Another of Plomer’s friends, Ian Fleming, the Bond creator, made a clumsy entrance into Edith Sitwell’s world in December 1947. At a luncheon for Osbert who had just won the Sunday Times book prize for Laughter in the Next Room, Fleming told Sitwell that he was amused at Plomer placing ‘The Shadow of Cain’ first on a list of admired contemporary works. Sitwell bit her tongue but then complained to Plomer,50 who persuaded him to write a letter of apology. An improbable friendship developed between Sitwell and Fleming, centred on their shared interest in Jung and Paracelsus. By June, they were talking of collaborating on a book (never actually written) about poets and mystics. Fleming sent her a translation he had made of Jung’s speech at the birthplace of Paracelsus; Sitwell copied out sections of it and sent them to Pavlik. She was seized by Jung’s comments on modern science’s approach to the ‘Paracelsian concept of spiritually animated matter’, and she found Jung’s remarks on Paracelsus ‘enthralling’: ‘“As, unprejudiced, he accumulated the kernels of surface experience, so did he create the philosophic basis of his work from amongst the primitive shadows of the soul.” (Is that not what we should do? Indeed, what we do?)’51
Greene, Plomer, Bowes Lyon, and Fleming belonged to Sitwell’s network of friends in London. She was also developing new connections across the ocean. Among the younger poets Edith Sitwell most admired was the Filipino, José Garcia Villa, who spent much of his life in New York. In the late summer of 1944, he sent her a copy of his collection Have Come, Am Here. Not knowing the author, she approached it with a sinking feeling but soon decided she liked his work very much. He had a cummings-like taste for verbal experiments, such as inserting a comma after each word. This was not what interested Sitwell, as she told John Lehmann: ‘You know I think José Villa a really fine poet. I, too, think his experiments are bosh, – especially the comma one.’52 She encouraged Villa, and around 1945 he decided to dedicate an issue of his journal Viva to her. He solicited essays from various critics but first found himself stymied by the paper shortage, then simply mislaid some of the contributions. Finally, Charlie Ford intervened and brought in James Laughlin to publish A Celebration for Edith Sitwell in advance of the reading and lecture tour. For some time, Sitwell had distrusted Laughlin. Dylan Thomas had reported back to her Laughlin’s gossip about her supposed lesbianism. He visited her at Renishaw in mid-July, spoke well of Charlie’s poetry, and conducted himself pleasantly. Sitwell decided that Thomas was simply wrong. To her mind, Laughlin was ‘a perfectly decent and honourable person’.53
Sitwell’s growing reputation in Britain was contributing to a problem that would greet her when she arrived in New York. At the end of 1947, she wrote to Pavlik, ‘Did I tell you that on the 7th of May, I shall be no longer Miss Sitwell, but Doctor Sitwell? I am being given an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) and shall from then onwards call myself and be called Dr. Sitwell, in order to keep the nasty little boys who are still attacking me in order.’54 The degree from Leeds was organised by the critic and anthologist, Professor Bonamy Dobrée, a friend of Herbert Read’s. In February, she learnt of a second doctorate coming her way, this one from Durham, which would make her ‘Dr. Dr. Sitwell’ or ‘Double Doctor Sitwell’.55 She decided to style herself ‘Miss Edith Sitwell, D. Litt., Litt. D.’, but also used ‘Miss Edith Sitwell, D. Litt., D. Litt.’, and after a further award from Oxford in 1951, ‘Miss Edith Sitwell, D. Litt., D. Litt., D. Litt.’. Always regretting her odd education, she was thrilled by this recognition from the universities, but she knew what she was doing was funny. William Plomer said in early 1948 that if she was to become a doctor he would register with her under the National Health Service, and she answered: ‘Yes, do become one of my patients. The great thing would be, I should always advise my patients to do exactly as they like – which would result in an almost immediate cure.’56 She brandished her doctorates at the pipsqueakery, but her last two, from Sheffield in 1955 and Hull in 1963, did not matter so much as she was by then Dame Edith Sitwell.
At first, Pavlik was pleased for Sitwell, and addressed her as ‘My dearest futur [sic] doctor’,57 and he continued to congratulate her through the spring. However, he was brooding, complaining about his state of mind and of a lack of recognition – he was at the time one of the more fashionable artists in New York. Sitwell could see that the doctorates were beginning to bother him, so she wrote that it was sad there was no doctor of painting as there was a doctor of letters, as he should surely be awarded such a degree: ‘But are the crowds – the huge crowds – that pass by your pictures – not more honouring than a Doctorate? I think so.’58 Tchelitchew was envious and perhaps a little bored by Sitwell’s doctoral glee, although the problem lay deeper than that.
