Saturday 25th July 2020

I think a bridal trump for Beatrice – the Queen Mary Fringe Tiara. The other brides had to make do with unworn Queen Mary tiaras. The Fringe was not only the Queen’s tiara at her own wedding (although broken and hastily mended just before: you can see the gap in the graphs) but still worn by Majesty. And Beatrice had the beauty of it properly repaired. Then her gown: Rufus Pitman comments, ‘an old frock that Granny wore to the pictures.’ Incredible that these things are kept. The little added puff sleeves were odd with the shoulder straps and why was the skirt altered to hang just above the ground? Conservation perhaps? To keep it off the stones when worn outdoors. Originally it was a great puff of silk with no hem. The Beatrice skirt was quite different with a band of different fabric at the bottom.

Funny how women often wear each other’s clothes. Men never do. Merle Barr visited Hastings this week. Genevieve Suzy supplied her with a dress for after sea-bathing and then said, ‘Keep it. It suits you better.’

At least, from this Time of Wrong, Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the World, have acquired a sure grasp of the tiaras.

Rufus told me that Conrad (a novelist) wrote a novel called Chance which is about how a family lost both their tiaras at once but rose above it. I must read it.

Meanwhile Harry Rollo writes: my entire world has been murdered – no perfs, no tours. Nothing but tiny pathetic shoots, weeds in a scorched landscape.

In normal times I would have circled the world twice so far – two trips to America, Japan – also perfs in Amsterdam, Paris – and every night would have been a different scene, friends, colleagues, bores, other people.