Wednesday 27th April 2022

Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten were in a suite at the Imperial. First of all they were in the Royal Suite but that suddenly developed a structural problem so they were ‘upgraded’ to the Imperial Suite in the Imperial Hotel.  The ‘structural’ problem, Harry said, was most likely that the Royal Suite was required by staggering Royalty of some kind. The names had been switched round to placate. The Imperial Suite could not fail to give pleasure all the same, with its massive bed presented as a throne and a suite of gruelling Imperial furniture organised below it where Harry had received people like Bartok and Kodaly. Every door in the suite opened to a bathroom. The Hotel Imperial had been built as a palace for the Duchess of Wurtemberg but she did not care for it. Too dusty from the Ring Strasse outside.

This was in Vienna. Anthony Mottram and I were entrained by special 1st class train from Prague. But O! the arrival in Vienna. A terrible scene. The population gagged and loving it. Despite their polished chrome and glass setting, their luxe, when not yards and yards of Imperial building… We were back in the Altstadt, as before, even the same room for me, with Anthony Mottram in Reggie Cresswell’s old accommodation. But the nonsense in the breakfast room, with requirements at the buffet but not when sitting down. How can a bourgeois put up with it? How would you ever become bourgeois if you believed in such rituals?

Harry gave two performances in Vienna at the highest conceivable level. It was the same performance given twice but different, of course. Others performed with Harry but they were not free from his direction although incredibly dynamic with a massive wooden hammer. The work Harry had devised is as great as any known previously in the whole history of performance. It is shattering but good for one.

So we were at the core. Backstage at the performance venue…Unfortunately only ticketed with the general for the Belvedere where two paintings picked out by Reggie Cresswell on our previous visit had apparently disappeared from view.

You couldn’t be at the Belvedere for very long because of the requirement not to breathe. On exit I was near collapse and could have become a burden to the Austrian Health Authorities.

Otherwise we went to look at the outside of the Ephrussi mansion where the Ephrussis lived with those awful netsuki. It’s got a plaque outside referring to the book, ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes’ – which one has read, would you believe it.

New Artist for Me: Richard Gerstl: the Sisters Karoline and Pauline Fey. Great Painting

The Belvedere, Vienna. A Munch of Some Mates of HIs. Unusual

The Belvedere, Vienna. Klimt’s Idea of a Sunflower

Schiele’s Idea of a Sunflower. His Painting of the Boy in Red NOT on view

A Monet Portrait: Rare. What do you Think?

Horse at Death Bed. Helpful

NOT ON VIEW NOW This is ‘Large Landscape in the Prater’ by Ferdinand Georg Waldmülller 1849, Another Rare Artist Highlighted by Reggie Cresswell. It Appears to be a Photograph but Isn’t

NOT ON VIEW NOW This is by Francois Gérard. The Husband Seems Rather Vain and the Wife is Struggling with her Adoration. There’s an Interesting Trajectory between his Area of Reproduction and the Consequent Baby

NOWHERE TO BE SEEN NOW This is a Schiele of a Child: Not Quite What the Parents were Expecting, I Imagine.

Backers at Harry’s Perf Venue. Glamour’s Lack..

Interior at the Hotel Alstadt Vienna. The Great Liver Corridor, as Named by Anthony Mottram

The Ephrussi Palace, Vienna, once full of Ephrussi and their Ghastly Nesuke. Very much on the Street, as you can See

Tuesday 26th April 2022

I was touring in the old Eastern Bloc, including Austria. As you know, Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague, single-handedly, along with many other Gays, re-built the bloc after communism. The big worry was flooring. The parquet in AM’s museum apartment in Prague is agony. Ideally it shouldn’t be used. The tycoon owner oils it  himself. It was restored and matched as old ladies in neighbouring apartments passed to the beyond and then their walls were beaten down and their former rooms  absorbed into the main tycoon museum sweep. But we dined out each night and the first day lunched out as well, at the Ukraine Briefing Lunch given by the Prague Chamber of Commerce.

Is there any worse decor worry than that your floor might be spoiled? I feel the same about my kitchen floor, which is distressed but with massive art. The wear of years I love. But bits chipping off is awful. I keep a little pot of diluted paint in a Georgian cupboard to apply to these chipped off bits.  Every three months another layer of varnish is given to the whole floor.

In Prague you can wander through history. In the Old Town Square is the scene of the Defenestration of Prague, then a few blocks away is the theatre where Don Giovanni was premiered, while at the top of Wenceslas Square is the plaque marking the spot where Jan Palach self-immolated in 1968.

All this arc of history has now arrived at floor-worry in Anthony Mottram’s museum apartment, the freedom to experience floor-worry and it’s all been worth it.

