As the deadline approaches for the Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, John Aplin and I are frantically trying to fit undated letters into the chronology. But sometimes it is the content that is not dateable, for instance the day of a trip or an auction.
Sometimes an envelope is preserved with a date stamp. This helped date a letter to Pissarro to 20 March 1900.
Dear P.
The Vale Books fetched tall prices at the sale notably your Queen of the Fishes which sold for £8-15-0.
There were quite a few auctions in March 1900 and it was not immediately clear which auction Ricketts attended.
In a postscript, Ricketts wrote:
I was unable to buy 3 books at double the published price. The Chaucer Kelmscott £65-0-0.
This could provide an auction date thanks to William S. and Sylvia Holten Peterson's The Kelmscott Chaucer: A Census (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2011). However, in the 'Catalogues' section one cannot find any 1900 auction in which the Chaucer was sold for the amount Ricketts mentioned. Prices were £66, £67, and £72.
There is one auction that seemed interesting and promising. This was the Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge auction at 19 March, a day before Ricketts's letter: Catalogue of a Valuable Portion of the Library of H. Sidney. Disappointingly, Peterson and Peterson mention that the lot was 'withdrawn' and without sales, there was no price. In a footnote, the withdrawal is explained: 'According to a letter from [Frederick S.] Ellis to [Sydney] Cockerell, 26 March 1900 [...], Sotheby advertised an unbound copy of the Chaucer for its sale of 19 March but withdrew it when Ellis obtained an injunction.'
Due to the hack of the British Library website, John was unable to consult the catalogue of the 19 March 1900 sale. However, the Grolier Club sent me images of the relevant pages - thanks are due to Jamie Elizabeth Cumby, Kevin McKinney and Scott Ellwood.
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| Catalogue of a Valuable Portion of the Library of H. Sidney, Esq. ... London: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 19 March 1900, p. 8 [Grolier Club, New York] |
This is a priced copy. After the sale Sotheby distributed catalogues with the prices noted in the margins. This copy has the Chaucer lots crossed out. Thanks to Ricketts, who wrote a letter to Pissarro the day after, we know that initially the Chaucer must have been sold, only to be withdrawn sometime later. Its - never paid - price was £65. Ricketts was a reliable witness. All the prices he mentioned in his letter match those in the Grolier Club catalogue:
The book of Ruth & Esther £2-0-0. The Typographie £1-15-0, all books with the exception of the Milton nearly doubled their published prices[:] Hero & Leander £4-0-0 Daphnis etc £4-5-0. Sonnets Mrs Browning fetched the ridiculous price of £5-7-6. Hand & Soul £1-10-0 & £1-12-6 Keats £5-15-0.
The prices are indeed remarkably high, especially since all these copies were printed on paper, these were not vellum or specially bound copies and they did not include extras such as enclosed letters or portraits.
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| Catalogue of a Valuable Portion of the Library of H. Sidney, Esq. ... London: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 19 March 1900, p. 14 [Grolier Club, New York] |
By the way, H. Sidney did not exist. The collector had used a pseudonym and his name was Sidney Humphries (1862-1941). This is probably a unique case. Usually, when a collector wanted to stay anonymous, her or his collection was advertised as 'The Property of a Lady or 'The Property of a Gentleman'. To think of a pseudonym - reversing the name Sidney Humphries to H. Sidney - seems a bit redundant. Anyway, when 'the remaining portion' of his library was sold, the same pseudonym was used. This portion, again, contained many Vale Press books, including duplicates and vellum copies.