Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

This is a broad, catch-all category of works that fit best here and not elsewhere. If you haven't found it someplace else, you might want to look here.

Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:27 am

Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell
by Lady Natasha Spender
The Telegraph
08 Jun 2008

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


A loveless, lonely childhood was responsible for Dame Edith Sitwell's prickly reputation, yet she was loyal and kind to her friends. Here, Lady Natasha Spender, wife of Sir Stephen, remembers with affection her revealing encounters with the poet

On an airy spring day soon after the first Blitz, Stephen and I walked along Grosvenor Street, thronged with officers of the armed services, to the Sesame and Pioneer Club for our first luncheon with Edith Sitwell after our marriage. We must have appeared an incongruous pair; I, a 22-year-old, conspicuous in girlish pre-war clothes amid the crowd of trim young military ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), Stephen in his navy-blue, red-piped, brass-buttoned uniform of the London Fire Brigade. In spite of fatigue after 48 hours' non-stop duty, he shared my happy anticipation as we mounted the steps.

The hushed atmosphere within the Sesame Club was that of a dignified refuge for the elderly, solicitously served by old retainers. With younger members and club servants away on military duties, it was a backwater harbour for old ladies, a shelter from the clattering impact of wartime outside. Edith, with her aristocratic style and magnificent presence, always excited their curiosity, not least on that day when she entered the dining-room attended by a fireman - young, tall and handsome, but nevertheless a fireman. One could sense their dismay at her social effrontery.

Once seated at table, she gave a brief smothered giggle and, peering round conspiratorially, said quietly on a long inhaled breath, 'O-o-o-o-h, how I should like to cast Macbeth.' We felt like subversive children, reprehensible in our disrespectful laughter, a little ashamed to enjoy the irresistible image of the onlookers as inhabitants of the thunderous heath. I remember little more from that first encounter save its friendliness, for Stephen and Edith were immediately engrossed in discussing poetry, which became, over the years, their intense, sustained dialogue.

Too often, Edith is seen as an isolated, regal figure - grand, eccentric, assured and quick to rebuke impertinence. To some in those days, her Plantagenet features could strike a chill. But her soul was fired by devotion to friends and to unfortunates: her famous solitude was less that of a queen than of an abbess, even, at times, a hermit.

Edith's friendship with me grew out of her benevolent concern for my need for company when Stephen was on fire service duty. My inexperience of the world of great literature brought out her almost parental desire to protect and instruct, as well as to share and give pleasure.

We talked a little of poetry, though more of the music she knew and loved so well, from plainchant to Prokofiev. But mostly it was of human predicaments, the merits and foibles, triumphs and sufferings of others. For each of us, the perennial quest for peace in which to collect one's creative thoughts was, in contrast to - and perhaps born of - the tribulations of childhood, which we recalled as if they concerned characters in ancient stories. We swapped sagas, we laughed at the museum-piece incidents we had lived through. But in reality, for Edith, it had been no laughing matter.

The plight of her aristocratic upbringing was that she inhabited a bleak no-man's land between remote, sometimes barbarous, parents and good-hearted servants, with whom she could have no intimacy. She took refuge in her isolation by wide reading in the family library at Renishaw Hall. Her parents' enduring anger that their first-born was a girl, and by no means the conventional, mindless beauty they craved, gave her an intense sense of a life-threatening force, which never left her. Thus Edith's anxieties and shyness (despite her exalted deportment) were all too explicable. Throughout her life, she unconsciously fought this battle for the right to exist, her only weapons verbal, her only comfort in childhood the sporadic kindness of people unable to be consistently close to her, and in later life, her faith.

The loveless Victorian attitude to children as trophies, owing only duty to their parents, was punishing. Edith told me of the long solitary walks she would take when her parents were in an angry spate, after which she would enter the house quietly by a side door. The butler, unobtrusively vigilant, would say, 'Perhaps you'd better go in there, Miss Edith', gently locking her into the silver pantry, knowing as he went about his duties that no one could get from him the key of his inviolable domain.

Her brothers (Osbert and Sacheverell), meanwhile, lived in the real world of schools, guards' regiments, travel and worldly social intercourse. Osbert, the adored son and heir, was able to develop a toughness or perhaps a carapace with his mastery of social occasions, whereas Edith was in comparative isolation with her governess. Although he was five years her junior, Osbert had always felt protective of her. He knew her to be hypersensitive, prone to childish terrors, hating to see anyone teased, yet of great courage and with a wonderful sense of fun. He was indignant at the torments she was obliged to undergo; her mother's humiliating public taunts and rages, her father's carping and, above all, the painful, even damaging orthopaedic contraptions forced upon her to punish rather than remedy her appearance.

One of Edith's museum-piece sagas was her description of the first performance of Façade in Italy, at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Siena, when she was in her late thirties. She went into the city from the family home, the Castello di Montegufoni, and was soon absorbed in and exhilarated by the rehearsal, for the complex musical ensemble was going well. Near the end of the morning session, her mother, Lady Ida, suddenly made an appearance in splendid summer finery, sailed up the aisle towards the platform crowded with performers, and said firmly, 'Now Edith has a headache and must go home.' It was far from the case. In a state of shock, Edith replied, 'Mother, I am perfectly well', but Lady Ida persisted and swept her away so that she never heard the performance of her work that evening.

The Sesame Club - where we would often meet for our tête-à-têtes - was dangerous, in that Edith's working day could be utterly destroyed by the need to be polite to leisured fellow members. The long corridor to the dining-room was a particular hazard, a setting for a stately, measured procession led by Edith, her long satin skirts sweeping the ground where, behind her, I felt a little like Patience trailing after Queen Katherine.

On one such occasion, a wispy country lady, whose name I remember only as having three syllables (it might be Henderson) almost danced to a stop before Edith and gushingly began, 'Oh, Miss Sitwell' (a bad beginning as Edith was by then a doctor of literature, if not yet a dame), 'Miss Sitwell...' - the lady now faltering as if she hardly believed what she was going to say - 'I've read some of your poetry, and do you know? I quite liked it.' Edith took a graceful step backwards, her beautiful hands giving a gesture of noble benediction, while she replied in perfect poetic metre:

'My dear Mrs (Henderson)

You really mustn't flatter me,

I'm totally unused to it.'

At another time of frantic work to a publisher's deadline she received a long letter from a club member describing a ghost she regularly saw, which she wanted to believe was kin to the Sacheverell family, an apparition of conventional 17th-century appearance - bob-wig, tricorne hat, brown velveteen suit and buckled shoes. It bore no resemblance to Edith's family history, but she instantly replied that on receiving this letter she had consulted Osbert, and they both agreed that, unfortunately, there could be no doubt of the identity of this terrible ghost, and that they must beg her 'never to mention this most painful subject again. PS. It always brings misfortune'.

This self-protection contrasted with the unfailing concern she felt not only for friends, but for acquaintances whose predicaments seized on her sympathies. I remember there was at a Sesame luncheon a gifted young poet, David Gascoyne, then clinically diagnosed as being in a severely disturbed state, who every minute would swivel violently from the table to repudiate some imaginary persecutors in the empty space behind his chair. Edith's kind enquiry elicited that 'these dreadful people won't ever leave me alone'. With benign authority, she said, 'My dear, simply take no notice of them. They only do it to annoy and will go away if you ignore them.' It seemed too simple a remedy for his hallucination, yet her smiling and confident serenity communicated her affectionate certainty of his true self. For that hour at least his demented distraction evaporated and the ensuing talk of poetry was entirely balanced and illuminated.

