THE PLAIN DEALER: By EVERARD MEYNELL
A Browning Retrospect
HE Browning sale was not disposed of by the daily papers.
It was too big a thing to be knocked down for a penny in the
Telegraph. Certain brief episodes, it is true, were reported
in full ; and while, for a minute and a half, Mr. Sabin, junr.,
and Mr. Quaritch were making history, a little crowd (smaller,
indeed, than a Divorce Court crowd, but a crowd for all that)
Watched and marvelled at the bidding, to disperse directly after. For once,
and for once only in a century, the posters in the streets were given over to
figures that celebrated not fraud, nor separation, but the marriage of true
minds. But of the rest, of the daily compliment, through a whole week, of
long hours and high prices for even the least considerable lots, only the
bidders and Mr. Barlow, M.P. appreciate the true measure. During the
second and third days of the books the public had dwindled to two or
three ; the Brownings were in the hands of the dealers, and most chival-
rously treated.
Mr. Chesterton failed to attend. Had he been there, he would surely
have turned a verse or two in homage to the booksellers. It was he who once
planned a poem upon the things he found in his pocket-upon such tre-
mendous trifles as a key, a coin, a piece of string; but after some little
cogitation he abandoned it. " Upon the Things in my Pocket " was never
written, because it would, he discovered, have bulked larger than the
" Divine Comedy." The intention, at least, was flattering; and poetry
came near to paying the penny a handsome compliment. At Sotheby's
it was all the other way ; the compliment was to poetry, from the pocket.
That so few strangers stayed for anything save the love-letters and the
furniture was surprising. Mr. Elkin Mathews was assiduous ; but where
were the Cork-street authors P Have Mr. Yeats and Mr. Hewlett and Mr.
Masefield no interest in the Waterloos of Wellington-street ?Vigo-street
seemed not to be represented even by Mr. Lane, certainly not by Mr.
William Watson; and I doubt if Mr. Heinemann even once made the
three-minutes' journey from Bedford-street. Mr. Shorter stayed away,
and so did all the rest of Fleet-street. Mr. E. V. Lucas, despite his training
over Bemberton's, also missed the great occasion, though he of all recent
writers is the one most likely to be encountered in Mr. Spencer's shop or
Mr. Dobell's, and has only lately associated an American bookseller's name
with his own. Mr. Collins, of the Pall Mall attended and so did Mrs.
Angeli, to watch the books of her uncle, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, fetch
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