An Encounter with Mr Bernardi

Peter Digby fidgeted with his catalogue, which contained rows of tantalising book listings. He’d just drawn a line through the previous lot number and added the knock-down price for future reference. From the front of the gallery, the auctioneer’s gavel smashed down, ripping into the tense silence. We were still one lot away from Peter’s gem. The rare book was an inscribed regimental history of the Coldstream Guards, published just after the Boer War and embellished with the autographs of many veterans. Like a gun dog waiting for his mark, Peter was taut with anticipation. He rubbed the textured wooden handle of his lot-number paddle with his thumb. Then, in a flash, he held his paddle high and, after a short rally, the book was his. He listened carefully for confirmation from the auctioneer – and there it was: ‘Bidder 79’. He licked his lips and circled the lot number in his catalogue. 

Peter was a storied figure in the book trade and a respected vestibule of knowledge on the Anglo Boer War. He played a significant role in my life as a dealer too. The following tale, which took place over 30 years ago, is a source story. It’s about my first day in the trade and how I didn’t even realise it. While I had no idea at the time, this auspicious sequence of events set in motion my career as an antiquarian bookseller. 

In generations gone by, rare books were bought mainly from antiquarian book shops. Large collections made their way to book auctioneers, who operated from centralised premises. In South Africa, this arrangement is extinct. In other industries, auctioneers still thrive, but online book auctions have taken over in the book world.

Recently, while perusing the periodical Bibliophilia Africana Volume VI, I came across an entry by the flamboyant rare book auctioneer Edward Bernardi. Here, I sketch the world of the wizened bibliophile commanding a room, playing out his role in the ecosystem of rare books. During his lifetime, many of the top book collections of the day moved through Mr Bernardi’s hands. 

In 1995, I took one such scuffed blue paperback, published in 1991, with me on a visit to Peter Digby. I flopped into a worn armchair, decorated with flowers. The springs moaned and the wooden frame shifted. That chair had the distinctive odour of decaying furniture, which, in true Pavlovian style, I’ve associated with Peter’s lounge ever since. Even now, when I’m invited around to view libraries with that style of furniture, I have the same associative response. 

Opening the book to page 90, I began reading to Peter the following hilarious story about the eccentric owner of a Cape Town bookshop. The year was around 1960 and Mr Bernardi was a shop assistant at Clarke’s Bookshop at the time. ‘Miss Jeffreys claimed to have left me her considerable Africana library,’ wrote Mr Bernardi, ‘a claim, I subsequently found out was made to several other people.’

Peter laughed and pointed to his chest. ‘That’s happened to me too.’ He was dressed in what people used to call his ‘school-boy uniform’ – brown Grasshopper shoes, high socks with a woven rope pattern, khaki trousers and a pressed, khaki, short-sleeved Teesav shirt. Only the most durable brands for Peter. This was his summer daywear – above all else, practical. He was, after all, a career English teacher at Pretoria Boys High. 

I continued reading Mr Bernardi’s story. ‘Miss Jeffreys insisted on carrying a caged parrot to and from her shop every day, and on public transport.’ We both chuckled.

I must digress for a moment. This reminds me of a story about Meredith Kempthorne, once Chairperson of the South African Bookdealers Association, who used to bring her cat to her Pretoria bookshop every day. Agatha-Panther was not a people person/cat, but greatly enjoyed ambling up and down over the bookshelves. Unlike the striking flower-cluster garden plant, Agapanthus, she undoubtedly descended from a lineage that must have included the noble African wildcat, for her paws were black and her striped legs a measure longer than those of her suburban domesticated kin. Agatha-Panther was an introvert, who treated the bookshop as a habitat for things other than reading. It was her urban savannah. I wonder if Miss Jeffreys’ parrot was ever let out to wander through the bookshop, hopping from bookcase to bookcase using his beak to leverage his way around.

Mr Bernardi goes on to mention an invitation to tea at Miss Jeffreys’ bookshop. ‘At my commenting upon the unusual flavour of the tea, she admitted that the water had also been used to boil some sausages earlier that day,’ he writes. Peter and I chortled at this hilarious comment.

The topic of book collecting and book auctions was raised. ‘Edward is one of the most knowledgeable people in the book trade,’ said the schoolteacher, his brass-framed spectacles perched on the bridge of his glowing bulbous nose.

I responded that I had never met him.

