Remembering Miss Killingbeck
Del Martin has died. I never met her or her partner but I have a picture from their (subsequently annulled) 2004 wedding up in my office, as well as using a cut down version as this icon. I use this as an icon a lot because it so well represents the things I often post about and the things I feel strongly about - later life, older people and older women in particular, queer-ness, representations of sexuality, especially queer sexuality and sexuality in later life, and extra-especially queer sexuality in later life (I need a Venn diagram). Also, whenever PB sees this icon he makes a kissing noise and says ‘kiss’.
It made me think about another picture that represents an older woman who’s been important to me. This one hangs in my hall at home.
Her name was Miss Killingbeck and she was in her late 80s when I met her and 91 when she died. In 1928, when she was about 20, she won a place dancing with the Ballet Rambert (now the Rambert Dance Company). She left her job and family up in the north and went down to London to join the company.
One day she was messing around between rehearsals, dancing a popular modern dance of the day (something like the Charleston or the Shimmy, but she couldn’t remember what) but on her points. One of the men in the company was an artist and caricaturist. He later went on to become moderately famous - she did tell me his name, but it didn’t mean anything to me so, annoyingly, I’ve forgotten it (it’s not ‘Chris’ - that was her name). He drew this sketch of her ‘fooling around’ and gave it to her. She kept it on the mantelpiece of her front room. When I was leaving the area, she wanted to give me a present, so I took a colour photocopy of her sketch and framed it. I imagine the original is lost now, as she died shortly afterwards and I don’t think the distant relation who inherited her things would have known or valued the story.
I’d always loved the picture over the years I knew her. I think it was partly the story that accompanied it - the sense of this person who now seemed such a stereotypical slightly cantankerous old woman having an interesting and unusual past. And that reminds me that that’s my experience of lots of people. On first impressions I often assume that people are as straightforward and have lived as mainstream a life as they seem to present, only to find out, as I get to know them, that they have all sorts of interesting quirks and wacky backstories. And this particularly often seems to be the case for older people, I guess because just having lived longer gives you more time to have done different things and to have happened to be in the path of interesting historical moments.
The poignancy of the way the story continued also moves me - she had assumed that she would be able to hold down a job as well as attending rehearsals, but she found that rehearsals took up all her time. Her family were poor, so after a few months she had used up all her savings and had to give up her place and return to the north. She was very bitter about this and the way there had been no scholarships or bursaries in her day. Something about the unfairness of some of those historical moments speaks to me in that.
I like her muscle-y thighs in the picture. All the dancers I’ve ever known have had these incredible muscle-y thighs and I like the way that doesn’t fit the idea of the ballerina at all, but is entirely the case. That contrast of reality and fantasy bodies. And the gesture of her hands has always struck me as rather camp. I always wondered if she was queer - she certainly never married and never mentioned a partner but I never asked and never picked up any hints.
I had very strong feelings around her - sympathy for how hard she found the loss of independence as she grew older, a mixture of envy and pleasure in her lovely, if dilapidated, house, repulsion when she came out with her occasional racisms and ‘young people today’isms. I think she saw me as a younger version of herself, despite my lack of dancing skills. She had gone on to become what she described as a ‘businesswoman’ and bought her own house, having to get her wastrel brother to guarantee her mortgage because single women were not considered competent to take on a mortgage. I expect I was quite indignant about that when she first told me, and I had just bought my first house. I never had the courage to admit that I lived in sin with a partner, so I think she saw me as an independent single career woman like her (which is/was not a complete misrepresentation anyway). I also had a cat, as did she, but she used to refer to it as ‘my pussy’ and hence say things like ‘how’s your pussy?’ and ‘I was sat here last night stroking my pussy’ which made it hard not to laugh.
Towards the end of her life she was in and out of hospital a lot and receiving very unsatisfactory home care services. That was awful to witness and must have been terrible to experience. I remember one time happening to be on a ward where she had just been admitted and talking to the nurse who had just done her admission paperwork. She was annoyed because Miss Killingbeck had been incoherent and unhelpful and said that she thought Miss Killingbeck quite liked coming in to hospital because she got looked after and it gave her a break. I went in to see her and it was obvious that she was confused because she was feeling so ill. I knew she hated the indignities of being in hospital and each time fought not to be admitted. I had often heard nurses say of particular patients ‘oh s/he’s always in and out, s/he likes being in here’ and thought that unlikely, but it gave me a jolt to see them seeing her as a stereotype when she was so real to me.
I’m sad that now, 10 years after she died, there are so few people who remember her. Her friends were mostly around her own age, so probably dead now, and her nearest relative was a great-niece who never visited. I find it sad that someone so characterful and interesting and just human, has disappeared with so little trace. And that actually, she probably was no more characterful and interesting and human than anyone else, I just knew her better and was more in sympathy with her than other older people I met, so there’s so much loss of individuality as people age and die.
