Mary Austin was the ever-present female figure alongside Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Austin, the daughter of deaf working-class parents, met Mercury in 1969 in a London clothing store where she worked. Despite her reservations, Mary and Freddie began dating, and several months later, she moved into his apartment.
It wouldn’t be long before Queen became a household name. Freddie proposed to Mary in 1973, the same year Queen released her first self-titled album. Mary and Freddie would never marry, but Mary remained by Freddie’s side until her death. Only Austin knows where he scattered Freddie Mercury’s ashes.
Mary still lives a secret life in Freddie’s One Garden Lodge mansion
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Mary Austin celebrated her 70th birthday in March 2021 at the One Garden Lodge mansion that Freddie Mercury left her. Freddie’s friends couldn’t believe it when they found out that he left the mansion to Mary Austin.
Jim Austin, Mercury’s partner at the time of his death, thought the house would be for him. Three months after Freddie’s death, Mary asked Jim, Freddie’s ex Joe Fanelli, and Freddie’s personal assistant Peter Freestone to leave the facility.
Freddie had left them each £500,000, so they had somewhere to go. Mary said that she did not like to evict Peter, Joe and Jim:
“Some of the fans even told me that I was just the keeper of the house. That hurts. I know that several of Freddie’s gay friends were surprised that Freddie had left me so much. There are those who thought that the house should have been left to them. It was as if people envy me for having what he had left me.
Freddie bequeathed to Mary not only his house but also his fortune and half of his future earnings from Queen. Mary had tried to persuade him to make the London mansion a memorial site that fans could visit, but Freddie insisted that she have it.
“If things had been different, you would have been my wife and this would have been yours anyway,” Freddie said. Mary raised her two sons, Richard and James, in Freddie’s mansion.
The rare interviews he has given from the house show that he hasn’t changed most of Freddie’s decorations. In 2017, she clashed with Freddie’s fans after they removed all the graffiti from the mansion’s exterior wall and replaced it with a warning that defacing the wall was a crime.
A section of Freddie’s fans claims that Mary is merely a caretaker of the estate. However, Freddie’s will stipulates that the property is his to do as he pleases. She currently enjoys a quiet life with her cats in the enclosure. It is unlikely that Mary turned the house into a museum like Freddie wanted a family home to be.
Mary and Mercury were headed for marriage before Mercury revealed he was bisexual
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Six years into Mary and Freddie’s relationship, she began to suspect that he was having an affair. Freddie changed after she threatened to leave, but soon after he revealed to Mary that he was bisexual.
“I will never forget that moment,” Austin said. The Daily Mail. “I remember saying to him at the time, ‘No, Freddie, I don’t think you’re bisexual. I think you’re gay. Freddie’s revelation ended the couple’s engagement and physical relationship.
However, he did not break their bond. He continued to tour with Mercury and the band. “And they remained such good friends for a long time after that,” said biographer Mark Blake. Biography “He stayed as part of the band’s entourage because he was part of their entourage. She was the most important person in that entourage.”
Mary was to marry Piers Cameron, but when Freddie died, she said she felt she had lost her family. “He was everything to me, apart from my children,” said Mary. “He was like no one he had ever met before.” Mercury once said that he considered Mary to be his wife:
“All my lovers ask me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s just impossible. The only friend I have is Mary, and I don’t want anyone else. To me, she was my common-law wife. For me, it was a marriage.”
Freddie kept his promise to love Mary until the day he died. “We had done it for better or worse, for rich and poor, in sickness and in health,” Mary said. OK!
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn