Tuesday 31st March 2020

…and I only just had breakfast. Engagements are beginning to pile up… we’re to have a virtual dinner party on Saturday apparently…. bicycle outings are spoken of … You remember Emma – as in Jane Austen’s Emma – somebody said to her, ‘What a social whirl you live in!’ She replied: ‘What do you mean? A ball was spoken of which never took place…’

In those days, in the early 19th century, people didn’t do much. You couldn’t go more than a few miles. You were limited to those nearby. The odd card party… but then viruses didn’t get about.

I said to Royston yesterday: ‘This confinement is how Royalty live.’ He was having none of it. He said the Duchess of Cambridge had been seen in Waterstones the week before last… yes, with a car waiting outside, probably a detective lurking. She couldn’t exactly pop out.

No, I insist: we’re brought closer to Royalty in this limitation. Thrown back on our antiques and grounds such as they are. If we go out we might be recognised by the Police and overwhelmed – rather like when Lilibet and Margaret tried to take the Underground at Tottenham Court Road after a visit to the YMCA and Crawfie had to get the detective to fetch a car…

Royston and I spent hours yesterday wondering what the true relationship between Harry and Meghan is… we’re sure it’s incredibly psychological.  And there’s more than meets the eye.

After that Harry Rollo called (not Harry Sussex), so it was nearly 8pm before I could carry out the daily call to the Gay Mother, who has got her broad beans and potatoes planted. Harry said, ‘Do you remember restaurants? Where you could go in, sit down and order food?’ He is sure that future generations will be astonished to hear of such a thing. His performances will be found on shelves in years to come, he says, and considered examples of the pre-Corona era. Now he is concentrating on tiny socially distanced manifestations of Art. ‘If I’d had my own way, from youth I would have lain on a chaise-longue conceiving such tiny performances. I’d never have done anything else. Never gone anywhere…’ He could have lived all his life in a viral situation, perfectly happily.

With all this social life, how am I ever to get that trolley tortoise-shelled – if it is to be tortoise-shelled?  First of all 4 more coats of Gesso, each one sanded. Kelm Driver did a lot of the preliminary Gesso-ing, in the days before, and before mineral wealth was axed… Before that, I’m trying to finish the silicone filling in the lower bathroom. Then just touching up paintwork with an artist’s brush. After that I move on to the dining room woodwork… that’ll be months of labour.

Will I ever get to the trolley? And the headboard… and the little table… all needing paint finishes.

The days drift by, as they do in later life. Virginia Woolf said, ‘You look up and it’s tea-time.’ I really must get on…. Yesterday I didn’t do my exercises in my exercise room – which is one of the disused bedrooms on the 1st floor.

By the way, I’ve news of that duvet cover with the stain. It’ll have to wait. I tried Nitromors…

The Trolley and Headboard: have Been Docked here for 4 years at Least: Will they ever Acquire their Paint Finishes? Oh, and I Forgot: the Gilded Brackets – I’ve got 3 sets to Put Up!

My Egg Florentine Last Night: Was quite Pleased with my Poaching. It’s Disappointing that Service is so Quickly Over: Five Courses last Night over in 25 Mins: Humous and bread, Egg Florentine, Cheese and Celery, Plums aux Star Anise, Choc. You see that Silver Needs Cleaning

Sunday 29th March 2020

I’m worried the epidemic will be over and I still won’t have got everything done. If not myself taken of course.  Gesso-ing that trolley is finally on the horizon. Then a paint finish. But I remembered  – out of gesso. All shops shut. No hope. Unbelievably Amazon delivered on Thursday. I’ve got the parcel in quarantine for 3 days before handling in my quarantine area. But I got gesso. Essential supplies.

All I’ve done today is sweep the top terrace a bit. Beastly wind snapped a bit off my bupleurum. Went out and tied it up.  That was in the back garden.