Edith Sitwell in the 1950s: one dame and several doctors
With Sitwell’s arrival in New York now fixed for October 1948, Tchelitchew was spooked by her expectations of him and by the approach of his fiftieth birthday on 21 September. These pressures contributed to a new episode of what several of his friends believed was mental illness. In his journal, Charlie Ford noted at the time that Pavlik was in a continual panic over money; he claimed there was no friendship in America and called Charlie a ‘parasite’. On another occasion he looked in a mirror and was terrified of a face that was mad and old.59 Early in the summer, he protested to Edith that while visiting New York John Lehmann had not gone to see his large canvas Hide and Seek – his usual touchiness was growing more acute.60 He spoke of a veil of melancholy over his mind, and there were signs of paranoia.
She did her best to console him but failed to see the danger on the horizon: ‘Dear Pavlik, how wonderful it is to think that in only just over four months, I shall be seeing you, sitting beside you and talking, and seeing your pictures … The excitement and happiness will be almost too much.’61 By 25 September, she was clearly aware that something was wrong: ‘But oh me! You are not pursued by mocking laughter, any longer. You are a great painter! … Keep absolutely firm, in your heart.’62
21
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
‘Women are happier when they’re fucked,’ mused Pavel Tchelitchew one evening shortly before Edith Sitwell’s arrival in New York. Charles Henri Ford replied, ‘So are men.’1 Pavlik did not want to break down the wall between his rackety world and that other world of myths and symbols where he and Edith were courtly lovers. After years of paper and ink, he would now have to deal with her bodily presence, and he supposed she would pressure him for sex. And he was not pleased that the critics thought more of her than they did of him.
Twelve hours late because of a rough crossing, the Queen Elizabeth, with its 2246 passengers, docked in New York at 7.50 p.m. on 21 October 1948 (New York Times, 22 October 1948). Minnie Astor’s chauffeur brought Pavlik and Charlie to Pier 90, West 50th Street, and gave them dock passes indicating they were to meet ‘Mr. Oscar Sitwell and daughter’. After much confusion they found Edith, who was by now relying on a walking stick. They embraced and kissed her, and gathered up the sixteen pieces of luggage she and Osbert had brought – among them extra copies of her new book A Notebook on William Shakespeare, for which an officious customs inspector demanded eighty-five cents in duty. A dockside reporter lobbed questions at Osbert, who offered up bland comments on how the last twenty or thirty years had been a great time for his country’s writers.
The next night, Alice Pleydell-Bouverie gave a dinner for the Sitwells at the St Regis. Among the guests were Tchelitchew and Ford, Lady Ribblesdale (Pleydell-Bouverie’s mother), Monroe Wheeler of the Museum of Modern Art, Mary Rockefeller (first wife of Nelson Rockefeller), and Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein. Edith Sitwell was wearing a dress made of black and white material that Tchelitchew had sent to her in advance of the visit. The cloth symbolised the bee-priestess who figures in some of Sitwell’s poems, and he had advised her that her wardrobe should follow a medieval theme. However, when he saw the dress, he thought the tailoring was awful and could not conceal his annoyance. When they said good
night, Sitwell was crying because she had had little chance to speak with him.
The next day he went to the St Regis for lunch with the Sitwells prior to taking them to see his great work Hide and Seek (or Cache-Cache). As often happened after the mid-1940s, Sitwell was suffering from lumbago; she could not make the outing to the Museum of Modern Art. She appeared at lunch in a red turban. Tchelitchew thought that it was too ‘fixed’ and that the ones she used to make herself were better – but he did not say this to her. Elizabeth Bowen once famously referred to Edith Sitwell as a high altar on the move; that effect was largely contrived by Tchelitchew who designed much of Sitwell’s wardrobe and regarded her appearance as one of his artworks. Trying to be cheerful, Sitwell gave him and Charlie a dozen Liberty silk ties before the two men took Osbert to see the picture.2
As soon as she was well, she went with Pavlik to see Hide and Seek. Painted between 1940 and 1942, Pavlik had often written to her about it, and he sent her one of the preparatory sketches, which she treasured. Yet no small sketch or photograph can convey the strange complexity of this 6'6" x 7'1" oil painting. Beginning with Phenomena as his Inferno, Tchelitchew planned to work through the cycle of Dante; Hide and Seek was his Purgatorio; he did not produce a Paradiso. Hide and Seek follows his usual technique of melding bodies and landscapes. Here, the central image is a tree, composed mainly of the bodies of many infants, whose eyes are generally turned towards some point within or beyond the tree. Most of them are gazing into a cave or a vagina, at the front of which stands a small figure with its arms spread and a butterfly to its right. The tree is phallic, and the whole work is a labyrinth, from which, Parker Tyler tells us, escape is symbolised by birds in the upper left-hand corner.3
