The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-10-22

The woman meant more than she said. She meant that Geraldine Farrar was through with life as Mrs. Lou Tellegen and equally through with grand opera. The wide roomed. summary house at 20 West Seventy fourth street had been swept bare of furnishing as of memories, and there we're tears in the eyes of the wom- an as she stood in the Fifth avenue auction rooms amid the orderly elut- ter of objects that represented so much of hope, ambition, and achieve ment.
 Those words and those tears gave the keynote Of the most personal" auction sale New York has ever known. Not until they actually saw the beds and the vanity boxes. the pictures, the household linen, the gorgeous robes of Thais and Butter fly, offered for sale to the highest bidder with reckless disregard of cost and sentimental association. did her tremendous following realize Farrar meant what she said. She was through"
 A different Farrar
 l A new Farrar there might be, per AiohPS u ACdlCi OHtf IHt concert stage, Farrar of the thea trical stage. But the other Geraldine was an epoch that is done, brought to an end by her own dramatic ges- ture.
 Realizing this at last. her admirers thronged to buy final souvenir. or If money or opportunity lacked, to gaze their fill on the intimate things of her home and operatic career. By actual count, 8,246 people walked 1 through the auction rooms before the sale began. On each of the four days of the sale there were TOO bidders in the rooms. with 200 belated and disappointed folk begging vainly for admission The police were called to 1 control the mass and they closed Twenty-fifth street to all cars except those bound for the auction. Between 3 and o'clock in the afternoon there were eighty-six cars In line. No more, because the street could hold no more.
 And, most of the crowd, like most of the bidders, were women. They made 1t, as has been said, personal affair. They sympathized, with a neighborly quality not often seen in this town, over the domestic tragedy round which the sale revolved. Though she was out somewhere in the west. Geraldine's presence per vaded the place. You couldn't get away from 1t. A vanity box that ally worth nearly so much, went not as baub1e but as q thing that Geral- line had often handled.
 "Buy Me Anything"
 People from out-oftown sent | money orders for five dollars. Buy me anything" they wrote to Wallace H. Day, who had the sale in charge. 1 Scores of them sent these money 1 orders An average of 15 daily are still writing in to ask for catalogues and to inquire if there isn't, by some lucky chance, "any little souvenir left" which they may purchase. They call her, in these letters, Geraldine Who said the American public was a tickle thing?
 It was surprise to the auctioneers, 1 that crowd. Not only surprising in numbers. but in makeup. Stage peo- l pie came but to buy the splendid gowns, and shawls and kimonos worn by Geraldine in operatic roles. The stage people bought vases or a silver I coffee service, or a Dutch painting or two They seemed to feel that they could not afford to wear on the stage. a secondhand costume l which many of the audience would recognize as Farrar's. The crowd l which came late in the afternoon, after the private school closed. the ] crowd which came In the town cars with their mammas. these were girls who bought the costumes. Gerry | flapper"-expressive word!-bought costumes complete from curled wig to ] jeweled gown. to fan or gem studded walking stick. For masauerades, one girl explained. For a group of costumes that originally cost s1f.- GOO, the gerryflappers paid only Is1.lo0. yet for things which they con- sidered for some vague reason more intimate they paid extravagant sums. Comparatively extravangant, that Is to to say. Farrar herself had hoped there would be no wild bidding for any one object. She seemed content