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Out of a black velvet case appeared the high spot of the jewelry sale—Mrs. McCormick's diamond necklace, a glittering plastron of 1,801 stones, 40 inches long ending in a sort of jointed breastplate of diamonds. Dealers, many of whom were unable to get in the room, shouted bids through the door, raising the price $250 at a time. A quiet, unassuming woman in galoshes who sat with her husband on a bench against the wall finally bid it in for $15,000. Said she: "It's beautiful. It all comes apart, you know, and makes lots of bracelets and brooches and things." Known to every Chicago gossip columnist was the historic Bonaparte-McCormick gilded-silver dinner service of 1,600 separate knives, forks, plates, dishes, platters, etc., weighing over 11,700 ounces. Made by Napoleon's favorite goldsmiths, Martin Guillaume Biennais and Jean Odiot, executed after the design of Architects Percier & Fontaine, the service was a wedding present from the Emperor to his sister Pauline on her marriage to Prince Gamillo Borghese. In 1892 the Borghese family sold it intact to Prince Baucina who sold it to Dealer Ercole Canessa who sold it to Mrs. McCormick for $80,000. Last week it was subdivided in 146 separate lots and sold, after a block bid of $20,000 by Mrs. Hubbard had been refused, to dozens of different owners for a total of $57,565. Unnoticed by most in the room was a plump little man who kept nervously wiping his forehead and gazing first at Auctioneer Otto Bernet, then at Mrs. Hubbard as she bid $100 at a crack with the raise of a pencil. It was Escort Edwin Krenn. "All this is breaking my heart," declared this beneficiary under the McCormick will, with a wave of his hand. "It cuts into me, you know, it cuts into me!''
What cut into him deepest was that the sale of objects valued at well over $1,000,000 brought a total of $330,617.50. Of this the gallery extracted its customary 20% for advertising, cataloging and use of the hall.
In Chicago, at her greystone Lake Shore Drive palace and in Lake Forest, Ill. at her country home, Villa Turicum, the rest of Mrs. McCormick's private belongings were to go on sale next week. Auction gapers in Chicago were discouraged by a $10 admission fee, redeemable on the first purchase.
In the same Manhattan gallery where Mrs. McCormick's relics were being dispersed last week another sale of even greater interest to book collectors and professional patriots was being held. Assembled from various owners was an important book collection. There were second, third and fourth folio Shakespeares, Mary Baker Eddy's own copy of Science and Health, a Kelmscott Chaucer and a number of letters from Warren Gamaliel Harding and Thomas Jefferson. But the prize item was No. 264, an Italian leather frame holding a yellow sheet of paper, the original autograph manuscript of "The Star Spangled Banner."