In the autumn of 1944, with buzz bombs and V-2s raining down, we were expecting our first child. I led a happy existence, learning baby care at the Anna Freud nursery, and by night sheltering with the Ernst Freuds in their bricked-up flat below ours at Maresfield Gardens. Although we sometimes wondered if there was any future beyond the furore of the raids, I thought of Edith in her Renishaw hermitage as a still centre of contemplative life, and tentatively wrote asking if she would think of being a godparent. Happily accepting, she surprised us by her humility in thinking it necessary to commend to us her suitability, by describing her role as an understanding aunt to her two nephews. She immediately offered her services, knitting tiny garments.

Naturally, she worried about our safety (and that of her other friends), particularly when we had emerged one morning from the Freud shelter to find our home a jumble of huge chunks of masonry, piles of broken plaster and furniture under a pall of acrid dust. Stephen, who had spent his off-duty night with us, simply cleared heaps of rubble from the corner of a damaged table and went on writing. When Edith returned to Blitz-torn London in December, she showed equal unconcern on the now famous occasion when she calmly continued reading her poems to an audience at the Churchill Club through the menacing crescendo of a buzz bomb, which cut out overhead, presaging a direct hit. Afterwards, when praised for her courage she joked, 'Fortunately, I always wear very long skirts, so nobody saw my knocking knees.' Yet, as her voice never faltered, one could not believe there had been a moment's unsteadiness.

After Matthew was born, since we had no nanny, she used to insist he be brought in his Moses basket to her bedroom during Sesame lunches. He would be left in the care of an elderly club servant, who shared Edith's evident joy on these occasions. My memory is still fresh of the excitement with which Edith fluttered over the sleeping baby and the poignancy of her great generosity of spirit - old, alone and childless as she was - in sharing our happiness.

Matthew's other godparents were old friends: William Plomer, Edward Selwyn and Clifford Curzon. Somewhat after VE Day, at a private christening in the deserted St Mark's, North Audley Street, Edith held the baby with stately gentleness and veiled fervour. When Matthew began crying, we all felt mild panic for her supposed inexperience, until she gave him a sharp little tap with her aquamarine ring. It might have made matters worse, but to the amusement of Clifford and William, the baby's astonished curiosity prevailed. Sharing a taxi later with Stephen's sister, Christine, she remained elated saying, 'The babe leapt in my arms.'

Her two long-life fidelities were to her governess, Helen Rootham, who had rescued her from a miserable youth, and Osbert, her loving childhood champion. She had tolerated Helen's bossiness (particularly in her last illness) and the monumental selfishness of Helen's surviving sister, Evelyn, whom she also loyally supported to the end of her life. She expected similar loyalty to Osbert, in his long decline through Parkinson's disease, from his life-long friend David Horner. She could neither understand nor forgive - as Osbert himself did - David's desertion in choosing to get away from the strain. Indeed, she explained her conversion to Catholicism as her only relief from her hatred of David, though it wasn't easy to gauge the intensity when she would say conversationally that it protected her from murdering him.

Given what she saw as David's shocking perfidy to Osbert, in 1957, she was ill-equipped to see the second marriage of her friend T.S. Eliot as anything but desertion from what she saw as his sacred duty to look after the severely disabled man of letters John Hayward. Tom had become a carer, living with John for 10 years in a situation that no other man (and certainly no woman) had been prepared to undertake.

John, a superb critic and generous friend to writers, had for decades bravely overcome his wheelchair existence and grotesque appearance so that his friends were indulgent about his tendency to make gross misrepresentations, ('A catty old soul, but we're fond of him,' said one). Occasionally, he would embarrass ladies, testing them out with what my children used to call 'panty talk'. I remember an occasion when Peggy Ashcroft and I had gone to tea with him. There was suddenly an outburst of panty talk until Peggy stood up and in friendly voice said, 'I'm awfully sorry, John, I can't bear it', and left the room. Admirably, she did him a kindness by that clear message, and feeling it would be cruel to follow her like a lady-in-waiting, I stayed for a while, embarrassed but cheerfully determined to change the subject of conversation. It was a relief when he finally regained the terra firma of literary talk and friendly jokes.

Such eruptions of wheelchair-itis were understood in the context of his stoicism, but were often complicated and wearing. When staying with us once, Auden came back from tea with Tom, and having asked why he played so many games of patience, was distressed at the momentary depression in Tom's reply, 'Because it's the nearest thing to being dead.'

There can be little doubt that Tom's marriage, a joy to most of his friends, had been a shock for John. But Edith's passionate partisanship prevented her from knowing the truth of Eliot's care for John at his departure, as only he could have told her, though self-justification was not natural to the poet of Ash Wednesday. Had she consented to see the friend she had admired for 40 years, one can imagine the 'aged eagle' listening silently, patient like a penitent. But she never did.

In the 1950s, Sachie Sitwell and his wife, Georgia, had one day driven Edith over for lunch at our Red Brick Cottage at Bruern, in Oxfordshire. Our other guest, Barbara Astor, had at the last minute asked to transfer the invitation so that we should all lunch with her at Bruern Abbey, as she expected Alan Pryce-Jones and the Duchess of Buccleuch. On the Sitwells' arrival, I hung back with Georgia to explain the change of plan. She clutched her cheek, saying, 'Oh Lord! Edith absolutely non-speaks' - meaning to Alan. We debated whether to announce the change when Edith might angrily renege or to risk trusting to luck. We decided to announce it with enthusiasm and entered the cottage drawing-room doing just that. There was a full minute of frozen silence, with Sachie looking apprehensive, imploring, protective of his sister, who slowly replied, 'Very well... I am... after all... a lady.'

In the event, she was at her most scintillating, as was Alan, quite dazzling us by their quick good-humoured exchanges. Strolling later with Alan round the garden, I extracted from him the laughing admission that he had, as editor of the TLS, given more than an inch of review to a lady poet of whom Edith disapproved. Yet the cloud had been dispelled almost as soon as they met.

Her friendship with Dylan Thomas had a special place in her heart. Not only did she think him a genius, but it was clear in her indulgence towards his unruliness, that for her he was the son she never had. I remember how Dylan sat at her feet at a party given by Humphrey Searle and heatedly criticised her for undertaking only fashionable well-paid readings in America. He asked why she despised poor students at non-Ivy League universities, when she could have been far more valuable to talented young writers needing her influence.

She listened meekly, apparently chastened, but of course unable to mention that her very rocky finances obliged her to use what energy she had for lucrative performances. Few of her friends would have cared (or dared) to give her such a public scolding.

Her nephews, Reresby and Francis, had a similar privilege to oppose or tease her, which they used with a sense of fun that she could seldom resist. One day she telephoned me saying, 'You must come to tea, adding darkly, 'The Millers are coming.' I wondered whether she meant the Gilbert Millers, or Emanuel and Betty. As I walked along Grosvenor Street, the maids at the Sesame were hanging out of the windows watching for an arrival. I found Edith and Reresby eagerly awaiting their guests, glad to see me and chat, as a means of ignoring the curiosity of other club members.