Speaking of quarantine, what are your routines? A few years ago, there was a spate of bleach attacks. I formed the idea that Mould and Mildrew Spray (which contains bleach) had been withdrawn from the shops and so ordered in bulk from Amazon. Now mercy of mercies, I’ve got three full bottles, easily enough to last, even for six months of lock-down. Just a little squirt on an old wet wipe that’s dried out and been re-moistened is enough. I do my keys, wallet and phone upon returning from the shops. Plus the alarm keypad and the doorknobs. If I think the bleach might harm the surface (i.e. not metal) I clean again with eco-spray or anti-bacterial.

But they haven’t told us what we’re supposed to do with our shopping. How come that’s not raving with virus? I’m wiping mine now with old wet wipe sprayed with Dettol anti-bacterial. As much as possible. But the loose vegetables and fruit? Where does it end? And can one get the sequencing right? I don’t see how to get the stuff out of the bags without touching the bag which one will have touched while in the mart and if you pick up the bag to wet wipe it then you’ve touched it and your hands might be viral.. the same with individual items. How do you wet-wipe them without touching them or laying them on surfaces which then get contaminated?

What about clothes worn out of doors? Should they be burnt?

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m using old wet wipes? Well, they might be in short supply. Will we be able to get any more? Marvellous: we’ve got lock-down, viral attack AND rationing all at the same time, plus money ruin looming.

Poor Little Rich Gays, it’s all right to be annoyed. You should stamp your foot and shout, even if alone. It will do you good.

Merle Barr said that I won’t get Coronavirus but I might go insane instead. She is thinking of deploying a social distancing device for use in supermarkets. Angus Willis said one of his magnificent traditional brooms, sold in his Hasting shop or online, would be ideal while his range of bottle brushes could be re-deployed for anal tidiness in view of the lav paper crisis.

I’ve got a terrific battle on with a stained duvet cover in my downstairs bathroom. Three days now. Is it ink or is it paint?

Anyway, I can’t be dithering about here. I’ve got to go up to my exercise room. Then phone the Gay Mother for the daily phone call. She’s threatening to order everything from Fortnums, by the way. Joshua Baring, meanwhile, has got Leila to do him parcels which he collects plus meat delivered from the country. Incredibly grand. He’s wearing surgical gloves out of doors, discarded after one use.

Gesso-package in Quarantine with Other Items – the Shopkeeper Licked the Bag to get it Open

Stained Duvet Cover Undergoing Treatment

My Stain and Anti-Covid Nerve Centre: Mould and Mildew Spray in Shot

Saturday 28th March 2020

The first week – or is it the second? Mental confusion is the state one longs for most, these days.  On Monday, Laura Malcolm suggested a meeting in Hyde Park. At the Norweyan War Memorial, which I’d never heard of. So I proceeded by bicycle, as did she. Glaring Spring day, much blossom, a little whippy wind. Nobody there. Laura said it was enchanting, London so quiet. We sat at a social distance and I ate a banana ( a bit worried about fingering it before eating with un-sanitised hand – but had I touched anything on the way?). Confused. I had to eat the banana because I’d panic-bought a bunch the Saturday before and they were starting to go off. That’s another problem – getting all the food eaten. Nothing must be wasted, as in WW2. An enthusiastic young man stopped by and offered to take a photo of us plus sanitising with his own sanitiser Laura’s phone before handing it back. What a service! Laura and I agreed that the Norweyan War Memorial was a bit of a disappointment – just a lump of rock, inscription illegible. Not nasty though. I laid my banana skin on the ground, knowing that Royston would be cross with pollution in his park – which he was, later on the telephone. ‘Others will think it’s all right for them to leave worse litter.’ I forgot to explain that a crow made off with my banana skin almost immediately. That counts as an event now. A park bench had ‘David Tang’ inscribed on it. I thought I knew that name – from the time before. Some sort of massive mogul Earl’s Court Gay? Well, I just Wiki-ed and it seems not. Married with children. But a giver of incredible events? Like Sir Elton…

We saw two magpies.