‘You’ve never been to a Volks book auction!’ It was an expletive, not a question. Peter preened his tousled mess of chestnut curls and cocked his head back. Licking his lips in physical surprise, he took stock of the situation.

I gathered that I’d missed out on one of life’s fundamentals. You see, Peter’s world was that of books, documents and medals.

After a pause, he declared, ‘Well, you can’t not have ever in your life been to a book auction! The quarterly one is coming up in a few weeks. You can drive with me.’ And so, the next collectable book auction became the obvious topic of our interim conversations.

I was a 25-year-old neophyte and curious about books in general. The fascination had started around five years before when I had discovered reading. At school, I had been relegated to what was known as ‘Set Five’. This was a special class in which the thick, lame and lazy were contained. A feedback loop of anti-academic malcontent festered in the classroom. I still maintain that the likes of Jane Austen and even Shakespeare should not be burdened on teenagers. These masterpieces should be reserved for later in life once one has seasoned a little. 

I must also point out that my schooling took place before the time of legislated human rights in South Africa. Electricity had been invented, but there was no such thing as the Internet, YouTube and so on. There were no videos to search for, no music to stream. My point is that there was simply no incentive to learn to read and write – no point in learning to spell or use grammar, whatever that was. I was quite content with playing sport and socialising. Desperate parents and teachers often resorted to using negative incentivisation as a means of teaching. We were thick-skinned youths and the canings and detentions merely alienated us further. I matriculated without a university exemption. My prospects were bleak, my motivation bleaker. I was what you might call ‘a scrote’ (short for scrotum) – a dysfunctional, antisocial non-member of society.

Thankfully, my squandering of life lasted only a short while and national service in the paratroopers seemed to instil a bit of discipline in me. It was during this time that I discovered books. Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart comes to mind. It’s a masterpiece that really resonated with me. It was as if Malan was a kindred spirit. How was it possible to write so well? Unlike the acclaimed EM Forster, he didn’t drag a story out. At school, great literature was synonymous with boring. Malan got straight to the point with his colourful powers of description and exquisite minimalism. Why had we not been inducted into literature like that at school?

Once I’d discovered books in my early twenties, I became forever invested in the wonders of them all. To this day, I read every day. 

As to attending a book auction? I was reticent, for it was entirely possible that a book auction might be mind-numbingly boring, like math class. What would I do if that was the case? I laughed inwardly at my own ironic solution. I took a book along to read, just in case. 

Peter and I set off in his 25-year-old butternut-soup-orange Mecedes Benz. The seats were sprung and we bopped up and down as if on a fairground ride as we sailed through the countryside of Halfway House and Midrand. After rounding a bend covered in bushveld trees, we cruised downhill. The Voortrekker Hoogte airfield was on our left. During my national service, I’d fast-roped out of helicopters and parachuted out of Dakotas there. I loved the Boys’ Own-style adventure of it all.

Peter, who enjoyed the feel of the accelerator, raced us past the Voortrekker Monument and down past Pretoria Central Prison. Then, in a flanking manoeuvre, we turned right and entered the city centre from the side. Volks Art Auctioneers were situated in the historic jacaranda-lined Schubart Street. Three lanes buzzed with traffic along this south-bound arterial route out of the city. The hulk of a Mercedes glided amid the purple haze of privilege. Pretoria is a beautiful city, I thought to myself as we arrived at the address – number 224. 

The building was a drab 1960s utilitarian double-storey. There was a processing showroom on the ground floor and an auction gallery on the first floor. We ascended. Clutching my book, I was overwhelmed. Paintings and antique maps lined the walls. Cabinets filled with books padded the central seating area. Peter inspected the room, which was swarming with chattering people. A brotherhood of bibliophiles gestured, greeted and waved from across the room. We marked our seats, near the back of the room of course – a form of schoolboy logic that was familiar to me. I placed my book on a seat. Peter put down his coat and his programme.

A cool wind came in through the open balcony doors. I went outside to orientate myself within a city with which I was not at all familiar. I had only ventured to that side of the boerewors curtain a couple of times as a boy. On the opposite side of the road, an explicit sign caught my eye. The words ‘Escort Agency’ flickered and I laughed secretly to myself. Drawing attention to it would not have elicited a laugh from Peter. My host had always been a bit ‘prim and proper’, as they say. The agency remained hidden in plain sight.