Rather later than expected, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe arrived, he strong and protective, she happily turning from time to time and waving with delight at the staff who crowded in the doorway. As we sat down, the distracting atmosphere of other guests' intrusive interest ebbed far too slowly, and our little group was struck dumb. Silence lengthened, I saw rising panic in Edith's eyes. Retrospectively, I realise that Reresby had perceived the need for a jump-start to the conversation - he leant forward and said, earnestly, with long pauses '… Aunt Edith. How I wish... I had... your… nose…' He then twinkled, and so did she, with relief. 'Oh do you, Reresby?' she replied, coolly. 'I've always found that... so to speak... it got in my way.' The hilarity that followed (knowing the misery her appearance had given her in youth) was a glimpse of the confidence she found with her affectionate young nephews. She clearly regarded Marilyn Monroe as an intelligent waif who was 'young and good' and she rejoiced to see her safeguarded and blossoming in marriage.

It is sad to realise that, as well as being denied a marital home with children, after she left the parental home, aged 26, she had no truly independent home until she was 74. She lived first in poverty for 19 years at Pembridge Mansions, Bayswater, then with Helen's sister in Paris, after whose death Edith returned to England at the outbreak of war. For 22 years she shuttled between a dreary back room at the Sesame and as the welcome guest of her brothers at the family homes of Renishaw (which she sometimes described as 'Wuthering Heights'), Weston and Montegufoni. Supportive and affectionate as her brothers were, this proved a nomadic existence.

She became frail, in pain and largely bedridden, for the orthopaedic troubles of her childhood were magnified in old age. When we used to visit her in her Hampstead flat, her cat, Shadow, purring on the end of the bed, we felt that the blessed calm of being 'taken care of' by the admirable Miss Salter and Sister Farquhar had come sadly late. But she had become happily close to her younger nephew, Francis, on his return from a job abroad and enjoyed the phenomenal celebrations of her 75th birthday at the Royal Festival Hall, which he organised.

As I stood at the end of the evening sharing in the ovation, my thoughts were of her lifelong quest, from the ordeals of her childhood, for the recognition of her right to exist. Sometimes public misrepresentation of her grandiose, touchy dignity seemed, understandably, to have added to the inner burden of her anxiety. But I really believed she was at last truly convinced of that right.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:52 am

Castle of Montegufoni History
by histouring.com
Accessed: 2/2/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The Castle of Montefugoni, a splendid residence nestled in the heart of Tuscany, dates back to 1100 and is surrounded by a vast estate planted with vineyards and olive groves. Always a venue for wedding receptions and events that remain etched in memory, the Castle also offers 28 rooms and 10 depandances to guests who want a stay characterized by elegance and quality.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

The Castle of Montefugoni is located in the Chianti area, not far from Florence and in a perfect position to reach Pisa, Siena, Arezzo and San Gimignano. Built in the post-Carolingian period by the noble family of the Ormanni family mentioned by Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy.

In 1135, the Florentines attacked the castle for the first time, attempting to raze it to the ground. The building was left in ruins until the thirteenth century when it became property of the Acciaioli family, in the person of Gugliarello Acciaioli. His descendants grew enormously thanks to the bank they owned and towards the end of the 13th century, Montegufoni has now become a complex consisting of the central building and seven smaller buildings surrounded by walls: the so-called seven old villas of the ancestral castle of Montegufoni mentioned in an inscription of the castle.

In 1310 Niccolò Acciaioli was born here in a room of the castle, later transformed into a chapel. He later became the Great Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples and a close friend of Boccaccio and Petrarch. In 1348, the king of Naples Luigi di Taranto, removed from his reign following the conflict with the King of Hungary, took refuge with his prime minister in Montegufoni. He used to banquet with the bishop Angelo Acciaiuoli in the Banquets hall, which overlooks the part of the castle, now called the Cortile dei Duchi.

In 1386 by Donato Acciaioli, a person who possessed the titles of Duke of Athens, Senator of Rome and Gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence, the tower was built that still dominates the castle. In 1396, Donato was banned from Florence, but his assets were saved from his cardinal brother's confiscation. The three sons of Donato resided at the Court of Athens until one of them, Agnolo di Jacopo, returned to Montegufoni with his son (the Duke Francesco) and his cousin (it is in that period that the appellative Court of the Dukes).

In 1546, another Donato restored the tower on the model of the Tower of Arnolfo of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and built the arms room (today called the Gallery) and in this period Montegufoni became the meeting point of many Florentine artists. In 1612, Cosimo II de 'Medici was invited to Montegufoni.

Around 1650, Donato with his wife Anna Maria Altoviti restored the whole castle, giving it the appearance that it still maintains, connecting the seven buildings until then distinct. The castle continues to be one of the most celebrated haunts of Florentine high society throughout the seventeenth century and also during the eighteenth century, until the economic decline of the Acciaioli family, who sells it to the Baracchi family.

In 1909, Sir George Sitwell, an eccentric Englishman, falls in love with the splendid structure of Montegufoni and decides to buy it in the name of his son Sir Osbert Sitwell. After becoming its owner Sitwell begins to enrich and beautify the castle. In 1922 he called to decorate the castle Gino Severini, who created a series of frescoes.

During the Second World War, to prevent them from being stolen, works of art were hidden in Montegufoni such as the Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Primavera by Sandro Botticelli and the Madonna di Ognissanti by Giotto.

Sir Osbert Sitwell lived there until 1969 when he died and in 1972 he was finally bought by the current owners, the Posarelli family, who began to restore it to make it a luxurious vacation spot.


The Castle of Montefugoni is located in the middle of a vast estate cultivated with vineyards and olive trees, harmoniously integrating itself into nature in perfect balance between architecture and landscape. After passing the majestic facade, the central courtyard immediately transmits a sense of severe austerity, but soon passing through the halls illuminated by the large windows, in the sloping gardens, in the sequence of rooms, one lives a shining and delicate sense of life, until it flows, in the great eighteenth-century salon, in a more refined and light atmosphere.

The Castle offers a series of apartments and outbuildings within its walls, from different sizes but always very spacious, all furnished differently to meet the most varied tastes.

The hotel has an excellent restaurant where dishes from the rich Tuscan tradition are served, combining simplicity with quality and elegance.

A building with a refined charm, always the perfect setting for wedding ceremonies and events that remain etched over time: an experienced and qualified staff will be ready to offer a complete service and suggestions on every detail, from floral decorations to photographic services, from accompaniment musical to the rental of vintage cars, making an unforgettable day so special.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:59 am

George Sitwell
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/2/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Sir George Reresby Sitwell, Bt
Image
John Singer Sargent, The Sitwell Family, 1900. From left: Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), Sir George Sitwell, Lady Ida, Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), and Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969)
Born George Reresby Sitwell
27 January 1860
London, United Kingdom
Died 9 July 1943 (aged 83)
Locarno, Switzerland
Occupation Writer and politician
Spouse Lady Ida Denison (1886–1937; her death)
Children Edith, Osbert, Sacheverell
Sir George Reresby Sitwell, 4th Baronet (27 January 1860 – 9 July 1943) was a British antiquarian writer and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1885 and 1895.

