Oh is it not sad to think that when a faith is so deeply needed to save the world, a faith did arise: the black and appalling creed of the Nazis. That and that only. What hideous mockery. Because it was not only self-seeking that brought this horror about, – it was a black and hideous religion, like the religion of Baal or of Moloch. They were willing, these people, to die for their Anti-Christ. How pitifully have the churches of Christ failed to deal with this: there is no fire in the faith – none. Many good men, much hard work – but not the fire of the saint. That is left to a few – a very few outside the church.50
In the early summer of 1943, strange letters and telegrams began arriving from Switzerland, leading Edith to believe that Bernard Woog was drunk when he wrote them. Finally, in the first week of July came a telegram: ‘Father sends blessings. State far worse. Doctors pessimistic.’51 Sir George apparently spent three days in prayer and two under morphine before dying quietly on 9 July.52 His remains were cremated in Switzerland and a small memorial service was held for him at Eckington church near Renishaw on 17 July.
Upon her father’s death, Edith expected to receive about five thousand pounds. By 13 July, she learned that she had been left just a thousand pounds.53 But then another will appeared, which removed her control of that amount and gave her instead an annuity of sixty pounds, which, she remarked, would become just thirty pounds after taxes.54 Sir George had, in fact, written a number of contradictory wills in an effort to tie down money for Reresby and Francis, as well as (male) children not yet born. A will that came to light at the end of the month laid out different annuities: first claim for Reresby £600, for Francis £300, and for an American cousin £250; after those, £1200 for Osbert, £700 for Sachie, and £200 for Edith. Eventually, the lawyers worked out that only two wills mattered: one in England mainly concerned with property, and one in Switzerland dealing with money. However the estate was resolved, the entailed English properties with self-supporting rents were already in Osbert’s hands. Sachie had Weston, and was about to receive £5000 from Lady Ida’s marriage settlement, so both men were certain of comfort.55
Edith had allowed herself to dream of a future in which Bryher’s gift and a legacy from her father would together allow her the independence to live in Bath and devote herself solely to poetry. In her anger, she now told Pavlik that her father had tried to force her to earn a living by writing prose: ‘He has tried to murder my poetry. He will not succeed. For nearly ten years I did not write poetry, because of my ghastly worries. He shall never do that to me again.’56 By 8 August, she had calmed down somewhat and wrote to Sybil Colefax:
I am glad he died peacefully in his sleep, without pain, and without (I think) knowing he was dying. He was frightened to die. I shall remember about him that he was truly kind to my poor friend Helen and indeed behaved like a human being to her; and that he did not prosecute two employees who each embezzled £200 from him. I shall remember these things, and I shall try and think that he could not help certain things which grew in his nature. But – he remained to the last what he has been for the last thirty years. He had, of course, a miserable married life. But then, so did my mother. Poor old man! But they were a pair, and the trail of what they have done is still all over everything.57
Without open disagreement with Sachie, Edith very unwisely took Osbert’s view of the estate and thought the worst of Georgia for her complaints about money: ‘Smash and grab raiders are not in it!’58 Osbert was sometimes generous: in May, he had bought Edith four hundred pounds’ worth of defence bonds so as to free her own money to pay off a loan at Coutts.59 Presumably such acts blinded her to other aspects of his conduct: ‘[Father] has long tried to ruin Osbert’s life: he has not succeeded, because Osbert is a very great soul, and has a kind of saint-like comprehension of and pity for such beings.’60 A stickler for loyalty, Edith often referred to Cain in her poetry, but it seems she remained unaware of one of the worst betrayals in her life.