Laura said, ‘It’s lucky we like our houses.’ So true. Poor Little Rich Gays – all those hours screaming down the phone to C.P.Hart re: the wrong bath taps will have their reward. I’m also thinking: lucky so many of us went to boarding school. We know what it is to be confined – and deprived. Although on Monday, and on Tuesday I wasn’t confined, but out, out, on my bicycle. I bought some stewing beef for Aunt Lavinia who mustn’t go out at all due to age to hand over to Laura, who lives near her. But I left it behind, so had to get some more and bike all the way to her residence in Fulham. On the way back, I ran into (at a social distance) Churchill and Churchill, one of whom is intimate with the Ducal Grandson. As twins at birth naturally they were given the same name. Churchill and Churchill were not maintaining a social distance and had a luxury dog with them. ‘Chelsea’s deserted,’ they said, with disbelief.

Two Magpies – Good Luck?

The Norweyan War Memorial. Not Thrilling

Sir David Tang – his Bench. Was he a Poor Little Rich Gay?

My Banana Skin in Hyde Park. Royston King not Pleased

Thursday 26th March 2020

How are you managing? Are you still there?

I’m just going to take one last look back before our present terrible reduction. Cecil Beaton and Picasso. I re-visited the Cecil Beaton exhib at the National Portrait Gallery on that last Friday. On the last Thursday Royston and I toured the Picasso, mis-named ‘Works on Paper’ at the Royal Academy after the private breakfast. Neither of these shows will be seen by anyone now, presumably.

The general idea is: Picasso is a towering genius whereas someone like Cecil Beaton is barely decorative. At the packed PV with Mrs May it was hardly possible to view the Cecil. But touring the Picasso, Royston said, ‘Certainly the Paris of Picasso was more innovative than the London of Cecil Beaton.’ Standing there in the midst of the works, I thought: this must be right. Blue Picasso is heaven. I never knew that a Rose period followed, before he burst forth with the astonishing full avant garde of Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon. Further phases followed, including one of painting women to look like Easter Island statues. That was in the 1930s, so there must have been many more phases but I can’t quite recall what they were. In old age, he was filmed with no top on, doing something with marker pens. It was a kind of instant art. Terrifying black eyes. Possessed. Our curator, whom we adore and have enjoyed many times in private tours, was making a joke of Picasso’s conduct in real life, consuming muses, discarding wives, and dedicated to male phallic supremacy. I wish I understood better. I’ve never liked Picasso, always preferred Matisse, apart from the Blue. ‘It leaves me cold,’ said Royston, finally. I agree. One could only feel a rapacious over-powering genius, tremendous technique, hardly a faulty picture, but ugly and ploughing this narrow furrow of sex, sex, sex, with him on top. No faces, or at least no expression, just blanks, People as pure form, interfering emotion stripped away. I know about that. It was all the rage when I was young. Modernism. Although in fact misleading, because when you try to remove the conventional perspective and the natural emotional engagement of the artist with the subject, a lot of other more dangerous obsessions come galloping through the gap, in Picasso’s case penis-mania and setting women up as muses in order to destroy them.

The next day I was at the nearly deserted National Portrait Gallery to re-visit silly Cecil and his trivial photos. He hoped to elevate his sisters to Society. Even his mother joined in the dressing up. His great dream in later life was to be found by his friends dining alone with the Queen Mother. At Ashcombe in the 1930s, his country home, he mounted extraordinary Fete Champetre, which was lot of Gays and their women friends scampering around. A particular interest, which I and many other Poor Little Rich Gays share, was in minor Germany Royalty of the pre-1st World War era. His masterwork, My Royal Past, is a spoof memoir of Princess Baroness von Bulop. Its glory is the group photo, which must have been taken at Ashcombe: ‘The arrival of King Boris at Klosterhoven, 1899: a souvenir of happier days.’ Happier days was grim Royalties, clamped into frockage with a supremely random vase, devastatingly off-centre, towering beside them. This picture wasn’t in the exhib. Instead you got Baba Beaton as the Duchess of Malfi, Sylvia Townsend Warner, the Duchess of Westminster and so on. Cecil drew from the theatre for his mis-en-scene; it’s a highly artificial frame-work, lavish and contrived, in which the character of the sitter is somehow manifest. In that sense more successful than Picasso. And Cecil had more fun with his dressing-up and carry-on. Despite the wracking background worry of that day and all the days since, Cecil gave me more joy than Picasso. Let’s put it this way: if Picasso is a raving genius, then why shouldn’t Cecil be as well? Only better. Just as limited as their different ways, equally inventive and new, but Cecil with the greater hold on reality, doing what Art is supposed to do, transforming but not disfiguring.

