£2.808m for a First Folio

We had the catalog for this Sotheby's auction and I'd thumbed through it looking at what was for sale.

The prime lot at this auction was LOT 95: SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES. PUBLISHED ACCORDING TO THE TRUE ORIGINALL COPIES. ISAAC JAGGARD, AND ED. BLOUNT (PRINTED AT THE CHARGES OF W. JAGGARD, ED. BLOUNT, I. SMITHWEEKE AND WILLIAM ASPLEY), 1623.

Sale price estimate: £2.5m-3.5m.
Final price (hammer plus buyer's preminum): £2.808m

Auction catalogs are great entertainment. This auction of "English Literature, History, Fine Bindings, Private Press and Children’s Books, including the First Folio of Shakespeare" included not only the First Folio of Shakespeare (which sold for the second highest price ever realized for a First Folio) but also items such as letters signed by Edward VI and by Mary, Queen of Scots, an assortment of Richard Burton (he of 1001 Nights) writings and books, &c.

(Lot 23) A silver snuff box that Winston Churchill gave to William Robert Brimson, the principal Doorkeeper of the House of Commons, who'd lost his in the bombing of the Houses of Parliament, was expected to sell for between £5-8K but sold for £14,400.

The things you can buy at auction, if you only have the wherewithal and want to spend that wherewithal for ... for something like ...

Something I would've liked ...

LOT 200 BECKETT, SAMUEL. SIX AUTOGRAPH POEMS. (These were pictured in the catalog, blown up so you could read the poems).

DESCRIPTION: one of them apparently unpublished, in French, each one written on the back of a torn Craven 'A' cigarette packet, together with an autograph copy of a slightly modernised early seventeenth-century poem by Mathurin Régnier ("J'ai vécu sans nul pensement...") and a pen-and-ink sketch plan of the area around Beckett's house in Ussy; the poems on 7 cards, each one between four and twelve lines in length, 12mo size (85 x 75mm.), annotations in another hand chiefly recording dates of composition, large autograph envelope, [1974-80].

Three of the poems, "Octave", "Imagine si ceci…", and "Nuit qui fait tant…", were first published as "mirlitonnades" in Poèmes suivi de mirlitonnades (1978), the only textual variant being in "Imagine si ceci…", the published state of which lacks the seventh line of the present version ("si ceci"). The fourth poem, "Hors crâne seul dedans…" was also published in Poèmes suivi under the title "Poème". The fifth, "Qu’à lever la tête", was written in July 1980 (according to the annotation below it) and appears in Poems 1930-1989 (2002), as an additional "mirlitonnade". The last poem, of six lines, beginning "Resolutions / Double Point", appears to be unpublished.

Beckett composed most of his "mirlitonnades" (or "bird calls") during 1977 and 1978, and would use any handy scrap of paper, such as a beer mat, an envelope, or in this case a cigarette packet, to jot down the words as they occurred to him. "The apparent slightness and playfulness of form of these late 1970s 'poèmes courts' (miniature poems) should not disguise the seriousness and, to use Beckett's own word, 'gloom' of their themes…they offer startling insights into the darkness of his private moods at this time" (James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett, 1996, p.646).

Beckett gave the present poems to Josette Hayden, the widow of the Polish-born French painter Henri Hayden. Their lifelong friendship with Beckett began in 1943, while they were all taking refuge from the Gestapo in Roussillon d'Apt. Beckett contributed greatly to the renaissance of Hayden's reputation after the war, chiefly by helping to arrange exhibitions in London. The Haydens had also bought a house in Reuil, near his own cottage at Ussy. The annotations beneath each poem would appear to be in Josette's hand.

"The Mirlitonnades…reveal the late Beckett, often filling in time on his own in cafés, and finding words for a random thought. Sometimes playful, often sombre, they catch, with a total economy of words, the same process of insights into the human soul that can be found in the novels and plays" (Foreword to Poems 1930-1989).

Estimated price: £2,500—3,500. Sale price £6,000.

Ah, well.