TREASURES OF GABY DESLYS.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1921, Page 1

TREASURES OF GABY DESLYS.

AUCTION SALE IN LONDON. LONDON, February 21. Time was when the proper fate of actor-folk was to die in poverty, neglected by a fickle and censorious world, which regarded such a fate as that proper to the class which, although Shakespeare was of it, ranked with vagabonds. Thanks now to the Press and to novelists, one knows that theatrical folk are .as honest a class as any, leading sober, industrious lives. Not that they set up to be superior to ordinary people by any means, but they arc undoubtedly no worse. These reflections are thrust on mo by the auction last week of Gaby Deslys’ “furniture and effects,” as the auctioneer’s announcement coldly give it. Sables and East End feathers, silk hats and caps, were strangely mixed in the crowd which attended the sale in Basil Street, Knightbridge S.W. The dead dancer’s seventeenth century water clook, for which fifty guineas was paid had an inscription which, if Gaby bought the clock for that, shows a mind more thoughtful than was usually attributed to the joyous Parisienne.

As tyme and houres paiisetli awaie, So doth ye life of man decaye, As tyme can be redeemed with no cost Bestowe- it well and ho houre lie lost.

The goods brought it altogether over £41,000— a fair estate at which no actress even in tbe “star” class could sne eze—and a very good gift to the poor of Marseilles. The most imposing item as far rs appearance went was her famous golden Italian bed. The famous bed looked incongruous, removed from its dais and its attendant Eastern lamps and the van-coloured cushions piled on i>—h might have come from anybody’s bouse. Still, because it had belonged to Gaby someone paid 200 guineas for the bed, and two of the cushions went for £lO. There was also the severe ivory crucifix in her bedroom in front of her prayer-stool, on which was an old prayer-book. Her Gothic throne chair in which one of her most successful photographs was taken, fetched £3B. and a rich Eastern loin cloth CB. pewter tankard, bearing the inscription:—“Given to my friend and secretary, John Tliurloe, by Oliver Cromwell, 1050, was sold for £56 10s. Other lots were an Elizabethan oak refectory table, and a bronze statuette of the Venus de Milo. The Parisian-Chinese and Indian rugs were among her most cherished possessions, and used to adorn the Moorish drawing room so dear to her. The grand piano, sold for £2lO, was that on which she used to accompany her own songs. The fine old Dutch buffet, which fetched £54, stood in her dining-room, and witnessed many a merry supper party. Many girls, who from the ranks ul the chorus used to look up at Gaby as at a sort of half-divinity, were touching the silks, the furs, the furniture whicn had been ners, as one handles a sacred relic. The dealers who usually haunt these sales and secure the best pieces were absent. Most of the buyers were probably amateurs encouraged by the absence of expert competition, and probably many of those who secured odds and ends of ornaments, blue and white china, or some of the queer barbaric weapons for which the famous dancer had a fancy, were anxious to have any souvenir of her, not caving greatly what,

it was. _ One of the diverting incidents of tne sale was provided by a woman bidder, evidently a novice, for she became enthusiastic as she heard tho auctioneer knock down a silver coffee pot to her at 5s 6d. Her face fell, however, when the clerk informed her that silver articles were sold by the ounce, and that the, price of the purchase; was round about £5. This was not the only incident ot the kind, for the sale was attendee! quite evidently by women who were no auction sale habitues. The story is told by one in remiseent mood'of a visit to Gaby in her early struggling days, when she v-as living in a small flat furnished for, at the most a few thousand fiaues. Sht said: “C’est tout a fait tnpisser, mais un jour j’aurais autre chose.’ (“It’s very ugly, but some'day I shall have better”)' These things that are being sold now are the realisation which had cost Gaby many years of hard work.