Books in Brief: Auction Madness

Auction Madness, by Charles Hamilton (Everest House, 255 pp., $13.95).

Subtitled “An Uncensored Look behind the Velvet Drapes of the Great Auction Houses,” this is Mr. Hamilton’s best book yet, filled with all the right sorts of anecdotes. Hamilton—whose own Charles Hamilton Galleries he bills as the world’s largest auction firm specializing in autographs and manuscripts—appreciates a good story. Here he takes the “elegant hucksters”—Christie’s, Sotheby Parke Bernet, and Philip, Son and Neal to task and reveals many of their sharper practices, including the girl hired strictly to glean the obituaries daily and telephone families of the deceased to solicit consignments. He describes “dirty tricks” from the podium—pulling bids from the ceiling, off pillars, out of thin air—and what you can do about them. And he presents a fine array of history and auction lore. He recounts the dizzying fortunes of Lincolniana at auction, as well as the binge of souvenir-hunting immediately after the Ford’s Theatre shooting. He describes Basil Rathbone selling some letters he had received from Jacqueline Kennedy to raise money. He presents the booming history of Nazi relics at auction. Mr. Hamilton notes that Jews seem to be the most enthusiastic collectors of such items; once, seeking an explanation, he was told, “It’s like having the head of the hunter on the wall instead of the hunted.” And he provides a number of lists: atrocious penmen, for one, with Napoleon, Horace Greeley, and John F. Kennedy heading the list; and “Twelve Most Bizarre Articles” ever sold at auction, for another, which includes an object purporting to be Napoleon’s penis, Queen Victoria’s bloomers, a lock of hair from Robert E. Lee’s warhorse. Traveler, and Charles Dickens’s stuffed and mounted pet raven, Grip, which inspired the author’s novel Barnaby Rudge, as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” and which now resides in the Philadelphia Free Library. Of course this book is wonderful; with such stories, how could it be otherwise?

Auction Madness, by Charles Hamilton (Everest House, 255 pp., $13.95).

Subtitled “An Uncensored Look behind the Velvet Drapes of the Great Auction Houses,” this is Mr. Hamilton’s best book yet, filled with all the right sorts of anecdotes. Hamilton—whose own Charles Hamilton Galleries he bills as the world’s largest auction firm specializing in autographs and manuscripts—appreciates a good story. Here he takes the “elegant hucksters”—Christie’s, Sotheby Parke Bernet, and Philip, Son and Neal to task and reveals many of their sharper practices, including the girl hired strictly to glean the obituaries daily and telephone families of the deceased to solicit consignments. He describes “dirty tricks” from the podium—pulling bids from the ceiling, off pillars, out of thin air—and what you can do about them. And he presents a fine array of history and auction lore. He recounts the dizzying fortunes of Lincolniana at auction, as well as the binge of souvenir-hunting immediately after the Ford’s Theatre shooting. He describes Basil Rathbone selling some letters he had received from Jacqueline Kennedy to raise money. He presents the booming history of Nazi relics at auction. Mr. Hamilton notes that Jews seem to be the most enthusiastic collectors of such items; once, seeking an explanation, he was told, “It’s like having the head of the hunter on the wall instead of the hunted.” And he provides a number of lists: atrocious penmen, for one, with Napoleon, Horace Greeley, and John F. Kennedy heading the list; and “Twelve Most Bizarre Articles” ever sold at auction, for another, which includes an object purporting to be Napoleon’s penis, Queen Victoria’s bloomers, a lock of hair from Robert E. Lee’s warhorse. Traveler, and Charles Dickens’s stuffed and mounted pet raven, Grip, which inspired the author’s novel Barnaby Rudge, as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” and which now resides in the Philadelphia Free Library. Of course this book is wonderful; with such stories, how could it be otherwise?