Postscript
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THERE was a pronounced flavour of end of term about the last sale of the record- breaking season at Sotheby's, even to the unchecked chatter at the back of the room, over which it was sometimes diffi- cult to hear the auctioneer's voice. In the other rooms rugs were being rolled up, pictures taken down, and display cabinets taken apart and roped together again. Just behind me, two dealers who looked, dressed and sounded as though they had never seen any water west of the Serpentine were discussing fishing.
Not only. end of term, but anti-climax. This was one of those odds-and-ends sales, a sort of by-day, with glass and paperweights, rugs and clocks and furniture, all in the same, unillustrated, threepenny catalogue, and not much edge to the bidding, even though a private buyer did pay £300 for a Baccarat paperweight in the teeth of the trade. And even that is hardly like the good old days, not so long ago, when good King Farouk was firm on his throne, and dealers all over the place had carte blanche to buy him his trinkets and toys, so that they bid fiercely enough against each other to send paperweights up to more than a thousand pounds apiece, and watches with 'curious' movements—to be cata- logued later as 'scenes galantes' and 'scenes plus que galantes'—almost out of the market.
Everybody knew before the sale started that Sotheby's had already beaten their own record, and the world's record, for a season's turn-over, but that this last sale just wouldn't send the total up to the nice round figure of seven million pounds. So there was none of. the excitement that had attended the sale of the Berkeley silver or the Blohm porcelain or the five days in June that had added almost a million to the total. It was merely a matter of knowing, as we had for a long time, that rather a lot of money, at 10 per cent. commission, had been made by rather a few people. A retired Indian cavalryman of my acquaintance, veteran of many a race-meeting, east and west, jerked his head towards the tired, trim figure in the rostrum, and whispered to me, 'Just like horse-racing: only one thing to be in this game, and that's the bookie.' But he'd just seen a clock sold for £30 that he'd once given a hundred guineas for.
One of the most annoying of the many extremely annoying devices adopted by advertis- ing people is that of inserting leaflets under the windscreen-wipers of parked cars. As often as not, you've unlocked the door and settled into the .driver's seat before you notice. You can then either drive off, with your vision impaired by it, or open the door again to get out—probably having to wait for a stream of traffic to pass, perhaps knocking a cyclist down—to remove the unsolicited danger to driving. The whole thing is so infuriating that the practice must surely be self-defeating as a method of advertising. Cer- tainly, I shall never join the Volkswagen Drivers' Club whose membership secretary, presumably a motorist, ought to know better, nor shall I ever buy Vitasun.capsules, the latest product to be brought to my attention in this way. Especially as Messrs. Burgoyne Burbridges & Co. Ltd., the manufacturers, have the impertinence, after put- ting me to all this trouble simply to land myself with a piece of unwanted paper in my hand, then to add this to it: 'When eventually you have finished with this leaflet, please dispose of it tidily'in accordance with the Anti-Litter Act.'
I see what the novel-reviewer meant, though I think he might have expressed it differently, who began his column in this month's Courier maga- zine thus: 'With deep regret I record the death of John Lodwick, rather belatedly, I am afraid, through no fault of my own.'
There will be sore hearts as well as empty bellies in Belgium if events in the Congo really do make measures of austerity in- evitable, as the Government threatens. I am a serious eating man myself, but I am always awed by those heirs to French cuisine and Flemish appetite, exemplified by the senatorial greybeards with •the coloured threads of orders on their lapels who discuss the pralines and the noisettes of the classic chocolatiers of the capital —Godelaine and Godiva, Marye and Toison d'Or—with the solemnity, the devotion to the subject-matter, and the sheer bloody malice to- wards each other, of the most distinguished classical scholars. The sort of eating house that in England advertises its 'Dainty Teas,' in Brus- sels displays 'Notre Menu Formidable.'
It would be sad if world affairs deprived of their midday sustenance those two Belgian matrons I once saw demolishing, for their lun- cheon, two portions each of Beluga caviar (at 305. a portion) with Chablis; a whole cold lobster apiece, smothered in miyonnaise, and washed down with a bottle of claret (yes, claret): truified pâté de Strasbourg on hot buttered toast; and chocolate cake with cream. You may point out that nobody but a Belgian would want to eat such a meal; it must still be respectfully admitted that only a Belgian could.
What those good women drank with their chocolate cake and cream I hadn't the stomach to wait and see. But had I got that far myself I might have sipped a small glass of Frontignac with it—a rich sweet wine that used to be a favourite here in the eighteenth century, and seems to have been rediscovered. Asher Storey, the shippers, have found one that is just not strong enough to attract the same duty as port and marsala, so that it can be sold retail at about 9s. 6d. ,a bottle (at Williams Standring, of Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, and Wilkinsons of Newcastle-on-Tyne, among others). Frontignac conies from Frontinan, south of Montpelier, and am just as baffled as you are about the changed letter at the end. It has the colour and the sweet- ness of honey, but a clean uncloying 'finish,' and the same strong muscat smell as the Aleatico of Elba. It is my wine of the week for people who like a really luscious dessert wine with fruit or nuts, and find port too heavy on the purse or on the person.
CYRIL RAY
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