Henderson Sale

To Washington society it was an occasion, to His Excellency Mehmet Munir Bey, Ambassador of the Turkish Republic,, it was an opportunity. Last week, the pictures and knick knacks of Mrs. John Brooks Henderson's bulbous brownstone castle on 16th Street went on the auction block.

Washington society has been the duller since Mrs. Henderson died in 1931, aged 90. Wealthy widow of the late Senator from Missouri and friend of Presidents Lincoln through Hoover inclusive, it was among her various ambitions to make 16th Street the social stem of Washington, D. C. Buying great quantities of real estate, she induced the Austrian, Spanish, Cuban, Polish, French and Lithuanian embassies to move there, built a $300.000 palace which she attempted time after time to have made the official home of the Vice Presidents of the U. S. Vegetarian, ardent prohibitionist (she poured her husband's valuable cellar into the gutter immediately after his death) and anti- tobacconist, she caused one great sensation in 1931 when she publicly announced that her granddaughter, Mrs. Beatrice ("Trixie") Van Rensselaer Henderson Wholean was a foundling, secretly adopted to inherit a $600,000 trust fund.

The paintings which went on sale last week were just the sort of thing that an elderly eccentric might be expected to buy: buxom ladies in pink draperies, sad-eyed St. Bernard dogs, angelic newsboys, Venetian sunsets, etc., etc.

It all seemed excellent to His Excellency the Turkish Ambassador. Perched on the edge of his chair, his high bulging forehead pink with excitement, he bid again and again, walked off with seven canvases at prices ranging from $22.50 to $475. The latter was the price of an enormous highly varnished Harem Scene by Benjamin Constant.

Because she loved animals, Mrs. Henderson once paid $25,000 for a canvas entitled Nude Child With Dove, and then tried to force the artist to put the little girl in a petticoat. Mrs. Mary Y. Henderson got it for $100 last week. Old Mrs. Henderson's love of animals again forced her to pay $10,000 for an oil painting of a four-horse brewery hitch by Edmund de Pratere. George Goodacre, local restaurateur, got it for $310 to put in his lunchroom.

In her salad days Mrs. Henderson had a court painter of her own, a crippled Civil War veteran named Lucien Whiting Powell. Seventy-six original Powells were in the sale last week. His widow got two of them for $60 apiece, another for $55.

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