Who Do I Think I Am?. Homan Potterton

I said I felt that Dublin should never ever get even a glimpse of the Lane Pictures as their behaviour was at all times disgraceful and they didn’t deserve them. He agreed with me. Lord Moyne¹⁵ was always a great friend of his so when Desmond and Mariga Guinness, newly married, first came to Dublin pretending to be penniless, PO’C took them under his wing. DG didn’t know what he wanted to do at this time. They travelled the country together and would put up at small country hotels. PO’C would order a room and a meal and D&M would come in and cadge food from him, supposedly having no money for food for themselves. Desmond would play some musical instrument on pavements and Mariga would pass round a hat. When their first child was born they called him Patrick after PO’C. All of this sounded very spurious to me. He spoke a lot about his father –which, after all, was why I was there. Andrew O’Connor (the sculptor) was divorced at an early age and this made his career v. difficult as he could never be commissioned for anything by the Catholic Church. This has never been known before and even young Andrew had never heard it of his grandfather. I gathered neither Andrew nor Patrick were very keen on Jessie.¹⁶ She kept Andrew père isolated and never allowed him models. She is still alive and living in a nursing home in Dun Laoghaire.

      11 January: Today was a meeting of the Association of Irish Art Historians of which I am Assistant Honorary Secretary. The Keeper of Art from the Ulster Museum, James Ford Smith – who is totally blind with a white cane – is Honorary Secretary. I do all the work. James F-S was there; Desmond Guinness; Anne Crookshank; Hilary Pyle; Helen Roe; and Mrs Leask, who complains all the time of not being able to hear, which is not surprising as she is talking all the time. A lot of nonsense was discussed and Michael Wynne was in the Chair. After the meeting I went to dinner with Jeanne Sheehy and Hugh Dixon. Hugh stayed the night. This morning I had a Christmas card from Speer Ogle in Rome, who hopes for 1973 to be peaceful, personally and publicly!

      27 January: Burke’s Club at Lisnabrooka, County Galway. Only Charles Benson¹⁷ and David Butler¹⁸ and me. Also Nesta Fitzgerald and a girl called Veronica Heywood.¹⁹ Lisnabrooka is the most beautiful house – only built in 1912 – and standing quite isolated above Ballynahinch Lake. It rained all the weekend; but even so the views were stupendous and not another house in sight. Lisnabrooka now belongs to people called Reid who live in London and they rent it out for fishing. It is furnished in a very casual way.

      5 February: This morning I had to go into Trinity to borrow some slides for a lecture I am to give tomorrow night in Coleraine. I had a chat with Anne Crookshank and gave her an offprint of my article in Country Life about Mrs Hamilton’s memorial. Anne does not care for Ted Hickey,²⁰ who is Keeper of Art at the Ulster Museum, and was not kind about him. She told me that she likes John O’Grady very much now and has taken him to lunch. This evening I went round to see Mrs Leask at her invitation. She lives in a bed-sitter in Mespil flats. She showed me some of her offprints – articles written over many years – and also the most beautiful embroidered curtains dating from about 1720, which she bought for thirty shillings some years ago. She was in better form than usual and didn’t rail at me as she normally does. Desmond Guinness once published in the Georgian Society Bulletin an article which stated that ceiling paintings which were in Mount Vernon (Cork) were by ‘Des Gray’ (sic) even though the pictures are documented in Strickland as being by Nathaniel Grogan. When Mrs Leask pulled him up on it, Mariga said, ‘Oh we only said they were by Des Gray because that was the only name we could remember.’ Mrs Leask was horrified, and that the Guinnesses couldn’t spell the Peter De Gree name correctly either but only as Mrs Leask had pronounced it. Rolf Loeber had’ phoned her and pretended that he had met her at Leixlip, which Mrs L says he had not, and he invited her to lunch. She did not go to lunch but took him to the RIA and introduced him. Carola Peck²¹ told Mrs L that she wasn’t sure about Rolf and nor did it seem, from her conversation, was Mrs L. I am sure that Rolf did meet her and that she has forgotten.