As it’s Sunday we will do Bible study. The Gutenberg Bible, as you know, was one of the earliest books to be “mass” printed using moveable, metal type. Fewer than 200 copies ran off Gutenberg’s press at Mainz in the mid 15th century; one uxorious frog could do better in the tadpole department, and as time has marched on a lot of them (Bibles) have disappeared – maybe one will turn up at Oxfam in Kensington High Street.
Today there are forty-nine copies, in varying stages of repair, in libraries, museums and so on, mostly in Europe and the United States. There were thought to be only eight copies in the UK: Lambeth Palace, Oxford, Cambridge, the British Library (two copies), the National Library of Scotland, John Rylands Library in Manchester and Eton. They rarely come on the market but one not too foxed might fetch around $40 million today or more. Better value than a Picasso, methinks.
Primogeniture, a system not always approved of by younger sons, has the advantage that estates , lands, houses and their contents often remain in the same family for many generations. It is an opportunity to collect a lot of junk, sometimes augmented by a few good pictures, some old silver and a bit of Chippendale in the dining room. Over the years the more indigent eldest sons thin things out a bit, especially if they invested in the South Sea Company or Lloyd’s, or play with high stakes at casinos and racecourses.
Considering the profligacy of the Threepwoods and bearing in mind their guests at Blandings are usually bent on larceny, it is surprising but gratifying that the small museum at the castle still has a well-preserved edition of the Gutenberg Bible. I have heard that it was moved from the library to the museum to accommodate the 9th Lord Emsworth’s extensive collection of bound editions of the Shropshire and West Midlands Agricultural Society journals and other important porcine reference materials.
When I was at Eton I did not see their Gutenberg Bible but I did frequent a little-used library, to repose more than revise, and was charmed to find in a desk drawer some fascinating pornography. What I meant to say was, when I was at Eton in 1970 Robert Birley, a former Head Master, published a pamphlet, One Hundred Books of the Eton College Collections. Most schools would rate a Gutenberg Bible No 1 but this is Eton – so number seventeen. Birley adds in his pamphlet; “ to the recorded copies of the Gutenberg Bible should be added one in the library (sic) of Blandings Castle in Shropshire”.
He sent the pamphlet to Remsenburg, Long Island. “To Mr. Wodehouse from the author, a devoted admirer of his works, with special reference to No. 17. I am very hopeful that some German professor will write to me asking what he should do to inspect the book. I shall, of course, suggest to him that he catches the 11.28 or the 2.33 train from Paddington Station for Market Blandings, having secured a room at the Emsworth Arms hotel (sic) and making use of the services of Mr. Jno Robinson and his station taxicab.”
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“In the museum at Blandings Castle you might find every manner of valuable and valueless curio. There was no central motive, the place was simply an amateur junk-shop. Side by side with a Gutenberg Bible for which rival collectors would have bidden (sic) without a limit, you would come upon a bullet from the field of Waterloo, one of a consignment of ten thousand shipped there for the use of tourists by a Birmingham firm. Each was equally attractive to its owner.” ( Something Fresh, 1915)