THE AUCTIONEER'S LONG SENTENCE

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

  not forgetting museum curators and antique dealers who have gathered here on this brilliant spring day at the stately home of Lady Sylvia Floxburgh (deceased), only known daughter of Sir Victor Steadfast Pilgrim KGB, not to be confused with his younger brother Tobias Faithful Pilgrim, the eminent novelist and collector of erotic art from the Edwardian era, particular African fetishes and Micronesian death masks,

indeed not, ladies and gentlemen, for Sir Victor Pilgrim was an explorer, geographer and photographer of extraordinary eminence in the nineteen twenties and thirties before that unfortunate cataclysm, now a mere ripple on the tide of history, known as World War 11, put an end to his peregrinations but not before he amassed a formidable library of books, photographs and film which shed new light on primitive communities surviving in remote areas such as New Guinea where Sir Victor lived with head hunters of the Seepik River for five years, in fact rumour has it that he formed a liaison with a native woman there, fathering several children, one of whom occupied a cabinet post in the first New Guinea Parliament,

but I digress, ladies and gentlemen, because Sir Victor did not confine his activities to New Guinea, indeed no, for if you consult your catalogues, available from the usher at the entrance, you will discover that lots 150 to 378 comprise memorabilia collected from the upper reaches of the Amazon where he disappeared for eight years, during which time Sir Victor discovered at least four primitive tribes, previously unknown to explorers, archaeologists or geographers from the civilised world,

  no mean feat, ladies and gentlemen when we remember that Sir Victor was completely untrained in those disciplines, having grown up on a remote sheep farm in the Mackenzie country of New Zealand and never having attended any school, but was taught by his mother to read and write so he could avail himself of his father’s extensive collection of travel books, some of which are on sale here to-day, lots 398 to 421,

but again I digress, so let us return to Sir Victor’s explorations in the upper reaches of the Amazon river, incidentally his biographer, Lady Sylvia Floxburgh categorically denied that her father fled there to escape the vengeance of a Brazilian tobacco planter who had not guarded his daughters as carefully as he should, a vicious calumny, Lady Sylvia says, and we believe her of course because her reputation for veracity and fair dealing is unimpeachable, endorsed by those who worked with her in the Political Ethics department of Otago University,

but time is passing ladies and gentlemen and we must return to the Amazon and those lost tribes, the first of which was the Axtex, a high Andes group who communicate solely by tongue clicks and whistles,

 second the Arboyans who live in the treetops of one remote Amazon valley, sometimes mistaken for spider monkeys, but the Arboyans lacked tails,

 and lastly the Incxpox who claim descent from a pre Columbian nation which lived high on the mountain tops of the Andes and had an astounding knowledge of astronomy, far in advance of any other nation before the invention of the Hubble telescope, indeed one of their star maps, incised on clay, is on sale to-day (lot 279) and has already attracted bids of more than two million dollars from museums in the United States,

  but fascinating as this is, ladies and gentlemen, the most interesting tribe contacted by Sir Victor was undoubtedly the Naxatilla because, although there had been contact between them and the civilised world,(they worshipped Bing Crosby as a god), the Naxatilla tribe eschewed further intercourse with civilisation and returned en bloc to the upper reaches of the Amazon where their reputation for unspeakably savage rituals, human sacrifice and we suspect cannibalism, became legendary

 and furthermore Lot 342 is a shrunken head which Pilgrim believed to be that of Colonel James Coster who disappeared in 1869 while seeking the source of the Amazon and there is no doubt that the 1935 expedition was the most perilous of all Sir Victor’s explorations and we are fortunate indeed that he survived to write his most renowned book, ‘Pilgrim Up the Amazon’ which was awarded the medal of the Royal Society of Great Britain as well as the American Explorers Foundation prize for the best exploration book of 1938,a prize never before or since awarded outside the United States,

and I would like to remind you, ladies and gentlemen that a signed copy of this book is on sale here to-day, Lot 498,hold it up, Fred, let everybody see that it is in pristine condition even though considerable controversy still surrounds ‘Pilgrim Up the Amazon’ because of later so called evidence gathered by academics who resented Pilgrim’s lack of qualifications, Sir Victor having refused all honorary degrees offered him over his lifetime showed astonishing humility, ha! ha! but I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen none of Sir Victor’s denigrators even tried to replicate his explorations, none of them even tried to lug a sixty pound pack as well as an old glass plate camera, with tripod (lot 348 ladies and gentlemen) through the jungles of the upper Amazon, of course they did not, they sat in their overstuffed armchairs in their London clubs and said it could not be done, not very scientific ladies and gentlemen, not scientific at all, merely spiteful jealousy.

