You can tell where you are in the Hay festival pecking order by when your event is scheduled. Mine – an hour's chat with the Guardian's Claire Armitstead – was on a Tuesday morning at 10am, the day after the bank holiday weekend at which Bill Bryson, Roddy Doyle, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nadine Gordimer, Tina Brown, Ed Milliband, Carlos Fuentes and Jeanette Winterson (the list goes on and on) had appeared. By Tuesday, both the writers and their fans had departed, and the walkways and common areas felt as desolate as a Welsh sheep farm on a rainy morning.
I was surprised, and relieved, therefore, when almost 200 people turned up. God knows where they came from, but it was fun, and they seemed to go home (or to the next event) happy enough. Claire allowed me, after the necessary 10 minutes of stories and reminiscences, to abandon story-telling mode, and talk – sometimes light-heartedly, sometime not – about the structure of ideas in Outside of a Dog. I get a bit weary being branded with the old label of "raconteur," which is usually accompanied in print by a manically jolly photo of me and Dame Edna partying on.
I had promised, rather against my better judgment, to take part in a Guardian Books podcast, touring the bookshops of Hay, trawling about for material that might interest me as a rare book dealer. If my past experience of the place, and its shops, was anything to go by, it was likely to be a dispiriting experience. When I did the festival five years before there wasn't anything remotely interesting in the shops, confirming my belief that Hay is where books go to die.
Wrong. There has been a distinct up-marketing of the Hay bookshops, and even the most jaded old bookman (that would be me) can find things to covet, if not necessarily to buy. The best of these was at the excellent Poetry Bookshop, the only shop in the UK to deal in nothing but poetry. On entry I showed them my business card and asked "have you got anything that would interest me?" I am a hopeless book scout, and can't bear all that kneeling, rooting around and shuffling books about, looking for bargains. I was handed, from out of the glass case, a dustjacket-less first edition of WH Auden's 1965 collection About the House, and opened it to find the inscription "Chester with love from Wystan. These are public words addressed to you privately." On 24 pages of the text there were corrections or additions in Auden's hand, the best of which, surely, is appended to the poem The Common Life (for Chester Kallman) and reads: "Postscript/Cosy to think/(though not for me)/There's a large cock about the house." Auden and Kallman had been lovers, but by this time lived together in chaste but loving companionship. The podcast team gasped in appreciation. I went uncharacteristically quiet. Great association, great book.
The price of £6,000 seemed reasonable, once you factored in the dealer's discount, but I found myself wondering to whom I might sell it. Auden is out of fashion, and I can't think of anyone who collects him at this level. I offered a bit less than the asking price, and was politely turned down. We trailed out of the shop, with this website's editor palpably trying to figure out how to raise the money to buy it herself. But when you are a dealer you see loads of great books at other dealers or at auction, and you can rarely buy them for stock. Insufficient margin is what we call it. You get used to it. You walk away and forget all about it.
But I couldn't. When I got back to my office, I consulted my colleague Peter Grogan, who reluctantly agreed with my decision. That evening I had dinner with Declan Kiely, Keeper of Manuscripts at the Morgan Library, both a good friend and a shrewd judge of things. I told him about the book, the inscription, the changes to the text, the cock. He looked at me incredulously and with distinct disapprobation.
"And the problem is...?"
"No one collects Auden."
"So what?"
The next day I rang the Poetry Bookshop, bought the book at their price, subject to them getting it into my hands the next morning (Saturday), which was the final day of The Antiquarian Booksellers Fair at Olympia, at which we display our wares like girls in an Amsterdam window. The Auden arrived in the post at 10am, and I spent the next 45 minutes writing a catalogue description of it. The Fair opened at 11am, and half-an-hour later the book sold, at what we call "a reasonable profit," to a collector who had never bought an Auden first edition, but knew a great book when he saw one.
Who says you can't make money going to a literary festival? But the experience left me feeling stupid. I have always believed that, if possible, you have to buy the really good books, the ones that have a little magic, generate a narrative, come right out of the creative factory. This one was, and wasn't all that expensive, and I faddled about thinking of the market rather than the object. I profited from others' opinions, though I like to think I would have bought it eventually. But I'm not so sure.