Biography

Sitwell was born in London, the son of Sir Sitwell Reresby Sitwell, 3rd Baronet and his wife Louisa Lucy Hutchinson, daughter of the Hon. Henry Hely Hutchinson. His father died in 1862 and he succeeded to the baronetcy at the age of two. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Yeoman Cavalry.[1]

Sitwell contested Scarborough seven times, losing twice in 1884. He was elected Member of Parliament for the constituency at the 1885 general election, but lost it at the 1886 general election. After regaining the seat in the 1892 general election, he lost it again in the 1895 general election.[2]

A keen antiquarian, Sitwell worked on the Sacheverell papers, and wrote a biography of his ancestor, William Sacheverell and published The Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells. His collection of books and papers are said to have filled seven sitting-rooms at the family house, Renishaw Hall, in Derbyshire. He researched genealogy and heraldry, and was a keen designer of gardens (he studied garden design in Italy).[3]

In 1909 he purchased the Castello di Montegufoni, near Florence, then a wreck inhabited by three hundred peasants. Over the next three decades he restored it to its original design, and took up permanent residence there in 1925, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain that taxes had forced him to settle in Italy. He remained in Italy at the outbreak of war, but in 1942 moved to Switzerland and died at Locarno at the age of 83.
He held his baronetcy for 81 years 89 days, longer than all his three predecessors, and one of the longest times anyone has held a baronetcy in England.

Sitwell married, in 1886, Ida Emily Augusta Denison, daughter of William Henry Forester Denison (later 1st Earl of Londesborough). In 1915 he refused to pay off her many creditors, and saw her prosecuted and imprisoned at Holloway for three months. He was succeeded by his elder son Osbert, who described him vividly in his five-volume autobiography. Sir George's other two children were the writers Edith and Sacheverell Sitwell.

References

Leigh Rayment's list of baronets
Debretts Guide to the House of Commons 1886
Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir George Sitwell
Eccentric patriarch with slender grip on reality, Tim Harris, The Age, January 2003, accessed March 2010
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:02 am

Edith Sitwell, eccentric genius: A new biography of the avant garde poet Edith Sitwell is applauded by her great-nephew William Sitwell
by William Sitwell
11 Mar 2011

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Edith Sitwell, 1931

Image
Edith Sitwell with a bust and a portrait of herself, 1931 Photo: Getty Images

It was a wet, wintry night on London’s South Bank that I first got to know my great-aunt Edith properly.

She had died in 1964, some years before I was born. But then, waiting in the wings of the Purcell Room, I breathed in deeply before taking to the stage to recite her Façade series of poems.

Set to music by William Walton, the poems are said, not sung, in precise time to the music. Some of the lines must be proclaimed at breakneck speed, and as I worked my way through the colourful, exotic language, the assonances and dissonances, I could almost feel her spirit conjuring up the figures of Sir Beelzebub and Black Mrs Behemoth, not to mention the satyrs, nymphs and others who appear.

She wrote this early white rap in the 1920s, finessing it over the next 40 years, and it demonstrates her extraordinary, dextrous touch with the English language, and her musical abilities.

More used to the comforts of an office, or better still a table in a restaurant – I work as a magazine editor and food critic – learning Façade had taken me on a year-long journey into the mind and life of Edith Sitwell. I had met some of her last surviving contemporaries, critics and champions of her work.

Now an even fuller picture of her emerges in the detailed, moving and often hilarious new book about her by the Canadian professor of English Richard Greene. The first biography of her for 30 years, using a wealth of previously unseen letters, it paints an extraordinary picture of childhood suffering, courageous writing and unrequited love. Greene makes an impassioned plea that 'It is time to look again at Edith Sitwell.’

She was born in 1887 to parents who could not have had less in common. Her mother, Lady Ida – daughter of the Earl of Londesborough; beautiful, gregarious and pleasure-loving – contrasted with her father, Sir George, in turn austere and solitary.

'The poor creature,’ Edith later wrote of her barely educated, then 17-year-old mother, 'married against her will into a kind of slave-bondage.’

Winters and spring were spent in Scarborough, where the family had a house near the seafront. The characters she saw there – minstrels, pierrots, contortionists – echo in her Façade poems, as do the elegant, empty-headed people who wandered at the seaside. Her poem Valse begins:

'Daisy and Lily,

Lazy and silly,

Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea…’

The family then decamped for summer and autumn to Renishaw Hall, a gothic house on the edge of Chesterfield built by the Sitwells in the early 17th century when they had made a fortune as the world’s largest producers of nails (now lived in by my first cousin Alexandra Hayward and her family).

It was another location that shaped Edith’s poetry and she recalled it as 'dark and forgotten… like an unopened 17th-century first edition in a library’. There, Lady Ida would start her day, as the biographer Sarah Bradford describes, '[lying] late in bed in a bedroom heavy with the scent of discarded gardenias and tuberoses, reading French novels, newspapers or letters, or playing patience on a flat-folding leather card-tray.’

Meanwhile Sir George would be cooped up in his study, smoking strong Egyptian cigarettes and pondering on his writing and thoughts. His literary output ranged between the eclectic and the bizarre: The Introduction of the Peacock into Western Gardens, Rotherham Under Cromwell, Modern Modifications on Leaden Jewellery in the Middle Ages and his seminal A Short History of the Fork – an epic tome that competes for brilliance with the results of his analysis for curing insomnia entitled The Twenty-Seven Postures of Sir George R Sitwell.

He installed a notice at Renishaw that read: 'I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.’

Sir George’s approach to procreation was equally eccentric. In order to achieve the finest result he would read a worthy tome before declaring, 'Ida, I am ready.’ He saw his sons as being a vital extension of his personality, events to enhance the Sitwell line, and it never occurred to him that his first-born might be a girl. Thus, as Edith recalled, 'I was unpopular with my parents from the moment of my birth.’

Her arrival deepened the rift between her parents; when her brothers, Osbert and then Sacheverell, were born, with much fanfare, she was relegated to a back place in the nursery and was put, as she wrote, 'in disgrace for being a female’.

She had more affection for her maternal grandfather, although he died in 1900 after contracting pneumonia from a parrot. And while she was entertained by her mother’s relations, who had a penchant for practical jokes – tethering hens under people’s beds and hiding live lobsters between the sheets – she was repulsed by their obsession with shooting. Memories of gamekeepers releasing rabbits from sacks to be shot or beaten with sticks made her a life-long campaigner against blood sports.

The remoteness and eccentric behaviour of her father and the increasingly sick and drunken rages of her mother stayed with Edith for the rest of her life. Years later she wrote to Osbert of her 'terrible childhood and… appalling home. I don’t believe there is another family in England who have had parents like ours.’

In my search to speak to surviving contemporaries I came across Lady Natasha Spender (who died last October aged 91), the widow of the writer Stephen, who in the study of her north London home revealed the extraordinary extent of Edith’s suffering.

'She was frightened of her parents, who were so belligerent and remote,’ she recalled. 'They gave her absolute hell and would punish her. She would go out for a walk and come in quietly through a side door, and the butler would lock her in the silver pantry until he thought it safe for her to emerge. It was like benign protective custody.’

The children bonded instead with the servants, in particular with Henry Moat, 'an enormous purple man like a benevolent hippopotamus,’ Edith wrote. Born to a family of whalers in Whitby, he had 18 brothers, one sister and a tame seal. He worked for the family for 43 years, although he was sacked and then cajoled back frequently, and as butler became almost inseparable from Sir George.

Described by Richard Greene as the 'Sancho Panza to Sir George’s Don Quixote’, he would explode his master’s more outlandish schemes.

'Henry,’ Sir George once called to his butler, 'I’ve a new idea. Knife handles should always be made of condensed milk.’

'Yes, Sir George,’ Moat replied, 'but what if the cat gets at them?’

