When all books are available on a device like an iPad will our carefully collected original versions keep their value? Google and others are busy scanning in the world’s libraries to make cheap paperbacks of out-of-copyright material. Canny dealers are already putting a big premium on unique items like letters, manuscripts and signed editions but as this month’s book shows you don’t have to buy big to stay ahead of the game.
Dear diary? Not in this case...
Diaries turn up regularly and are a great buy. The author need not be well known or even known at all and in fact it’s surprising just how many diaries have no name or address in them. This can be to your advantage as it keeps the price low and dealers are unlikely to have the time to read every line looking for clues. That’s your job. Certain topics such as the sea and exploration do command a premium but can still be excellent value. Whatever happens to printed books a lovely old diary like this one from 1859 will always be i-own, never i-pad.
It tells a story of encounters with famous politicians mixed in with the mundane doings of every day life and it even has a mysterious ending to boot. Fortunately in this case there’s no mystery about the owner. He was Lord Robert R. Pelham Clinton, the sixth son of the 11th Duke of Newcastle. Born in 1820 he was MP for Nottingham and a dashing Liberal about town. Things get off to a cracking start on January 1st : ‘Drank the old year out and the new year in in my rooms with Nell and Dolly’ and within a week he’s off to Paris with one Tommy Scott where he watched the can-can, went to be photographed and bought six pairs of curtains for £21.
151 years old, this Letts's diary is as bright as the day it was sold.
There’s no record of whether he claimed it all on expenses but he did take great pains to record all his personal expenditure. Details like this are as interesting as his later notes about supper with Lord Peel (‘A charming entertainment but curious as Lady Emily the only female present’) and hearing ‘Dizzy’ call for the dissolution of Parliament. The Paris jaunt cost him £91 13s which gives some perspective to his spending power although as we shall see he was only just warming up.
Reading it is a peculiar experience. The neat handwriting reveals its secrets easily and his daily life unfolds in a thousand little details, many perfectly familiar to fans of Victorian literature. He borrows a phaeton from a friend, goes to the Adelphi and catches more trains than Sherlock Holmes. Most entries begin and end with breakfast at Long’s and dinner at Chum’s but fine dining was not his greatest passion. In common with our own sorry bunch of MPs neither was politics. The first mention of anything that might be construed as work is February 8th when with a supreme effort he ‘went down to the House with Dolly and arrived just in time to divide.’ No, the great outdoors was where Lord C. spent most of his time – just as long as there was a horserace in the offing, that is.
The man was a prime candidate for Gambler’s Anonymous. ‘Lost £41’, ‘Lost £34’ and ‘Won £90’ are comments that appear day after day, and that’s just the whist. ‘Went to The Turf’ is a sign that the cards are about to come out and a whole host of characters with Wodehousian names appear for rubber after rubber. Hanky, Wade, Ruby Martin, Gippo and – I’m not making this up – Bingo all join in for the nightly raids on m’lordship’s purse. Sums like that would hurt most of us today. In 1859 it must have been a staggering amount of money.
Good grief! If you have a better idea of how much this is worth today, please get in touch.
As an aside, I should mention that Saint Google suggested several ‘value of money through the ages’ calculators. One suggested that a pound in 1860 would be worth £43 today, which hardly seems credible as a mid-Victorian live-in maid earned just six pounds a year. Lord knows what she would have thought if she could have read Lord Clinton’s entry for Wednesday 2nd March. He went to the Grand National and saw Half Caste beat Jean Du Quesne by a head. ‘A charming day’, he writes, casually noting that he won £828.
You can read the rest of this article in this month’s Book and Magazine Collector.
Diary bought from Eclectica at the PBFA Novotel fair for £25