The Scene of the 1st Defenestration of Prague. The 2nd occurred in 1945 elsewhere

Here was Don Giovanni’s Premiere Given

Jan Palach Self-Immolated Here

Monday 18th April 2022

Robert Nevil failed to resurrect on Easter Day. Usually he never fails, also to be born at Christmas as the two go together. But this year, unfortunately, he was found prone amongst wood anemones in a wood.

Is this the end?

The Gay Mother conveys bewilderment. She heard someone on the radio explaining that their poverty was such they would not be able to have the TV on all day.

Her TV recommendations proved invaluable. Filth! The Mary Whitehouse Story. And Thatcher and Reagan.

No, Mary Whitehouse was not right after all. The Gay Mother doesn’t think so either.

I do love the colours of Easter – primrose yellow, violet, pink and pale green. We had a tea table yesterday which arrived at these colours of its own accord.

On Saturday the Gay Mother was moved to go in quest of the wood anemones, meaning a hazardous walk into the woods over lumpy terrain. But they were there and flowering quite well. She has kept faith with the wood anemones over many years. Some years they don’t appear and hope is lost. What evil force has got at them? But somehow they seem always to come back.

Robert Nevil – Failed Resurrection

Easter Colours

More Easter Colours

Wood Anemones – They’re Back

Sunday 17th April 2022

It’s the Patriarch the Gay Mother can’t stand. Kirill of Moscow.

Yesterday she said, when I admired the floor in the restaurant and suggested it for her own kitchen, ‘I’m beyond any aesthetic way of looking now. I’m just surviving.’ Shocking. I said, ‘You need to be careful. You’ll let yourself go.’ I didn’t say so but I wonder if you can survive without an aesthetic way of looking.

Anyway, there’s to be no housework today, despite that she was to be found sweeping out the front porch which has been opened after the Winter.

Val texted from Moscova, Hastings. He’s fighting Funeral Poverty.

We fight on. We fight to win.

Friday 8th April 2022

I forgot to mention – or maybe I didn’t – that I was briefed at a high level in a Mayfair luncheon booth re: Putin and then again in Prague at a Chamber of Commerce working luncheon where Anthony Mottram silenced the restaurant owner who was asking a question supposedly but in fact outlining at length how Russian ships were in the Bay of Bengal or perhaps it was Chinese. ‘We’ve come to hear the General,’ Anthony Mottram said, recalling the then Duchess of York who swept past Mrs Simpson’s attempts to act as hostess at Balmoral: ‘I’ve come to dine with the King,’ she said.

The General was a former Nato General and former head of the Czech equivalent of MI6. Now he is in a band which does baroque music in a heavy metal style. But he can never have been a mainstream sort of person. Discussion was given as luncheon was taken. The table was huge, giving the feeling of a summit. I could imagine Mrs Merkel, Emanuel Macron, Ursula van der Leyden similarly arranged. The men had good blue suits with a sheen and open-necked shirts. The General said the campaign is going badly for Russia but don’t underestimate the Russian army. He reeled off lists of weapons yet to be unleashed. Putin, he treated as if rational, claiming he had been under a certain amount of provocation and had specific objectives such as recognition of Crimea and annexation of the eastern parts of Ukraine which are Russian-speaking. But his thrust was dispersed by interventions from members of the summit, particularly one who had worked in Ukraine over twenty years and said it was a country that had got rid of corrupt oligarchs and was advancing towards a much more prosperous and progressive state of affairs.

Summit members were wrestling with Russian history, Putin – who is he and why? Ukraine – what is it? What’s to be done? What hope? What future? Soon it was cars at the door and other appointments…

Tuesday 29th February 2022

On this day of days when Majesty drove out, last Wednesday the Royal Biography was launched at Hatchards. Royston helped Lord Airlie to the lift. He has done more than any other courtier to shape the reign. The monarchy is more secure now than ever because of him. He created the Royal Collection, re-aligned the Household on new economic lines, opened Buckingham Palace. So Royston told the taxi driver who was to return Lord Airlie and Lady Airlie (of the Bedchamber) to their blocki in Sloane. By the lift I cornered George Osborne to try to explain to him that our grannies were first cousins. Royston was appalled but he’d corner anyone anywhere. Pressure of time with the Great. No time to go into the Lord Lucan connection nor how when our cars returned to our mansion in the Far West after the Gay Grandpa’s memorial in January 1969, flowers from Lady Osborne had arrived. The Gay Great Granny often enjoyed a day out in Sussex with Lady O, despite her scandalous past and the affair of the man under a tree in India by which she was the mother of John Aspinall, although Aspinall was the name of her subsequent husband not the man under a tree.

