In about two months, Leslie Hindman Auctions will auction off the clothing collection of one Leona Helmsley, may she rest in peace... Hopefully somebody in her new location will sport her a glass of ice water now and then.

Helmsely's clothes are sure to be very fashionable, all very well made and all simply reeking of the bad vibes the woman made her bread and butter.



I lived in NYC when she went to prison, and can tell you that she was, easily - and still may be - one of the most reviled characters in the history of the city.

I'm a big fan of Leslie Hindman and her auction house, and would want to auction off this collection if the chance came my way - it interesting to note that it's not a NYC firm doing the sale - but I just can't say I would want anything that touched Helmsley's skin, or her closet or one of her houses, to be anywhere near me. The woman simply emanated meanness. I wrote about her after her death at the end of January after Christie's announced it would auction her furniture:

A ‘Queen’s’ legacy on the block

It was a bittersweet moment.

This morning, without ceremony, the e-mail from Christie’s Auction House entered my inbox. I get several a day from the venerable shop, so it was a good hour or so before I actually clicked on it and opened it up.

There it was. Throughout 2008 Christie’s, over the course of several sales at its Rockefeller Center location – conspicuously not saying it was proud to announce – will auction off the estate of Mrs. Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean. The legacy of one of the most reviled figures in the history of New York City will finally be dispersed to the four corners.

Helmsley once was famously quoted as saying, “We don’t pay taxes. Little people pay taxes.”

She denied ever saying it.

She never, however, denied smashing a teacup at a lunch with lawyer Alan Dershowitz. It seems a bit of hot water had spilled from cup onto saucer. This so enraged Helmsley, Dershowitz related, that she threw it to the floor and demanded the waiter fall to his knees and beg for his job.

She also famously fired one employee, with a casual flip of a hand, while being fitted for a dress. She fired hundreds of employees for the slightest indiscretion.

The stories about her in the city were myriad. She was endlessly lampooned on television, harangued by the paparazzi and the tabloids and mocked by comedians in nightclubs and comedy shows. It was a bonanza to any “little person” when, in 1989, under the prosecution of then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Guiliani, Helmsley was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 16 months in  prison, plus another two under house arrest.

Legal observers speculated that Helmsley’s personality and wealth alienated the jurors.

Hmmm… You think?

A woman worth well in excess of $2 billion – at the time – who routinely stiffed contractors, never tipped at restaurants and sued her dead son’s wife until she was broke… Sounds like a peach to me. Why would the jury be alienated by such sweetness?

The year that she was convicted, 1989, I can remember that the most popular NYC costume that  Halloween was Leona in black and white stripes. In the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade there were probably more than 200 Leona’s re-enacting her famous collapse in front of the Manhattan courthouse. It drew hearty cheers each time.

I don’t need to pile on. In fact, I’ll even point out that she was actually quite generous in her contributions to hospitals and that she established a fund of well more than $5 million to aid the families of firefighters killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Now the epic possessions of Queen Leona’s empire – mostly high-end fine art and furniture – will  go to the highest bidder. All those things that she so highly coveted, that surrounded her to the bitter end, will go back onto the market.

Will they be worth more, or less, for having belonged to her? We’ll see. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to sit my daughter’s picture on a desk she once used, or my keister on a couch where she once snoozed.

Good thing I can’t afford any of it anyway. “Little people” rarely can.

I heard this on NPR this morning as I drove into work, then saw it again on the front page of my Web browser when I logged on. This is a link to the Yahoo story, but you can find it almost anywhere.

It is a newly discovered picture of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, taken at the beach when Keller was eight. In it, as you can see, Sullivan stares intently at her puil, who seems totally at home and content, holding her tecaher's hand and - most importantly - a doll, the first word she was taught.

I have always been especially moved by the story of Keller and Sullivan, and not just because Keller became one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century.

This photo makes a good argument for the inherent intelligence a person is born with, and the human need to communicate, even when - to the outside world at large - it seems as if there is no way to do so. Keller was born blind and deaf, and was seeimingly a lost cause because of a terrible temper and being prone to violence as a child.

Now, I would have been, too, if my perfectly functioning brain had no way to process or express information, yet there was an inherent understanding there. If ever there was an argument for Noam Chomsky's theory of language as a priori, then Keller is it. All it took was a little patience from Sullivan to bring it out in the girl, and one of the great humans in history was allowed to flower. What a moving and interesting story it is, and made all the more remarkable for such a great photo.

As for the photo itself, taken casually in 1888, and stored in a family collection for almost a century, it is - almost - a masterul composition. The print is a bit faded, but the black and white are nicely contrasted, and the viewer is immediately drawn to the tenderness of Sullivan's gaze and, subsequently, to the placidness of Keller's. There is a great love and respect between the two, and it is only later - almost an afterthought - that we see the two holding hands just above the doll in Keller's lap. It is not hands in the midst of communicating, just simply touching and communing. Any of us who have ever had our own children or grandchildren hold our hand in the same way know of the intimacy and familiarity of this lovely touch. Truly, it's a beauty of pic, made more astonishing for its subjects. I do not even want to degrade it by speculating what it could bring at auction, as it probably will never come on the block and is priceless for what it conveys about two of history's most remarkable women.

As an important peice of material culture and history, it is indeed a masterpiece and indeed without peer.

The photo is in the hands of the the New England Historical Geneological Society. Here is a link to the press release and the photo, as pictured above.

This is one of those unexpected, and moving stories that comes around out of the blue, and for which I am very grateful. Check it out.