The copycat's whiskers

From the May 1, 2010 edition of the Spectator. Bevis Hillier reviews Nicolas Barker's Horace Walpole's Description of the Villa at Strawberry Hill in an article, Strawberry Hill Forever. What a marvelous club.

The book is produced by the Roxburghe Club, of which William Waldegrave is a member. It is perhaps the most exclusive club one can belong to - more so than White's, Boodle's, Pratt's or the Athenaeum. It was founded in 1812 by a group of patrician bibliophiles after the sale of the bankrupt Duke of Roxburghe's collection, the first English sale at which a book was sold for more than £1,000 (the Valdorfer Boccaccio, 1471, bought by the Marquess of Blandford for £2,260). The first president was the second Lord Spencer, but the idea of the Club came from the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, author of Bibliomania (1809).

The club is restricted to 40 members. The present membership includes a French prince, 13 peers (Waldegrave among them), three North American members and one South American member. They tend to be inheritors or custodians of important libraries. They meet for dinner, normally combined with a visit to a library, once a year in June: the 'anniversary dinner', that is, of the Roxburghe sale. There is also a 'business' dinner in the autumn. Members are expected to publish a book to be presented to each of their fellow members. Every member has his or her name printed in red in his or her copy; a limited number of extra copies is issued for sale - of which the book under review is one. The price may seem exorbitant; but you can be pretty sure that your copy, in its half-morocco binding, will become a bibliophile's treasure. This facsimile is the copycat's whiskers.