Already living beyond the dreams of most people, Osbert had hopes of an even finer life. He described the baronetcy to David Horner as a ‘new toy’ and proposed to have a gramophone record made that sang, ‘Sir O, Sir O, Sir O’, for when he was depressed.61 He had long since tired of Sachie’s whining over money and was going to take a hard line:
The wish to behave especially badly to me and to Edith was, of course, present in S’s mind, but I made up my mind a long time ago to try not to quarrel irrevocably with him until I was provided for; and I have paid more attention to my affairs than has Sachie. In any case, primogeniture, rightly or wrongly, [illegible] to protect me, and at Father’s death, under the Marriage Settlement, I had to get the estates I now hold for life … But I do feel very sorry for Sachie – if the figures are correct. On the other hand, he has far more capital than I have.62
For a time, the bequests appeared moot. Most of Sir George’s money had been placed in a Stiftung (endowment or private foundation), but a great deal of it had disappeared. His children initially believed that Sir George had just squandered it on gardens, renovations, bad pictures, and chairs that must not be sat on. However, by the first months of 1944, Osbert could see that Woog, who had once worked at the bank where Sir George did business and who had obtained a power of attorney, had stolen all but ten or twelve thousand of what had once been at least sixty-five thousand pounds.63 Moreover, Woog and his wife had been named as heirs to what was left in the Stiftung. Osbert began to think that his father’s death was not natural, and Edith, an avid reader of Agatha Christie, agreed, writing to Sachie in February 1944: ‘I should think a whole lot can be proved against [Woog]: and if you ask me, I should think it quite probable that there were strange incidents surrounding the end. Do you take me?’64 She told Horner: ‘I think we shall find that sulphonal played its part in gathering the old gentleman to his forefathers … not self-administered.’65
Even though the consul, a lawyer, and a chartered accountant were pursuing the matter in Switzerland, more help seemed necessary. At Edith’s suggestion, Osbert sent Lorna Andrade to Eleanor Lucie-Smith, known professionally as Nell St John Montague, a medium and psychometrist who was a friend of their cousin Irene Carisbrooke. They asked Montague to examine the handwriting of Woog and of Sir George and also to gaze into crystal. The medium suspected that something terrible had happened to Sir George, but held out little hope of getting the money back.66 Apart from spiritual vibrations and glimpses in the ball, there was not a scrap of earthly evidence to support the charge of murder. The fortune-teller was wrong on all counts, and her gift of foresight did not save her from being killed by a bomb six months later.67
After long wrangling, the bank paid restitution, and Osbert made sure that the final benefit of the estate fell to him. It is necessary here to look many years into the future – albeit without the aid of crystal. In 1965 (just after Edith’s death), Philip Frere’s younger colleague Hugo Southern took over the Sitwell file and wrote a letter to Osbert, reviewing the history of the estate: ‘you know virtually all of what I will have to say in this letter.’ Southern described how Sir George Sitwell had made many Stiftungs, and the one that was currently operating was dated 20 August 1935. It paid out annuities of £1200 to Osbert, £100 each to Edith and Sachie, and a total of £150 to two cousins. The validity of this (and any other of the Stiftungs) could be successfully challenged, and under either Italian or Swiss law the estate would then be divided equally among the three children. In a subsequent letter Southern placed the value of each share at that time at about fifty to sixty thousand pounds.68
It is evident from these letters that for many years Osbert knowingly profited at the expense of his brother and sister. There was no reason for the Stiftung to continue operating, except that it put money in Osbert’s pocket. Some of his annuity was tied to the upkeep of Montegufoni, but, then, he also had the enjoyment of living for much of the year in a castle. An acute businessman, Sir Reresby Sitwell later observed to John Pearson that Osbert ‘snitched’ money that belong
ed to Edith and Sacheverell, and that this probably required the acquiescence of the ‘eminence noir’ Philip Frere.69 Hugo Southern was disgusted by his dealings with Osbert and later described him to Pearson as ‘utterly, completely selfish’.70 Edith spent most of the late 1940s and 1950s in crushing anxiety over her debts, when she ought to have had a comfortable life. Osbert told Lorna Andrade that he did not help Edith because she was as extravagant as Lady Ida and that money given to her was wasted.71 It is often said that Osbert did not know about Edith’s money problems, but Andrade’s recollections indicate precisely the opposite. In any event, the money was not his either to give or to withhold.
