Mentmore mania
Frank Norman
'All done at five thousand, five hundred pounds?' Peter Wilson, the chairman of Sotheby's, intoned as I walked into the Mentmore sale. 'Against you at the back, sir ...six thousand, thank you, sir...five hundred, seven thousand, five hundred, eight thousand, five hundred, nine thousand, five hundred, ten thousand . . . all done at ten thousand pounds? . . against you, madam, . . No going at ten thousand pounds, then.' He tapped the rostrum lightly with his ivory gavel. 'Yours, sir ... the gentleman with the pipe, behind the lady in the pink hat.' Several Sotheby debs, in their flimsy summer frocks (one or two of them without bras, believe it or not) pounce on him before he changes his mind and tries to escape.
The auction was in a massive marquee erected on one end of the great house. All nylon ruffles, red plush and potted plants, it was crammed with the well-dressed proprietors of Bond Street premises and the rest of the world's most expensive junk shops, bidding furiously for 'distressed' tables, cupboards and disembowelled armchairs. Frightened to move a muscle, scratch my nose or even bat an eyelash in case it was taken as a ten, twenty or even fifty thousand pound bid for a very, very old sideboard, I soon felt the need for a drink and made off quietly to investigate the ninety-foot bar in an equally large marquee on the other side of the house and take advantage of the all-day licence. As I sipped my ' Pimms moodily, the TV monitors, mounted on a Venetian well-head opposite the bar, kept telling me that someone had just bought yet another table for /15,000. Then there was a clock: 'We'll start this lot at twenty. thousand . .. twenty-five thousand, thirty thousand, thirty-five thousand . .' In ninety seconds flat it got knocked down at seventy thousand.
Actually, although the information moves me neither one way nor the other, I'm told that it was at the top end of the
market that these bargains were to be had. The man who bought the clock for £70,000 thought it was a snip; there are apparently only one or two others around, and museums will be falling over each other to get it off him. At the same time, prices at the other end of the market for broken crockery, battered saucepans, chipped chamber pots and old junk, went through the roof due to what became known ast `Mentmore mania.' 'If I'd known that these things were going to reach such prices,' said Lady Roseberry, `1 would have much preferred not to auction therri but just draw the bids out of a hat.' One very harassed Sotheby girl put it another way: 'I just hope to God they don't bring all this stuff back to us in a couple of months and expect us to sell it.'
At the end of the morning session the international big time operators, with carnations in their buttonholes, swanned into the private dining-room jabbering away in foreign languages.
Although it was widely believed that the Arabs would turn up in droves with sackfuls of oil money to spend, there was, in fact' only one Arab in sight, and he was Souren, Meloukien, the sale room correspondent er the Paris Herald Tribune. The TV cameras zoomed in on him as a typical Arab buYer' The absence of the OPEC sheiks was pet down to the fact that they don't like their gilt and ormolu furniture to be quite s° 'distressed' as that on offer at Mentmore. On Saturday the day trippers turned uP and good use was made of the lack °ft licensing laws at the bar. At lunchtinie strolled in and saw a very young all,u frightened American phtographer with h's chest smothered in expensive cameras' surrounded by a group of bellicose cockneys. `Justchew wait 'til the revolution mate!' they were telling him. 'We're gonna line the fuckin' lotta these rich layabouts against the wall an' mow 'em darhn fuckin' machine guns!' As if on cue, Jac°`: Rothschild came in with his daughtAe' Hannah. The daughter of Baron MeYer 1)6 Rothschild, who formed the Mentraorc collection, was also called Hannah; she wa5c the one who married the fifth Earl Rosebery. And Jacob was looking for bits old silver for his daughter which already ha her name engraved on them. It was rumoured that Frank Sinatra had sent a dealer down to bid for him.,E1Wild John, the popular singer, was also ar°1111l „ somewhere, and Victor Lownes, the Bnri, Club proprietor, was much in evidence On the most sizzling girl I have ever see,e trailing behind him —whenever I see him' ye has always got the most sizzling girl I 1110 ever seen trailing behind him. He botis neat bouquet of ivory-handled riding er°' for around a hundred pounds. f is The sekrenth Earl of Rosebevy hirnsel ,t an extremely genial fellow. When he wa,sno, seated in the front row of the auctl? marking his catalogue, he was wandennaa around. He could often be found Ow stepladder with his hands in a fuse box.,,(pot is a professional electrician.) He just on popping up all over the place. I was loitering in the press room afternoon when he came bustling in ater paused for a moment to listen to a reVroe; as he yelled his copy down the telePn° With gathering conviction that Mearri,°‘ a prices will Set international standards Pciod period, comma!' he was shouting, conscious of the cachet. .. that's cache' e. C-A-C-H-E-T of Mentmore for invesruleto purposes, comma, punchdrunk aria,to. buyers competed keenly with the late1,62 tional contingent to pay pounds 146,x es during the day, comma, at least ihree the expected total, stop!' Lord Rosebeb". threw back his head and roared with 'alio ter. Someone then asked him Whr'sos thought would buy the house when it gutted of its treasures. ; area 'Someone who wants to live in th5 and needs a house this size,' he reP sensibly.
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