Another for Dr. R

In Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries one night last week, the auction room was jampacked with bibliophiles and rare-book dealers. On the block was a great rarity, the finest of eleven known copies of the famed Bay Psalm Book, first book published in the Anglo-American colonies (Cambridge, 1640). It had been bought for $1,200 by the late Cornelius Vanderbilt and was being sold by the estate of his daughter, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

The bidding started at $30,000, and went up fast. By the time it reached $91,000 only two were bidding. One was the owner's son, Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney. As a trustee, he had ordered the book's sale; now he wanted to buy it to display in public institutions. The other bidder: an assistant of the world's No. 1 rare-book dealer, the famed Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, Ph.D.

More than Macy's. "Rosy" Rosenbach, known to the auctioneers of Europe and the U.S. as Dr. R, claims he does more business than all the other rare-book dealers combined, likes to brag that his Manhattan and Philadelphia inventory is more valuable than Macy's. (In the Macy tradition, Rosenbach once had a million-dollar day.) He usually keeps about 11,000 volumes in stock. The most valuable are kept in steel vaults (example: part of Dickens' original manuscript for the Pickwick Papers). His average selling price: $2,000. Rosenbach has helped assemble most of the great U.S. libraries.

At 70, plump with fine living (he has a special fondness for sherry and terrapin), irascible Dr. R seldom visits an auction room himself. Instead he sends an employee usually told to."Buy at any price." Did Dr. R want the Bay Psalm Book that badly? He did.

More than Whitney. Every time Cornelius Whitney shouted a new bid, Rosenbach's agent quietly nodded his head to indicate another $1,000. Finally Whitney bid $150,000. The agent nodded--and got the book for $151,000, the highest price ever paid at public auction for any printed book.*

Said Rosy Rosenbach next day: "Reasonable . . . we would have gone higher." On what he intended to do with the Bay Psalm Book, Rosenbach was mum. Best guess: if he made his usual profit, he would resell it for $200,000.

* Previous high: $106,000 paid by Rosenbach for a Gutenberg Bible in 1926. Other notable prices: for the Rosebery First-Folio Shakespeare, $62,000 (paid by Rosenbach); for a first edition of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, $42,800 (J. P. Morgan).

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