‘The Arrival of King Boris at Klosterhoven, 1899: a souvenir of happier days’ Photograph from ‘My Royal Past’ not in Exhib

Baba Beaton as the Duchess of Malfi

Daphne du Maurier

Anna May Wong

The Duchess of Westminster: Tiara like Glass

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Oliver Messel in a Costume

Nora Holt: Royston King complained there Weren’t Enough Black People

A Minor German Royalty

Another

Cecil Graphed by Another as Elinor Glyn

Cecil Having Fun

Sunday 22nd March 2020

This remark is made by either Vladimir or Estragon (it really doesn’t matter which) in Waiting for Godot.  It refers to a carrot one or other of them is eating but also of course to their whole predicament of being alive.

For the 3rd time since the Poor Little Rich Gays began we face catastrophe. In 2008, money very nearly came to an end, in 2018, my mineral interests blew up in my face and I faced ruin and termination. Now this. Not just Pestilence and Death, but Money Ruin and Starvation all at once. Several times this week, crawling up the stairs of my official home, I longed to merge for good with the stair post. But yesterday Anthony Mottram of Prague telephoned from Prague and I was bucked up.

Who would believe that in a trice we would be reduced to this medieval condition: walled in, scrabbling for food, eeking out and bleach wiping to ward off pestilence?

In the last week before closure, I was delirious with events, although, truth to tell, attendance had dwindled to almost nothing by the Thursday. On the Friday I took my last lunch in an almost empty restaurant. At the National Portrait Gallery on the Tuesday, for the Cecil Beaton Opening, Royston King was talking to Jacob Rees-Mogg when I arrived. He (Mogg, that is) held out a hand. ‘No, no,’ I said, offering my elbow. He began a vague discourse, as a matter of remote interest, about how he’d heard that a family took to washing their hands more often and it seemed that they were transmitting less virus as a result.

This View was packed though.

Mrs May arrived with her husband. Black suit, some kind of light jacquard material, and red difficult heels. Flash of red at the neck. Definitely an outfit. Her idea was that she’d come to see the exhib and like any dedicated retiree inched round the walls speaking to nobody. Two security officers lurked near her at all times. It was easy to tell who they were. One of them was quite large. Why doesn’t she know that nobody at a PV looks at the art? I was informed privately at an earlier function by someone who’s known her since youth that she’s grown odder and odder with the years. Otherwise Royston was besieged by people in the museum world and Philip Mould also was addressed.  Always the chat was of things to come, plans and schemes.  Except for the woman who casually let slip that her daughter was at home with a temperature!

So that was that. On Thursday morning at the Royal Academy fund-raising breakfast, panic was mounting. Hand sanitiser beside the buffet. That great name known to Harry Rollo was present and couldn’t have been more charming. Royston got out of him that he’s now living in St James’s, having given away various properties to a former partner. Art did have a small triumph though – more later.

By the evening though, audience for the Winchester Boys Concert at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall substantially reduced. Nobody touching the eats. I waved my hand near an old Wykhamist. ‘I’m using Mould and Mildrew Remover,’ I explained. ‘It’s got bleach in it.’ The Wykhamists are famous for their dryness and distain for the random.

By last Sunday, thump. That was it. All gone.

