South Africa
One house, one city, and a country I have read about far more thoroughly than I have walked in — which is to say, not at all.
By city
One city, and I will not pretend the rest of the country is covered by it.The entries
Filled marks are places I have stood in. This one is hollow.I have not been. That is the honest whole of my standing here, and it would be easy to dress this page up with the sort of confident advice one absorbs from other people's books. I would rather leave it thin and true.
The country keeps one entry, and it is here because a reader wrote in and would not let it go — a painter's own house, with her own collection still inside it. Houses kept that way are the whole argument of this directory, and I am not going to leave one off the list on the grounds that I have not yet bought the ticket.
When the plan comes it will be March, on the reader's advice, and it will not stop at one house. Anyone who knows the collections here properly — Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, the coast — is invited to correct this page before I ever get to it.
