LM: No, no, no! It’s nothing to do with Egypt. It comes from the Ottoman Empire side of our family, an empire which had endless principalities, duchies, marquisates, counties and all the rest of it. And because our family was in Constantinople for centuries, we inherited a matrilineal title, which was passed to me through my mother – and it’s been a burden ever since.
Fitz: But if you had not told anybody about it, it wouldn’t have been a burden?
LM: Well, you’ve got a point. But the great Melbourne high society lady Lillian Frank knew about it, and she had a column in the paper. We were working on a couple of arts projects together and she said if she put me and my title in the paper, it would help with the projects. She gave me a couple of rings to wear, I got the stories from my mother, and the next thing I knew I had a double-page story about me in the centre of the Saturday Herald. And that [a little ruefully] is where it all began.
Fitz: So by this time, you’re nominally a prince, albeit working as a steward in Qantas first-class, serving coffee and wine to the well-heeled?
Montesini at home, 1996Credit: Fairfax Photographic
LM: [Sighing.] Everyone just loves to take the piss out of that, but for me that life was perfect. Robert and I didn’t have an independent income, so I had to work, but I also wanted to study more, I wanted to write, I wanted to work on all sorts of society projects and be with all sorts of society people. And for a gay man, back then, Qantas was a rare safe space for people just like me and after every 10-day trip, you got 10 days off, so it was ideal. And even when I was away, I wrote and I read and I studied, while Robert waited for me at home, admittedly being a bit naughty – people just couldn’t keep their hands off him. But he said, “Look, I don’t care about them. You’re the only one I love.” And by the ’80s, we’d moved to Sydney, and were doing more and more in high society, holding all these soirées – cocktail parties every five weeks with about 60 or 80 people, dinners for a dozen – with diplomats, famous artists, writers and so forth in our Woolloomooloo terrace. And there was a particular night where Lady Mary Fairfax was one of the guests, arriving with a retinue of people in Rolls Royces, Mercedes, BMWs and Bentleys. People said to me, “Lorenzo, you’ve arrived.” It was a wonderful night, a seminal night and Pitty-Pat was there. And after that, more and more doors kept opening for me and I saw more and more of Pitty-Pat and her mother Mitty, Lady Dunlop, to whom I became very close. It was such a wonderful time in Sydney, with new restaurants opening, great theatrical and literary events every week, and I launched my first novel, Cardboard Cantata, which Primrose gave a dinner for.
Montesini with friend Pixie Youle.
Fitz: So how did it go from that to engagement?
LM: The engagement came because of her mother, who kept wanting to know, “How can we get closer?” For some crazy reason, her daughter was not married. And so, you know, “Eureka! Let’s get the two kids together!” It was suggested at a dinner. I didn’t actually fall off my chair, but I did mentally. But then Rob spoke up and said, “That’s a very good idea!”
Fitz: But hang on, surely Primrose knew you two were a gay couple?
LM: Of course, she knew, yeah. But she was also completely in the thrall of her mother, who was in control of everything. And Robert loved the idea because it would be a way for him to prove to the world that he was not gay.
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Fitz: I would have thought, under the circumstances, that was a tad difficult?
LM: Well, I mean, now it sounds ridiculous, but you’ve got to think when it was, where he came from … so very difficult. Straight out of the dinner, I said to Rob, “You don’t realise what this means for us. They’ll just try and break us up, and get rid of you!” I could see what was coming.
Fitz: I’m guessing you and Pitty-Pat had not consummated your relationship and hadn’t even passionately kissed?
LM: No, no! We were just sort of chums. And it was the sort of thing where the marriage had been “arranged” – just like it works in many parts of the world, still – rather than being because of love. I kept trying to break it off, but no-one would listen.
Fitz: And now the whole idea takes on a momentum of its own, until all of Sydney and Melbourne high society, with attendant press, gather in Venice for your nuptials. What was the final, irretrievable breakdown?
LM: I had had enough. Two days before the wedding we were on the ferry going to the Venice Basilica for the wedding rehearsal. The girls were at the front and we were at the back. When we got to the landing, I went up to Pitty-Pat and her mother and the others, and I said, “I’m sorry, I’m not going on with all this. I’m going back to the palazzo with Robert, and we’re leaving.”
Fitz: And how did they react?
LM: They could not believe it, because once they had seen Rob and I arrive at the palazzo a few days earlier, they had thought, “That’s it. We’ve got him!” And even when we walked out, they still didn’t believe it. They thought I was having “a turn”, and they went ahead with the rehearsal, with someone standing in for me. So Robert and I walked back to the palazzo, and I began packing. Everyone by this point was frantic – except me. I was the most calm of all because I thought, “Finally, I’m in control.”
Fitz: And yet now the real circus begins.
LM: Everything went absolutely crazy. Rob and I went to the last hotel in Venice which had a vacancy, on the very end of the island, and stayed there – a tiny room with two single beds – but were found by the journalist Hedley Thomas. For the next few weeks, everywhere we went there were paparazzi, and the scene when we got back to Sydney Airport was extraordinary. Just dozens of journalists shouting questions and whole banks of cameras.
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Fitz: Enter, the great agent to the stars, the legendary impresario, Harry M. Miller. If I may say, I love this story, and have quoted it many times since you first told me in the early-1990s.
LM: Yes, Harry M. got me alone and proffered a contract for an exclusive deal to tell my story to The Australian Women’s Weekly and 60 Minutes, in return for $180,000, an extraordinary amount of money. I said, “I’m not sure, Harry. I’d like a couple of weeks to think about it.”
Fitz: Whereupon he shared with you the North Star he had steered his entire deal-making career on.
LM: He said, “Lorenzo, in this business, you’ve got to get them while they have a hard-on.” I signed.
Fitz: Did you ever talk to Pitty-Pat or her mother again?
LM: No, they blamed me for causing such havoc, but of course, I was sad to hear of her death.
Fitz: Tragically, you lost the true love of your life, Rob, to AIDS, 30 years ago?
LM: Yes, which was terrible. He just didn’t want to leave me, and I didn’t want to be left alone without him.
Fitz: I have heard many wonderful stories of the Sisters of St Vincent’s back in those days, the nuns nursing those dying of AIDS with such great care, when the Catholic Church itself was far more uncaring – and was privileged to meet a couple of them at the recent launch of Qtopia.
LM: They were simply extraordinary, and took such great care of Rob to his dying breath.
Fitz: Were you not at all alarmed, upon his diagnosis, that you might have contracted HIV, too?
LM: Not at all. I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here without him anyway. But I tested negative. And before he died, Rob said to me he was sure that my work organising the International Australian Friends of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, working as a cultural diplomat for them, would be the thing that would help me navigate in the sea of grief without him, and he was right. That is what I have been doing ever since.
Fitz: None of my damn business, but I’ll ask anyway. Have you found love, since, Lorenzo?
LM: I’ve had two sort of relationships since with somebody in Singapore and somebody in Egypt, but things didn’t work out. Rob was my true love.
Fitz: Did Rob in the end, I hope, totally accept he was gay, and so could rest in peace?
LM: He had no choice. He said, “Why did I fight so much with myself?” But my love for him was unconditional. He died in my arms. And I’m still holding him.
Fitz: We weep. Thank you. I must say, for a 78-year-old man you sound as healthy as a trout.
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