Recollected after my return home.
1) Today’s adventure was to take the train down to Brighton to see the Orientalist fantasy of George IV, the Royal Pavilion Brighton. That meant a train from Charing Cross, so of course I got there early, and, alarmingly, boarded the wrong train when my track was posted. Oopsie. Resolved before it pulled out of the station, thank goodness.
2) I read most of the way down. The train called at only two or three stations, including Gatwick Airport, so a fair number of passengers with roller bags like mine were about.
3) On arrival, I walked down Queen Street to the waterfront — quite the honky tonk atmosphere, like Salisbury Beach in New Hampshire, but urban and with an edge, and crowds. One of the many pubs was called the Hope and Ruin.
3a) Turning left at the waterfront, after a block or so I recognized the name of a hotel, the Old Ship, from F. Tennyson Jesse’s masterpiece of a novel, The Lacquer Lady, which begins and ends with scenes in Brighton. Agatha and her husband, a clergyman, were staying at the Old Ship, I think. Agatha would not approve of Brighton As It Is Today.
3b) One of the very few shopping items on my list was to find Penhaligon’s to pick up a bottle of something, and what a surprise to find a branch en route to the Pavilion! I felt very efficient.
4) Of course I loved the Pavilion at first sight — you knew I would — but I still think someone should have been checking George’s medications at the time. The exterior looks sculpted out of meringue with all its domes and finials and whatnots.
4a) But inside, ahhhhhhh — inside they were celebrating one of my favorite things with a special exhibition throughout — color! (Or should I say colour?) The building uses the entire rainbow, room by room — even gray, but on review I can’t find an orange room — and they had special explanatory placards and other things in almost every room.
4b) The place was bustling but not crowded, not really, and I was able to Gasp with Delight without bothering too many people.
4c) The service areas were revolutionary for the time, especially the kitchen.
4d) In one of the saloons an American Couple Older Than I was exclaiming over one of the color of the walls and the information provided; they were the sort of couple that read everything aloud to each other and didn’t want to miss anything, which brought Mother to mind. The way their conversation was moving I interjected with a recommendation of Victoria Findlay’s wonderful book Colour, which a colleague gave me for my 40th birthday, and they gratefully jotted it down right away. “My wife loves everything about color,” the husband told me.
The Music Room.
5) In the Music Room, I noticed that they were setting up for an event of some kind, which turned out to be a book signing. When I got to the end of the tour, I asked at the desk how I could attend, and they basically allowed me to tour the house a second time so I could get back to the Music Room. Bonus!
5a) The book in question was The Royal Pavilion Brighton: A Regency Palace of Colour and Sensation by Alexandra Loske, who is in fact the former (or current?) Curator of the Pavilion. At the beginning there was some good-natured (I hope) banter between the author and the Pavilion’s program director (?) along the lines of “I was just expecting to sign a few books rather than give a talk,” but she certainly didn’t sound unprepared to me. And the audience, mostly Members Older Than I but a few tourists, were rapt with attention. How wonderful, too, just to be in that room (sitting down) to take in this exotic, vivid environment.
5b) Yes, I bought the book, even though I knew I didn’t have any room for it in my luggage. And yes, the author signed it and we had a lovely little conversation about both her work and mine.
6) Almost next door to the Pavilion was a little Italian restaurant, and I sat in the back with a couple Aperol spritzes and a succulent plate of pasta carbonara.
7) As long as I was in the area, I also needed to see the Brighton Museum, located right in the museum gardens. And happily for me, someone who enjoys dressing well, the special exhibition on was The In Crowd: Mod Fashion & Style 1958-1966, a really extensive look at a period of increasing edginess with no little elegance.
7a) Another fashion, exhibition, Queer Looks, showcased the clothes of different pillars of the Brighton LGBTQ community over the last 50 years or so. Fabulous.
8) All this stimulation and color — especially the color orange in those two aperol spritzes at lunch — and the heat were starting to get me down, so I struggled against the crowd on Queen Street back to the station and took an earlier train to London, about 4:30ish. And I enjoyed spending an evening in.