Edith continued into her teens, hiding from governesses and, by her account, reading and learning poetry in secret while her father, worried about her posture, engaged an orthopaedic manufacturer who designed a torturous – albeit laced – iron spinal apparatus. This she was forced to wear along with a terrifying nose-truss to improve her profile.

So obsessed was Sir George with her nose that when he commissioned the artist John Singer Sargent to paint the family in 1900 he made a point of asking the painter to portray its deviations in correct detail.

Sargent was so appalled at this request that if you look closely at the painting you can see he painted Edith’s nose as a fine, straight specimen while adding a distinct crook to that of her father. Indeed the painting portrays Edith as more assertive and confident than she actually was. Dressed in scarlet, she commands attention from the canvas.

It was at a point in her life when 'finishing’ was the norm, or 'finishing off’ as Edith put it. She was taught what she described as 'the heavy art of light conversation’. The lessons came to nothing and, aged 17, seated next to a politician and huntsman, she asked him if he preferred Bach to Mozart and was, she recalled, hastily 'withdrawn from circulation’.

Undeterred, she was attracted to the arts and spent hours transcribing poetry before being encouraged to write by a cousin, Joan Wake. With the outbreak of war and the shelling by German warships of the Sitwells’ house in Scarborough, Edith moved to London, her mind set on a life as a writer, renting a flat in a poor but lively spot in Bayswater.

But if she thought she could escape her family, she was wrong, as they were suddenly engulfed in scandal. Having got into tremendous debt about which she was afraid to tell her husband, Lady Ida became tangled up with unscrupulous moneylenders. Sir George, determined to do the 'right’ thing and see the culprits get their comeuppance, refused to deal with the matter out of court and the affair was resolved in the Old Bailey. The shocking end to the story being that in 1915 Lady Ida found herself convicted of fraud and sent to Holloway prison for three months.

'How did it feel when your mother went to prison?’ Stephen Spender once asked Edith.

'Not altogether pleasant,’ she replied. 'Because, you see, in those days one did not go to prison.’

The sentence was such a shock that no one remembered to tell Sacheverell, my grandfather. And so one weekend while studying at Eton, he saw on the front page of the Sunday Express that his mother had been jailed.

Perhaps the events galvanised Edith. Shortly after, her first poem – written on notepaper from Courtenhall, the family home of Joan Wake – was published in the Daily Mirror. Soon she had paid to have five poems published, and although a slight volume at only 10 pages, it was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement in glowing terms: 'Sitwell does not describe, she lives in her verse.’

Her name spread and before long she started hosting literary salons, something that was to last for many decades. She published a regular anthology of poetry called Wheels, in which she promoted the talents of the likes of Aldous Huxley and Wilfred Owen. And she fell in love.

This first unconsummated affair was with a Chilean artist, Alvaro de Guevara, whose brother, Richard Greene notes, had gone mad, stabbed himself and then leapt to his death from a house in South Kensington, clutching an umbrella as a parachute. Edith claimed they been engaged until she was warned that he suffered from a serious venereal disease.

It’s an idea that the writer Harold Acton dismissed, saying rather cruelly that Edith was a 'sex-starved spinster all her life. She desperately needed someone to take her to bed, but I’m sure that no one ever did. Certainly if it did happen, which I doubt, he was an extremely courageous gentleman… dear Edith wasn’t exactly what you might call cuddly.’

Aged 70, she wept to her secretary Elizabeth Salter that she had never had a passionate relationship, but it is impossible, unnecessary even, to know. Or as one biographer put it: 'Edith was returned unopened.’

While her reputation as a poet gained in stature, she embarked on the more controversial and avant garde project of Façade. Osbert had suggested that a friend of Sacheverell’s from Oxford called William Walton, an as-yet-unknown organ scholar from Oldham, set some of her poems to music. (He may also have given her some rhythms to work with.) With a small orchestra of some seven musicians, the first public performance at the Aeolian Hall in London, with Edith reciting through a Sengerphone (an early megaphone), was, as she recalled in her autobiography, 'anything but peaceful. Never, I should think, was a larger and more imposing shower of brickbats hurled at any new work.’

The critics were savage. 'Drivel they paid to hear’ was one headline. Another paper remarked, 'Last night at the Aeolian Hall, through a megaphone we heard Edith bawl.’ As Osbert later commented, 'For several weeks subsequently we were obliged to go about London feeling as if we had committed a murder.’

Noël Coward, who had ostentatiously walked out during the performance, now parodied the Sitwells in a West End show called London Calling that featured the 'Swiss Family Whittlebot’. Edith was furious, almost relishing the rage she felt.

Coward apologised many years later and gave Edith a large sofa, the comfort of which I can attest to, having snoozed peacefully on it on many Sunday afternoons at the family home, Weston Hall in Northamptonshire, where my mother, Susanna, still lives.

Similarly, the Sitwells never forgave DH Lawrence, whose Lady Chatterley’s Lover, they were convinced, was drawn on them. Fiction-writing Clifford Chatterley’s estate resembled Renishaw, his aunt was like Lady Ida, a sister Emma like Edith, and the crippled and unsexed Clifford a portrait of Osbert.

Acutely sensitive to criticism, Edith devoured reviews of her work and then attempted to devour anyone who had the temerity to criticise her.

'All the Pipsqueakery are after me in full squeak,’ she said of hostile reviewers. While ensconced in the uncharacteristic surroundings of Hollywood in the 1950s writing a screenplay for Columbia, she was teased by the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. On hearing of an outbreak of rabies in Los Angeles Edith said, 'I was told on good authority that this was due to the fact that Miss Hedda Hopper had pursued the dogs and succeeded in biting them.’

When Anthony Hartley criticised her in The Spectator she cabled the editor: 'Please have Anthony Hartley stuffed and put in a glass case at my expense.’


In the 1950s, to guard against cranks and unwanted company, Osbert and Edith compiled a form that would judge the lunacy of prospective visitors. Among other questions, it requested the 'Age, sex and weight of your wife’ and asked, 'Has any relative of yours ever been confined in a mental home?’ (With the supplementary question, 'If not, why not?’)

As Edith approached middle age so each publication saw more success. Of her Collected Poems one reviewer wrote, 'There are human chords, which remain and echo in the memory when other sounds have ebbed away.’ Fanfare for Elizabeth, her account of Elizabeth I, with whom she felt she shared many characteristics as well as a birthday, sold 19,000 in the first three weeks of publication.

Yet a melancholy pervades most of her work. She never gained real happiness, and the many letters – published in Greene’s book for the first time – to the other love of her life, the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, are almost mournful in tone. Yet they also reveal her rare talent for language. Writing, for example, to Tchelitchew, with no anticipation of a wider audience, she talks of the peace she had found on the coast of Catalonia: 'The sea is just opposite my window, and makes a noise like the sound of a Bible being opened, and quantities of pages being turned over all at once.’ In spite of her success she remained poor and in old age had to sell her manuscripts to clear her overdraft.

Looking through cupboards and wardrobes at Weston Hall, I come across examples of her clothes. Long flowing robes, gowns, turbans and other headgear, and huge colourful rings that adorned her long fingers. She was, as the writer Elizabeth Bowen once commented, 'like an altar on the move’. In an interview on the celebrated BBC Face to Face series of interviews, she sits in haughty splendour, doubtless terrifying the meek interviewer John Freeman and secretly – I suspect – loving every minute of it, speaking of her dress sense. 'I can’t wear fashionable clothes,’ she opines. 'If I walked round in coats and skirts people would doubt the existence of the Almighty.’

