What Perry Said

Sunday 15th November 2015

Before I get to What Perry Said, I must mention that it’s been a rich web of engagements and coincidences which has left me at the borders of existence. This is my failure. On parting from Harry Rollo, who dined with Prince Dmitri, Merle Barr and Mercury Mr Kitten (of course) on Monday, I said, ‘I don’t feel I’ve really opened up.’ ‘I’ve been completely open,’ Harry said. ‘Wide, wide open.’ How we roared. I might only see Harry ten more times in my life – if spared. I’m a bit tinged with melancholy and death seems to encroach at the moment. I must get over it. The slightest little thing and I crumble out of existence. Wednesday was lunch at Aunt Lavinia’s with Laura Malcolm: in her drawing room before lunch she announced that nearly everyone had died; she hadn’t thought to mention it before. She managed to miss all the funerals, owing to being alive essentially. But on Tuesday we set out for Oxfordshire for a funeral with the afterwards at a mansion that’s been in Downton. On the way back from Aunt Lavinia’s I managed to pick up some carpet samples from Chelsea Harbour. At this rate I might not live to see a new dining room mat in my home. On Thursday at lunch with Royston King in the middle of St James’ Park (he’s on the Royal Parks board), Royston said really one can only do 6 or 7 years as Chair before running out of steam. In fact now I think of it, Perry said the same of a certain editor: ‘He thought he’d become a National figure. He thought he could not bother to turn up for lunch with the owner.’  ‘Everyone’s dispensable,’I said. You had to lean over to talk to him because he’s almost 92, was seated and faint of voice. Can you guess who Perry is? Royston and I were lunching after the Press View of the Queen’s Dutch pictures. Genevieve Suzy had been unable to attend owing to pressure of work. But I was not alone because Royston was there and we had slightly impertinent banter with the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures (a position which might have been accorded to the son of the lady whose funeral we go on Tuesday but wasn’t) and the Press Head of the Royal Collection about HM herself . I suggested the Surveyor make a TV show going round the pictures with HM, chatting away. It was on Friday night, where I went to Virgil Grayson’s apartment where Cedric Partridge now presides, that Cedric told me about the non-surveyor. Also dining was the curator of the Goya exhibition. This morning Genevieve suggested last minute going to the Press and Insiders preview of the ice rink at Somerset House  and there was the curator of the Goya exhibition whizzing round and round the rink with wife and child. His wife was also at Cedric’s dinner and is gluten-free.  Really no-one could be more deeply embedded than me, Adrian Edge, in the fabric of London. Yet I have always felt for the last 39 years, that I’m here temporarily, on loan from the country as it were. Before we know it, life will be over and one will never have really settled in either town or country, let alone pitched one’s decor up to a pitch of perfection.

I’ve just got two more Private Views to tell you about. On Thursday was Dr Jonathan’s. He’s also an artist as well as just about everything else, now 82. Into the Gallery were packed household names: Dame Bone, who gave up men and went into the House of Lords: ‘You must have a project,’ she said. ‘Or you could get depressed. I’m in the House of Lords. Everyone’s jolly old there.’ She really doesn’t look 83. Posy Mignonette of the Guardian is not anything like 80. ‘It’s been perfectly lovely,’ she coo-ed on departure – no hint of her left-wing Guardian claws. Dr Jonathan, like Perry the next night, was seated owing to a deep vein throm. He’s still reading about the brain, he told me, as well as producing art works of a certain earthy gravity and presence also involving carpentry. He was up -‘I’m so proud of my art’ – or he was down – ‘Well, I’m 82. It’s what it’s like’ – re: his deep vein thromb.

So finally we come to Friday and Perry. ‘You must talk to Perry,’ his wife said. She was huge on TV for architectural programmes once. ‘He’s awfully interested in Dainty Lady TV.’  It was Purbeck Crowhurst ‘s Private View at Trenton’s Gallery (fantastic new work: v. important: this is a true artist who has lead an artist’s life). Except there was no sign of Trenton. I wonder if he’s moved on. Like the Multis did. They moved on from Trenton’s gallery and from the art world altogether which somehow had not really loved them. The poor, poor Multis – so frail and so prey to hurt. I must call them after my Unfriending on Facebook by the Photo Multi. Anyway, there was Perry – a figure of great beauty in raspberry cords, pink knitwear and various scarves. Because seated and nearly 92 rather isolated from the main throng. He’d met Robert Mugabe, he said. ‘Perfectly ghastly.’ His wife said he’d been the last person to see Mrs Thatcher as PM and had met Carol on the way out coming in the sausages and beans in a mart bag. Once Mrs Thatcher had resigned as PM all facilities were chopped off just like that. It was doubtful she could use the lavs. Of Perry himself, I asked, ‘Do you still follow the world? What do you make of it?’ ‘Very worrying,’ he said.’ Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s out of control.’ Within an hour of him saying that, those bombs went off in Paris.

I don’t Even Know My Own Life: I Forgot to Mention that on Wednesday was a Private View of a New Block of Flats in City Road to be Built by Norma Foster: A lot of Grey

The Press’s Head of the Royal Collection at the Queen’s Gallery: Greatness and Frockage

A Dutch Picture of Charles 11 Dancing at Court: the Queen’s Gallery

An Irish Dutch Picture of the 19th Century

Girl Chopping Onions: A Tiny but Utterly Great Dutch Picture

A Rude Work by Purbeck Crowhurst on Show at Trenton’s Gallery

A Glorious Work by Purbeck Crowhurst on Show at Trenton’s Gallery

 

Posted Sunday, November 15, 2015 under Adrian Edge day by day.

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