Monday 20th July 2015

I found that I’d bought postcards at the Belvedere so I can show you the pictures I mentioned:

This is Lady in Indeterminate Pink Dress: Not Quite as Ghostly as I Remembered But Maybe Postcard Isn’t Quite Right: Her Face is Worried

Another Klimt: She’s Beginning to Disappear Into Her Frock

This is a Schiele of a Block of Flats

This is a Schiele of a Child: Not Quite What the Parents were Expecting, I Imagine.

This is by Anna Maria Punz 1721 – 1794, Highlighted by Reggie Cresswell as an Artist to Watch

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

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

Saturday 18th July 2015

At last some excitement in high-end fashion. After years of drear, drear and rocketing prices (hence one has abandoned for Zara and Topman, even though the cloth is sometimes slimy) a new talent at Gucci has had a absolute brain-wave for menswear. The fashion Press are raving. I read about it on the plane to Vienna. Suits in chintz, other garments in lace and fur, tops of mousseline chiffon in a cafe au lait shade. In other words, ladies’ clothes offered for men. Can you imagine anything more new? Lord Arrowby will look sensational. He is a certainty for the look because he has now rocketed to the very pinnacle of our country, or one of them. It is a pinnacle nobody knew about before, so high it couldn’t be seen. His frock money will rocket also so a foamy cinnamon top at £900 will be as nothing…

New-look Gucci: This Fur is £18,000

A Superb Top in Mousseline.Yes, It is Menswear. £900

Gucci Fur Sandals: V. Much Taxi to Table. New Look Gucci for Autumn

Another New-Look Gucci Blouse: £900

A Gucci Lacy Top in Cinnamon: Essential for Autumn: £900

Wednesday 15th July 2015

I’d never heard of the Belvedere at Vienna, but Harry Rollo said, You must go and be sure to take the lower entrance. So we did and got the beauty of it from a distance. At the top of the gravel sweep was Rufus Pitman, newly arrived by air from London in Vienna in a Viennese outfit. Never have I been so rinsed through by an art gallery in a long time. Usually there’s always a portion of oneself that can’t wait to get away. But this time I could have gone round all over again at the end. The Klimts! I thought there was only that one in New York there was the row about and the Beethoven cycle of course. But the Belvedere was sumptuous with Klimts. The woman in the pink dress is ravishing. The frock is kind of fluffy. Someone asked me later, ‘What was it made of?’ I couldn’t really say. It wasn’t quite real. So rich and dreamy, like an iced cake, rather like Singer Sargent but there’s always a ghostly quality to Klimt. This painting was before he had the idea of making their dresses into seemingly flat designs with the faces poking out which the Gay Mother can’t bear. She couldn’t bear the famous Klimt in New York. Absolutely visceral recoiling. Shudder. But usually a person is ravished by the Klimts as well as spooked. Few artists have dared to be so delicious. Then Rufus and Reggie introduced a new artist called Sheila, so they said. But I think really it’s Schiele (rule of German spelling: have 3 vowels where 1 would do). Schiele was completely thrilling: mad but beautiful. I think he was Expressionist. Certainly he had a lot to express. He didn’t commit though, surprisingly, because the Spanish flu got him first and then a day or two later his lady wife. What a loss to art! But he’d done enough. Had he lived I get the feeling that suicide would have been on the cards at some point. Another artist did commit: that was Gerstl. He painted himself laughing manically then committed. He’d run away with Schoenberg’s wife but she ran back to from whence she’d come. Gerstl was in a wretched state; nobody would take any notice of him. He not only committed but incinerated all his works. Not very thoroughly though. A remnant survived and later proved to be of museum standard. So now he’s in the Belvedere. Rufus Pitman stood before the painting and did an imitation of him laughing manically before committing. We progressed into 19th and 18th century rooms. Reggie introduced some new artists as he always does but I can’t remember who they were now. Such light and airy rooms, such a world of art, even if the Art sometimes provoked Rufus to wonder how it would be as a 1000 piece jigsaw. Rufus always does a jigsaw every Christmas. One time the cleaner in New York removed the 1000th piece.

