Freddie Mercury’s ex describes his devastation over scrutiny of personal life
Mary Austin has lived in Freddie Mercury’s former Kensington dwelling for over 30 years.
The Queen star’s former girlfriend and “Love of My Life”, has saved the Georgian mansion precisely the identical because the day he died on November 24, 1991. Until now.
This month, most of Freddie’s private gadgets have been boxed up and brought to Christie’s public sale home forward of a significant sale in September.
Mary has virtually by no means spoken in public about her relationship with the star, nor about his dwelling and her custodianship of his legacy.
She gave a uncommon interview this weekend, and gave glimpses of the person she knew behind the celebrity and public persona.
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Freddie Mercury was ‘Intensely in love’ with final woman in his life after Mary
The couple have been collectively for nearly six years. Although the connection was over by 1976 as Freddie explored his sexuality, they remained devoted for the remainder of his life.
Mary remained his closest good friend, the individual to whom he turned to assist him discover a dwelling, and the one individual to at the present time who is aware of the place his ashes lie.
Freddie purchased Garden Lodge in 1980 and Mary says he fell in love with the Georgian villa on sight, telling the proprietor: “I will give you the asking price now if you take it off the market.”
However, there’s a devastating purpose why he didn’t transfer in for nearly 4 years.
By the mid-Eighties, Freddie was seeking to quiet down. He had loved a passionate love affair in Germany with restaurateur Winnie Kirchberger and was about to embark on his ultimate relationship with Jim Hutton.
He additionally, Mary says, discovered himself needing the steadiness and grounding safety of a everlasting dwelling: “I think performing, and everything that being a successful musician brings, it can just wash over and through you, and leave you unsure of who you ever were.
“I believe Garden Lodge gave him the prospect to rediscover himself. He walked again into being who he was — the individual that I knew — again within the Seventies.”
Garden Lodge, of course, would become the Queen’s star’s sanctuary as AIDS slowly began to take his strength and health.
Mary revealed that a favourite painting, Young Boy on a Sofa by Géza Vastagh, was angled so that bed-bound Freddie could stare at the beautiful young man as he, in turn, stared out at the star’s beloved gardens.
Freddie had filled the house with paintings and objects of art, famously bidding on new items from his bed in his final weeks.
His PA and friend Peter Freestone revealed the star requested to be carried from his bed the day before he died: “Freddie was downstairs in Garden Lodge on the twentieth November, as he needed to see a few of his artworks for one final time… He commented on how and when he had acquired a number of of the items. Of course, there was a quiet environment in the home throughout these final days, however Freddie remained the Freddie we knew till the tip.”