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Updated: July 18, 2025
Then came men with canvas for floors, bronzes and jardinieres and somebody's family portraits from an auction-room, chairs and sofas and draperies from an upholsterer's. The night before the event itself I announced my intention of staying in our own drawing-room the whole of the next day. "I am more interested in Patricia's debut," I said, "than anything else that can possibly happen in London.
If a man wants to feel that the world is wide, and a good place to live in, he must be for ever and for ever sampling infinity. He must shun the books that he dearly wants to buy, and buy the books he would do anything to shun. Yes, I bought thirty-six books that day in the auction-room; six that I wanted and thirty that I didn't.
He left it to his housekeeper, who, like a wise woman, converted it into cash while its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a great auction-room, its several catalogued items lay in humiliating contrast with the decorous order in which they were wont to be arranged. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The world knows him as the inventor of a sauce and as the general in one lost battle; but he had a higher fame among the booksellers for his prowess in the auction-room. He seems to have been the victim of a frenzy for books. He impressed them by crowds, and marshalled them in regiments and myriads. They all fell in 1789 before the hammer of the auctioneer. Dibdin has described the catalogue.
The bell with its incessant clangour had brought together an enormous throng, and quite a summer temperature caused the drops of perspiration to glisten on the foreheads of the spectators which the cold outside would have soon solidified. Do not imagine that all these folks had come to the auction-room with the intention of buying. I might say that all of them had but come to see.
Staines was sent for into the City at twelve to pay the money and receive the lease of the Bijou, and this and the taking possession occupied him till four o'clock, when he came to his hotel. Meantime, his wife and Mrs. Cole had gone to the auction-room. It was a large room, with a good sprinkling of people, but not crowded except about the table.
Far away from here Loch Nan and the vacant moors my memory wandered. It was at Blocksby's auction-room, in a street near the Strand, on the eve of a great book-sale three years before, that we had met, for almost the last time, as I believed, though it is true that we had not spoken on that occasion.
All that the curate told him now about the necessity that he should make his peace with his God, and prepare himself for a world to come, had a far-off sound to him. He thought more about the silver downstairs, and what it was likely to realize in the auction-room.
Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than Poolaphuca? If you happen to pass by Dodd’s auction-room, on any Wednesday, towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat in this fashion: “A very handsome tea-service, ladies.
He had intended them for the use of his fellow Kings-at-Arms; but it was said that he had some pique against the Heralds' College, and so 'cut them off with a volume. The rest went to the auction-room: 'The Earl of Oxford, said Oldys, 'will have a sweep at it'; and we know that the cast was successful. As for John Bagford, the scourge of the book-world, we have little to say in his defence.
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