I’m aware that there are more positive spins that could be put on this account, and on a different day I might put such a positive spin on my memories myself. Hmmm, what do you know, LJ really about poster’s own feelings, despite apparent outward facing content...
It made me think about another picture that represents an older woman who’s been important to me. This one hangs in my hall at home.
Her name was Miss Killingbeck and she was in her late 80s when I met her and 91 when she died. In 1928, when she was about 20, she won a place dancing with the Ballet Rambert (now the Rambert Dance Company). She left her job and family up in the north and went down to London to join the company.
One day she was messing around between rehearsals, dancing a popular modern dance of the day (something like the Charleston or the Shimmy, but she couldn’t remember what) but on her points. One of the men in the company was an artist and caricaturist. He later went on to become moderately famous - she did tell me his name, but it didn’t mean anything to me so, annoyingly, I’ve forgotten it (it’s not ‘Chris’ - that was her name). He drew this sketch of her ‘fooling around’ and gave it to her. She kept it on the mantelpiece of her front room. When I was leaving the area, she wanted to give me a present, so I took a colour photocopy of her sketch and framed it. I imagine the original is lost now, as she died shortly afterwards and I don’t think the distant relation who inherited her things would have known or valued the story.
I’d always loved the picture over the years I knew her. I think it was partly the story that accompanied it - the sense of this person who now seemed such a stereotypical slightly cantankerous old woman having an interesting and unusual past. And that reminds me that that’s my experience of lots of people. On first impressions I often assume that people are as straightforward and have lived as mainstream a life as they seem to present, only to find out, as I get to know them, that they have all sorts of interesting quirks and wacky backstories. And this particularly often seems to be the case for older people, I guess because just having lived longer gives you more time to have done different things and to have happened to be in the path of interesting historical moments.
The poignancy of the way the story continued also moves me - she had assumed that she would be able to hold down a job as well as attending rehearsals, but she found that rehearsals took up all her time. Her family were poor, so after a few months she had used up all her savings and had to give up her place and return to the north. She was very bitter about this and the way there had been no scholarships or bursaries in her day. Something about the unfairness of some of those historical moments speaks to me in that.
I like her muscle-y thighs in the picture. All the dancers I’ve ever known have had these incredible muscle-y thighs and I like the way that doesn’t fit the idea of the ballerina at all, but is entirely the case. That contrast of reality and fantasy bodies. And the gesture of her hands has always struck me as rather camp. I always wondered if she was queer - she certainly never married and never mentioned a partner but I never asked and never picked up any hints.
I had very strong feelings around her - sympathy for how hard she found the loss of independence as she grew older, a mixture of envy and pleasure in her lovely, if dilapidated, house, repulsion when she came out with her occasional racisms and ‘young people today’isms. I think she saw me as a younger version of herself, despite my lack of dancing skills. She had gone on to become what she described as a ‘businesswoman’ and bought her own house, having to get her wastrel brother to guarantee her mortgage because single women were not considered competent to take on a mortgage. I expect I was quite indignant about that when she first told me, and I had just bought my first house. I never had the courage to admit that I lived in sin with a partner, so I think she saw me as an independent single career woman like her (which is/was not a complete misrepresentation anyway). I also had a cat, as did she, but she used to refer to it as ‘my pussy’ and hence say things like ‘how’s your pussy?’ and ‘I was sat here last night stroking my pussy’ which made it hard not to laugh.
Towards the end of her life she was in and out of hospital a lot and receiving very unsatisfactory home care services. That was awful to witness and must have been terrible to experience. I remember one time happening to be on a ward where she had just been admitted and talking to the nurse who had just done her admission paperwork. She was annoyed because Miss Killingbeck had been incoherent and unhelpful and said that she thought Miss Killingbeck quite liked coming in to hospital because she got looked after and it gave her a break. I went in to see her and it was obvious that she was confused because she was feeling so ill. I knew she hated the indignities of being in hospital and each time fought not to be admitted. I had often heard nurses say of particular patients ‘oh s/he’s always in and out, s/he likes being in here’ and thought that unlikely, but it gave me a jolt to see them seeing her as a stereotype when she was so real to me.
I’m sad that now, 10 years after she died, there are so few people who remember her. Her friends were mostly around her own age, so probably dead now, and her nearest relative was a great-niece who never visited. I find it sad that someone so characterful and interesting and just human, has disappeared with so little trace. And that actually, she probably was no more characterful and interesting and human than anyone else, I just knew her better and was more in sympathy with her than other older people I met, so there’s so much loss of individuality as people age and die.
I’m aware that there are more positive spins that could be put on this account, and on a different day I might put such a positive spin on my memories myself. Hmmm, what do you know, LJ really about poster’s own feelings, despite apparent outward facing content...