Prices for Glory

The red flag was out at Sloan's Washington furniture auction house last week to mark another auction. It was not very smart furniture--ricketty rosewood tables, bulbous bureaus, gilt knicknacks popular in the late go's. But Abraham Lincoln's granddaughter, Mrs. Robert J. Randolph, went down to the sale as did 300 other Washington socialites, for under the auctioneer's hammer were the household effects of Admiral &; Mrs. George Dewey. No U. S. hero, not even Charles Augustus Lindbergh, was ever the object of more hysterical mob adulation than was the walrus-mustached old gentleman who as commander of the U. S. Asiatic Squadron sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Harbor, May Day, 1898. For exactly two years it lasted. Congress made George Dewey a full admiral, first since Porter. Dewey songs tinkled on every piano, roared from every barroom. New York gave him the first of its famed civic welcomes, with Edison bulbs spelling out WELCOME DEWEY on the Brooklyn Bridge. Admiral Dewey waited 17 months after the Battle of Manila Bay before coming back to his countrymen. No sooner had he returned than, aged 62, he married the sister of late Publisher John Roll McLean of the Washington Post. The public subscribed money to buy him a house. Admiral Dewey specified what street he would like it on, adding that it should have "a small dining room capable of seating, say, 18 persons." He promptly deeded the people's gift to his new bride. In April 1900 foolish friends urged him to try for the Democratic nomination for President. After much thought he finally gave an exclusive interview to the New York World: ". . . It is the highest honor in the gift of this nation; what citizen would refuse it? "Since studying this subject I am convinced that the office of the President is not such a very difficult one to fill, his duties being mainly to execute the laws of Congress." That was the end. Admiral Dewey died in 1917, was buried in Arlington. In 1925 his body was moved to the crypt of Washington Cathedral. Most tourists turn first to the other side of the vault, where lies Woodrow Wilson who as President did much more than "execute the laws of Congress." Two years ago Dewey's widow died. Last week old friends went to see the residue of the Dewey glory sold. Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean, who was swindled out of $106,000 in an effort to find the Lindbergh baby, bought the walnut armchair that was the hero's deck chair on his flagship the Olympia for $11. A moosehorn liquor set that her estranged husband had given the admiral she got for $30. The four red lacquer tea tables, gift of the Emperor of Japan, went to Abraham Lincoln's granddaughter for $16. Speaker Champ Clark's daughter-in-law got an oval gilt table for $8.50.

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