William Sharon's Last Opium Pipe

Undone by the treachery of the trans-Atlantic telephone.

We paced nervously outside the tent, the auction proceeding briskly within as we chain-smoked cigarettes and considered how much we could spend. All of our previous expectations had been dashed, and we realized that the pipe could cost a small fortune. After drinking tea for hours, and then wine, we'd achieved a high level of agitation, the internal tension mounting. We feared we might swoon, and breathed deeply to compose ourselves.

The opium pipe was just a few lots away from the bidding, and we took a place along the side of the tent, standing as a result of our inability to sit still. Presiding by then was James Miller, the star auctioneer who supervised this estate sale and wrote the historical features in the catalog. A florid, grey-haired man in his '60s, Miller exceeded all the rest who'd performed with his no-nonsense ability to keep things moving while inserting amusingly acerbic comments along the way.

When he had to announce that an Audi was blocking a lane in the car park, he went on to quip that it's always an Audi breaking the rules, isn't it. I suppose it'll be a BMW next. The crowd tittered at this reference to the nouveau riche.

After one of the phone people seemed to indicate that the bidder on the line was having a heart attack, Miller quickly demanded that they get the next bid before it was too late. He just as promptly offered his apologies; I, too, sometimes get caught up in the enthusiasm, he admitted insincerely.

The time had come, and an attendent took his station at the front of the room, displaying the silvery pipe glittering from its nest of red velvet. The estimate of its sale price had been in the hundreds of dollars, but bidding started at $2000, eliciting a gasp from the audience. We raised our paddle to start the bidding, it immediately becoming clear that we had no competition in the room. Back and forth swiveled the auctioneer's head, turning from us, toward the phones, and back to us, the sums mounting in $200 increments.

At dizzying speed they hit $4000, and we stalled, demurring when Miller asked if we were still in the chase. The numbers continued to climb, and we jumped in again at $4600. Up the numbers went, and we gave up finally at $5600; the pipe sold for $8000, to someone on the phone. We were deflated, drained of all energy, pondering the loss and the expense of a trip ended in failure, thinking again of all the items we could otherwise have acquired had we not waited for this. Later, we would discover that the pipe and the "California" portfolio both went to William Hamilton, cartoonist for the New Yorker and resident of St. Helena; cruel irony! We returned to the food tent in a confusion of despair and drank some more.

Through the catalog we looked, hoping to find something significant, discovering a last chance; a lot of four, silver-mounted riding crops remained for sale, expected to bring a few hundred dollars. Not bloody likely, given what we'd seen so far. We'd try anyway.

We lingered overlong, and on entering the tent we confronted the bidding well underway, a young man holding two of the crops out for display. Bidding had started at a hundred, we jumped in at two, and momentum stalled as some local determined whether to take us on; another bid was offered. We topped it, the sums climbed to about $350, and before we knew it, we'd won. Only then did we become aware that there'd been a misunderstanding; it seems that they were really auctioning off another lot of horse tack, and the crops hadn't been up yet. Their display was a mistake, known to all but us, and we'd bought instead a box full of random crap; a couple of riding helmets, some stirrups, and a lone spur. For $350!

This really was too much, but there was no time to lament the gaffe; the crops were really on now, starting at $200. Our opponents this time all sat in the room, no phones to complicate the game. We hit $1000 and continued beyond, offering, finally, $1600; nothing happened, no one said a word as James Miller inquired as to further interest, and then he turned to us: Yours, sir, a fine collection of riding crops!

Our most determined opponent joined us in the food tent for some tea after we'd collected our goodies, eager as he was to look again at the riding crops he'd wanted. Really nice, he said, you didn't do badly. He maintained a shop in the next village over, the one visible from the mansion's upper corridor, and he'd expected to turn a neat profit from them. This was serious horse country, but the traditional fox hunt had recently been banned; afficionados of the practice eagerly sought such legacies of the old days quickly passing, enhanced in this case by the stature of the family involved and the showy sale of their estate.

We had no chance to look at the acquisitions until we'd bought them, and we handled them greedily, the opponent explaining their finer points. One stood out dramatically, a bamboo shaft crowned with a silver crab claw, a monogram in gold on the side; the intertwined letters were L, T and B, for Louise Tevis Breckenridge. It was a great consolation prize.

Lloyd Tevis, the patriarch of one of San Francisco's own aristocratic families and first president of Wells Fargo, helped build the city in the '60s and '70s; indeed, we remember seeing pictures of him at the Palace Hotel, probably taken by Isaiah Taber, possibly in one of those lots we'd earlier lost. A capitalist of ceaseless energy, he involved himself in many of the hidden financial intrigues that so motivated Billy Ralston and his peers. He married Louise off to state senator John Breckenridge, who died before too long, when she remarried, this time to Fred Sharon, son and heir of the Machiavellian William; somehow, her riding crop had ended up with the heirs of her sister-in-law, Florence. We had acquired a great little piece of Western history, the object evoking San Francisco with a crab claw of Nevada silver, and connected to the great families of the day: Sharons, Tevises and Fermor-Heskeths.

A mean little bonus was the proliferation of stories told of the latter family: Not much loved in these parts, according to one of our informants, yet another antique dealer. Many locals resented the sales, the breaking up of the estate, the emptying of the house. The end of an era, brought on by Alexander, reputed as a profligate playboy; he'd fielded his own Formula-1 team, paying the bills and driving the car, and later began to manufacture high-performance motorcycles bearing the marque, "Hesketh 3000."