I don’t remember where we lunched but soon it was on to the Karlskirche (don’t tell me it’s got accents!). There was a once-in-lifetime opportunity to ascend by lift up the builders’ scaffolding right into the dome of the Karlskirche. Reggie said it meant more to him than anything to be up close inside a baroque cupola. Odd because instead of being carried though all the tricks of perspective to the vanishing point, we were at the vanishing point seeing the building splayed below. Terrifying especially with the scaffolding creaking and moving about apparently. Mercury, Mr Kitten had gone up a day or two before and had a breakdown. Or rather he’d gone straight back down again. A Germanic woman was having a breakdown and had to be comforted through the downward lift journey. We saw her later in the street and she cut us dead. I did wonder whether this is the attitude that lead to Hitler.

At the End of this Vista was Rufus Pitman, Newly Arrived by Air from London. In the Background, the Belvedere

Gerstl Laughing Before Suicide at the Belvedere, Vienna. Still He Got into the Belvedere

This Looks Like Debo but Isn’t: Belvedere, Vienna

In the Cupola Looking Down: Karlskirche, Vienna

Karlskirche, Vienna. An Important Baroque Interior: It’s Completely Rhythmic

Dusty Ledge Only Visible from Scaffolding: Just Shows How Even in Top Building They Thought: If You Can’t See it Why Bother?

Tuesday 7th July 2015

We’re building up to the full Vienna experience. At last whipped cream loomed. But on the culture front we were not yet at full throttle. Only a Frans Hals and a single Klimt remained in the sieve when we came to drain the first full day. Reggie and I enjoyed the breakfast panoply in the hotel Altstadt. I had that wet muesli stuff that’s got a name. There was trouble with the butter getting too warm owing to the little glass dishes supplied to put it in being just out of the dishwasher. But I had an amazing brainwave re: that problem the following day. We also found that afternoon cake service in the hotel (very modern cakes) went on beyond the alloted time. Several times, when in a museum, we shrieked, ‘We’re too late for cake in the hotel salon.’ But we weren’t. That first morning in Vienna we entered the Kunsthistorisches Museum (yes, it’s really called that: it means Art History Museum).  It’s a very brown building inside. Late 19th century. The Habsburgs phoned up and said, ‘Bring round 3 million miles of Imperial Building.’ Reggie seemed to rather like it at first but he had to rest after climbing the stairs in the café. Then we undertook the Dutch and Germanic wing. I don’t think Reggie really liked the Bruegels, which are the highlight of the whole museum really. Later he said he couldn’t have poultry in a painting and I suspect there are poultry in the Bruegels. Of course they show peasant life but I made a special effort to find them fascinating. Bruegel always obscured the main subject of his painting so we spent ages trying to work out where in one of them the conversion of St Paul on the Road to Damascus was going on only to realise that we were looking at ‘Village Festival Scene.’  The St Paul picture was on the adjacent wall. The knockout though was the Frans Hals, whom I’d always understood to be a chocy box painter but Reggie said not. There was a Vermeer but we’ve seen all that before. The Frans Hals was completely new although old.

