“Kind Hearts & Gentle People” (portrait of Sunny Nan Mosely; Charlottesville, VA)
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
2020 (NFS)
I had word, just this afternoon, from a mutual friend that Nan Mosely died yesterday….quietly and, apparently, peacefully.
So, there goes the last in the line of my Grand Old Lady Friends, who sustained me from my callow twenties until quite recently. I feel obliged to emphasize that there was nothing remotely “Auntie Mame!”/fag-haggy about our friendships; I emphasize that because all too many folks (tiresome gay men, in particular) immediately exclaim “Oh, my God! She must have been a real HOOT!”. Finding that intensely irritating, I usually reply (cryptically) “Oh….you wouldn’t have thought so if she’d met you”.
All of my elderly, female friends have been unavoidably equipped with razor-sharp wits, a longstanding habit of ironic detachment, an insistence on somewhat outmoded (does it matter?) decorum/manners, and (surprisingly) a fierce interest in and loyalty to me.
They all found, so to speak, me when I was in my confused twenties and thirties. My parents did a perfectly fine job of raising me to the age of 18, but it’s the Old Ladies who took me in hand afterwards.
And, yes….they all had been well-born and well-raised (as they would phrase the matter),…..and, yes, they all had names like “Newby”, “Nan”, and “Spilly” (whose middle, surname, and married names were a complete, hyphenated smash-up of FFV families).
Actually, I first met Nan at Newby’s big, old house in Charlottesville…during an enormous, Thanksgiving weekend. It was rather like encountering two survivors of the Titanic or White Russian refugees at the same party. Of course, they knew each other.
Neither one of them, rather obviously, had many pennies to rub together in their old age. Neither did either EVER speak of income/money. I never figured out what either of their father’s had “done”. Most importantly, neither had the slightest shade of middle-class snobbery. Neither ever expressed regret over anything. Both adored their horses and dogs beyond any logical measure. Neither had any care for “keeping up appearances”. Doing so simply wouldn’t occur to them.
However?…..if you knew them long enough, and they liked you, and you didn’t break the unspoken rules?……anecdotes and hints would come spilling out at the corners. Newby could be helping me to mend a suit-coat, and out would pop a story about being in the dressing room of some house-party and doing the same for a young Jacqueline Bouvier (later Kennedy, of course). Nan seemed to have spent a surprising amount of time swimming with Cary Grant, Cole Porter, and Fred Astaire when she was six or so….but it turns out, upon direct questioning, that her father was the consul in Antibes….which would be before Nan was shipped off to a Swiss boarding school. And the stories went on from there……they were, indeed, The Last Romantics in my life.
Well, enough of this. Suffice it to say what’s probably already obvious……with Nan’s passing, I will miss my old lady pals. Here’s the perfect song for all of them. Do, please, listen to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRId-Wsw9LA
