As spring cleaning and preparing the house for summer and lots of company rapidly approaches, my mind turns to “Grey Gardens.” I work very, very hard keeping this great house clean, sanitary, safe, and maintained. What would happen if I didn’t? If I lived here the rest of my days and never did another thing?
I honestly can’t quite remember when I first saw Grey Gardens- it was in my hazy days raising a preschooler and a toddler I know that. I just know that it grew to be an obsession of mine. It all started when I read “Gone-Away Lake” at the age of 11. This book by the acclaimed author, Elizabeth Enright, tells the story of a brother and sister who move back to their childhood summer encampment of Victorian houses in their old age. They enjoy being semi-recluses and living amongst the falling down beauty of a dozen Victorian houses in stages of decay. I was enthralled with all of this as a child and I still am today. Thus, when Grey Gardens and its fabulous decomposing house came into my life I was hooked.
If you don’t know about Grey Gardens go look it up now, then come back!
What always pulls me back is my fascination with their level of squalor. Squalor at a level I have never witnessed, or would want to in real life! I suppose it’s what draws people to shows about hoarders. It sure draws me to Grey Gardens. Let’s discuss it.
Before the footage was shot for Grey Gardens there was footage made the summer before when Jackie’s sister Lee visited to direct workmen and talk with her cousin and aunt. This is before the house is fixed up. (Yes- the house had been “fixed up” for almost a year when the Maysles filmed Grey Gardens!) There are bags of garbage in the cellar (they apparently couldn’t pay to have the garbage removed), piles of empty cat food cans in the kitchen, mounds of cat and probably human feces on the floor. The stench of urine so heavy your eyes water. Fleas. No heat, no electric, no water. Just cats, rotted furniture, holes in the ceiling, and filth so thick it was dripping down the sides of the stairs in stalactites of disease and decay. The one thing that stands out to me, however, is the grime! Their matresses don’t have sheets and they are almost black with dirt. The doors have layers of grime around the knobs and the wood above where their hands have touched them and closed and opened them for over 50 years. They gleefully sing and dance through all of it!
Mentally ill? I never could tell. Eccentric most definitely. How else would you explain posing in your fashioned outfit next to your very own squalor?
Imagine- this wood-burning stove, cold for years in that filthy kitchen pictured above. No heat was on in the house. Little Edie says the vines destroyed the chimneys and they couldn’t burn anything in their fireplaces anymore. She stated that was how they were disposing of most of their trash before.
The house was perilously close to the end as there were huge holes in the roof, water coming in and plaster ceilings coming down. The resident raccoons these two nutters fed did not help things. This was the state of the house the year before the Maysles made the movie Grey Gardens. I knew it was bad, but it was much worse than I thought when I saw the earlier footage from “That Summer.”
I wish my screenshots were better. Part of the reason they are hard to see was the lack of light in the house. They had had no electricity in so long the house had to be rewired for it and new service put in! This was all revealed by very polite workmen. I was pleasantly surprised how kind and mannerly the workmen were. Always “yes, ma’am, no ma’am, yes Mrs. Beale,” etc. In all the stench, fleas, and filth they were incredible!
Let’s get back to the squalor- can you belive the stairs? Look at the detritus literally dripping from between the spindles in the balustrade! It must have been the maid’s day off…
These pictures of the downstairs rooms literally look like they might have caught on fire at some point. If they had they might have been cleaner! Lee Radziwill discussed with a furniture man the fate of the household goods. All upholstered furniture was burned. The rest saved if possible. Apparently the fine china was packed in barrels. Maybe sent to a bank? They were discussing the storage of the crystal as well so thieves wouldn’t steal it.
It’s awfully hard to keep the line between the past and the present. -Lil Edie
It’s interesting to think of this in the present day as the bottom fell out of the fine china market about a decade ago and crystal is not something anyone would steal. They had probably sold all of their silver off already.
The stern county health nurse comes in very seriously, then later cracks a smile and is quite kind to big Edie. She and us are actually seeing the house after the first phase of clean-up. After the garbage removal. I wonder how horrific it was for her to see the original conditions when she first visted months before. She states that she was very worried about Big Edie. She had come in the winter too when there was no heat. The house was (and is here) completely unsanitary and unsafe. Remember NO running water. Let that sink in. And they had apparently had their pipes burst one winter because the whole house had to be re-plumbed.
The plumber even put in an electric water heater. Soooo, the other water heater was the one run by the wood stove? How often do you think they had hot water then? When was the last time they had a bath? WWII? They do seem relatively clean so they probably had rag baths at least. I don’t even want to think about the last time they had a working toilet…
The ladies and their things were moved into a large bedroom where a lot of the footage is shot for “That Summer” while roofers, painters, carpenters, and inspectors come and go. The girls go from griping about the “redecorating” (Oh how that kills me!) to thanking Lee and playing hostesses to the extended visiting family. With a straight face they both tell the Maysles Bros. behind the camera “kitties don’t like house redecorating.” Give. Me. A. Break. I think they have parasites in their brains. Redecorating.
And then there is the infamous portrait of Big Edie in her heyday. The woman is obsessed with it. She even makes her daughter pose with it. Creepy. Don’t worry- it shows up in every movie made about them. I wonder whatever happened to it? My biggest shock of this series was Big Edie telling her daughter to leave a cat alone that was relieving itself right next to her potrait. “At least somebody’s doing something they want to around here.” Hmmm. You hardly ever see the floor of this place and later lil Edie has a knack for covering everything with newspapers… ewww.
Speaking of filth- take a look at the doors. That brown stain? Filth from hands opening and closing for the last 50 years. That is shocking. Doors do get dirty and even I have to clean mine every once in a while, but WE HAVE RUNNING WATER. WE WASH OUR HANDS. God help these women. This one little detail really got to me. Those doors are a whole new level of grime. It haunted me for days. You could scrape that crap off with your fingernail. Squalor and no heat or water.
The squalor continued even after the “redecoration.” Notice Big Edie’s mattress?
What an icon though. Right?
Aaaannnndddd, in case you were wondering, the outside was just as bad. I think a broken-down 1930’s Cadilac was under those vines.
I don’t want to get into the weird relationship between mother and daughter here or even how they got to this state. Frankly, Im not sure the truth is really clear on any of it. I suppose both sides could be blamed. I do like the women, and lil Edie is infinitely more likable than her mother. But I feel that there is a lot of history and grey areas we don’t know about. I really liked how the HBO movie dealt with these things and their explanations for both Big and Little Edie’s failed relationships and ultimately fortunes, plus the reasoning for some of their odder decisions. But I don’t really know if that is the truth. The movie explains things neatly, but life is anything but.
The story ends in a sort of jumbled way, with the “redecorated” house making its appearance a year later in “Grey Gardens.” But in no time the racoons are tearing down a wall, cats are peeing in the corner, the mattress turns black from filth. Big Edie died a couple of years after the final movie and Little Edie sold the house and moved to Florida to live happily ever after. The house was pretty bad when she sold it, I think an exterior wall was even missing in a downstairs room! Yikes! But it was saved and it is fine now. Houses go in cycles don’t they?
Well, that’s motivation enough for me, I’ve got plenty of “patina” to deal with around here. On with the spring cleaning!
From a dusty house on Kansas Street to you,
Happy cleaning!
Love,
Jaime
PS- If you need help with squalor, hoarding, managing a house, or just cleaning, please consider trying the flylady system. It works so well and Marla Cilley, who is the fly lady is fantastic! Flylady.net
Life on Kansas Street 