Believing what Osbert told her about money, Edith had constantly to hold her tongue in dealings with Sachie, since much of what he said implied doubt of Osbert’s judgment or goodwill. For their part, Sachie and Georgia failed to grasp that the person most injured by Sir George’s will-making was Edith. The tension mounted through the autumn of 1943 and flashed out over an apparently unrelated question. Ten years younger and a boy, Sachie had not witnessed Edith’s childhood. It was easier for him to look on his early years with generosity and forgiveness – he had less to forgive. His book Splendours and Miseries, published in December, contained a description of Lady Ida’s qualities as a mother that appalled Edith. She described the book to David Horner:
I really haven’t any words to say what he has done to me by that chapter. I do not need to tell you that by this, he has succeeded in leaving me alone with the hell of my childhood, (he was never in it) – has succeeded in conveying that it was all my fault (I suppose I ill-treated her, when I was a child of eight and nine, a child of thirteen!) Why do you suppose he has stuck a knife into my back in this way? Out of mawkish sentimentality – and because like his father before him, he cannot see anyone else’s life, or his own life, honestly.72
The last sentence contains the essence of her rage. Sir George had never accepted that his wife had abused Edith, nor that Edith needed the means to have a separate life, so had in desperation thrown in her lot with the Roothams. Now Sachie, whom she loved and admired, was guilty of the same disregard for her emotions and her material needs.
For about two weeks she mulled over her response. She praised the book handsomely, then addressed the issue of the last chapter: ‘It is not how I see the situation.’ She recounted for him the psychological injuries she had suffered at Lady Ida’s hands, and what she believed was the damage done to Osbert by the fraud trial. Then she demanded in all kindness that Sachie – who gave up poetry after the reviews of Canons of Giant Art – show a little courage:
I realise, my darling, only too well from this chapter, that you have been suffering from great unhappiness. Many things have gone to make this up: loneliness at school; the first war coming while you were yet so young; your young friends being killed; the dreadful 1915 incident; this war; and, I think, too, the extraordinary wave of idiocy that has swept over the country on the subject of poetry … You are surrounded by people devoted to you. You are at the height of your powers. Don’t take refuge in some dream of childhood. Don’t allow yourself to pulled down by imbecile publishers, either. Go straight ahead, and leave these dreams behind. Now is the time to write more poetry. You owe it to us that you should.
And the tide is turning.73
At the end of the war, he did start writing verse again – and it doubtless owed something to Edith’s mixture of encouragement and badgering.
The exchange with Sachie forced her to think about whether recent experience had changed her. Although she speaks in the language of neurasthenia, she had recognised some truths about herself. She wrote to Pavlik: ‘I, for one thing, have become much wiser. Although my terrible childhood has left its mark, and I shall always be nervous, and have sudden outbursts brought on by my wrecked nervous system, and the fear of people that has been instilled into me.’ It was an accurate assessment. Childhood had trained her to expect sudden cruelties. Serenity might be imaginable in her poetry, but she knew that she would live and die a woman of extremes.
19
THE DANCING MADNESS
John Banting’s whimsical pseudo-portrait of Edith Sitwell (1943) was based on a propped-up bone and some bits of glass
‘I am much more intelligent than when I saw you last, because I have used my mind much more profoundly, and because I have read and understood very great and wonderful works. So when you speak to me of painting now, although I shall always remain silent out of reverence for you, and out of a proper humility and knowledge of my ignorance, I shall at least absorb everything that you are saying. I can be a better companion [for] you. I have real hunger to learn.’1 Sitwell found Tchelitchew’s intuitive and chaotic mind intimidating. She wanted to make herself more pleasing to him when they met again after the war. At the same time, she wanted to kindle new poems. She put it to John Banting’s whimsical pseudo-portrait of Edith Sitwell (1943) was based on a propped-up bone and some bits of glass Stephen Spender, ‘I’ve got very much the night-school nature, and try to educate myself.’2
Her programme of reading from 1943 was offbeat and sometimes esoteric. While the subject would bear an interesting book for specialists, here it is possible to offer only a short summary. At Tchelitchew’s suggestion, she took up Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century alchemist and hermeticist. She struggled with him but kept trying: ‘It is certain that until one begins to understand that there are Secrets in nature, one will get nowhere. And every great artist is, as you say, in some sense a Magician.’3 Perhaps as a result of her reading in this area (and the influence of Tchelitchew himself), she often depicts sudden transformations in her later poems; the words ‘become’ and ‘change’ take on an enormous weight in her poetry. However, this may have been just a further development of the impulse that led to her poem ‘Metamorphosis’ back in 1928.
