Edith Sitwell

by Richard Greene

  Adrian Allinson’s cartoon from the late 1920s depicts the three Sitwells on what appears to be a post-cubist camping holiday

  At the end of 1928, Sitwell was in deeper financial trouble than usual because she was covering expenses for Helen and for Pavlik. She undertook for Duckworth The Pleasures of Poetry, a three-volume anthology published between 1930 and 1932, and she accepted a commission from Faber to write a biography of Alexander Pope. Sitwell identified with Pope, partly because of his spinal deformity but also because she viewed him as a persecuted genius, not unlike herself. The book appeared in March 1930, the product of shallow research, yet vastly more entertaining than Maynard Mack’s sober biography of Pope, which is now regarded as definitive. She undertook to defend Pope’s life and poetry from all comers, portraying him as she would a good modernist: as a master of ‘rhetoric and formalism’. His adversaries are just like the minor Georgians:

  To these men, rhetoric and formalism were abhorrent … But in addition to this technical fault, we find in the verse of that time (as in much contemporary verse) the fault of an exaggerated praise of worthy home life, which alternated with swollen, inflated boomings and roarings about the Soul of Man. These reigned triumphant, together with healthy, manly, but rather raucous shouts for beer, and advertisements of certain rustic parts of England, delivered to the accompaniment of a general clumsy clodhopping with hobnailed boots.66

  And with the hobnailed boots she is back to the problems of prosody. While the book hardly presents a nuanced account of Pope’s contemporaries, it makes a massive contribution to an undervalued subgenre, the literary put-down: ‘Addison was good-hearted, perhaps a little too consciously so, was kind, but rather too deliberately open and just. He might be described as the first of a long line of literary cricketers, for he was always “playing the game” or being manly and above guile about one thing or another.’ Sitwell draws a self-portrait when she speaks of Pope as the antithesis of Addison: ‘although he spent a large part of his life in doing kindnesses, and although he was the truest and loyalest of friends, he had [an] unfortunate inhibition against speaking the truth.’67

  In one respect, the book did break new ground. Its last chapter explained Pope’s rhythms and versification; W. H. Auden thought it ‘brilliantly displayed’ the beauties of Pope’s work. Half a century after its publication, Donald Greene, a leading expert on Alexander Pope, wrote that ‘in spite of its flowery language, [it] should not be overlooked by any beginning reader of Pope’, and he agreed with Auden’s observations.68 Beyond an opening nonsense (perhaps derived from her training on the piano) about how physical strength is necessary to write some verse forms, she grows acute on Pope’s use of the caesura, and on his handling of the ‘speed’ of a line through the alternation of monoand polysyllabic words to achieve different effects. Although scholars now take it for granted that Pope’s heroic couplets are capable of huge variety, in the 1920s they were often spoken of as monotonous and inflexible. Sitwell made her case so convincingly that it entered the common store of unfootnoted critical certainties.

  Sitwell’s unusual expertise in poetic technique was honed by conversation with Sassoon, for whom she also had a strong affection. In October 1928, hearing that he was ill, she urged him to drink raw eggs beaten up in port and to take care over his meals. She even volunteered to teach him to cook chops so that he would ‘feel far more independent’.69 However, after making a gift to him of a manuscript of ‘Gold Coast Customs’ at the end of the year, she heard nothing more until April, when Sassoon wrote asking why she was ‘unfriendly’.70 He sent her a silk scarf and said he measured their friendship by years, not weeks or months. Sitwell teased him, ‘Did you mean us to measure it by the years in which you don’t speak to us, or the weeks when you do, or the months when you do and don’t, on and off? Kindly answer!’71 Since 1927, their friendship had been made difficult by the presence of Stephen Tennant. Sitwell did not like and was jealous of this ‘daisy’.72 However, her antipathy did not preclude her introducing Tennant, an art collector, to Tchelitchew. Tennant and the painter went on to form a friendship and may even have been sleeping together. Sassoon was briefly as jealous of Tchelitchew as Sitwell was of Tennant.73

