What a surprise! The start of LGBTQ Month has unearthed all the simmering questions about the appropriateness of celebrating gay heritage that were prominent over the last couple of years. I don’t want to be sucked too deeply into the pockets of outrage that still seem to be out there in reaction to the National Trust’s LGBTQ programme but it is an irresistible debate. Well, I, for one, am glad to see a big bureaucratic organisation like the NT taking a few risks. But I also agree that the NT cannot justify a role as the conscience of the nation.
Here is the key question. Can you find heritage and history interesting if it doesn’t show you someone just like you? I’m female and I have certainly been more interested in the lives and achievements of women and love the fact that this generation is unearthing so much more detail about domestic life and individual women from the past. But when you explore the historic kitchens at Edwardian Stansted Park in Sussex, for example, you don’t have to be a cook to get the point.
Most people will compare it with their own kitchen and reflect objectively on the social change that brought us kitchen appliances and promoted the squads of maids out of the scullery and into the general workplace. Visitors do however also find the downstairs arrangements interesting because so many of us are now fascinated by our ancestry and, let’s face it, we are far more likely to be related to a long dead scullery maid than to the Earl. Does it make a difference to our sense of connection that we can imagine that, yes, we might once have been scrubbing carrots and carrying coals? Yes, it does.
So if that is true for women, is it also true for LGBTQ people? Of course it is. The problem with the National Trust’s approach in 2017 was lack of subtlety. When actor Will Young was outed by the press in 2018, he was unhappy but he regarded it as one of the pitfalls of celebrity. When Robert Kretton-Cremer of Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk was outed by the National Trust in the year before, his family were angry. Robert Kretton-Cremer was not a celebrity. He was a writer and philanthropist and an intensely private man, who gave his house and its contents to the National Trust so that it could be preserved “for everyone, for ever”. He did not invite the NT to make judgements about his private life. For most of his life, if he had been outed, he would have been jailed for homosexuality. The historical reality therefore is that he made a choice not to discuss his sexuality publicly. A century on, his family are the keepers of his memory, not the National Trust, and their views should be paramount.
Consider another great house, Powderham Castle in Devon, where the story has played out over the centuries and from which we, the visitor, can learn about evolving society just as we did in the kitchen at Stansted Park. Stand in the elegant Music Room at Powderham and you are enjoying Rococo splendour and the taste of William, 9th Earl of Devon as expressed by his architect, James Wyatt in 1783.
The ‘flamboyant’ 9th Earl, ‘Kitty’ to his friends, was certainly gay – he was outed by his uncle over his affair with William Beckford, publicly disgraced and exiled. Yet two centuries later, in 2008, Kitty Courtenay’s descendant, Hugh, 18th Earl of Devon was the target of complaints from gay rights organisations for banning gay weddings at the castle. Powderham was his home, after all, and perhaps he was justified in thinking he could invite who he liked. Move on a generation, and Charlie, 19th Earl is today proud that Powderham is listed in the Gay Weddings Guide and is a popular (and romantic) place for gay couples to tie the knot. You can see right away that at Powderham, the upholding or otherwise of gay rights has become a story of individuals and individual decisions, not a judgement by society or national charities. If you are indeed in the Music Room at Powderham, you cannot but regret the sad exile of Kitty, 9th Earl of Devon, a man capable of creating such beauty but prevented from enjoying it. The story is right in front of our eyes and we are left to judge for ourselves. Kitty, 9th Earl’s monument is the beautiful interior at his home and that is how we should think about his legacy. Isn’t the same true of the preservation of the elegant interiors at Felbrigg? We can speculate about Robert Kretton-Cremer’s homosexuality but regret outing him so publicly; if it still upset some of the volunteers at the house, then what possible justification is there for upsetting that group at the cost of another? So, this year, let’s encourage each of us to find our own relationship with the history on display at heritage places and let the stories speak for themselves. Let’s celebrate gay history where we find it but not make modern judgements about the people of the past. If they set their own rules, we can take pleasure in discovering that too. So well done, National Trust for continuing to spark debate and celebrate diversity but please, please be sensitive and just a little more subtle in your approach.