She grew fascinated with works that had inspired Blake and Novalis, leading her to re-read the shoemaker-mystic Jacob Boehme, drawing from his Aurora (1612) imagery of precious stones.4 She wrote later that she found Kierkegaard ‘tepid and damp … I really hate him. Hate him as much as I love Boehme and Blake and Whitman, who are love.’5 In the autumn of 1943, she took up Jonathan Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu (1927) – an account of Coleridge’s reading and how it bore fruit in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan’. Here, she learnt of Thomas Burnet’s The Theory of the Earth (1681–90) with its visions of deluge and apocalypse: ‘The description of the bottom of the sea after all the waters had been drained from it, is so tremendous that one gasps – and so is the description of the mountains when the earth is being destroyed by fire on the Last Day, – and the description of the sun at the time of an earthquake.’6
Two years later, Burnet makes an appearance in Sitwell’s ‘The Shadow of Cain’. Probably from a reading of Coleridge’s letters, Sitwell discovered the German philosopher Lorenz Oken7 (1779–1851), whom she regarded as mad but visionary, and to whom she returned again and again until she wrote ‘The Shadow of Cain’, in which she quotes him on the nature of ‘zero’.8 Sitwell was attracted to Plato and to that ‘great and derided heart and intelligence’ Ralph Waldo Emerson.9 Through these years, she continued reading the sources behind Shakespeare, becoming absorbed in several of them, notably the Greek travel writer Pausanias. Essentially, Sitwell was trying to understand the intellectual formation and the inspirations of a handful of authors who inspired her. This reading was an approach to the minds of Shakespeare, the Romantics, and Walt Whitman.
Coleridge coloured her view of almost everything in the late months of 1943. She wrote to Colin Hampton, cellist of the Griller Quartet, which performed privately at Renishaw Hall programmes that included an important new composer: ‘I’m not sure that [Benjamin] Britten hasn’t been, spiritually, where Coleridge went before he wrote The Ancient Mariner – to those polar regions … Only Britten saw it, I think, from a freezing height, like a bird – very, very high up. And Coleridge saw it fro
m the sea.’ In the years to come, she would have a close friendship with Britten, who would set to music a number of her poems. As for Coleridge, his grip on Edith Sitwell extended even to her sense of humour as two years later she described for T.S. Eliot her dealings with visiting bores: ‘I am the Wedding Guest to every Ancient Mariner, and am now bent permanently sideways, with my right ear almost touching the ground.’10
Sitwell needed also to keep in touch with new developments in contemporary writing and for this she turned to the poet and editor John Lehmann. In 1936, he founded New Writing, which became Penguin New Writing in 1940 – a best-selling anthology packaged as a magazine. He also founded Daylight, New Writing and Daylight, and in 1954 the London Magazine. At Cambridge he had been a close friend of the poet Julian Bell, Clive and Vanessa Bell’s son who was killed in Spain. Lehmann worked at the Hogarth Press and in 1938 purchased Virginia Woolf’s share of the firm.11 He moved in leftist circles in the 1930s, and even though he admired Street Songs, he expected a cool reception from Edith Sitwell when they met at the Sesame Club probably in the spring of 1943. They were introduced by a common friend, Demetrios Capetanakis. Lehmann recalled: ‘I was struck at once by the sculptural beauty of [Edith’s] oval face … I recognized at that earliest tea-party what was in fact perfectly clear from her poetry, and could not be concealed even by the shower of shafts of satiric wit that sometimes filled the air around her: that her response to any genuine emotion was immediate and that she was extremely sensitive, especially to all forms of suffering, human or animal.’12
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