In February Harry Rollo and Mercury Mr Kitten dined. Harry’s theory of Brexit is that Nations are like people. They grow old and become confused. That’s what’s happened to our Nation. Or had before Corona Virus overtook it. At Rufus Pitman’s launch – so, so long ago now – Raj was murmuring with an Indian friend, ‘It’s a Hindu takeover.’ Because of Rishi replacing Sajid. Also Priti, of course. Lord Arrowby (he’s not using his other title) lounged against a bookcase saying ‘F..k’ as often as possible with one of his underground ‘mates’. The Gay Mother was withering about Mary Beard. ‘I don’t care. She looks awful.’ ‘No, Mary Beard we don’t want to see you nude. So boring.’ Lucy Worsley also crushed. Had nothing new to tell her about the Armada. The Gay Mother gained 96 in February. She’s getting younger and younger. ‘How have I done it?’ she proclaimed upon being congratulated by numerous relations in the hall of our ancestral mansion. Later she said, ‘I am worried about being this age. Pollution, you know. And climate change.. taking up space.’

All that quite, quite gone now. Shock, loss and grief, plus crashing markets and bare shelves in the mart. Then yesterday Anthony Mottram telephoned from Prague. As you know he’s a huge ‘consultant’ in Prague, worth a fortune for some reason. Well, he’s quite chipper. V. strict regime in Prague. Only allowed out with masks. The Vietnamese corner store left a free supply (which they’d made themselves) on the pavement outside their shop. No gatherings of any kind allowed. But he foresees greater knowledge. There must be a breakthrough. Every virus brain in the world bent to the task. As for the money side, well, this has never happened before. All governments of every country in the world will have to bail out. Unprecedented. A difficult year, Anthony Mottram thinks, but then recovery…

In the meantime, whatever happens, we’ll get used to the much as we go along.

Just to Remind of Simpler Understated Days of Frockage

Sunday 8th March 2020

It was nearly time to mount the air for London in World Traveller Plus Class. That was going to be freezing cold as well. But how was I to know I’d have to get my Zara coat down from the locker? Ned and Peter promoted the Aquarium for my final day. They said there was a huge glass wall with a shark behind it… such a feature.

I should mention the High Museum in Atlanta. I visited a day or two before departure. Yes, there was a Mrs High who loved Art in a coffee morning sort of way and started a museum in her house. Now it’s major and Richard Meier did the extension. The trouble is if vast numbers of school children are kettled in the atrium the racket booms through the entire place: not a single quiet room. A good collection: you think there’s going to be just the one Monet but there are more. The same with Sisley, Manet, Matisse etc. Intermittent displays of English china, early American furniture etc. Then we come to the self-taught artists department: marvellous, especially their names such as Nellie Mae Rowe. I just love this sort of thing: these artists cared nothing for the public, or the museums or the world of art-buying. They just went on and on producing works of art according to their own lights, as they saw fit. One of them got famous on TV in the 70s – but that was an accident. His garden was crammed with art works. It was a kind of mania and some visitors were alarmed. But really such a flow, such a force… incredible.

But flash forward to that final day. I rock up at the Aquarium. Really it was just to be usefully occupied before boarding at 9pm for London. $45, they say, for entrance. My card doesn’t work. I pledge to get cash from a machine but in the interval change my mind. The Civil Rights Museum is across the way. Who knew? And only $21. Card works and I’m in. Well, it was a great museum. Much less random than the Martin Luther King Visitor Centre. You can sit at a counter and put on headphones and get a re-creation of what a black person might have experienced peacefully protesting at a Whites Only lunch counter – even the sensation of the chair moving and a raving White person breathing in your ear. I couldn’t bear the full duration. The presentation of the end of poor Martin Luther King – the terrible run-down motel in Memphis, the wretchedness and misery of it all. No wonder he had to have sex as a recreation to relieve anxiety. Who can blame him? The many others that died for the cause… in one of the rooms a black woman approached me to admire my Zara coat. I feared a telling off.

