The Sale at Maxwell’s : Auction of Publishing Mogul’s Possessions Draws Cash and Curiosity

Robert Maxwell’s immense double bed, with its padded serpentine headboard and bedcover printed with “swags and lotus in blue, purple, yellow and green,” is off to a country hotel in southern England where it will dominate a new Scandal Suite.

His blue director’s chair--a gift from Ronald Reagan that says ROBERT MAXWELL on the back and has the White House insignia embossed on the front--will end up in the offices of an electrical supply company in the commuter town of Tunbridge Wells.

A mounted collection of photographs showing Maxwell with Jesse Jackson and Nelson and Winnie Mandela will hang in the office of a London School of Economics lecturer who helped unravel the dark secrets of Maxwell’s business dealings.

These personal effects were among hundreds of items from Maxwell’s London apartment that were auctioned off at Sotheby’s Friday to help pay the late publisher’s creditors. Although the sale raised nearly $900,000--topping Sotheby’s expectations--it will not make a noticeable dent against the billions of dollars of debt Maxwell incurred.

Maxwell’s body was found floating off the Canary Islands Nov. 5 after he mysteriously fell from his yacht. In the days and weeks that followed, it emerged that he had engaged in massive fraud to stave off the imminent collapse of his public and private companies, which included Macmillan Inc., the New York Daily News and the British tabloid, the Daily Mirror. Officials also say he secretly siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from the employees’ pension funds of his companies.

Before reaching Sotheby’s, a few of Maxwell’s household items might have slipped out the door ahead of the movers--a large leather-embossed chess set is said to have disappeared.

But the odd assortment of items offered for sale give the impression that not much was left out. With mundane pots and pans and other everyday household items joining the expensive furnishings on the block, Sotheby’s seemed to be holding a grand garage sale.

There were howls of laughter when several bundles of books all turned out to be copies of the fawning biography Maxwell had commissioned for himself. “You can share them with friends,” joked Sotheby’s auctioneer Leslie Weller from his podium.

Weller also drew a laugh as he sought bids for the obese tycoon’s small exercise trampoline: “It looks unused, actually.”

It must have been incredibly embarrassing for the Maxwell family, none of whom were visible during the four-hour sale. But the most humiliating aspect of the auction might still lie ahead.

The Sun, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper which has long been the arch-rival of Maxwell’s Daily Mirror, purchased some of Maxwell’s most intimate possessions and will offer them as contest prizes this week.

Against some of the most frantic bidding of the day, the Sun reporter covering the story topped all comers to secure Maxwell’s monogrammed towels, bathrobe and slippers, paying $2,068 for the bathroom set. The paper successfully bid the same amount to buy an odd lot that included baseball caps--one inscribed MCC (for Maxwell Communication Corp.) and another that said GUVNOR--and a collection of wooden hangers that appear to have been stolen from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

Among the overflow crowd of about 1,000 people, desperately jostling for space inside the auction room, were the usual Sotheby’s habitues--the Sloan Rangers, the art dealers, the Old Etonians. But mostly, this was a gathering of curious first-timers to the renowned auction house.

Drawn by the infamy of the Maxwell name, they came for a glimpse of the action and the possibility of buying a little piece of tainted history at a knockdown price.

“I lost some money on Mr. Maxwell, so I’m going to see if I can get some back,” said Graham Hicks of Essex, who wore a jeans jacket and a couple of days’ stubble. Smarting over losses on a few shares of Maxwell stock, he was hoping to buy something electrical--cheap. “That 34-inch television would look good in my house,” he said.

Certainly there was every reason to believe bargains were to be had out of Maxwell’s apartment, which adjoined his Mirror Group Newspapers building.

Thrown on the auction block--along with the $20,000 paintings and $50,000 dining room table--were shoe horns, garbage cans, linen napkins, towels, a toaster, a coffee maker and three used paper shredders.

And there were no minimum bids. As at a fire sale on Main Street, everything had to go.

But in the end, bargains were scarce and were found only at the pricey end of the scale, among the antiques and furniture. Many of the furnishings, in “interesting” patterns and color combinations, had been declared yucky, or words to that effect, by more than a few observers.

“He didn’t have great taste, did he?” said London art dealer Gavin Graham. “It’s all gaudy and flash. He had a better appetite than eye.”

An item listed diplomatically in the Sotheby’s catalogue as “An Unusual Giltwood Side Table, possibly Sicilian” was valued at up to $22,560, but it sold for $7,144. A rosewood jardiniere table, which once adorned the passage to Maxwell’s bedroom, sold for $2,632, a third of its estimated value of $7,500.

But more often, the price exceeded the estimate, especially if Maxwell was seen to be personally associated with the item in some way. His office desk, valued at $750, fetched $2,256 after furious bidding. Maxwell’s office armchair, worth about $375, brought $3,760.

The Dualit Four Slice Toaster, seen by many in the crowd as the Maxwell memento they could most likely afford, went for $188.

“I just like the toaster,” said Andrew Carnegie, the London architect who bought it. “And there’s the interest of the history that goes with it.”

A limited-edition print of the Lady Ghislaine, Maxwell’s death yacht, was valued at less than $60 but sold for $1,692. And a mahogany chairmen’s hammer, a gift from his daughter bearing the inscription “IRM Xmas ’87 love Ghislaine,” sold for $1,128.

Christopher Napier was among those with personal reasons for wanting a Maxwell keepsake. A lecturer in accounting at the London School of Economics, he is an expert on Maxwell’s finances and had appeared frequently on television to explain the publisher’s complicated business dealings.

He paid $750 for the collection of photos of Maxwell, which included an autograph that read, “With love & admiration, Winnie Mandela.”

“I wanted to have something tangible to remind me of Maxwell,” he said. “In some ways, he’s been very good for me.”

And then there was Shirley Gardner, a former model and dancer and current hotelier from Dorset who spent more than $22,000 buying Maxwell’s bed, two other beds, duvets, linens, curtains and drawings. They are all to go in a Scandal Suite at her hotel.

“It’s my new idea,” said Gardner. “English people and American people love scandal.” She wouldn’t name the hotel but said it caters to “discerning people” between the ages of 30 and 50.

She was asked if she might give Maxwell’s bed a try.

“I don’t know where Mr. Maxwell’s been,” she said, “so I’d have to say no.”