Books and works of art have become objects of speculation. Daily papers are the sources of information on the prices of values in auction rooms as well as on bonds sold on the stock exchange. And still bargains are found almost daily. Little fortunes are made by buying things in an auction room on University Place and selling them in another one on upper Fifth Avenue.
Here is a little amusement calendar for lonely afternoons:
Do you want to see splendid gowns, magnificent jewels, society manners, etchings of priceless value, paintings, sold for thousands of dollars by the square inch? Witness Mr. Kirby’s performance at the American Art Galleries. He is a dignified gentleman: never talks above a whisper: very discreet in advice, but irresistibly urgent in his discreetness. A magnetic fluid seems to emanate from him, and he has the power to direct it properly—believe me!
But what an education to see the great works of great artists put up for public sale: Whistler, Zorn, Degas, Corot, the greatest—and how wonderful to think that they will find an honored place in so many American homes. And the books! Rows of wonderful bindings and old yellowish tomes with broken backs. Rich and poor have an equal chance; and money does not always acquire the most precious, the most coveted prize. Money usually searches for outward beauty; real value is left unobserved in a shabby garment. This is the consolation of the bookworm, but dealers spoil his chances now-a-days. They have learned that it pays to put beautiful clothes on valuable books.
Would you like to see an actor of the old type? Drop in on Mr. Hartmann, in the Fifth Avenue Auction Rooms on Fourth Avenue. Listen to his good-natured talk:
“Madam, you ought to buy this divan,” he urges an undecided, elderly lady, who perhaps lives somewhere in the Bronx, in a little flat and wonders how she could get the monstrous divan into her tiny living room. “Let me advise you to take it,” Hartmann continues. “You will never have another chance at such a magnificent piece of furniture. If I wouldn’t have bought one last week I surely would keep it for myself.” Or, he would lift up some old Steins: “I take any bid for these things,” and he would give his audience to understand how hard he is hit by prohibition. He knows the dealers among his audience.
“All right, if you don’t want to bid any more I will knock it down to one of the dealers who will take it to his shop and sell it to you at an exorbitant profit,” is his remark when he cannot get the people interested in some object or another. Every dealer has a nickname with him. There is a second-hand furniture man from Baxter Street, whom he calls “General Darrow,” much to the delight of the old gentleman who does not look like a general at all. Then there is another one, a very studious looking man, whom he calls “Doctor.” Everybody in the audience really thinks the purchaser is a doctor and a collector of valuables. He is a jovial man who makes you feel at home. A sort of old-fashioned cabaret performance. Everybody seems to take part in the show.
If you would like to see a “dandy,” who feels one with the best of his listeners, whom he wishes to make out society people of the highest order, listen to Mr. Clark on Forty-fifth Street, near Fifth Avenue. His is a society play with an everlasting ripple of shallow laughter on the surface. The auctioneer speaks with a broad English accent, makes little bows every once in a while, and his right hand reaches instinctively for an invisible monocle. I always wonder if he really wears one. And he sells things. Every one has his own methods. But he is a sort of “bon vivant” on the stage of New York auctions.
Would you like to see an old-time Broadway comedy and an actor with a manner that was in style forty years ago? Would you like to listen to well-set flowery speeches? Get acquainted with Mr. Silo and his auction rooms on Vanderbilt Avenue, near Forty-sixth Street. He wears a cut-away and a goatee. He has the distinction of having auctioned off during the past forty years a greater part of the contents of many Knickerbocker Mansions. He seems to love each and every article that comes before his auction table. Everything is “exquisite, beautiful, grandiose, magnificent, stately.” He looks in the ecstasies of an overjoyed connoisseur at his paintings and drawings. He interjects once in a while his sorrow that Mr. Astor is not alive any more, who would have appreciated at once this or that painting. After such exclamations, he looks with sad contempt over his audience, shakes his head as though he wanted to say: “You poor simps, you do not appreciate real art.” He constantly urges: “Don’t buy this, don’t buy it, please don’t buy it. You will do me a favor if you do not buy it, because next week such and such a millionaire collector from California will be in town and he will pay me a far greater price than you intend to offer.”
To emphasize his sincerity at least once during each sale, he would get up from his seat, stand erect with the solemnity of a preacher and declare: “If you are sorry to have purchased this article, please return it to me. I am forty years in the auction business; my word is as good as a bond and I will return the money.” And he makes good; at least he made good to me. In the folly of the minute I bought something that I had no earthly use for. I told him so and a couple of days later he refunded my purchasing price.