Huntington Away from Home
My own private Pasadena
This week, I went to The Huntington. It’s a library, museum, and garden courtesy of—big twist—a dead rich person. Specifically, Henry Edwards Huntington, who did a lot of railroad stuff and then married his aunt (his uncle’s widow but still weird). His aunt/wife loved the most boring type of art—19th century British portraiture. Like her nephew/husband, she knew a good deal when she saw one and used the chaos following the First (but not the last!) World War to raid Europe of its treasures and bring them to a place no one would bother them: Southern California. Henry, probably after being suddenly surrounded by paintings of dead-eyed inbreds all over his house, buried his nose in rare books (eventually becoming the library) and turned his attention to landscaping, transforming part of his (600 acre) yard into a garden worthy of his enormous mansion. And now it all belongs to me.
In a way. For Christmas, my brother generously got me a year-long membership to The Huntington, which is the closest to Pasadena home ownership I will get in my current lifetime. I can come and go whenever I want, provided I make a prior reservation on the website and the tickets aren’t sold out for the day and time I want to go.
This week, we went at 4 PM, better known as “the hour of existential angst.” The sun was beginning to set and a chill was beginning to descend and The Huntington employees informed us that we had an hour until closing. We made our way to the main mansion, the former home of aunt/wife and nephew/husband, current home to me (in a way). Portraits hung throughout in the carefully preserved living spaces, but we headed to the side gallery, where a banner promised a Kehinde Wiley exhibition. At first glance, the side gallery seemed to only be full of the old familiar faces—Countess of This, Duke of That, etc. But then when we turned to the exit we saw the Wiley—the impressive, massive “A Portrait of a Young Gentleman,” hung to mirror the Gainsborough that inspired it, “The Blue Boy,” directly across the room. And you know what? It was cool.
Our art appetite satiated, we meandered through the gardens on our way back to the car. It was approaching 5 P.M., and patrons were splayed on the lawn adjacent to the mansion. They looked up to the sky, where hundreds of green parrots were in the process of bedding down for the night on the grounds. These wild green parrots are apparently the progeny of a couple of pets that escaped a hundred or so years ago. Their silhouettes cawed as they homed in on their trees. A family walked past us and the teen daughter remarked, “It sounds like the ocean.” And it did—a wave of birds crashing and receding above us.
We made our way through the Japanese Garden, the Chinese Garden, The Gift Store Garden, and finally, The Car Garden, which is poetic given the fact that Huntington was a railroad man. It was time to head to home (our actual one), with its more modest garden (potted plants), limited library (now taken over by baby board books), and eclectic art (curated from area thrift stores). Whatever its limitations, its charms outweigh them, and at the end of the day, my husband is not my nephew and I am not his aunt, not even in a way.
Can't stop laughing. What a day!!
I had to google Wiley and his Portrait of a Young Gentleman. Thank you for informing me of this history of my home town. So happy there's no nephew/ aunt connection....:)