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Updated: June 3, 2025
In marrying the Duke of Roxburghe in 1903, May Goelet, the daughter of Ogden, was but following the example set by a large number of other American women of multimillionaire families. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive.
The oft-told story of the Valdarfer Boccaccio of 1471, carried off at the Roxburghe sale in 1812, at £2,260 from Earl Spencer by the Marquis of Blandford, and re-purchased seven years after at another auction for £918, has been far surpassed in modern bibliomania.
In those moorland sojournings, too, he had got light on other matters, for he had the numbers of Kenmure's levies in his head, had visited my lord Stair at his grim Galloway castle, and had had a long midnight colloquy with Roxburghe on Tweedside. He had a pretty tale for his master, once he could get to him.
How genial a picture does Scott give of himself at the time of the Roxburghe sale the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar Terry, he says, "The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero.
The leading principle, indeed, which the other clubs so largely adopted after the example of the Roxburghe, was not an entire novelty. The idea of keeping up the value of a book by limiting the impression, so as to restrain it within the number who might desire to possess it, was known before the birth of this the oldest book club.
These two books made the reputation of the Roxburghe, and proved an example and encouragement to the clubs which began to arise more or less on its model. It was a healthy protest against the Dibdinism which had ruled the destinies of the club, for Dibdin had been its master, and was the Gamaliel at whose feet Hazlewood and others patiently sat.
But the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons.
Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of the Art of Printing. William Caxton, the Father of the British Press. Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press. Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious Successors of William Caxton. The Aldine Family, at Venice. The Giunta Family, at Florence. The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris. The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
Find out, too, anywhere, if you can, the instance in which the money scattered in these forms comes back again, and brings with it a large profit, as the expenditure of the Duke of Roxburghe did when his library was sold. But it is necessary to arrest this train of argument, lest its tenor might be misunderstood.
Scott got through the affair ingeniously with a little coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally accepted as the Author of Waverley's representative. The Roxburghe had, however, at that time, done nothing in serious book-club business, having let loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets of letterpress already referred to.
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