We lunched in a palm house and there was Simeon Bond, also arrived from London for Harry Rollo’s perf and staying in an Airbnb despite a fortune extending as far as the eye can see. One felt completely connected and that really Vienna wasn’t in foreign at all. Everyone was there. At 2pm Harry Rollo gave a discussion to some students. This took place actually inside the Emperor Franz Joseph’s horrible new back gate to the Hofburg built in 1897. The House without Eyebrows was put up opposite it by Adolf Loos as a deliberate insult and Harry said that the Emperor never went out of his back gate again for the horror of the House without Eyebrows. But Reggie said the back gate was ‘rather good.’ Anyway, we were Harry’s Suite for the big entrance after miles of grubby university corridors to the room where the students were. And Harry gave a discussion about his perfs. ‘It’s all totally frivolous in a terrible way,’ he said which is exactly how I feel about my own life  when it is considered as a work of Art. Then we processed out, me, Reggie and Mercury, Mr Kitten making up the Suite. It may have been at this point that I first spied the entrance to the Sisi Museum but our destiny then was a swirly whipped cream café where swirly whipped cream in swirls had been applied to simply everything. After that I would have lain down, but Reggie spurred me up a ramp to the Albertina. The contents of this museum were shown in London after the War and seen by the Gay Mother. There was a delicious suite of near edible rococo rooms. Harry told us to look out for the arsenic wallpaper. But we couldn’t understand why all the Dürers were facsimiles. Then there was the exhibition of photographs by Lee Miller. I thought she was a glamour person so did she end up in Hitler’s bath straight after the War?  Her photographic record of  the death-camps, suicides, reprisals and devastation – well, words can’t describe… there’s an astonishing, ruthlessness about them, ruthless towards the viewer.  I couldn’t believe that children were allowed to see them  nor that they were published originally in Vogue. Nevertheless we forged on to the Batwinger Collection, now comprising a large part of the Albertina. The Batwingers must have been very rich indeed but if only they’d bought fewer pictures of better quality. Clearly they were determined to have something by every artist of the 20th century. Finally we came to the collection of Paul Klee work which had belonged to the man who invented the Pill. ‘I knew him,’ Reggie declared. Inventing the Pill was not enough. He wished to be known for artistic endeavour as well so was a wheeny bit tiresome.

When we got back to the hotel, cake service was still in progress. Reggie had that cake cover off in no time, I can tell you. I can’t remember if it was that afternoon or the next day that I saw a painting of Sisi, showing Sisi as she actually was in life.

Painting by Frans Hals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Star Piece for Us

Vermeer in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Nice but Rather Popular

The Batwinger Klimt: Top Picture of the Day, with the Frans Hals

Also Liked This Batwinger Monet Actually. Am a Champion of Monet Who Assaulted with Colour. Don’t Think of it as Pretty

The Batwinger Picasso: Supposed to be a Pheasant: Ghastly

The Albertina Blingkammer: Edible

The Albertina Blingkammer: Arsenic Wallpaper: Lovely Shade

Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bath, 1945

Saturday 4th July 2015

Our first dinner in Vienna was not a classic Viennese all-meat affair but at least, as Reggie Cresswell often mentioned afterwards, it was terribly cheap. Thinking that we were ordinary diners with a reservation, we were received at Steirereck im Stadtpark, which had a clean, Scand feel of wood and glass. But the Maître d’ had not only been at one of Harry Rollo’s perfs but had arranged appropriate lettering to shimmer through the tablecloth in a mystic manner. Champagne was lavished, possibly free and the pre amuses were brought. Luckily there was an accompanying explanatory card although some of the items did not resemble the description. ‘Peanut with Rhubarb’, for instance, was a peanut with a red coating somehow baked on. There were 14 pre-amuse. ‘Wheat cracker with nasturtium’, ‘Duck egg with watercress and berberis’, ‘Lupin with green pepper’ and Iced Oyster Water. Another card explained the ways in which a person might be allergic to each of them. In Vienna restaurants have to point out any possible allergy trap a diner might fall into, so it was a brilliant coup d’chef and possibly an example of Germanic humour to assemble a collection of pre-amuse illustrating the entire array of known food allergies.

All this before we got anywhere near dishes actually ordered. My first course was Char, a trout-like fish, cooked at the table in hot beeswax left to cool and solidify. Another card was produced to explain the dish, so now I can read that it was accompanied by boiled and marinated yellow carrot, jellied yellow carrot and apple juice infused with beeswax, sour cream with cayenne pepper and lime, char caviar strewn with a yellow carrot and quince vinegar ‘pollen’ and finally basil cress. I can’t say, one week later, I’ve got much grasp of any of this, apart from the piece of fish itself which was of sufficient size to make an impact. This beeswax method of cooking could be tried at home if you have a tin of Antiquax or similar classic furniture polish to hand. Heat it up and pour of over fish fillet which you lay in a specially constructed frame for succulent and flavoursome results.

We only took two desserts between four in an attempt to slash the bill but they brought an unordered set of 16 post-dessert items, one of which was medlar kernel ice cream. What I was wondering was: if we’d not ordered any desserts would we still have got the complimentary 16-piece post dessert fan? If yes, then savings would have been magnificent and one could imagine coming in at less than €150 a head.