Anne Robinson had a frozen, ghostly look. At least one of Her Private Secretaries was present. Dicky Arbiter told Royston that She might have an operation. Valerie Singleton – well, she said Blue Peter was a good programme so why not be on it forever. Royston was furious that I’d mentioned Blue Peter. Princess Margaret complimented her dress. Unheard of, so attendants said upon hearing. James Landale was before me in the queue to buy the great work. He was a matching set with David Cameron re: Eton hence chumy with… Haydon Gwynne – an amazing 64.

There must have been so many others. If only they’d do an App for recognising the Great. Royston blew up the Royal Historic Palaces for losing money. That young man loves fashion. I suggested an exhib on Royal Menswear. He said they’ve got lots of the Duke of Windsor’s clothes. Well, what are they thinking of ? An exhib at once. This young man is frocked to the skies, always has sockettes and bare ankles, even in winter. I noticed when he fetched his coat and bag the co-ordination was supreme. Huge feet, worn as an asset. Everything thought of. He loves also hotels and couldn’t recover from Olga Polizzi being present. I said I’d once seen her mother getting out of a Rolls Royce outside Heals in 1978. She had a mac but it was mink-lined. Olga Polizzi – an amazing 76. William Shawcross is her husband, tall, so visible at the function. His father, as I told the young man, was the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, the trials.

So, history, history…

Outside, Royston hailed a bald man and said, ‘The succession is assured.’ This was Simon Sebag Montifiori. Santa and the daughter were a cohort looking for a taxi. Royston said, ‘What glamour and so young, both of them. ‘ Simon Sebag Montifiori said, ‘I know. It’s unbelievable. And all mine.’ Royston said, ‘The transition is working well. I saw you in a private tent with the Prince of Wales. I suppose it’s the access of important Jewish people.’

But later, in the Wolseley, Royston became melancholy. ‘We’re a dying breed,’ he said.

Monday 28th March 2022

How could I have forgotten Fabergé?  I knew there was something wrong. But now I think of it, I know why. No photographs allowed.

If they won’t allow photographs, what hope is there of remembering anything? Come on, V&A.

The cigarette case given by Mrs Keppel to King Edward V11 was glorious – lapis blue with a two-headed serpent in diamonds twining over it. Fabergé was a shop really. The idea was to see how many relatively everyday objects could be turned into miniatures of themselves in superb enamel with jewel encrustation. Endless tiny boxes, miniscule pianos, writing desks etc. The last word in uselessness, but essential for decoration. I must confess the spirits sank at times. I had no idea Fabergé did such a range. Some of the animals are hideous. Also the horrible folk figures. The glasses of water with a flower in them (the glass and water done in rock crystal) are all very well, but the flowers look like plastic, although in fact some priceless material. Overall, the Fabergé feel is incredibly bedroom. A certain creamy pink and pale blue enamel are favoured. Absolutely boudoir.

They saved the best to last. Finally some eggs. I never realised one of the Queen’s eggs is actually filigree and you can see through it. Just the most exquisite thing..

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Fabergé. Fabergé is craft as great as the world has seen, quite transcending the luxe, mad excesses of the epoch that adored him. Nicky Russia, such a client, was in fact a plain man but buying Fabergé was one of the best things he did. Of course, I’m scheming how to get hold of some myself, and enough to make an impact. What are the prices now? Any hope of a downturn? Or can one make one’s own?

Saturday 26th March 2022

A Peruvian Exhibition was given at the British Museum. There was a preoccupation with severed heads. The blanket work was charming but not to be trifled with. Persons were depicted as monkeys and composed of squares. In the ceramic area there was also excellence. A vessel sprouting scallops was a striking oddity. But I think one would fear the Incas.

At Kensington Palace an exhib opened on the theme of Royal photography. Intriguing but a little incidental. We know how the iconography of Royalty has thrived through photography and that Royalty were photographers themselves from earliest days. Queen Alexandra’s Box Brownie album – utter Heaven. Tiny snaps of shapes on yachts which the captions inform are the Empress Minnie, a clutch of half-baked Wales girls etc. In the exhib I loved the Cecil Beaton of the Winz with their pugs and the Princess Alix of Wales with one of her children on her back – so new in its informality. Also Queen Victoria knitting with Princess Beatrice in their private sitting room, which towers around them in monumental grandeur but stuffed with knick-knacks. Queen Mary visiting the less fortunate – surprising the deep care on her face, her closeness to those she has come to care for. But her fabulous Royal shape, a lampstand gone mad, in utter evidence.