  Needing the money, Sitwell kept up her schedule of lectures, frequently refusing invitations on the grounds that she was terribly busy but offering to squeeze them in if she was paid extra. Her lectures in 1929 often described D. H. Lawrence as king of the ‘Jaeger school of literature’. In May, this came to the notice of Messrs Jaeger, who objected to the comparison.74 Recalling the episode about two years later, Sitwell said she had explained to the clothing firm that her ‘only reason for comparing the works of Mr. Lawrence and those of Professor Jaeger was this: that the works of both are hot, soft, and wooly; but that as the works of Professor Jaeger are unshrinkable by time, and some of Mr. Lawrence’s, in my opinion, are not, I wished to apologise’. The firm responded that owing to her ‘courteous expression of regret, the matter had been erased from their records, but they added: “We are soft, and we are wooly, but we are never hot, owing to our system of slow conductivity …” How I wished that they would invent a system of slow conductivity for “Lady C’s Lover.” Perhaps they did, for the new and authorized edition has appeared, and … is soft and wooly, but not hot, and is, as well, (again like the works of Messrs. Jaeger) in no need of a depilatory.’75

  A portion of Sitwell’s earnings as a lecturer and writer went to Tchelitchew, who required other kinds of help as well. As a stateless person, he often had difficulty crossing borders. In the late spring of 1929, Sitwell turned to a ‘Mr Gurney’ in the Foreign Office to hurry along the granting of a visa. This was probably Thomas Gurney, whose wife, a Scarborough friend of Lady Ida, had presented Edith at court in 1907.76 From 1930, Sitwell looked to the politician Cecil Harmsworth (later first Baron Harmsworth) to secure Pavlik’s visas.77

  In May 1929, Pavlik arrived in London and set to work on a wax head of Sitwell. It appears that he stayed with the young anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, whom Sitwell had first met at a literary society in Cambridge in 1924. Gorer knew Gertrude Stein’s circle and had met Tchelitchew before Sitwell did. Although argumentative, Gorer became one of Sitwell’s closest friends, as did his mother, Rée (or Rachel). Geoffrey Gorer told John Pearson that his mother and Edith Sitwell resembled each other. When they went to a show at Finsbury Park Empire in the Gorers’ Daimler, Sitwell got out first, and the bystanders believed she was the comedian Nellie Wallace. However, when Rée got out, they changed their minds. ‘[Edith] was a very simple person underneath that most exotic of exteriors. A simple country girl, entirely self-educated. What she really liked was a schooner of beer and a plate of steak and onions.’78

  Tchelitchew had come to London looking for people to buy his pictures and to commission portraits. Sitwell promoted him aggressively. On 6 June, she recounted for Sassoon the hardships of the painter’s life and urged him to get Tennant to purchase something at an exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. She said that she had herself raised £45 against her biography of Pope to buy a picture. Six months later, she sent a cheque to Pavlik for £45 as half-payment for a painting. This seems to be a second purchase; if so, she paid him £135 for the two paintings. Even though her income increased that year by £50 owing to an inheritance from Blanche Sitwell, this was a huge amount for her to hand over to Pavlik. A patroness on tick, Sitwell constantly asked Tchelitchew about his finances and vowed to do everything she could for him: ‘Vos tristesses sont mes tristesses; et vos espoirs sont mes espoirs.’79 She bought his paintings because she thought them brilliant, but she also wanted to put money in his pocket. By purchase and gift, she acquired a collection – most of it hidden after 1939 in Evelyn Wiel’s apartment in Paris. When at last Sitwell recovered most of the pictures in 1961, she had to auction off thirty-nine of them to pay debts.80 A further group of works was subsequently found in the apartment.

  Rounding up sitters for Pavlik had its
comic side. At first, Sitwell liked Diana Fitzherbert, the American wife of a baronet, but then lumped her in with the ‘cheap little sluts who arouse [Pavlik’s] chivalry’.81 In October, when Sitwell needed to cancel an arrangement to have tea with her, she took the occasion (so she claimed) to teach a sixteen-year-old servant named Ethel not to be afraid of the telephone. Ethel girded her loins and made the call to Lady Fitzherbert: “‘Is that you, Bitch’erbal? Bitch’erbal is that you? This is Miss Sitwell speaking, and she won’t see yer.” Sensation. Curtain. “Ethel,” I said sadly. “Ethel,” I said, “that is not the way to speak. You must not call Lady Fitzherbert Bitch’erbal.” “Why not, Miss?” enquired Ethel sullenly. “Because Ethel,” I said rather regretfully, “we have to try and remember old Mr. Manners.”’82