I forgot to mention the bread waiter with accompanying bread trolley displaying 10 or more choices. He recommended filling up on bread because the portions were so small. I think this was more Germanic humour. He was bread but not butter – which was brought later in another procedure and the butter had been styled and combined with seeds and nuts in ways never known before.

I’m sure, at dinner, Harry mentioned that he’d seen Sisi’s weighing scales in a palace somewhere. Sisi, Sisi, Sisi – she was building up in mind, even over such a rewarding dinner requiring careful study and attention throughout.

The Pre-Amuse Array

Char Cooking in Beeswax

Char Finished Cooking in Beeswax

The Finished Char Plate

My PIgeon Main

Thursday 2nd July 2015

Last Tuesday, before dear precious Mrs Nevil’s funeral which was this Tuesday, I boarded for Vienna with Reggie Cresswell, the world’s leading Ghanian ceramicist, for a five-day visit to culminate in Harry Rollo’s perf. We were recognised at Heathrow by Piggy Hislop, who once courted Laura Malcolm.  Now he is a fixture on ‘Have I got News for You,’ a programme loathed by the Gay Mother. Extraordinary that he was in Economy too, so that cabin was more celebrity-packed than any is likely to be ever again, yet few or none on board appeared to realise it. Our conversation, open to all ears, was of Reggie’s private ducal visit in Northamptonshire to look at the Poussin. Sharing the taxi from the railway station was a lady close to the Queen, of her Bedchamber no less at one time. The driver got lost. ‘I think he’s from Bombay,’ the Bedchamber lady said, ‘or thereabouts.’ Otherwise she was tremendous fun, unstuffy, really crammed in the taxi, owing to a over-weight household name forcing entry, and loving it, and quite penniless.

Before we knew it, we’d gained and were in the Hotel Altstadt. I held my breath. What if Reggie didn’t like it? We’d end up spending all our time on the pavement outside other hotels, craving admittance. But Reggie did like it and almost at once Harry Rollo was round from appointments to do with his perf and Vienna began. Fold upon fold of whipped cream – little did we know then what riches were to come. Reggie had never been there before.  That first afternoon he found a frontage by Plečnik (it’s just taken me 10 minutes to work out how to do that accent).  It must have been then that Harry Rollo first mentioned Sisi. At once I was entranced but not yet bewitched. She’s got a whole museum devoted to her, which Harry pronounced ‘Rather poor.’ He’d been in residence in Vienna for six weeks and done everything. All the same Sisi was an Empress and mad keen on losing weight. She started the whole weight-losing movement. How could one resist?

Rare Plecnik Frontage in Vienna – I’m Not Doing that Accent Again

The House without Eyebrows, Seen by Me in Vienna in 2013. This is the First Building of Modern Design in Europe and Hugely Important

Wednesday 1st July 2015

I’ve been in Vienna as well as Sales Shopping. But I was worked so hard in Vienna by Rufus Pitman and Reggie Cresswell I never got near my blog machine. Anthony Mottram, who has been with me since 1970, with considerable estrangements, came down from Prague, or rather up from Budapest where he had been bicycling. What times we had! Such discoveries! Such roccoco. Such Expressionism, such Baroque, such Klimt. Such memories! What cakes and coffee confections! As well as an incredibly rare dinner. And Sisi – who I’d never heard of before. How I longed for her. She was the last but one Empress. We were there for Harry Rollo’s perf. He’s conquered Vienna now which nobody has done for years. Oh, I’ve so much to tell…