An evening function opened privately a selection of prints and drawings from the collection of Sir John Soane at the Soane Museum. Royston thought the world of the John Soane museum as reflected in the guests invited open to question – only a small corner of the world represented, not even Guardian-reading. Giving her speech, the curator of the exhib was overcome with coughing. Amazingly the room didn’t empty. Her claim to asthma was readily embraced. Later Royston encouraged her to take over the V&A with a bigger exhib. The actual show was superbly selective: just the one Grinling Gibbons drawing. The Piranesi was amazingly wild and uncharacteristic. Of huge interest were the architectural drawings Soane devised for teaching purposes, technical but giving a flavour of a place the student could not hope to see.

We didn’t dine after this exhib. Royston had been in committee all day and pronounced dining after finished as a thing.

Peruvian Blanket Work

A Peruvian Table Piece

The Winz with their Pug by Cecil

Out-takes from a Shoot thought Too Intimate for Publication at the Time

Princess Alix with Back Baby – Daring and New in Its Day 

Incredibly Informal – Queen Victoria Knitting in Her Private Sitting Room with Princess Beatrice – Note the Gruelling Informality of the Private Sitting Room 

Queen Mary – So Caring

Her Late Majesty Queen Mary – A dazzling Glimpse of Her Care and Intimacy

Sir John Soane’s Realisation of Stonehenge for his Students Who Could not Visit it

Uncharacteristic Piranese

Robert Adam – a Design for the Drawing Room Ceiling at Harewood House 

Friday 11th March 2022

Always the end of the world is nigh and always we are at War. For the last 2 years we have been at war against Covid-19. War-time conditions apply: careless talk costs lives, don’t ask any questions, do what the Government tells you. If you don’t, or even squeak the tiniest doubt, you’re the enemy. It’s also a war against Climate Change, with similar rules: no dissent allowed. ‘Settled’ science etc. The third war is against our own culture, which is conducted in the all-or-nothing way of Wars: remove the statutes, vilify and denounce the perpetrators of ‘hate speech’ etc. Ravage, rage and destroy in order to win, win, win.

These wars are necessary because if not won the world will come to an end.

The Gay Mother heaved out the atlas, for Napoleonic study of the antique type of war now being fought by Putin. She googleth also. ‘Putin had a wife but not any more. He might have daughters,’ she revealed. She took a dim view of this.

Otherwise she’s very much been promoting a recipe for duck with marmalade given in the Radio Times by Raymond Blanc. We had it on Sunday executed by me. It’s hardly a recipe. It’s Duck with Marmalade. A dash of red wine vinegar is the secret ingredient.

The Gay Mother styled Aga-Sautéed potatoes with roasted parsley stalks to go with Duck with Marmalade.  This is a completely new styling. No even the hugest influencer chef on Insta has thought of it.

She’s told the gardeners to try the ‘no-dig’ approach in a confined patch. But she’s doubtful. ‘So much compost is needed for it to work.’

The Gay Mother’s Campaign Management

Completely New Styling: Sautéed Potatoes with Roasted Parsley Stalks by the Gay Mother

Friday 4th March 2022

I phoned Val. He described Storm Eunice from his point of view. He returned to bed to weather the storm. But the most frightful banging began. So he had to get up. His patio door was flung open and lurching. Apparently when I cleaned his windows I had not locked it up properly. So, in the teeth of Storm Eunice, Val fought with the door, finally triumphing over the elements and getting it secure. ‘Val,’ I said, ‘the scene should be painted and widely reproduced, replacing Grace Darling rowing out to that lighthouse as the artwork of choice in every 19th century home.’ Val liked the idea. ‘We’d have to get Gerícault. Nobody else would do to outdo The Raft of the Medusa.’

Val said he’d turned on the TV and discovered a War in the Ukraine. ‘But why?’ he said. He was begging for background, rather than blow-by-blow as offered by the BBC. I said, ‘I believe the Russians think it’s theirs.’ At once Val was expert. ‘All this has been going on since the 13th century. Such nonsense.’ He reeled off all the facts for five minutes at least. ‘Ukraine has always been a separate country,’ he said.

Royston King phoned. He’s worried about the Monarchy. But there’s always been worry about the Monarchy.

As it happens I was down with that virus that’s been mentioned quite a lot recently. Or rather up. I was always able to carry out my domestic duties, such as plumping the drawing room last thing and finalising the kitchen for the next day, as well as gardening, librarian work and managing my estates.

Something has happened that could wreck everything (I don’t mean nuclear war). I said to the Gay Mother: ‘We may have to cut back on fish and just be confined to hake.’ Reduced to hake only, because …. well, it’s an insurrection really. Finally they’ve come for us, those of birth, and are going to claw us down.