The High Museum: Nellie Mae Roe: Self-Taught. Self-Portrait as a Little Girl Doll

Mary Proctor: The Obamas: Another Self-Taught

Bill Traylor: Untitled. He died 1949: between the age of 85 and 89 he produced 1200 drawings of vibrant life in Montgomery Alabama. Self-Taught

Cecilia Beaux: 1855 to 1942. American Woman Artist

Unusual John Singer Sargent:

I Thought I was so Clever and this must be Same Artist as seen in Belvedere Vienna when Conducted by Reggie Cresswell. But it Isn’t. Same Extraordinarily Intense Trees: This is Albert Bierstadt. Vienna one was Waldmuller: See July 2015

Wednesday 4th March 2020

We had Gay Life in Atlanta as well as the High Museum and the President Carter Presidential Library and Museum. From Ned and Peter’s Unit you could see the Gay District – a junction with the Rainbow painted round it.

President Carter is such a good man.  His childhood cruet set and a baby cardy made by his wife Lurlene were the highlights of his museum for me. No other traces of her frockage remain apparently. He strove so mightily for good. In one of the taped segments that boom out of the wall he is heard saying that the best years have been latterly, after they left the White House; he has been building houses for poor people (literally: sawing away) and monitoring elections in parts of the world where elections need to be monitored.

Like all Presidential Libraries, this one has a full-scale mock up of the Oval Office which you can stand in. As always, with these things, one is struck by how small it is.

Peter drove me uptown (or further into the woods) to visit a gentleman friend in the Plaza Building. Here Elton John possesses the entire top floor and we rode up in the elevator to see the common parts outside his apartment which have Elton John decor – black and red lacquer and huge photos. Then we toured a rich area of large houses in the woods before an evening visit to an antique shop downtown and the Colonnade traditional Southern restaurant. Peter insisted that a metal flower for sale was an early but-plug and in the restaurant there was someone they knew so he had dinner with us. I wondered afterwards: did that person just go and hang out there in the certain hope that somebody of his acquaintance would turn up? It’s quite likely.

The talk, as on other occasions, was much taken up with future plans, possible visits to each other’s properties elsewhere and, of course, the forthcoming Pool Party Season. Peter said, You have to watch out because the Pool Party Season can start but your body isn’t there. Somehow, over the winter, it’s escaped. The other topic was: Who you know. Not name-dropping but a quick tugging at names to try to pull them into the web. An essential check-list to make sure, also, they’re still there because someone might have flitted off to the other end of the country, never to be heard of again.

Finally I found out what collards are. Except I didn’t. They were on the menu. You remember the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where somebody fires a gun into the collard patch thinking a black person is trespassing but it was Tom hiding there?  But what are collards? I’d always assumed cabbages. Well, whatever was brought wasn’t cabbage and it wasn’t spinach either. So apart from having consumed them, no progress really as to what collards are.

It was after-dinner that we went to the strip club. I’ve never seen a place with so many prohibitive notices plastered about: Don’t touch the dancers. Ladies Don’t Scream and Mock Our Gay Life. Don’t take Photos. Don’t Speak too Quietly at the Bar. Don’t Enter the Dancers Backstage Area. Rather odd given that nude rudeness was the whole object. Peter was poised by the catwalk with a huge roll of dollar bills. ‘Go on,’ he said… ‘Look that one’s nice… ‘ Gingerly, in fear of some kind of backlash, one popped a bill into the muscle boy’s foundation garments. Squealingly embarrassing. And that wasn’t the end of it. Once they’d done their turn on the catwalk, the men would perambulate the tables selecting some for special favour – apparently. This meant writhing all over one and really they were a bit damp. In our present virus crisis the activity would have been out of the question. Also there was the problem of how to reconcile being writhed all over with the No Touching prohibition. But it wouldn’t have been polite to make a fuss. The real idea, Peter explained, was to lure one into a VIP room where $150 services were on offer. Extraordinary. Can you imagine someone merrily leaving their group: ‘Oh I’m going to have excitement in the VIP Room’? Then coming back again. The shame.