But first, yesterday Mrs Nevil, Robert Nevil’s Gay Mother, was laid to rest, now gone from this Earth. Her funeral was yesterday. I drove in the Official Car with Xenon driving lights. Joshua Baring was my suite. He wore round sunglasses by Cutler and Gross and looked incredibly young with the most perfect skin. Mrs Nevil’s funeral was at 12 noon. The church bells tolled and 150 plus attended. You cannot imagine a more right funeral, both modern and traditional. The coffin was festooned with meadow flowers spilling over. Mrs Nevil was a countrywoman. She lived for almost 60 years in wide, low country between hills with huge skies and big views in England’s mid-west. In life she was rolled round with the seasons, yet indomitably present, winning prizes for extraordinary horse expertise, founding a stud, having an excellent seat on a horse, planting hedges, roaring along the roads in the Jaguar. In death the same. The tribute was composed by her son and daughter, carefully cataloguing her activities and achievements in a solid way not normally seen and so important to do. Yes, she was someone. Her seat was admired by international champions in her field. Then the hymn was announced. ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter.’  I could hardly get through it. So simple and touching and humble. The words maybe are naive but the spirit of them is the vastness of Nature and one thought of all the generations working the land and living on it and finally disappearing into it and Mrs Nevil herself, although with children and husband, but in that big, open place with the huge sky all around. The second hymn was ‘For the beauty of the earth’ – again I could hardly get through it. The service was concluded by the Canon in the traditional manner, thundering the solemnity of death. Then the triumphant floral coffin was borne forth from the Church, followed by the family. Later, at the wake, I learned that Mrs Nevil, only moments before her death as it turned out, had been seen by her son-in-law standing in her garden, surveying the scene.

Sunday 21st June 2015

Val emailed: ‘Marguerite morte! Who ever is going to make Spam toothsome now?’ He referred to the death of Marguerite Patten, the great British wartime cooking heroine. ‘It’s rissoles I’m worried about,’ I replied. What that woman did for rissoles! ‘You can assume the mantle of spam, Val,’ I said. That provoked a spate of email abuse. The matter of the pie dish for one was not forgotten. I had refused to return it when Val came over on my garden open day, and himself refused to pay the entry fee, refused to look at the garden, refused the lavender biscuits and demanded that the cake be produced at once. Finally he had required the return of his soufflé dish and pie dish for one. ‘How dare you!’ I barked. ‘I’ve had them for a year.’ Surely I now had legal title. I didn’t mention it but my possession dated from the outrage of Val being too drunk for Glyndebourniana last May. Entering his flat, finding him lurching, I had seized the picnic items in the white soufflé dish and pie dish for one which he had prepared earlier (before the bottle, one hopes) and fled, bellowing condemnation. One year later, he was daring to ask for them back. Subsequent to his appearance in person at my garden opening, he declared me by email to resemble Mrs Danvers and said my upholstery was insufficiently supportive of his bum. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘since you’re i/c upholstery we know who to blame. Get back in the upholstery cupboard, Danvers,’ I added. ‘And when your inferior china items are returned, if ever, they’ll be smashed.’ Val reverted to the subject of spam. Delice de Spam. I mentioned that my father had had Spam à la Americane at the Ritz during the War. Val came back with : Spam Congolais; Spam Russie; Spam a la maniere d’Ulan Bator. Val reverted to the pie dish for one. He went:  ‘You must keep that dish, because you and only you have need of it. Those sad, lonely, spinster evenings with an individual meat pie. I don’t hate you, I pity you!’ You have to imagine this being uttered with tremendous passion by a 40s starlet with little knowledge of acting. Then it was back to spam, but not before Val announced that Carol Channing, his former Oxford don and afterwards friend, had had a stroke and was not likely to live: ‘Spam Sylvia Plath! A lump of the stuff prepared in an unlit gas oven, served with a disconsolate Yorkshire drizzle. Marco-Pierre White will be eating his heart out! Oh, Sylvia Plath and that gas oven………If she had known Spam! Well, she’d be here now.’ Now it seems Carol Channing has died and Val has thought of more spam presentations.