 but let us return to Sir Victor – a worthier protagonist if I may say so and I am sure you will agree for otherwise you would not be gathered here to view, to touch and perhaps to eventually own these relics of a great adventurer’s life which have been treasured and cared for by his daughter, the late Lady Cynthia Floxburgh, who, as well as helping her husband run their high country sheep station, cared for her father in his declining years, recorded his memoirs and turned the south wing of Floxburgh homestead into a museum dedicated to Sir Victor’s explorations and furthermore, I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, Lady Cynthia did not buy these blow pipes (lot 240) or these poison darts (lot 241) and she certainly did not purchase Colonel Coster’s shrunken head from a curio shop in Parnell, as that hack reporter from the Daily Blast maintained,

indeed not, Sir Victor himself brought them down from the impenetrable jungles of the Amazon headwaters as his day book for 1933 (lot 12 in the catalogue) shows, so not to put too fine a point on it, ladies and gentlemen, Sir Victor Pilgrim was a man ahead of his time, if he had been born later he could have scaled Everest with Hillary and Tensing. recording their adventures as they climbed, he could have driven a tractor to the South Pole, he could have accompanied Neil Armstrong to the moon

 but alas, after spending World War 11 behind enemy lines gathering intelligence throughout the Pacific theatre, Sir Victor returned to the bosom of his family broken in health but not in spirit for he survived the war and lived quietly on the family estate until after the death of his beloved wife, Nancy, then our hero spent his final years at Floxburgh station with his daughter, Lady Cynthia until his death in 1982 and his final wish was to be buried at Floxburgh looking out towards the Southern Alps where he had lived as a boy,

and now, ladies and gentlemen we come to the most important item of the sale because before his demise, Sir Victor wrote a letter to his daughter, Lady Cynthia, it is here in this sealed envelope, ladies and gentlemen, addressed in his unmistakable handwriting, Palmer McLean, light upstrokes, heavy down strokes, a lost art indeedis it not, ladies and gentlemen, written with his Osmiroid gold nibbed fountain pen (lot 21 on the catalogue), sealed with red wax bearing the imprint of Lord Floxburg’s crest, and across the envelope, here at the back, is written the words ‘NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL THIRTY YEARS AFTER MY FUNERAL’

 that thirty years expires to-day. ladies and gentlemen although neither Lord nor Lady Floxburgh have survived to this date and the letter, from the most eminent explorer in our history I remind you, was given into my hand this morning by the Floxburgh family solicitor to become part of this historic auction, one of you ladies and gentleman will open and read the last words of Sir Victor Pilgrim because we have decided that lot one will be this letter and the fortunate bidder will be expected to open and read Sir Victor’s last words to us all assembled here, bidding will open at $20,000, bids will be at $5000, now what am I bid opening at $20,000 to you sir and five - - - - -

Much later:   I told them it was a stupid idea, the letter went for eight hundred thousand eventually but the media had a field day when that bloody American collector started reading it aloud and after the first gasps everyone began laughing,

Sir Victor Pilgrim KGB, hero of exploration, author of books that are required reading in every school in the country, never got nearer to the upper reaches of the Amazon than the ports and brothels around the coast. he was cook on a cargo steamer and got his travellers’ tales from drinking companions in the bars of Rio de Janeiro, and his brother, Tobias wrote the books for him and the two of them fudged the photographs, easy in those days before colour, it’s all there in the letter therefore we couldn’t get a bid above $5.00 for any of the other stuff, in fact we had to call off the auction everybody was too busy laughing and it’s all going to be on the six o’clock news, so I can kiss my chief auctioneer’s job goodbye

 and to think I worshipped that old fake as a boy, ruined my eyes reading his damn books under the bedclothes;

just goes to show doesn’t it!