Having inherited her collection of books from a dark attic at Weston Hall, I now have them on shelves in our library at home. I peruse the titles that inspired her: anthologies of poetry, travel guides, detective fiction and much more, not to mention her own works. There is the bravely anti-war and haunting Still Falls the Rain that dwells magnificently on the tragedy of air raids during the Blitz, literary works on the likes of Alexander Pope, her novel I Live Under a Black Sun, and her popular cornucopia English Eccentrics.

And in a collection of poems by the Welsh poet Brenda Chamberlain, I spot Edith’s own scrawl. 'God almighty,’ she writes on one page, her voice almost coming to life in my hands, 'what platitudinous pretentious rubbish.’

She is buried in the next village, the headstone adorned with the hands of a mother and child by Henry Moore. Behind her grave the countryside sweeps away peacefully into the distance. Engraved are the words from The Wind of Early Spring:

'The past and present are as one –
Accordant and discordant,
Youth and age,
And death and birth.
For out of one came all –
From all comes one.’

It’s surely time to look again at Edith Sitwell.

'Avant Garde Poet, English Genius – Edith Sitwell’ by Richard Greene (Virago, £25) is available for £23 plus £1.25 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1515; books.telegraph.co.uk). William Sitwell will talk on the Sitwells and perform 'Façade’ with the Orchestra of St Paul’s at the English Music Festival on May 27 at Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxon (englishmusicfestival.org.uk)
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:10 am

Renishaw Hall
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/3/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Renishaw Hall
Image
Renishaw Hall and fountain
General information
Town or city near Sheffield
Country England
Completed 1625
Client George Sitwell

Renishaw Hall is a country house in Renishaw in the parish of Eckington in Derbyshire, England. It is a Grade I listed building and has been the home of the Sitwell family for over 350 years.[1] The hall is located southeast of Sheffield, and north of Renishaw village, which is northeast of Chesterfield.

History

The house was built in 1625 by George Sitwell (1601–1667) who, in 1653, was High Sheriff of Derbyshire. The Sitwell fortune was made as colliery owners and ironmasters from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Substantial alterations and the addition of the west and east ranges were made to the building for Sir Sitwell Sitwell by Joseph Badger of Sheffield between 1793 and 1808 and further alterations were made in 1908 by Sir Edwin Lutyens.[1] Renishaw had two owners between 1862 (when Sir George Sitwell succeeded in his infancy) and 1965, when Sir Osbert Sitwell gave the house to his nephew,[2] Sir Reresby Sitwell, 7th Baronet. He was the eldest son of Sir Sacheverell Sitwell brother of Edith and Osbert and owned the hall from 1965 until 2009 when he bequeathed it to his daughter, Alexandra Hayward. The house and estate are separated from the Renishaw baronetcy for the first time in the family's history. Sir George Sitwell lives at Weston Hall.

Architecture

The house was built in stages and has an irregular plan. It is constructed in ashlar and coursed rubble coal measures sandstone with crenellated parapets with pinnacles. It has pitched slate roofs.[1]

Gardens

Image

The gardens, including an Italianate garden laid out by Sir George Sitwell (1860–1943), are open to the public. The hall is open for groups by private arrangement. The park is listed in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England as Grade II*.[3]

The 1980 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice used footage shot at Renishaw Hall. D. H. Lawrence is said to have used the local village of Eckington and Renishaw Hall as inspiration for his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

References

Historic England. "Renishaw Hall (1054857)". National Heritage List for England (NHLE). Retrieved 10 July 2015.
Reresby Sitwell (1977). Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells. Reresby Sitwell.
Renishaw Hall, Sheffield, England, Parks and Gardens, retrieved 7 June 2012
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:17 am

The Sitwells in Scarborough
by James Bantoft
November, 2008

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Why a family who were at one time the principal iron-traders in the country and were the world centre for the trade in nails should settle in Scarborough for over 50 years is a question whose answer has brought the town into international focus and bequeathed it a rich heritage. The answer of course is that name which is for ever associated with eccentricity, but which is now more firmly founded in literature, namely the Sitwells.

That family has been associated with the town at least since 1774 when in common with many other visitors Francis Hurt Sitwell came to the resort both for health as well as leisure. His family seat, as it had been since 1620, was at Renishaw Hall, the centre of a 7000 acre estate located in the parish of Eckington in North Derbyshire. The Sitwells took no part in the affairs of State and only gained prominence when in 1808 the Prince Regent, having stayed there for a Ball in an extension built for his honour, conferred a Baronetcy on the incumbent head of the family. Sir Sitwell Sitwell’s honour has descended to the present and 7th Baronet, Sir Reresby Sitwell, who resides there with his wife, Penelope, Lady Sitwell.


As is so often the case the most pleasant situations seem to have a deep shadow, and this was never more true for this family when the proceeds of a land-sale were deposited into a local Bank on the day that it went into liquidation. Allied to the loss, the family was defrauded of money and at the same time a family of Scottish relatives came south to live with and off them. It was all too much, and in 1847 Sir George Sitwell, the 2nd. Baronet, had to close the Hall and sell off the family treasure.

When he died in 1853 aged 55, and relinquished the title and estate to his son Sir George Reresby (Reresby) he passed on too an inheritance of problems which led to the 3rd Baronet's death in 1862, aged 41. Sir Reresby had by then a young family of two, one Florence and her younger brother George Reresby (Sir George) who, aged two on his father's death, became the youngest Baronet in England. It was this boy who was to become the beginning of the legends which have attached themselves over the 19th and 20th century to the Sitwells, but who would not have achieved fame without his remarkable and widowed mother, Lady Louisa.

Sir George grew up in Scarborough since his mother had decided to base the family in the town and had first lived at "Sunnyside", a modest villa which she had built, on the corner of Ramshill and Westbourne Grove, but later became more permanently established at "Woodend". From 1870 to the present day that house still stands as the focus for the family in its sea-side adoptive home. Lady Louisa, raised in the village and house of "Weston" in Northamptonshire came from the Hely-Hutchinson family. By her marriage to Sir Reresby in 1857 she brought "Weston" into the patrimony of the Sitwells and even today part of it is occupied by William Sitwell, who locally so recently entertained us with a performance of "Facade", a poetical composition by Edith before she became a Dame.

The marriage of Sir George to Lady Ida Denison on Nov. 26 1886 at St George's, Hanover Square, London should have been one made in heaven! But, not so, since Ida being an innocent seventeen year old and Sir George being of a rather isolated nature were each unprepared for such a union and on the third day she ran back to mother. You do not bring such troubles to a Lady who, being the youngest daughter of the 7th. Duke of Beaufort, descended from the Plantagenets, and married to Baron Henry Denison, Lord Londesborough No, the former Hon. Lady Edith Somerset (Somerset Terrace) sent her daughter back to get on with life! In any case Baron Londesborough was to be raised to the rank of Earl in the following year and his wife would not wish to disturb her own ascendency to Countess!

Sir George and Lady Ida would have a family of three children, and the first was a great disappointment. She was a girl, known always as Edith, born at "Woodend" on 7th. Sept. 1887, not pretty like her beautiful mother Lady Ida, but worse, not the expected heir to the title. All her life Edith would suffer from the double rejection by parents, the wrong gender and her apparent hideous looks. This latter was untrue and in later life Cecil Beaton was much taken with her appearance and remarked on her most attractive voice.

