What I bid

Lot 31 comes up forty minutes after the start of the auction.

“Do I hear three hundred pounds?” My arm shoots up.

“In the room, at the back, three hundred,” then “On the phone, three twenty.”

There are three Bonhams people at a table to the left of the auctioneer’s podium, each with a phone to their ear. My arm goes up again. “In the room, three forty.” Two agents put their phones down. The third still holds his to his ear: I cannot hear what is being said, but with little delay he nods. “On the phone, three sixty.”

It seems horribly possible that I am bidding against the Man from Miami, the one who is offering on Abe Books a 1555 edition for $20,000. I continue bidding: so too does the person at the other end of the phone as the sum bid rises rapidly towards my limit of £500. “In the room, four eighty.” The agent relays this to … Miami? He shakes his head. “Sold, at four eighty.” I hold up my paddle (a laminated card with my bidder’s number, 593, on it). “Lot 31 to five nine three.”

On the way from Buckingham to Oxford the Prof told me that Bonhams followed the two big auctioneers, Christies and Sothebys, a couple of months ago by charging a Buyer's Premium. This is revenue over and above the commission that auctioneers justifiably charge the seller and is not justified by any increase in the service they offer the buyer. This premium is no less than 25%, which means that my little book is costing me £600, a hundred quid more than the maximum I'd discussed with Ayesha.

This bad news was balanced by his telling me of a late Elizabethan Italian-English dictionary which I would certainly need, if my bidding proved successful, in which to look up the words which have since fallen out of use. This explains his description of the auction and its aftermath to the Hagiographer, a mutual friend.

Well, l'Italiano secured the book for not too much more than the estimate. I think he intimidated the room with his bidding style, which involved a fierce and terrible concentration of expression - and violent, forward hand movements that caused people in the front row to duck, as if avoiding spears. He departed for Bodley happy as a pig in those old pork pie adverts, clamouring to find a first edition of Florio's Italian dictionary ...

In my next post I will say something about the physical attributes of the book, leaving matters bibliographic, linguistic and gastronomic to posts which may not get written till after Christmas. If this should be so, then let me end this one with a valediction which I am sure my new friend Giovanni de' Rosselli, the author of "Epulario", would have used, Buon natale e felice anno nuovo.