Maybe they don’t feel it.

Still I was wracked with guilt, having no plans to visit the Civil Rights Museum. Wasn’t the Martin Luther King Visitor Centre enough? I told myself. Besides I’ve read To Kill a Mocking Bird and Jessica Mitford. I know all about the Civil Rights Movement.

The Baby Cardy Made by Lurlene Carter

The Early Cruet of President Carter

Lurlene with Betty

Elton John’s Foyer

The Gay District of Atlanta

Rich Houses in the Woods

An Early But-Plug, According to Peter

In the Oval Office at Last

In the Oval Office: a Good Hotel Room Really but Oval

The Desk!

Tuesday 3rd March 2020

It was not easy to gain the Martin Luther King Birth Home in Atlanta – public transport, perhaps white-led, conspiring against. I went most of the way on foot, unheard of in America. The neighbourhood is still black and more picturesque and historic than other parts of the city with no feeling that it’s all about to be torn down and replaced with high rise. I went into a shop where there were only black people ‘hanging out’ to ask how to pay for the bus ticket for the return journey. They couldn’t have been more charming although they didn’t specifically mention my Zara coat.

The Martin Luther King section has an agreeable park in which is situated a super new Ebenezer Baptist Church bang opposite the still functioning original one where Martin Luther King’s father was the Pastor and where his own funeral was held in 1968, with the throng surging in the street in its vastness. A water-feature has a Biblical cascade and lake in the middle of which the Kings are buried. There’s also a Visitor Centre and Exhibit. Funny how terrible events often lead to an agreeable park and visitor centre. It’s the same story with the 1st World War and all those Lutyens cemeteries.

The Birth Home Visit was rare. Free but you had to wait. A white person sold the tickets. He was blind so one didn’t dare fail to turn up to take one’s place which would deprive another as sternly warned in a Bibical manner. Of course I wasn’t going to miss it. The chance of that third toilet, as much as anything else – Martin Luther King’s to add to Queen Victoria’s and Margaret Mitchell’s.  Conscientiously I went round the Visitor Centre, wracked with guilt about going to the shopping mall the day before. These events were within my time. From literature and memory, I thought I knew it all. Photographs. The protestors made a point of being smartly dressed as well as non-violent. They knew that a tiny step out of line and they’d be condemned as sub-human, not fit. So there are all these photos of elegant ladies and gentlemen, the excellent post-Dior look of the Sixties and those darling little hats for the men, so flattering, standing wide-eyed in the midst of the debris of police brutality.

The actual guide for the Birth Home was from the Virgin Islands. Her main object was to withhold the Birth Home for as long as possible, building with ferocious warnings in the next-door sweet shop. No photos was one of her direst thunderings. Oh no! Would I dare? She also had quite a lot to say about the Virgin Islands, none of it complimentary. She was dressed for battle.

The general idea of the Martin Luther King complex was to have frightening attendants. Once inside the Birth Home – well, it’s a big house and a marvellous period preservation from 1929, except it’s all been ‘reassembled’.  Martin Luther King and his brother smashed up all their original bedroom furniture – while they were in it. At least they had some fun. A boarding house look, except it wasn’t a boarding house. Chocolate brown for the woodwork, tobacco dinge for the walls, moquette and tapestry cushions, burgundy carpets, the odd bit of aluminium. And toilets. The Platonic ideal of the miserable lino bathroom with mint-green walls and pipes… I was so busy buttering up the guide from the Virgin Islands and trying to make up for Slavery. What hope of a snoop graph? A classic period toilet with black seat. Martin Luther King spent much time on it, the guide was saying, reading tracts and avoiding doing the washing up. In the end I just couldn’t. The only good to come is that that toilet, not photographed, is embossed on my memory in a way that others are not. But for me only…

We moved on to the washing machine which was parked at the end of the huge hallway.  I tried to explain that in England nobody had a proper washing machine until at least the 1960s. The Gay Mother had a twin tub. I didn’t think it wise to mention that she is Landed Gentry. Anyway – complete blank. It was as if I hadn’t said anything, which was quite often the case in the South, now I think of it. It was the same when I blared at two other visitors, an unlikely black couple, either relations or boyfriends, they can’t have been friends. One was wispy and lithe and inclined to giggles, with much jewellery and scarves, the other a regular guy, older, good figure. To them I said, ‘This is a big house.’ I suppose they thought it was just fact, rather than interpretation and couldn’t imagine why it was worth saying.

The other thing I found out about Martin Luther King – but from Wikipedia – is that he was incredibly extra marital. Apparently it was to relieve anxiety.

The Martin Luther King Birth Home, Atlanta, Georgia. You have to Understand that the House is Narrow but Deep. It Goes Back a Long Way

The Old Ebenezer Baptist Church, Where Martin Luther King’s Funeral was Held in 1968

The Cascade at the Martin Luther King Burial Site

The Kings – Their Grave

Wednesday 26th February 2020

I went to the so-called Margaret Mitchell House, a ‘Tudor Revival’ building now marooned between freeways and high-rises. The only clarity was that Tudor when revived bore no resemblance whatsoever to Tudor. She occupied only an apartment there in fact. The building had fallen into ruin by the 1970s and what you see is a facsimile. Convincing though as a middle-class 30s American interior. I noticed that in America they have no qualms about offering an improvised restoration as the actual thing. It’s all a question of what you want to believe. The same story at the Martin Luther King birthplace. I sat on a banquette in Margaret Mitchell’s little lounge and suddenly realised I was within inches of her as she sat at a tiny oak table composing Gone with the Wind – that immortal work. Tara and the green velvet curtains. She only did it because she’d had an accident and had nothing to do. Her husband bought her a typewriter. The rest of the exhibit was all about the film and its premiere in Atlanta, which the actress who played the black maid couldn’t attend. I thought it a swindle, the writer overlooked in her own ‘home’. I’ve never read the book or sat through the film. Have you? But her toilet was there. I believed in the toilet. And suddenly was struck by a great opportunity. I’d already got Queen Victoria’s toilet, achieved on a visit to Osborne a few years ago. Now Margaret Mitchell’s was secured. What a wonderful thing it would be if I could add Martin Luther King’s when I visited the Martin Luther King Birth Home in downtown Atlanta. It was inconceivable that it would not be on view.

What a trio of toilets…

Queen Victoria’s Toilet – Already in the Collection

Margaret Mitchell’s Toilet – but Would I get Martin Luther King’s….?

Tuesday 25th February 2020

After the Gays at the Florida wedding, the second incident was at the Lennox Square Shopping Mall in Atlanta which to reach required a journey on the Marta through woods to what appeared to be another city. A man was getting a bit too friendly, I thought. He was from Mexico and wanted to help me find the exit from the Lennox Square Shopping Mall. I’d developed a craving for a chocolate slack from Club Monaco plus a jumper in tangerine from the same. I was plotting to acquire them online. In the end they were shipped from North Carolina. ‘I really like your coat,’ he said. ‘It’s only a Zara,’ I said but he’d never heard of Zara. Outside the Marta station we were joined by a pair selling telephone services. ‘I live in UK,’ I said. They grasped that that meant I wouldn’t be interested in their telephone service but they really liked my coat. Fortunately the Mexican announced that he was headed for his rooming house or whatever, having admired my coat.

I was a bit wracked shopping in Atlanta. I ought to have been in the Civil Rights Museum and at the Martin Luther King centre. I almost wasn’t at the Civil Rights Museum but finally, on the last day, I was. A black woman approached me,  surely for a telling off. How could a white person understand?  I thought she was going to say but she said, ‘I really like your style.’ It was the same Zara coat. That evening, at the airport, boarding for London there was a queue and disagreeableness until, that is, one of the guards said, ‘I really like your style.’

Zara – if only they knew…