The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 2 July 2006

Sold! Royal Auctions

The auction at Christie�s of items from the estate of the late HRH Princess Margaret in June got me thinking about auctions of royal possessions. This was actually the second royal auction at Christie�s this year � the Queen�s cousin, HRH the Duke of Gloucester, auctioned some items inherited from his father in January, bringing in over five million pounds. Presumably the Gloucester auction was in part a warm-up for the more important auction of Princess Margaret�s things. Both auctions reflected Queen Mary�s mania for collecting in the vast amount of stuff that she passed on to her descendants. (The Duke also auctioned an antique sword in April at Bonhams for over 100,000 pounds.)

Princess Margaret�s children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto, conducted the sale to pay the three million pounds they owed in inheritance tax on her estate. The auction has been somewhat controversial. Most notably, Margaret�s ex-husband, the Earl of Snowdon, objected to the sale of items that had been wedding presents to them both, even though Margaret kept them after their divorce and left them to their children. This must have embarrassed his children, but presumably he had raised the issue privately and they had ignored his concerns. It would be embarrassing for both giver and recipient to see a third party auctioning off a gift, and Snowdon clearly felt the need to register a public protest.

Also, the preservation organization English Heritage objected to the sale of items that were fixtures in Margaret�s apartment in Kensington Palace, which is a Grade I listed historical building and cannot be altered without permission. (The Snowdons� renovation of the apartment was paid for in part by government funds because of its landmark status.) Some railings from the Ascot racecourse that Margaret had been given were removed from the sale and allowed to remain in her Kensington Palace garden, but a chandelier was sold. Viscount Linley bought another controversial item, the famous Pietro Annigoni painting of Princess Margaret, for 680,000 pounds on the second day of the sale, after the first day had raised far more than expected. Hopefully it will eventually be displayed with Annigoni�s portrait of the Queen.

Another problem was that some items in the sale were gifts to the princess in the course of her official duties. This echoes the 2002 scandal over the whereabouts of gifts given to the Prince and Princess of Wales, including the aborted trial for theft of the late Princess of Wales� butler, Paul Burrell; the threatened prosecution for theft of former royal butler Harold Brown; and the revelation that the Prince of Wales� assistant Michael Fawcett had been selling unwanted gifts. In March 2003 the Prince of Wales� office established new guidelines on the handling of gifts that hopefully will reduce future problems. The difficulty in distinguishing between personal and official gifts, and a lack of clear guidelines as to what may be done with unwanted gifts, creates a problem that lasts even unto the next generation, as Princess Margaret�s children found out this week.

The auction turned out to be a tremendous success, with sales totaling 13,658,728 pounds. Some proceeds will be given to charity, apparently in response to the criticism about selling official gifts. Ironically, Margaret�s children will now have to pay capital gains tax on the sale. The most excessive premium paid for royal provenance at the sale was 2400 pounds for three umbrellas. I wonder if anyone has ever paid capital gains tax on an umbrella before. It was very clever of Christie�s and the sellers to include several items with little intrinsic value and low valuations to bring in souvenir hunters of modest means. The auction�s success brought out the British media�s critical tendencies, with articles in most national newspapers disapproving of Viscount Linley�s enthusiasm for maximizing his assets. (Lady Sarah is more discreet and less wealthy than her brother.) However, there are only so many keepsakes one needs, and many people have estate sales. The criticism would have been muted if the sale had not made such a remarkable profit.

Major royal auctions have come along about once every ten years lately. The last one was, of course, the 1997 auction of dresses belonging to the Princess of Wales, also at Christie�s, but in New York rather than London. However, this was not an auction of her clothes after her death, but a charity fundraiser she organized herself. She was killed soon afterward, and the dresses held far more sentimental and financial value than they would have if she had gone on and on, wearing more and more clothes. The $3.2 million that auction brought in seems less impressive now, but it was for just 79 dresses, compared to the eight hundred lots in Princess Margaret�s estate sale, which also included far more intrinsically valuable items.

As we all know, Diana�s possessions were not auctioned after her death, but maybe they should have been. Diana�s will left her chattels (personal property) to be divided among her godchildren. Her executors ignored this and gave them only a small keepsake each. Given the suddenness of her death, the intense publicity surrounding it, and the fact that her sons were minors at the time, it is understandable that her executors dealt with her possessions as discreetly as possible. The Spencer family exhibits some of her things in the museum at Althorp, and her jewels are being kept for her sons� wives or have returned to the royal collection (a codicil to her will specified exactly what should happen to each of her jewels). It�s still unclear what happened to all of Diana�s possessions, but most of them were either destroyed, put in storage, kept by her sons or the Spencers, or squirreled away in Paul Burrell�s attic. If an auction had been conducted, Diana�s intention to leave significant legacies to her godchildren could have been fulfilled, probably while raising money for charity too.

The royal auction of the 1980s, and the twentieth century, was that of the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor in 1987. The Windsors� marriage was possibly the most romantic story of the twentieth century. Because the Duchess was American and the Windsors had lived a jet-set life, international interest in the auction was very high. It was held in Geneva rather than New York or London, and at Sotheby�s rather than Christie�s. The sale brought in thirty-one million pounds for AIDS research, dwarfing all other royal sales. It may never be surpassed unless the monarchy goes through a crisis equal to the abdication, such as the crisis that resulted in the most important royal auction ever � Cromwell�s sale of Charles I�s possessions, about which a book called The Sale of the Late King�s Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection was recently published. As it turned out, Charles II got most of the goods back.

- Margaret Weatherford

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