Much greater joy was forthcoming for the parents when on 7th Dec. 1892 the heir, Osbert, was born at 3, Arlington Street, London. The reason for the location is simply that Sir George was Scarborough's M.P. (1892 - 1895) having earlier been the youngest M.P, in the House when elected for the Conservatives for the period 1885-1886. Osbert, like Edith, would never marry and in 1930 began travelling with a male companion, David Horner. This relationship continued until 1965.

At the time of Osbert's birth the family left "Woodend", where Lady Louisa still lived and moved across the Crescent to occupy "Belvoir House" on Belvoir Crescent, their home until 1908. Also with the move there came into the family a man called Henry Moat, part of a family of Whitby fishermen, and he became Sir George's valet serving until 1937.

Lady Louisa meanwhile had started a "Home of Hope", for young girls, in a large detached house known as "Red House" in Sitwell Street, which still stands today. Too she had opened a charitable hospital in King Street in 1883 and appointed a Dr. Peckitt Dale as one of the physicians there. Dr. Dale, had built, in 1879, a house in Scalby called "Hay Brow". When he died in 1893 she bought the property and used it as a summer residence until her declining health compelled her to move to Bournemouth where she died on 31st Oct. 1911.

Lady Louisa had used her business acumen to good effect for by the turn of the century she had reopened the Hall and already Sir George was surveying it to channel his creative urges into establishing a garden, outlined in his book of 1909 "On the making of Gardens". The funds for this new wealth were the royalties flowing in from every ton of coal mined under the Renishaw Estate, and some of these funds found their way into the pockets of Scarborough fishermen when times were bad and Sir George needed men to dig out a new lake!

It is a tribute to this town that even though the family could easily have decamped and gone back home to Derbyshire they would stay until at least 1922, Osbert even standing as the local Liberal candidate in 1919. Edith and Osbert returned to the town in August 1949 to view "Woodend" and the changes brought by the Council who were now the owners, and would establish the Natural History Museum, later to be the Creative Industries Centre. The Londesboroughs are descended from the Marquis of Conyngham whose wife Elizabeth was an established mistress of George IV. Her brother William Joseph Denison left a tremendous fortune in money and land, and being childless endowed it to Albert Conygham, their son, and his nephew, on condition that he changed his family name, which of course he did and became Albert Denison in 1849. In 1850 he was created a Baron, bought Grimston Hall, and the the Londesborough Park Estate, and was succeeded by his son Henry in 1860. It was Albert who in 1853 purchased Londesborough Lodge, previously known as "Warwick House."

Image
Londesborough Lodge


There Henry, 2nd. Baron entertained the future king Edward VII who in staying with them developed typhoid fever, and was so ill that his recovery is commemorated by a stained-glass window in St. Martin's Church. Henry, who had been an M.P. for both Beverley and Scarborough was created an Earl in 1887, dying in April 1900 of psittacosis complications. His son Viscount Raincliffe derived his title from the local area of that name and many of the "rides" there are named after the Denison relatives., as Lady Edith's Drive remembers his wife. It is important to understand that all of the land totalling 60,000 acres of Yorkshire and £2.300.000 of cash came from W.J.Denison and raised the former Conynghams to their local pre-eminence.

The durability of the Sitwell title was further sustained when the third and last child was born to Sir George and Lady Ida. Named Sacheverell, derived from the French language and long used in the family, this baby would become the 6th. Baronet, after Osbert. It was his son Sir Reresby, who as the present Baronet, came to Scarborough in November 2004. He unveiled a Civic Society Blue Plaque which commemorated his father's birth at the then Belvoir House (later Bedford Hotel and now flats) on 15th Nov. 1897. Sir George was always punctilious and he spaced his children at five-yearly intervals!

To delve into all the experiences and effects which the town brought into the lives of the family would be too exhaustive here, but suffice to say that the literary output of the three children, and their father, was always reflected and acknowledged. To think of Osbert learning to dance the Hornpipe on the beach under the careful tuition of Mr. Owston is just one of hundreds of recollections, later used in Osbert's autobiography, the five volumes beginning with "Left Hand, Right Hand". Too, his short story "Low Tide", in his book "Triple Fugue", brings a harrowing account of the fall of two maiden ladies who ruined their lives with a change of investment. What a prophecy for our contemporary predicament!

Sir George's health broke in the early 1900's shortly after the painting of the family group by the noted American artist John Singer Sargent. It was executed in a house especially rented for the purpose from a relative of the Churchills. Edith hated the picture because it portrayed her father resting an affectionate arm on her, a deep hypocrisy linked to his failure not just to love her but to show understanding of her emerging gifts.

Sir George, fortunately given great help by his guardian and great-uncle Archibald Tail, had failed to allow any close friends into his life and therefore became excessively introspective. His intelligence, capacity for research and huge correspondence, not to mention his forensic viewpoint of family matters often brought him into conflict. Archibald Tait, an Anglican clergyman who would become Headmaster of Rugby School and the first Scottish Archbishop of Canterbury could not save Sir George from being a lifelong agnostic! In his breakdown there could be seen the conflict with his wife and Edith, and his departure from the earlier shared political beliefs by which he renounced the Conservatives. A turning point occurred in 1909 when on his travels in Italy he viewed and purchased a castle near Florence - Castello De Montegufoni. This purchase was to dominate the family until it was sold in 1974 by Sir Reresby. In the mid-1900's the family left Belvoir House and "Woodend" became the local focus for gatherings, particularly in the winter, since the Hall was now being regularly used during the summer holidays. As for the three children's education, Edith never went to a school but had early tuition from a Miss King-Church, whilst at the same time retaining a great affection for the children's nurse, Davis. Osbert and Sacheverell would progress through schools in Scarborough and beyond both going to Eton and Oxford University.

Sir George carried out extensive alterations to "Woodend" by adding a wing on the Valley elevation such that a Library and a bedroom (for Osbert) was created. These survive to this day but his balcony, crossing a Conservatory installed during his mother's tenure, has gone in the most recent alterations. With the onset of the Great War Osbert found himself in France, serving with the Grenadier Guards, being recalled home in 1915 to testify against his mother, who was being prosecuted for being an accessory to the fraudulent operations of a man named Julian Field. This was the nadir of the Sitwell family, brought about by Lady Ida's extravagance. On this occasion Sir George refused to pay her mounting debt and in desperation she employed a man who was already a criminal. Being found guilty she was sent down to Holloway Gaol for three months. Her mother, the Dowager Countess Edith died that year. In 1913 Edith finally began to blossom when she moved to London sharing a flat with her companion and former Governess Helen Rootham. Helen was Edith's amanuensis, and would be with Edith almost constantly up to Helen's death in October 1938. In London Edith was soon being noticed for her unusual poetry and later edited a Magazine called Wheels, which attracted like minds. Her first published poem was "Drowned Suns" appearing in the Daily Mirror in March 1913.

Drowned Suns
by Edith Sitwell

by The swans more white than those forgotten fair
Who ruled the kingdoms that of old-time were,
Within the sunset water deeply gaze
As though they sought some beautiful dim face,
The youth of all the world; or pale lost gems
And crystal shimmering diadems,
The moon for ever seeks in woodland streams
To deck her cool, faint beauty; thus in dreams
Belov'd, I seek lost suns within your eyes
And find but wrecks of love's gold argosies.