  Tchelitchew’s companion Allen Tanner played a bizarre trick on Sitwell when she came to Paris in March 1930. He asked her to sell in London a book that Thomas Jefferson had once given to the Marquis de Lafayette. The book had come to Tanner from a man named Semenoff who had stolen it from Count Louis de Lastérie.83 Tanner knew it was stolen property, but told Sitwell it had been purchased on a quai in Germany. At the same time he asked her to keep the sale secret from Pavlik and to say only that he had made the money from writing a piano manual. When Sotheby’s sold the book, the Count claimed the proceeds. Fortunately, the auction house politely accepted Sitwell’s explanation. She could see that she had had a narrow escape, as she explained to Stella Bowen:

  My poor mother has been in prison; but our characters as writers have made this almost forgotten. Allen, by his lying and lying, has not only risked my being prosecuted and perhaps imprisoned, but it is absolutely certain that had there been a case, or prosecution, – even with me only as Seller of Stolen Property (and I could probably have proved my innocence) the newspapers would have raked up the story of my mother, even if the lawyers did not. And in any case, it would have been the discussion of every Club and dinner party in London.84

  In a series of letters Sitwell explained the matter to Tchelitchew and warned him not to abuse her friendship. He took Allen’s side and accused her of being quarrelsome.85

  A chill set in, but on 8 June 1930 Tchelitchew wrote:

  Dear friend, you write to us very infrequently and I think that you give us much less this year than last, for you know very well that if I don’t write it means that I am poisoned by my life, and prefer not to speak of it for there is sometimes such a hell in my soul that it is frightful to touch it and you know that there isn’t a single person who can understand and console me more than you, and your silence and the rather hasty, reticent letters – letters which don’t say even the half of what they said last year – it makes me very sad and unhappy – for I think that my best friend is withdrawing from me gently but firmly.86

  Unable to remain angry, Sitwell was soon calling him ‘mon petit Pavlik’ and proposing that he, Stella and she go on an ocean voyage in September, if such an idea did not seem too scandalous.87 There was no voyage, but the dispute was over.

  Just after Easter 1930, there was a new spate of medical trouble. Mrs Powell, who had had further surgery, was near death. Around 22 April, Sitwell, expecting news, thought she heard the phone ringing in the middle of night; she got out of bed, then fell badly and struck her head, creating a tiny dent at her hairline and bruises on her face. In the absence of her own doctor, Hal Lydiard Wilson, she went to Helen’s doctor, who failed to recognise concussion. Sitwell donned a veil and continued visiting the hospital where Mrs Powell died in agony on 26 April. A few days later Helen travelled to Paris, where Evelyn had undergone a second round of surgery herself, which left her an ‘invalid’.88

  Sitwell continued to suffer vertigo, headaches, and loss of memory for more than six months. In August, Sir George inspected her forehead and urged her to consult another doctor. The matter of Edith’s dent created a sensation in the family; Lady Ida wrote to Sachie: ‘I feel much fussed about Edith. Mildred [Lady Ida’s sister] wonders whether there may be a bit of bone touching the brain and that it can easily be moved without danger & that she ought to have that place X rayed.’89 It seems they jumped to the conclusion that it was a depressed fracture of the skull, but it was merely concussion and got better over time.

  Sitwell was very glad when at last she had something to laugh at. John Collier, a young man who had once attended her tea parties, had his first success in 1930 with the brutally funny novel His Monkey-Wife; Or Married to a Chimp. In it a schoolmaster named Fatigay returns from the Upper Congo with a chimpanzee named Emily, whom he gives to his cold-hearted and very modern fiancée Amy Flint. Emily falls in love with Fatigay and decides to educate herself to be worthy of him. She becomes a reader at the British Museum, where she wins the hearts of learned codgers, and then moves on to the London stage. The work concludes with inter-species matrimony. In its African imagery and its debunking of British ‘civilisation’, the book, though not so grim, has some things in common with ‘Gold Coast Customs’. Sitwell invited Collier back to Pembridge Mansions, and wrote to him afterwards: ‘The word “wit” has been debased from meaning Swift to meaning that wretched buffoon Noel Coward. But you have wit as Swift understood it … And I know that you have genius. And I never use that word lightly. I don’t think anything is left to be said now either about men’s attitude towards women, or about women’s inmost thoughts. I have always liked you very much, but I think you are a most terrifying young man.’90 Collier went on to achieve fame with his short stories, of which about thirty were published in the New Yorker.