Thought he was going to beat the Japanese, cackled an octogenarian in a wheelchair. Spent all the investors' money and went belly-up; that's the Fermor-Heskeths for you.

He remembered Flora from his childhood, by then an old lady in her own wheelchair. She'd had a movie theater built in the town, which she attended every afternoon, often seeing the same movie over and over.

Probably senile, said the old man. Every day she had the chauffer drive her into town, and there she'd be, sitting back and waving at people like the bloody queen as she passed by.

But the family's more-refined neighbors, the couple of the 20,000 new trees, offered a different assessment.

No one around here seems to have anything good to say about them, said the woman, dressed casually in expensive country wear of jacket, slacks and boots. But I sat next to Alex at dinner once and found him quite charming and very intelligent. He did hold a position in Margaret Thatcher's government, you know.

Her husband--bespoke tweed coat--grunted noncommitally.

We finished our business at the estate by introducing ourselves to Mr. Miller, and expressing our interest in family archives; he shared our interest, and we discovered that he was working on a book on American heiresses who'd married titles. We left him a copy of "The Big Bonanza," Dan DeQuille's volume documenting the exploitation of the Comstock Lode, William Sharon's greatest achievement.

Freed of the auction tensions, we spent the next several days walking London, revelling in this great, prosperous city of the world. The papers carried numerous stories about upcoming votes on the Continent concerning the constitution for the European Union, and the French, notably, weren't too keen on the idea anymore; they feared English liberalism, which in their terms meant unbridled capitalism. The effects of this economic policy, really much more bridled than in America, appeared everywhere in a stunning display of wealth and high-prices, often double what we pay in the States.

Imposing buildings abounded, recently renovated as if new, and they spanned miles. The river walks along the Thames thronged with people strolling in the sun, eating at the innumerable outdoor cafes, clustering by the dozens at the museums and galleries along the way. The HMS Belfast, a World War Two cruiser that sunk the Scharnhorst, hosted visitors with the finest maritime exhibits we ever encountered. The ship could have been newly built so complete was the refurbishing, and life-size figures at various stations might have been mistaken for real people. The Tate Modern, London's new museum of contemporary art housed in a vast, old power plant, presented one of the greatest surveys of modern works we ever saw in one place. Sitting rooms in the upper stories looked out on a London skyline dominated by St. Pauls Cathedral, where we'd earlier taken communion from a female curate named Maggy; we joined her afterward as she took a lunch of watercress sandwich and iced tea at the Crypt Cafe in the basements, where we discussed theology and the evolution that led to women in the pulpit.

The dynamism was inspiring and overwhelming, dwarfing in scale and scope anything we know from New York and certainly San Francisco. If one took the hundred or so blocks around the latter city's Union Square--the heart of the city and its best shopping--and multiplied them by a hundred or two, they would still be exceeded in grandeur and size by London's superlative public buildings, its crowded pubs, its variety of shops, its spending mobs. It was breathtaking.

The city had transformed itself within its given space; it had spruced up and opened to the world, often to the dismay of its working-class residents. They hated the EU, went out of their ways to tell us so, and complained bitterly of the immigration, the loss of English culture, the fact that they couldn't fly their nation's flag anymore without serial permissions from the neighborhood councils, the neighbors, anyone who might be offended by an expression of retro-patriotism.

On the other hand, we were pleased to discover that cold beer was available, not the case on our first visit 20 years previous. Then, the food was as appallingly bad as the stereotypes claimed. Now there was good eating of every sort everywhere. Pretty Eastern European girls manned the bars and waited tables, and complexions of every shade mixed easily. And the music was amazing.

We are not fans of contemporary music, and on our tips to the Continent we tend to be neverendingly annoyed by the wretched sounds emanating from virtually every shop and cafe, wonderful, historical environments cursed with the sounds of Abba and technopop and rap. London, though, fosters a thriving creative environment, and in addition to the many shows in theaters, the art in galleries, there is great rock of all types, and we heard good music everywhere we went.

But one order of business remained; we knew absinthe to be legal in England, and were eager to try the elusive beverage so badly maligned by history. After a Frenchman butchered his family a century ago in the wake of a binge, the drink was almost universally banned. In addition to a high alcohol content, its wormwood byproducts impart a subtle narcotic effect.

You don't want to touch that stuff, said one waiter in a hip cafe in Brixton, London's answer to Harlem. Don't know where you could get some. Bars stopped serving it because people got so crazy. Every time I tried it I ended up naked in a strange place with no idea how I got there or what happened.

We found the recommendation irresistable.

Apparently, said waiter mentioned my quest to a co-worker, who informed us that absinthe could be had at a corner bar. We were seated there within five minutes, the Green Fairy on its way for a visit. Delivered to us by a most fetching mulatto girl, we sipped the chartreuse liquid slowly, savoring its strong, anise-like flavor. Before half-an-hour passed, we'd drained the contents of three glasses, though much of it went into the small bottle we just happened to have in our knapsack. A comforting warmth suffused our consciousness, leading to a feeling that detached one slightly from the surroundings. Its appeal was obvious, and it occurred to us that if, perhaps, people hadn't rendered themselves blind drunk on it, maybe such dreadful things would not have happened to them. We determined to drink it sparingly, and did so, nipping at it that afternoon and the next. Our last day slipped by as a dreamy vision of the profusion that is London, and when we found ourselves landing back in San Francisco, we half imagined that our most eventful trip had all been a bizarre fantasy.


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