After the Armistice Sacheverell returned, having served too with the Grenadier Guards, taking up a career which would last well into his old age. Quite simply he began to travel and quickly established himself with the results of his Italian wanderings when in 1924 "Southern Baroque Art" was published. Later in 1925 he would marry Georgia Doble, the daughter of a wealthy Canadian banker. They had two sons, the future Baronet Reresby and his younger brother Francis.

By this time Scarborough had been left behind. "Woodend" was empty in 1925 and most of the possessions were transported to Renishaw or Montegufoni. The Londesboroughs had given up the Lodge. Various Aunts who had been careful that the children always had the most impeccable manners had died and there the "in Scarborough" has to end.

Well, almost. Henry Moat, Sir George's valet retired to Scarborough and kept up a ceaseless correspondence with the family from 1937. His letters from Beaulah Terrace were always full of that earthy phrase which is amusing and descriptive and on the night of his death in Whitby those staying at Renishaw were disturbed by rumblings in the pantry! On a wall in his retired house he had written of his position with the Sitwell family.

Lady Ida would die in 1937 and was interred, as is Edith, amongst other relatives in the cemetery at Lois Weedon, only a short distance from Weston. Sir George, leaving it too late to get back to England when war was declared, had to remain in Switzerland until his death at Locarno in 1943. The title passed to Osbert, who made Montegufoni his major residence, though he would regularly return to Derbyshire as Renishaw was still the family base. In the post-war years Osbert would achieve lasting literary fame with the five volumes of his autobiography, known under the title of the first volume "Left Hand! Right Hand!". He and Edith would tour America in that period and gave their poetical recitals to packed audiences. So famous that Marilyn Monroe, filming in England, would visit Renishaw with her husband Arthur Miller. Edith's poetry now went under a period of re-appraisal and she was formally honoured by three English Universities. Then in June 1954 she featured in the Queen's Honours List, elevated to a Dame. In 1962 there came a memorable 75th Birthday, organised by her nephew Francis, in the form of a Gala Evening at the Royal Festival Hall. Her genius vindicated she died on 12th. Dec. 1964. Osbert slowly declined with Parkinsons Disease, and by the end of 1964 his life with David Horner was over. When he died in May 1969 at the Castle he left a Will which would cause the utmost distress to Sacheverell and his wife Georgia. When he succeeded as the 6th Baronet he would not succeed to the Castle, which went to Reresby. Sacheverell was devastated with the shock and distaste which his brother had inflicted, not alleviated when the Castle left possession of the family, as the upkeep became apparent to Reresby and was sold in 1974.

Osbert was cremated and his ashes buried in an urn in the Alliori Protestant cemetery in Florence. In keeping with his wishes a copy of "Before The Bombardment" rested too in that urn. Scarborough was remembered to the end.

Sacheverell had to settle on the fact that "Weston" would always have to be his family base. Georgia died in 1980, but he continued to work at his desk until his death in Oct. 1988. The trio will always be remembered for themselves, but whose lives too must always be reflected back into that man, - odd, clever, selfish, kind. Given to intellectual melancholy, as he saw his Victorian era melt into the disasters of war, Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, deserves our serious attention.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Lady Natasha Spender remembers Edith Sitwell

Postby admin » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:21 am

Sitwell Sitwell: So posh they named him twice! New book tells the story of Renishaw Hall, home to the Sitwell family for 400 years
New book Renishaw Hall examines the history of the Sitwell family
A romantic, enchanting house, where a puckish sense of humour is at play
Explores the family's history, including sale of ironworks in 1791
by Matthew Dennison
For The Daily Mail
18:26 EST, 30 July 2015 | UPDATED: 20:09 EST, 30 July 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


REINSHAW HALL
by Desmond Seward
(Elliott & Thompson £25)

On a long, rocky promontory, high above a hamlet on the southern border of Yorkshire's West Riding and the northern border of Derbyshire, stands a crenellated house of many windows.

This is Renishaw Hall, home to the Sitwell family for 400 years.

At first sight, it is not classically beautiful - the house has a forbidding, austere quality.

Image
Successful siblings: (From left) Sacheverell, Edith and Osbert Sitwell

But step inside or wander through the Italianate gardens, which this year won the HHA/Christie's Garden of the Year Award, and you discover a different Renishaw: a romantic, enchanting, otherworldly house, where a puckish sense of humour is at play - a ghost who only appears to pretty girls, stealing cold kisses, statues of warriors fitted with spectacles, a notice removed from an aeroplane instructing users of a downstairs loo to ‘sit well back' before take off and landing.

Before World War II, artist Rex Whistler described it as ‘the most exciting house' he knew.

Historian Seward seamlessly links the history of this out-of-the-ordinary house to that of the family who built and continue to live in it. With the exception of the famous Sitwell siblings Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell, the Sitwells are not well-known. There are no famous Sitwell generals or politicians.

Despite - or because of - his name, Sitwell Sitwell embraced life with gusto. When a tiger escaped from a circus in Sheffield in 1798, it was Sitwell Sitwell who came to the rescue


Nowadays, few people read Edith's poetry, Osbert's autobiography or Sacheverell's art history. Yet anyone who has visited Renishaw will understand why Seward considered this stern, North Country house worth writing about.

The original house was built with the proceeds of a coal mine at Eckington Marsh. Soon after, George Sitwell began mining iron ore. He grew his business through exports to Virginia and the West Indies.

The English Civil War, with its demand for weapons, made him a wealthy man. By 1660, he was England's biggest manufacturer of iron nails and his furnaces were producing more than a tenth of the country's entire iron output. When his descendant Francis Sitwell sold the family ironworks in 1791, his huge income was worth half-a-million pounds, then a colossal sum. But Francis's undoubted business acumen did not stop him christening his son Sitwell.

Despite - or because of - his name, Sitwell Sitwell embraced life with gusto. When a tiger escaped from a circus in Sheffield in 1798, it was Sitwell Sitwell who came to the rescue. Using hounds from his own pack, he hunted the ferocious beast through the town's streets. He was later given a baronetcy.

Yet one thing that distinguishes the Sitwells is their consistent lack of interest in hunting and shooting.

Image
The house itself: Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire

Today, Renishaw is not full of stuffed foxes' heads and paintings of horses. Instead, it is full of Italian paintings and hefty pieces of gilded Italian furniture that began their lives in doge's palaces and hilltop medieval castles.

If the effect is sumptuous, it came about for quite the opposite reason.

In the mid-19th century, Sir George Sitwell came close to bankruptcy. He auctioned Renishaw's contents, including the timber in the surrounding woods. He retreated to Germany, where the cost of living was lower, but even there was too poor to afford a fire in winter.

Renishaw might have been doomed, had it not been for the timely discovery of coal on the estate, and Sir George's descendants set about refilling the virtually empty house.


Another Sir George - the father of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell - bought Italian baroque art, which was then unfashionable and undervalued.

Desmond Seward was a friend of Sir Reresby Sitwell, who died in 2009, and his remarkable wife Penelope.

This entertaining and elegant book is partly a lively celebration of Reresby and Penelope's restoration of Renishaw and their joint creation of one of the handsomest houses in England.

Matthew Dennison is author of Behind The Mask: The Life Of Vita Sackville-West (William Collins).
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am


Return to Articles & Essays

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests