleroom price and the final bidder would be split between them. However, Rodney suffered a troubled conscience over this; the original vendor had been robbed of a fair price and the auctioneer defrauded of commission. He decided to take no further part in this.
At first this made it a bit harder for him, but he had been talking with a local antique dealer, Joan Fothergill. Joan was an older woman who had been in the antique trade dealing in furniture for many years. Whether in the saleroom or buying privately, Joan was always happy to pay sellers a fair price and tried to sell at fair, but not exorbitant prices. She was well known in the trade as “Honest Joan” and for years she had prospered because of her integrity. She secretly applauded Rodney’s disdain of the rings and was impressed when she learnt that he purchased from private sellers at fair prices.
Although she dealt in other period furniture too, her specialism was bureaus, bureau-bookcases and bookcases and anybody wanting to furnish a library or an office with antique furniture would visit Joan’s premises. Joan frequently needed books to enhance the shelves of the furniture in her shop. As she said herself “…not expensive rare collectable books, but ones with attractive leather or faux leather bindings and bright gilt titling on the spines. Old out of date encyclopaedias, that sort of thing.”
Joan mentioned this to Rodney and soon he was often buying very cheap defunct encyclopaedia sets for which Joan would give him a reasonable price. Some of Joan’s buyers were book collectors with special fields of interest and Joan would introduce Rodney to them and he would look out for titles for them. This helped him begin to develop a private client base, much more profitable than selling to booksellers at trade rates.
It was probably not to Rodney’s advantage, but Joan had been trading since before Rodney had been born and had several contacts in the trade. She didn’t deal in ceramics, fine paintings or books, but because she was trusted if one of the top city dealers became aware of an item in the local auction in their genre, they would leave it to Joan to bid for them and pay her a commission for the service. So occasionally, when Archie Spicer of Spicer and Brown, the top West End antiquarian booksellers, became aware of a rare tome in the local sale, he contacted Joan.
Rodney was making a bread and butter living most of the time, a slice of cake was infrequent. On a few occasions something rare came up, like the first edition of Black Beauty or the letter from Eric Blair in the front of a copy of Animal Farm, nobody else remembering Eric Arthur Blair was George Orwell’s real name. These he had taken up to London and were sold handsomely by one of the major auction houses. Finds like this were few and one could never count on them.
This particular week he had gone to the local auction room on viewing day prior to the sale day. As he entered the sale room, he passed Archie Spicer leaving. He wondered what Archie was doing there. Was there something special in the sale this week to whet Archie’s appetite. He picked up a 20p Roneo duplicated catalogue from Eric the porter and scanned through it. Individual book lots included a Victorian family bible with brass clasps, a couple of mid-nineteenth century books on farriery which often came up in farming districts, a fairly common miniature set of the works of Shakespeare in a little oak bookcase, but nothing out of the ordinary for a provincial sale room.
He went on to rummage through half a dozen boxes catalogued as sundry books. They contained a mixture of tatty paperbacks and book club reprints. These sort of lots were usually the stuff dealers put back into auction after they had removed the cream. Rodney had done it himself sometimes.
He was feeling a bit disappointed with this week’s offerings, but there was one lot to go – a large tea chest filled to the top with books. Rodney’s eyes started to light up when he saw at the top of the tea chest a copy of Arthur Ransome’ Swallows and Amazons, next to it Peter Duck and further investigation revealed all twelve volumes in the Swallows and Amazons series. All were in pristine dust jackets, but alas when he carefully examined each one all were late reprints, not one first edition amongst them. He squatted on the floor carefully emptying everything else out of the box. He went down through a number of modern cookery books, a couple of dictionaries, a bible, a first aid manual, a collection of modern novels, but none by sought after writers. At the bottom were some Penguin paperbacks, all reprints again and some half-completed crossword puzzle books.
He was just about to stuff everything back in the box when he saw the small slim book. Somebody had covered it with brown paper to help preserve it. It may have lain in the bottom the chest for ages, looking almost like a discarded brown paper bag, the volume was so thin. He carefully removed the brown paper to reveal an intact dust jacket. It was a small book of poems by Conrad Layton. Rodney did not know a lot about Conrad Layton other than he was one of those sought after World War I poets who had survived the war only to die tragically in a motor-cycle accident a few years later. He turned to the title page and found it was inscribed “To Priscilla, with my undying love and affection, Conrad.” A small envelope fell out of the book onto the floor. Stamped with a George V stamp, it was addressed to Priscilla Robins at a local address. Rodney carefully opened it and unfolded the single sheet inside revealing a passionate missive from Conrad Layton to Priscilla Robins.
He replaced everything as it was, carefully wrapping the brown paper round the little book again and put it back in the bottom of the chest. Then he placed the rest of the books back in the box in the order he had removed them. Somebody had presumably put the Arthur Ransome books on the top hoping they would attract someone to buy the lot, unaware of what was in little brown paper covered volume. He needed to go the library and find out a little bit more about Priscilla Robins.
As he walked towards the library the thought struck him that was to haunt him until the sale day – had Archie Spicer found the little book and deliberately hidden it right at the bottom of the tea chest? Had he been on his way to ask Joan to buy the tea chest for him on sale day?
Sat at a table in the reference section of the library with some literary and art biographies he began to piece together some very relevant information. Priscilla Robins had been a very successful portrait painter in the 1920s, although she had lived locally with her wealthy landowner husband, she spent much of her time working at her London studio. She was frequently commissioned to do portraits of the leading figures of the time - politicians, stars of the stage and literary figures. Conrad Layton, who was separated from his wife at the time, sat for her. There had been rumours of an affair, but both parties had denied it and their families had later denied it too, when their biographers were doing their researches. However, a question mark had always remained.
In their respective fields of art and literature both had left an historic mark. Priscilla Robins portraits of the famous were still continually sought after and fetched high prices. On its own, without a dust jacket, Rodney knew that little book of poems could be worth £50; with its excellent dust jacket £500; signed as well maybe £2,000 or more; but being signed and inscribed to Priscilla with that endearing letter as well, the sky was the limit. It confirmed something that the art and literary world had always been unsure about. If put in a London sale room, it was one of those items that would attract the interest of top book dealers and collectors around the world.
Rodney went home with feelings roller coasting up and down. Joan Fothergill had recently hinted that she was thinking of letting a room in in her retail premises to someone dealing in paintings, ceramics, jewellery or even books; just as long as it was something that didn’t clash with her furniture business. If he could buy that tea chest of books that little volume with the enclosed letter could provide him the means not only to rent that room, but stock it too and establish his own retail outlet. Then fear and panic took hold of him. Had Archie Spicer found it too? If Archie hadn’t seen it would someone else come along and discover it when viewing?
The chest was lot number 33, early on in the sale, which would start promptly at 9.30 two days later. For two days Rodney was pre-occupied with his hopes and fears. He found it hard to sleep that night and once when he did drop off dreaming of success, he soon awoke from a nightmare in which he saw Archie Spicer triumphantly walking out the sale holding the little volume aloft.
The night before the sale he again had trouble getting to sleep. Slumber finally came in the small hours and then he overslept in the morning. He knew he was running a little late but the saleroom was only a few minutes in his car. He pressed the starter in the car again and again to no avail – the battery was flat. He gave up the car in despair. His neighbours on each side had already left for work leaving no chance of cadging a lift. He set off on foot – a race against time and the auctioneer’s gavel.
Red faced and panting he almost fell into the auction room only to hear the auctioneer announce “Lot number thirty-five. A Royal Albert tea service….” He was too late, he’d missed the tea chest by a couple of lots, the auctioneer was going fast this morning.
When he caught his breath he moved over beside Eric, the porter, who was holding up lots as they sold. “Eric” he whispered “What happened to lot 33, the chest of books?”
“Made twenty quid” Eric whispered back “Honest Joan bought it.”
Rodney felt miserable and dejected, his dreams shattered, so Archie Spicer must have spotted the little book.
The antique dealers usually bought the bibles with the brass clasps, they sold well to the Americans, but he’d wait for the farriery books and the little set of Shakespeare to be sold, there might be a little bit of profit to be made on them.
As he waited, still feeling dejected, Joan Fothergill came and stood beside him “Rodney, you weren’t here earlier. I bought that chest of books in the corner. There was a lovely clean collection of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books in it. I’m going to give them to my grandson for his birthday. If what’s left in the box is worth a fiver, they’re yours.”
Rodney’s dream materialised after all. In a few months he had opened his own small bookshop in a room in Joan’s store. He was chatting with Joan one day and something incumbent prompted him to share with Joan what he’d found in the tea chest, though he wondered how she might react.
“Us dealers always win some and lose some” she laughed “But, as long as we’re honest, we sleep well. I’ll tell you about a time from my dim and distant past when I met up with a very young Archie Spicer.” She started to relate the tale.
“It was a few years after the war. A farmer had died and the farm was to be sold up. All the livestock and farm machinery were to be sold and the contents of the house at the same time. The auctioneer was a specialist in selling farm live and deadstock, but knew very little about furniture and nothing about books. Antique dealers in those days knew virtually nothing about books either and bookdealers usually little about furniture. Although there was little else of value in the house my father, who ran the business then, knew there was a fine Louis XIV bookcase, a family heirloom someone had brought back from the Napoleonic Wars. On the wave of post war prosperity, the deceased farmer had invested in extremely rare books purchased from top London dealers. In his ignorance the auctioneer had catalogued it simply as book case and contents.
Rather than trigger speculation by his presence my father sent me to bid for the bookcase with instructions to go up to £700, a king’s ransom in those days. After bidding a cheeky opening fifty I didn’t get a look in. News of the death of their customer had reached the London bookdealers and three came down to compete for the books. Archie Spicer was the successful buyer at £850 and after bidding turned to me and said he hadn’t much room in his car did I want the bookcase for £50. Of course I didn’t need asking twice. Archie and I can laugh about it now.
On another occasion father sent me to buy a bureau, which I bought for a successful bid of £200, big money in those days. I was approached by a man who said there were some old coins in a drawer in it and asked to buy them. There appeared to be nothing special about them, so I happily took £10 for them feeling I had reduced the cost of the bureau. When I told father, he scolded me. I should have brought them back and got a proper valuation on them he said. We later heard the man had boasted of selling the coins for £300.
Most dealers can boast of that lucky bargain in a saleroom and if they are honest can also tell of the ones they have missed too. My father used to say the real test of a good dealer is whether they will give a fair price to the private seller in their home. Not all do, but he always said ‘an honest reputation is worth more than a pot of gold.’ ”
About the author
Guy Pratt is a retired octogenarian second hand bookseller who enjoys gardening, long walks with his dog and travel. He gravitated into the book trade after earlier years in farming, the army Intelligence Corps and the civil service.
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