Evening Star Newspaper, October 11, 1931, Page 73

The Sunday Stad PART 7. Magasine WASHINGTON, . €, OCTOBER 11, 1931, “He poked about among the dusty piles and discovered a stack of dirt-grimed volumes.” By T. Porter Wood N August a man bought for $60 in a Lon- don auction room an album of old auto- graph letters, signatures and views of early American scenes. He was looking idly through his acquisition. Suddenly he paused, stared. A faded signature sprawled @across a page, an odd name. Button Gwinnett. Was it, could it possibly be, authentic? It was, and the album buyer found himself pbruptly in possession of treasure trove, for the fast price paid at auction for a Gwinnett, rarest among the signatories of the American Declara- tion of Independence (less than 20 Gwinnett gignatures are known to exist, and no one has wet found a letter entirely in his handwriting), was $25,000. A Gwinnett might well form the corner stone of a great collection of Americana. The story got into the papers, and now there 1s a mighty rummaging in dusty attics and old chests and cupboards and ancient libraries to see if any more unsuspected treasures in the way .of old letters, rare manuscripts, scarce first editions or precious signatures are lying around. News of these golden finds always has ghis effect, and for months British dealers and auctioneers are going to duck under an ava- lanche of books and manuscripts which their owners think American millionaire collectors will be prepared to wage furious dollar battles bo obtain. Som® will be worth money, some not. For competition has become so keen and discrimi- nating, and the American collectors’ ideas play 80 dominating a role now in making or break- ing pricgs, that in very few cases is it possible to tell even roughly how bidding will go. OSENBACH, most renowned of dealers, ¥\ trembled when, as a young man, he asked the great Quaritch to bid for him up to $25,000 for an imperfect Shakespeare first folio from the collection of Van Antwerp of San Francisco, then being disposed of in London, the great book mart of the world, then as mow. He thought it might be a ridiculously low limit. Quaritch got the precious folio for $18,000. A Philadelphia collector wanted a Lope de Vega autograph play of 1604, and authorized a bid of $7,500. He stayed at the telephone, a prey to mortal anxiety, waiting to hear if he had been outbid. Then he heard that the play was his. A first bid of $125 had secured it! One of the most astute of American dealers was sitting at his desk when he had a cable from London advising that an Amerigo Vespucci letter was being offered at auction. Instantly he cabled a maximum of $12,500. His agent bid, and got the precious epistle for under $2,000. Twenty-two lines of an autographed imanu- script poem by Keats went up for sale in New York and were knocked down for $17,000. Ex- cited by this price, the owner of 17 other lines of the same manuscript put them up for sale in London and saw them go for a mere $325. The first sale had killed the second. The 17 lines had missed the boat. The manuscript of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is auctioned. Who would have thought it would sell for $77,000—as much as a perfect Shakespeare first folio? A Gutenburg Bible is offered. There are only 42 copies in the world of this famous Latin Bible made by the printer GutenBerg at Mayence, in Germany, in 1455—the first complete example of Euro- pean printing. How much? $106,000! An early seventeenth century Breeches Bible—so called because the seventh verse of the third chapter of Genesis runs: “And they sewed fig- When Color Trembles By Elizabeth D. Hart I am not wiser now that color trembles Importunate beneath each tranquil leaf, And languid yellow afternoons dissemble The threat of swifter dusks and suns too brief. Well do I know my tears are for a mummer, Long have I been a witness to her art, Yet when I hear the death-bed lines of Summer, I step into my ancient, wailing part. For why should I await with resignation The green renascence of another year, Or sagely look about for compensation In burnished woods, or hold the harvest dear?, True, Summer will revive, but who can pledge My presence when again her swallows fledge, ! Art Notes Features 20 PAGES. i ® ® o : ® : . Striking Gold in the Attic " In Garrets, Storerooms and Libraries Valuable Old Books and Manuscripts Are Contz:flual{}'»" Being Discovered—England Seems to Be the Most Fertile Field, but America’s Dollars Are Bringing Many of the Literary Relics Across the Atlantic. Tllustration by Joseph Simont, 8 tree leaves together, and made themselve§ breeches”—is put up. How much? $20. So the great game goes. The originals of most modern authors take the form now of a corrected typescript. Joseph Conrad is one of the exceptions who worked in longhand. In consequence, the battle fo? the manuscript of his “Victory” was so keen that it was not knocked down at the 1924 Quinn sale in New York until the record price (for the manuscript of a living author) of $8,100 had been reached. RNOLD BENNETT, astute, businesslike, bought up the remainders of the first edi- tion of his first novel as a speculation. It turned out well. He saw the price reach $25. Afflicted by a stammer, he could not dictata He wrote all his books in neat longhand and had the manuscript bound and carefully pre- served. “The Old Wives’ Tale,” his master- plece, he wrote laboriously on fine parchment, which he illuminated with his own hand. One may be sure that his method and his care assure & higher price for his manuscripts than would have been the case had be worked on a typewriter or through an amanuensis; also, in the absence of accidents or some major catas- trophe overwhelming civilization, a life beyond that of the solidest buil :'1gs and most perma- nent monuments of this steel and concrete age. It was not the fault of their material which lost to posterity the originals of the old Greek writers, (They wrote on prepared strips of papyrus—the bundles of strips with continuous writing were called “bibles,” the word which is now the monopoly of the Book of Books.) It was the fault of the method of collection and storage. Ome antique Greek manuscript sur- vives, a play by an obscure dramatist of the fourth century. All the rest were lost when the Alexandrian library of Ptolemy Soter went up in flames. Collectors and dealers have sometimes mused on the probable worth of &