  Even more cheering was her own new book. On 27 May 1930, Balston sent her a copy of her Collected Poems, a summing-up of twenty years of work. She had done some, but not yet all, of the ‘sifting’ that Sassoon urged; at 288 pages, the book offered a fairly tough-minded account of what she felt she had accomplished. At least a third of her early work had been dropped. The idea was not to show development over time but to put strength on display, so the volume opened with ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and ended with ‘Gold Coast Customs’. The early work appeared in the middle, mostly absorbed into Façade and other sequences. She wrote to Balston, ‘I need hardly say that I now loathe every poem I have ever written. That I can’t imagine why I ever believed I was a poet, etc., etc. But if the production of the book has the effect it should have, and will have, my reputation is saved!’91

  As always in the 1920s, her work polarised even the sympathetic critics. Blunden praised her ‘particularity of genius and workmanship’.92 W. R. Benet harrumphed in the Saturday Review of Literature: ‘We prefer her “Gold Coast Customs” to yards and yards and yards of her satyrs, nymphs, fauns, Admirals, and high cockalorums of all sorts.’93 The reviewer in the Nation and Athenæum wrote: ‘Miss Sitwell is careless of lucidity … But even in this strange poetry there are human chords, which remain and echo in the memory when other sounds have ebbed away … At their approach, Miss Sitwell’s style takes on a negative quality, a crystal blankness, from which the image looks up exquisitely clear; it fills the mind, not merely with delight but wonder, that a word here and there, so simple, should have this power of evocation.’94

  Another of Siegfried Sassoon’s caricatures of the Sitwells

  14

  ALL EARS FOR EDITH

  Wyndham Lewis’s biographer, Paul O’Keeffe, tells us that The Apes of God weighed three pounds and three ounces.1 Lumbering, rancid, and self-congratulatory, this roman-à-clef, published on 3 June 1930, has a surprise ending – that is, the reader is agreeably surprised when it does, in fact, end. In the novel, Daniel Boleyn, a handsome poet based on Lewis’s younger self, is led about literary and artistic London by an albino named Zagreus. From time to time they receive encyclicals and broadcasts from an unseen painter-turned-philosopher named Pierpoint. We learn that London is full of those who ‘ape’ the true, God-like artist. One of the leitmotifs is studio envy: for example, Lewis’s sometime friend, the painter Richard Wyndham, portrayed as ‘Dick Whittin
gdon’, is said to have taken a block of studios that could be used by ten geniuses.2 Past kindness is especially provoking: Sydney Schiff, who gave Lewis a good deal of money, is portrayed as ‘Lionel Kein’, a talentless ‘pseudo-Proust’.3 Most of the Bloomsbury notables are identifiable among Lewis’s apes and mountebanks.

  The longest portion of the book, ‘Lord Osmund’s Lenten Party’, portrays the Sitwells as Osmund, Phoebus, and Harriet Finnian Shaw. Georgia makes an appearance as the ‘New Zealand Jewess’ Babs Kennson.4 Sir George Sitwell is ‘Cockeye’ and Edith Powell becomes ‘Mrs Bosun’. Edith Sitwell is presented, contradictorily, as both an old maid and a lesbian whose ‘woman-mate’ is Julia Dyott (Helen Rootham). With an extra touch of cruelty, Lewis added that for ten years the brothers had been trying to get Julia out of the family.5 Lewis wanted to make as much mischief as possible in the Sitwell camp.

  The Apes of God got good reviews (although regard for the book evaporated before long) and in no time readers were putting names to its characters. Sitwell was embarrassed, uncertain, and angry. When she did not answer a letter, the Schiffs asked, by registered post, whether their old friendship was over. She apologised profusely and explained that there had been sicknesses, deaths, and hard work on an anthology, but the more likely reason for her not writing to them was Wyndham Lewis. She pretended that she had read only one page of the novel directed at herself and no part of the book relating to them, adding that Lewis had ‘a mean personal reason for hating me, but I shall never tell anyone what that reason is’. She claimed that she was untouched by the remarks about her age and appearance: ‘The things that hurt me are ethical things – lies about my life, etc. (though he has lied about that too, I believe).’