Prices of Books. Wheatley Henry Benjamin
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firm has been Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge.
The firm of Puttick & Simpson dates back to the establishment of the business by Mr. Stewart in 1794 at 191 Piccadilly. The business was bought by Wheatley & Adlard on the retirement of Mr. Stewart. For a short time it was carried on by Mr. Fletcher, who was succeeded in 1846 by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson. In 1858 the business was removed from Piccadilly to 47 Leicester Square. Mr. Puttick died in 1873.
The firm of Christie’s was established soon after that of Sotheby’s, and James Christie the elder’s (1730-1803) first sale was on the 5th December 1766, at rooms in Pall Mall, formerly occupied by the print warehouse of Richard Dalton. Christie afterwards removed next door to Gainsborough, at Schomberg House, and died there, 8th November 1803. His son, James Christie the younger (1773-1831), was born in Pall Mall, and was educated at Eton. In 1824 he removed to the present premises in King Street, formerly Wilson’s European Emporium. Mr. Christie died in King Street, 2nd February 1831, aged fifty-eight. Mr. George Christie succeeded his father. Mr. William Manson died in 1852, and was succeeded by his brother, Mr. Edward Manson. In 1859 Mr. James Christie, the great-grandson of the founder, and Mr. Thomas Woods, joined the firm.
CHAPTER III
PRICES OF MANUSCRIPT BOOKS
In a treatise devoted to an inquiry concerning the varying prices of books, it is necessary that at least one chapter should be devoted to manuscripts. There is no field of investigation which offers a more interesting subject for study, and few that are more difficult to master. Manuscripts are really more attractive than printed books, because they are so various, and have been produced over a much longer period of the world’s history. It is therefore strange that so few authors care to trouble themselves about them; that this is so may be seen from the large number of readers at the British Museum who are contented to quote over and over again from the much-used printed books, and the comparatively few who cultivate the virgin soil of the Manuscript Department, where there are endless stores of unused materials.
Manuscripts are usually somewhat miscellaneous in character, for they consist (1) of some of the finest examples of the pictorial art of many ages; (2) of the originals of the great works of antiquity; (3) of a large number of valuable works that have never been printed; (4) of charters, documents, letters, memoranda, &c., which are of great value, but which are not books, and therefore do not come within the scope of our present inquiry. In respect to the prices of the manuscripts, it is very difficult to say anything of much value, because (1) many of the most important manuscripts have been transferred from library to library in bulk, and it is comparatively seldom that they come up for public sale; (2) the buyers of manuscripts are fewer than those of printed books, and therefore it is more difficult to arrive at a real standard price for books which are practically unique, as there is no wide public opinion upon the subject. But for the present purpose, a still more important reason why this vast subject cannot be dealt with in a succinct manner is, that the materials for its history have not yet been thoroughly investigated by experts. The relative prices at different periods are hard to understand, even in England, where money has been better regulated than in most countries; but when we have to deal with foreign countries and foreign coins, we are necessarily at a loss how to convert into their present value coins which may have been depreciated at the time we are dealing with, and have certainly been still more depreciated since: for instance, what idea is communicated to the mind of the modern reader when he is told that “Borso d’Este paid forty ducats for a Josephus and a Quintus Curtius, while his large two-volume Bible cost him 1375 sequins”?13
In dealing with manuscripts, it is most important to distinguish between plain and illuminated manuscripts. The neglect of this caution has led to an exaggerated idea of the cost of books before the invention of printing. Instances have been given of purchases at sums equal to a king’s ransom. Hence it is supposed that books were so dear that they were quite out of the reach of any but the richest personages. But this view is erroneous, for we know that by means of the slave labour at Rome and the organised work in the monasteries, plainly written manuscripts could be obtained at a reasonable price. We know now that transcripts of MSS. can be had at a price which, if dear when compared with the price of a newly-published printed book, is by no means extravagant. What could be done at a centre of civilisation like Rome, where books were produced in large numbers and at low prices on account of the organisation of literary production, could be done at other places. There is evidence that at London, and at those seats of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, where caligraphy was a profession, books were not difficult to obtain. Every church and chapel must have had service-books. Probably during the Middle Ages, when travelling was arduous and expensive, persons living in out-of-the-way places had to pay special prices for their literary treasures.
The late Professor J. Henry Middleton referred to this matter of cost in his valuable work on “Illuminated Manuscripts” (1892). After quoting from Aulus Gellius, he wrote—
“But ordinary copies of newly-published works, even by popular authors, appear to have been but little more expensive than books of this class are at the present day. The publisher and bookseller Tryphon could sell Martial’s first book of Epigrams at a profit for two denarii—barely two shillings in modern value (see Mart. xiii. 3). It may seem strange that written manuscripts should not have been much more costly than printed books, but when one considers how they were produced, the reason is evident. Atticus, the Sosii, and other chief publishers of Rome, owned a large number of slaves, who were trained to be neat and rapid scribes. Fifty or a hundred of these slaves could write from the dictation of one reader, and thus a small edition of a new volume of Horace’s Odes or Martial’s Epigrams could be produced with great rapidity, and at very small cost” (p. 19).
In the fifteenth century, even, illustrated Books of Hours were produced in France, Flanders, and Holland at a cheap rate. Mr. Middleton wrote—
“Education had gradually been extended among various classes of laymen, and by the middle of the fifteenth century it appears to have been usual not only for all men above the rank of artizans to be able to read, but even women of the wealthy bourgeois class could make use of prayer-books. Hence arose a great demand for pictured Books of Hours, which appear to have been produced in enormous quantities by the trade scribes of towns, such as Bruges, Paris, and many others. These common manuscript Hours are monotonous in form and detail; they nearly always have the same set of miniatures, which are coarse in detail and harsh in colour” (p. 141).
Mr. Middleton gives some further information respecting the cost of production of certain service-books taken from some church records in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—
“From these accounts (1379-1385) we learn that six manuscripts were written, illuminated, and bound, one of them with gold or silver clasps or bosses, at a total cost of £14, 9s. 3d., more than £150 in modern value” (p. 222). “Three Processionals only cost £1, 17s. 4d., being on forty-six quaternions of cheap parchment made of sheepskin, which cost only 2½d. the quaternion” (p. 223).
There was thus great variety of cost in the production of the various kinds of books, but when we consider the matter, we shall find it impossible to do other than believe that a demand for service-books, the price of which was not prohibitive, must have existed.
The Rev. T. Hartwell Horne gave in his “Introduction to Bibliography” some instances of the prices of manuscripts in the Middle Ages, but as some of these were evidently exceptional cases, although they have been used by historians to draw conclusions which we must consider as erroneous, they need not be repeated here.
Dr. S. R. Maitland in his admirable work on the “Dark Ages” comments with much acuteness on some of these cases as quoted by Dr. Robertson, and shows that the historian has drawn a general conclusion from special instances, which in certain cases have not been correctly reported. Maitland adds that some writer a few centuries hence might—
“Tell his gaping readers … that in the year 1812 one of our nobility gave £2260 and another £1060 for a single volume, and that the next year a Johnson’s Dictionary was sold by public auction to a plebeian purchaser for £200. A few such facts would quite set up some future Robertson,
Leader Scott’s “Renaissance of Art in Italy,” 1883, p. 193.