What will people not collect in this curious age, and what prices will
they not pay for things apparently valueless? Few objects can seem less
desirable than an old postage-stamp, yet our Paris correspondent informs
us that postage-stamps are at a premium in the capital of taste and of
pleasure. A well-known dealer offers 4 pounds 15_s_. for every Tuscan
stamp earlier than 1860, and 16 pounds for particularly fine examples.
Mauritius stamps of 1847 are estimated--by the purchaser, mind--at two
thousand francs, and post-marks of British Guiana of 1836, from five
hundred to a thousand francs. Eighty pounds for a soiled bit of paper,
that has no beauty to recommend it! Probably no drawing of equal size
from the very hand of Raffaelle or Leonardo would be priced nearly so
high as these grubby old stamps. Yet the drawing would be not only a
thing of art, beautiful in itself, but also a personal relic of the
famous artist whose pencil touched it, while a stamp is a relic of
nothing but some forgotten postal arrangement with a colony. We do not
know, moreover, how much the dealer will ask for these stamps when once
he gets hold of them and has rich collectors at his mercy. In no trade
do the buyer's price and the seller's price differ with such wide margins
as in the commerce of curiosities, especially, perhaps, in the
book-trade. People find that they possess books highly priced in
dealers' catalogues, and, if they want money, they carry their treasures
to the dealers. But "advantage seldom comes of it." The dealer has a
different price, very often, when he is a purchaser. This is
intelligible, but, to many persons who are not amateurs, the mania for
rare postage-stamps passes all understanding. Yet it is capable of being
explained. Like many other oddities and puzzling features in the ways of
collectors, the high price of certain stamps is the consequence of the
passion for perfection. Any one can collect stamps--little boys and
schoolgirls often do. But there comes a point at which foreign stamps
and old stamps grow rare, and more rare, and, finally, next to impossible
to procure. Here it is that the heart of the mature collector begins to
beat. He is determined to have a perfect collection. Nothing shall
escape him in the way of printed franks on letters. Now,
nineteen-twentieths of his assortment he can buy in the gross, without
trouble or great expense; but the last twentieth demands personal care
and attention, and the hunting up of old family letters, and the haunting
of great dealers' shops, and peeping through dirty windows in shady lanes
and alleys. As he gets nearer and nearer a complete collection the spoil
grows more and more shy, the excitement faster and more furious, till,
finally, the amateur would sell an estate for a square inch of paper, and
turn large England to a little stamp, if he had the opportunity. The
fury of the pastime is caused by the presence of definite limits. There
is only a certain known number of stamps in the world. This limit makes
perfection possible.
It is not as if you were collecting really beautiful things like Tanagra
terra-cottas, or really rare and quaint and mysterious things like aggery
beads. Though Tanagra terra-cottas, and aggery beads, and fine examples
of Moorish lustre, or of ancient Nankin, or of gold coins of the Roman
Empire, are all rare, yet there is no definite limit to their number.
More may turn up any day when the pickaxe breaks into a new Tanagra
cemetery, when a fallen palm in Ashanti brings up aggery beads clinging
to its earthy roots, when a pot of coins is found by some old Roman way,
and so forth. To be sure, perfection may be attained in coin collecting,
when a man has specimens of all known sorts, but even then he will pine
for better specimens, for the best specimens. In the other branches of
the sport we have mentioned the collector may be eager, of course, for
good things, but he can never know the passion of the stampomaniac who
has all sorts but three, and finds these within his reach. Perfection is
within a step of such a man, and that step we fear he will take, even if
it involves ever so many breaches of the Decalogue. In one of this
month's magazines, in a story called "Mr. Pierrepoint's Repentance," Mr.
Grant Allen tells the tale of a coin collector's infamy, and that coin
collector a clergyman and fellow of his college. A pope is said to have
stolen a rare book from a painter, and it is certain that enthusiastic
collectors are apt to have "their moral tone lowered some," as the
American gentleman said about the lady whom he had wooed with intentions
less than honourable.
A good example of the toils of the collector in pursuit of perfection is
given by M. Henri Beraldi in his very amusing catalogue of M. Paillet's
library. This book, by the way, is itself scarce, and the bibliomaniac
will be rather lucky if he meets with it. M. Beraldi describes M.
Paillet's copy of Dorat's "Fables," published in 1773, with illustrations
by Marillier. Nobody perhaps ever reads Dorat now, but his book came out
in the very palmiest days of the art of illustration in France. There
were no _photogravures_ then, nor hideous, scratchy, and seamy
"processes," such as almost make one despair of progress and of the
future of humanity. The people that takes to "processes" is lost! The
illustrations of the "Fables" were duly engraved on copper. There were
ninety-nine vignettes, and as many tail-pieces. The bibliographical
history of the book is instructive, either to young collectors or to the
common herd, not to speak impolitely--the persons who do not understand
what collectors want. The "Fables" were originally published on three
different sorts of paper, Dutch paper at seventy-two francs, French paper
at twenty-nine francs, and on "small paper" at twenty-four francs. In
1853 the original drawings were bought by one of the Rothschilds for
about 60 pounds; they would now, probably, be worth at least 1,000
pounds. The ordinary copies of the book itself bring about 6 pounds, the
large paper copies about 30 pounds, and a copy in old morocco can hardly
be estimated--you may pay anything for it, as a copy in old calf has sold
for 240 pounds.
Such is the natural history of a book pretty valueless as literature, the
"Fables" of Dorat. In the early edition of "Brunet's Manual," published
in 1821, the large paper copies of the work, with the engravings in the
earliest state, are priced at from fifteen to eighteen francs. These
vignettes had gone out of fashion; they have come in again with a
vengeance. The high prices, eighty or a hundred pounds, are merely the
beginning of what the great collectors are ready to pay, and to do, and
to suffer in the cause of Dorat. In M. Cohen's catalogue of all these
old illustrated books special mention is made of M. Paillet's copy of the
"Fables." It is "a superb example, with all the engravings printed
separately." But M. Paillet describes this specimen far more lovingly.
All the designs are separately printed, and, oh joy! all have all their
margins uncut. The book is "all that man can dream of" in the way of
perfection. Cuzin did the binding, in yellow morocco, tooled with roses
and butterflies. "Reader," cries M. Beraldi, "if you are not a collector
you cannot imagine the difficulty of getting such a copy. It is the
thirteenth labour of Hercules." First you buy your text, then you must
have the separately printed _fleurons_. These can only be picked up here
and there, in sales and stalls. Perhaps you purchase half of them in one
lucky investment. With no great difficulty you secure another lot. Then
begins the hunt--you buy assortments at the price of bank notes, merely
for the sake of two or three out of the mass. You offer to barter twenty-
five for one you have not got. Then you have all but three, which you
demand from the universe at large: then all but two; then all but one.
What you pay for that one you keep a profound secret, lest your family
should have you put under control. Even then you are not safe, for some
of your engravings have false margins, and must be changed for entire
examples. Such are the joys of the collector, for shadows we are and
engravings _a toutes marges_ we pursue.
Footnotes:
{6} Except with worm in a summer flood.
{8} Perhaps an Editor put this moral in?
{16} The author once caught a salmon. It did not behave in any way like
the ferocious fish in this article.
{23} Mr. Wordsworth, in his poem of "The Recluse," expresses a horror of
this diversion.
{37} It is a melancholy fact that the Author has quite forgotten what
_did_ happen! Thus a narrative, probably diverting, is for ever lost,
thanks to the modesty of our free Press.
{135} These remarks were made before the great discovery of some modern
authors, that the best novels are those in which there is never a
petticoat.
{152} What _was_ this anecdote?