I gathered that my mentor never wanted to be the one to lower the tone. As I was representing him as his guest, I took the hint to conform. We were both wearing sports jackets. Peter had roped a threadbare Transvaal Scottish Association tie around his neck. I was proudly sporting a school athletics tie. Later, during the break, he mumbled that maybe, in hindsight, it would have been acceptable for me to be without a jacket and tie because I wouldn’t really be noticed anyway.

A hush descended across the crowd. Heads turned to a smartly dressed man with perfect auburn hair and a strong jaw. Strutting from the back of the room, the man nodded his head and doffed his clipboard as he greeted patrons on his way to the dais. ‘That’s Edward Bernardi,’ Peter whispered from behind his auction catalogue, as one does when spotting a famous person. Preening his thick, brushed, chocolate-brown hair, Mr Bernardi stepped up onto the dais and ordered the stationery and papers on the lectern. All eyes were fixed on him. He was the very image of a gentleman – refined, yet effortlessly at ease. Spectacles framed glowing eyes that shone like fine bourbon whiskey. There was a mood of general anxiety in the air. The gavel tapped three times and the congregation fell silent. A hand lifted – an age-old ritual, I reckoned. I was back in church. I had no other frame of reference for an event like this. I looked around like a meerkat at feeding time.

‘Good afternoon.’ Mr Bernardi was calm and confident. He might have been a tenor. Some muttered salutations vibrated back to him. He commanded his listeners’ attention.

The book auction began with ‘Lot one’… The diction of this self-confident man was a foreign language to me. ‘This treasured piece of Africana,’ he declared, ‘exceedingly rare in this condition … only one copy registered in SABIB.’ It was as if he were laying claim to a realm of cultural legitimacy that he and his devotees held in high regard. I surmised that Mr Bernardi was the high priest of the book world, preaching a sermon in what could only be some inaccessible liturgical language: ‘bound in a fine elephant folio’, ‘magnificent example of tree calf’, ‘sold to the bibliophile’… His monologue took me on a magical journey. I dared not speak. I just watched with childlike curiosity. 

Everyone in the crowded room was fixated. There was a web of intricate communication going on. Messages travelled from Mr Bernardi to the bidders and from them to him, as they waved their catalogues, bidding with their numbered paddles and pencilling in the realised prices. Mr Bernardi carried himself as I imagined a London auctioneer might.

Peter had made the rules very clear to me: not to interrupt him in any way whatsoever. ‘I only want to know if there’s a fire or if you are witnessing the second coming of the Lord.’ He spoke clearly and enunciated his words as was the norm amongst the sophisticated English population of the time. 

I surmised a lot by watching Mr Bernardi smarten his hair, gesture with his gavel and joke with certain people. ‘The government has spoken,’ he might say after a particularly adversarial bidding war. I gathered that Mr Bernardi was gay or ‘a bachelor’, as was the nomenclature at the time, when to be openly gay might have elicited social exclusion or worse.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Some people spent the equivalent of my entire month’s beer budget on a single book! I was convinced that some collectors had even gone so far as to bid a book up as a demonstration that they had the financial means to overpay! It was like watching a Eugene Marais story unfold first hand – a scene of social dominance and hierarchy, not in baboons but in us humans. 

There were occasions of showmanship, with outbursts from a successful bidder. The heads in the room would turn. Murmurs might disturb the peace. Sometimes we’d all clap. I don’t know why. I saw the veteran book dealer Robin Fryde outbid a crestfallen man. Robin was the victim of a glare by an underbidder so fierce it was as if some wrathful God that had come to exact his revenge. I later overheard that the rare book had been eluding the wounded collector for decades. 

Robin Fryde had a slight lisp, a speech impediment that made him seem kind. An alpha male of his ilk he gave the establishment a gentlemanly tone. I found myself trying to find patterns in his buying. Why this and not that?

Like a desperate traveller hailing a taxi, Peter would sit up straight and thrust his rolled-up catalogue forward to bid. If there was any glimmer of uncertainty as to whether Mr Bernardi had seen his intention, Peter would wave the catalogue above the heads of the attendees. The fluttering of pages induced some heads to turn. One thing of which I am certain is that if Peter Digby wanted a book, he got it!

But who was this protagonist with compliant hair commanding the room? How was it that he could rule the attention of this room full of studious-looking characters. I felt a need to meet him. What made Edward Bernardi tick?

A break finally arrived as half the lot numbers had been dealt with. Peter turned to face me, his arm outstretched in the direction of the podium. ‘And that’s Edward Bernardi!’

