My interview with Kitty Kelley in her Georgetown home, an ante-bellum Southern mansion,
took place on a sun-baked afternoon back in the Stone Age (to be exact August of 1986). We
sipped diet Coca-Cola, not mint juleps. She answered many questions, at one
point “swiveling her body on the loveseat in her living room like a petite artillery gun.” Yesterday
the interview was posted here (scroll down to second item).
So what happens today? Frank Bruni offers a rare peek at her Georgetown home in this
morning’s House & Home section of The New York Times. (Kelley loves her privacy,
Bruni writes, so reporters don’t usually get to see her home.)
Not much has changed from what I recall. She still loves big colors (though the color scheme
has been redesigned). She still has her glass menagerie (though she’s no Amanda). The furniture
has been re-arranged, the loveseat re-upholstered, and topiary added to the garden. She still has a
fondness for editorial cartoons and political caricatures, momentos of her career that decorate a
first-floor bathroom (and, when I was there, the upstairs hall).
Here’s what I wrote so long, long ago:
It is an imposing house. The freshly painted black window shutters are
immaculate against the tan siding. The slate roof, with many peaks and chimneys, looks like
something out of a fairy tale. An American flag hangs on a pole set at a rakish angle over the front
porch.
In the front yard, set back from Dunbarton Street, behind a vine-covered wall … Matthew, the
Caribbean gardner, is clipping the shrubbery beneath a towering magnolia tree. Around the side
and back of the house is a vast, red-brick patio dotted with white, wrought-iron garden chairs and
tables. A block beyond the wood fence is the brick steeple of the Episcopal Church, whose
chimes announce God’s presence every Sunday morning. (“I love to listen, but I don’t go,” says
Kelley.)
It is a distinguished house. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan lived here for 25
years. Kelley still gets mail for him. …
Nothing on the outside of the house prepares you for the inside. A sculpted, horn-blowing
cherub, à la Chagall, greets you from a wall in the living room, which is overseen by a devilish,
green-faced Balinese idol with rainbow-colored wings. It sits on a brass sea chest across the room
from a 7-foot giraffe, also brass, which stands in the parlor near two Chinese Fu dogs perched on
a windowsill. Meanwhile, a veritable Noah’s Ark of miniature crystal animals crowd the coffee
table, and an elaborate stash of giant starfish fossils fill the shelves by the fireplace.
Kelley [has an] insatiable taste for primary colors: blue walls for the living room, where the
dark wood floor is polished to a glossy sheen and the white throw rug matches the trim white
molding; red for the flower-patterned loveseats, where we are sitting; red for the foyer with the
white Victorian armoire; red again for the parlor and the carpet on the stairway leading upstairs;
yellow for the dining room, a cheerful sort of breakfast nook with toy parrots hanging from the
ceiling; and green for the kitchen, where Kelley’s living pets, two stiped alley cats named Darling
and Runt, like to hang out. (“I’d have a burro in the backyard if I could,” she
says.)
Here’s what Bruni saw on his “recent visit to her tall, tan house, built in the early 19th
century”:
A brass giraffe, about six feet tall, stands in her foyer. The mantel above the
white marble fireplace in her living room supports a teeming glass menagerie, including a bunny, a
bear, a squirrel and an elephant.
A crystal cat has its own niche on an end table nearby.
The red paint on the living room walls is so glossy it looks candied, as does the royal blue
paint in the dining room, where one of many vintage French posters hangs. The poster, like
another, depicts a dancing party girl.
This copycat stuff is getting to be a habit with the Times. See what I mean here. Love it. Keep it
coming.