The Disputed Pie Dish for Val: I’m Never Giving it Back

Wednesday 17th June 2015

We’re been in mourning since March when Aunt Smidge died. That was sufficient for April as well; then May’s death was Jean Grainger’s. Last Saturday morning I was by the Martin Margiela rack in Harvey Nicks. I’d just downloaded an App allowing 50% pre-sale reductions. Martin Margiela hasn’t won favour with me (too baggy) in recent years but I’d asked whether they had some grey slacks in my size. The assistant was just returning to say ‘No’ when the call came through. I knew at once what it was but Robert Nevil left no message. I called back at once to hear the news: Mrs Nevil, that magnificent horsewoman, whippet-owner, gardener, country-woman and huntswoman, was no more. She’d been found a few hours before by her daughter sitting in her chair, having taken breakfast, with the Horse and Hound on her lap – her favourite reading. Recently her heart condition had got a great deal worse. She was battling on, last seen by me at the end of April careering defiantly, a will of iron, on a motorised lawn-mower. Let’s hope she knew nothing. She was not a bit ready to go but as we always say in the face of what cannot be altered it could all have been a great deal worse. So passes away the last link with a whole way of life on the farm from the early 50s, starting with the New Look summer dresses, the summers en fête on the farm, the picnics, the generations of dogs, horses, ponies cavorting with the children, all thought of hygiene abandoned,  the glorious adventures in streams and woods, then the winter dramas, frozen pipes and lambs born in the snow. They were outdoor people. The minute Mrs Morgan had washed the kitchen floor, they’d tramped it back to mud with their boots. Modernisation of the home was of no interest. Conditions were primitive, with dogs for warmth but there was always a Jaguar in the garage.  The new order cometh in, as it had begun to do already of course as Mrs Nevil enjoyed semi-retirement. The terrible thing is that grief and loss will heal. We get used to the new ways. As John Gielgud said, it would be hopeless if the dead were to come back to life, they’d be so out-of-date. Already I’ve been back to the Sales. You may recall that Aunt Smidge’s death was announced to me while I was at the Alexander McQueen Exhibition. So Mrs Nevil’s came through in Harvey Nicks. I hadn’t catered for so much death in late middle life.

Sunday 14th June 2015

Sadly we are once again plunged into mourning – in my case in a fashion context. More later.

I must revert to last Sunday when my garden opening for charity, now an annual fixture, took place. 12 lunched beforehand in the drawing room. There was just about room for everybody to squeeze into the tiny room which is really kept as a museum of a room. The salmon trout, weighing 1.55 kg was cooked for 35 mins at 200 C and would have been absolutely ideal at 30 mins. Still not hard and dry. Beef fillet also came off all right. So at least the summer nightmare of hard dry meats and fishes was avoided so far. The beans were far from the best but what can you do?

At 1.30pm, Lord Arrowby arrived, having refused to attend the pre-lunch for reasons unknown. Out of a small case, like Grace Monaco in ‘Rear Window’, he produced a blue silk gown by Dries van Noten and put it on. Can you believe it? High, high fashion, completely new and sensational. A billowing, floaty gown almost to the floor. Underneath, Lord Arrowby was lithe in something very sheer and clingy. He also had a little Tyrolian hat. His skin was a deep deep honey-tone. By day, this man stalks the highest corridors of power and gives talks to the PM with slides. More has come of this gown, I can tell you. You wait and see.

So the Opening began. For 4 hours, in Balenciaga and Helmut Lang myself, but growing more and more untucked, I received the Public. Suddenly, Blanche Spain was carnate in the garden (or is it incarnate?), dressed in pink-candy stripe and straw hat like a Renoir. Not seen for years since Edinburgh residence. She showered the garden with remarkable words and was gone. Genevieve Suzy’s daughter also attended and administered a fierce quiz to unsuspecting visitors. She is 7. Later she returned to the garden to make a dramatic announcement. ‘In this house,’ she declared, ‘you can drop your food on the floor but it’s still clean enough to eat. I really like this house.’ Can you imagine a greater compliment to a householder? Laura Malcolm also dropped food on the floor but thank the Lord for the self-healing power of my natural floor-covering. Poor Matt Driver was also present in his leg casket and was completely not spoken to by me. This is the experience of the differently-abled unfortunately.

At 5.30, the last of the Public had left and private guests and those of sufficient rank remained to tea. Royston King, elevated yesterday in the Honours you may have noticed, was present, along with the Head Gardener of Middleton House. Service at tea was chaotic. It emerged that I only have one small teapot.

Lord Arrowby in his Gown by Dries. So my Garden Opening was Really a Fashion Story. That’s my Head of Her Late Majesty Queen Mary being Used a Door Stop