I flowed from that statement directly into: ‘The one who drank the sausage tea.’ We both laughed as we gathered our pencils and book catalogues, relocated to the sandwich and samoosa table and began socialising. Ribbons of emerald coloured lettuce, like confetti, covered the sandwiches. I noticed a sense of kinship like that you experience at a game of rugby. This auction event was a social mechanism for getting likeminded people together. Other than the utilitarian function of disposing of a deceased estate, the event constituted an important cultural get-together. People travelled from all over the country to be present. Deals were struck outside in the parking bays. Phone numbers were exchanged. It fostered cooperation. I was witnessing a tribe in all its social complexity and bonding norms.    

Feeling a little out of place, I focused on the snack table, it wasan early dinner. As I was loading my side plate, Mr Bernardi homed in on me. Adjusting his owl-like spectacles, he thrust his hand out. ‘Good evening. Who are you?’ His tone was smooth and friendly. I gathered that if one was a professional auctioneer, then, ipso facto, your self-confidence had to be considerable.

‘I’ve come with Peter Digby to see what this was all about.’ I fumbled a bit and regretted saying ‘this’ for it might have been interpreted as an insult.

‘And what have you deduced so far?’ Mr Bernardi was inquisitive.

‘Fascinating. I think I might be back again.’

He sported his herringbone tweed jacket and paisley tie like a uniform. ‘Excellent, a new bidder.’ He welcomed me like I’d passed some other interview. Mr Bernardi conformed, yet his personality revealed a flare of non-conformity. Up close, I saw that he moisturised. 

Looking back, I realise that I never did read that book I had brought along, just in case. I was mesmerised by that underworld of rare books. Come to think of it, I called the auctioneer ‘Mr Bernardi’ until his death in around 1999. He was an introvert, a bit of a lone wolf – although inseparable from his brother and business partner, Romano.

Where did it all begin for Mr Bernardi? In his autobiographical article, Mr Bernardi explained that he had merely been a reader until he had met Anthony Clarke (more on this character in another story). ‘That was when I was first inducted into the world of antiquarian books in the Sixties,’ he wrote. 

Thirty years later, if I think about the direction my life has taken, I can empirically say that everything changed after that auction in 1995.  

Mr Bernardi once told me that, for his sins, he loved books, for book auctions didn’t really make much money. The bills were paid from the antique furniture auctions and the mundane Tuesday-morning general auctions. But it’s important to point out that book people attribute a worth to books greater than just their commercial value. ‘So long as collectors buy into the concept of collecting, then there will be sellers. In other words, there needs to be perceived intrinsic value in these books, that they grow in value, then there is an ecosystem,’ he explained.

The article in the Bibliophilia Africana magazine goes on: ‘In this magical Cape landscape there stood a poet, or a poetic bookseller if you like, called Anthony Clarke. I was his shop assistant, and I must say that he was most certainly a mentor and very kind to me.’

There’s an unbroken continuity here. While I never met Anthony Clarke, like a meme, I followed in the trade – like Mr Bernardi, like Peter Digby – and now, 28 years on, I find that I have seasoned into that dominion. 

Some of the highlights of Mr Bernardi’s career were: an original Thomas Baines map depicting a route from Walvis Bay going Northwards; François Le Vaillant’s Histoire des Oiseaux d’Afrique 1805–08, with its magnificent hand-coloured copperplate engravings of South African birds; the Mary Gunn botanical collection; and Samuel Daniell’s African Scenery and Animals (1804–1805).

But there is one item that stands out in his February 1974 catalogue: ‘Letter to Carl Behrens… I have much pleasure in introducing you to the bearer, Mr Cecil Rhodes, who is joining his brother...’ This is the letter of introduction with which Rhodes presented himself on his arrival at the Kimberley diamond fields. The rest became what, today, is history.

To appreciate the world of books, one must first be a stranger to it. In the first quarter of my life, books were anathema. We are now inseparable, one and the same. Mr Bernardi ended up occupying a pivotal point in my life. For 20 years, from March 2001 until the advent of the COVID pandemic, I ran online book auctions. In retrospect, I find it curious how one’s life can be shaped by a person who, at the start of one’s career, appeared to be an eccentric curiosity at best. I now run a bookshop and gallery on the third floor of the Cape Town Club, specialising in unusual books and collectable items.