Tchelitchew expected an immediate outpouring of wonder, but Sitwell stood silent before this painting. Whatever she eventually said was insufficient, and he took offence. When she spoke of this picture in future, it was always as a masterpiece, but it is possible that, at first, she was bothered by it. For example, the puzzle aspect, not evident in small reproductions, can strike one, straight off, as too clever. When it was displayed at the City Museum of New York in 2009, one visitor took her first look at all the small crowded bodies and asked, ‘Where’s Wally?’4 The painting has an extraordinary inner life, but that becomes evident only after one has looked at it for some time. Sitwell wrote to Tchelitchew on the day following her visit: ‘It is happy, to me, to be writing to you, because, writing being my natural form of expression, I can produce what I want to say more naturally than by speaking. I speak badly and inadequately.’ Her praise of the work was unstinting: ‘The beauty, the light in matter, is incredible. It makes everything I passed – I mean all pictures – on coming away from it, look trivial and petty, with no vision behind. I reverence you. How wonderful that seeking child with her companion butterfly are, plunging forward into that mysterious luminous darkness.’ She continued in this vein for four pages and then asked: ‘Dearest Pavlik, please let me come and sit and talk to you quite quietly, soon. What is the use of meeting amongst fools?’5 Apparently, Pavlik was touched by this letter.6
But he did not want to be alone with her, and he told Ford that her admiration for his art was muddled by sexual attraction to him. He scoffed at telephone messages left by ‘Dr’ Sitwell. There were other scenes. In Cecil Beaton’s presence he spoke of how at his studio rose-coloured light fell on the pavement below the train track, and he asked whether she thought it beautiful. Sitwell said she would need to think about it, so Pavlik began to stamp with rage.7 Privately, he complained to Ford about the pretentiousness of her conversation and the title ‘Dr Sitwell’. Parker Tyler, who witnessed some of these events, guessed that Tchelitchew was envious of her acclaim and wanted to bring her down when the rest of America seemed to be rejoicing over her.8 He was lashing out at Ford too, comparing them both to vampires.
One evening he said to Ford, ‘I don’t love anybody.’
Ford asked, ‘Not even me?’
‘Not even myself.’
He had come to an impasse in his work, and he and Ford were soon considering a break-up.9
Edith and Pavlik had a dinner by themselves on 15 November, after which he told Ford that Edith regarded him only as ‘a living cock in front of her’. He said that she had sat like ‘a big white worm’, and that she was entirely selfish.10 Pavlik wrote to her the next day: ‘I know you think a lot of bitter things of myself and my behaviour. Are you sure that in your life I myself am really an idea, instead of a reality?’11 – doubtless a fair question, one he might have also asked of himself about his view of Sitwell. He explained to Ford a little later that by ‘selfish’ he meant seeking glory for herself – he was plainly not used to Edith upstaging him. He then compared the two Sitwells to ‘piles of shit’.12 Nevertheless, he was conscious of his mind not being right; he described his depression to Sitwell and sought her comfort. She wrote on 21 November: ‘I was so happy to get your letter – to know, at least, that a part of that terrible darkness that was over you on the night when I dined with you is, though not dissipated, at least less possessive. I have thought of nothing else.’13 However, she had to watch her step. It appears that on 8 December someone claimed that Tchelitchew’s work was morbid, and he blamed Sitwell for not speaking up. She wrote: ‘I was too overcome, yesterday, to try to speak … I write with the utmost humility to the sublime artist who has shown those secrets [of life]. Why, nobody should be afraid of death, seeing this persistence of life, this transcendental flowering, this lily-stem of the bone, ineffably strong and undying.’14
And yet, apart from her Russian problems, Edith Sitwell’s visit to the United States was a triumph. A Celebration for Edith Sitwell came out on the day of her arrival, followed shortly by the Vanguard Press edition of The Song of the Cold, which included the companion poems to ‘The Shadow of Cain’: ‘Dirge for the New Sunrise’ and ‘The Canticle of the Rose’. On 25 October, she and Osbert held a press conference for twenty reporters at Colston Leigh’s office on Fifth Avenue. About the early performances of Façade, she said, ‘Even when I make a joke it is from a deep conviction. Who would purposely try to annoy the public?’ Osbert cut in, ‘I would … Frequently.’ He said he was afraid to enter the shops in New York because there would be no stopping him. He needed some good fountain pens but had discovered that it was not necessary to buy them since after a day of book-signing he usually had two more than when he began (New York Times, 26 October 1948). Wyndham Lewis saw press photographs of the Sitwells on tour and remarked: ‘She has changed since the days when I painted her portrait. She now has become a Van Eyck.’15
When the novelist Glenway Wescott (Wheeler’s lover and an acquaintance of Edith Sitwell since 1923) remarked on her patience with reporters, photographers, and socialites, she said, ‘Walt Whitman is my patron saint. I took a vow not to lose my temper in this country.’16 However, on other occasions, he saw that she was ‘hypersensitive and irritable’. He told John Pearson that when he saw her one morning at the St Regis, she said, ‘I can’t stand myself. I’m so ugly. All I want is for somebody to put his head in my mouth and I will bite it off.’17
On 8 November, Edith and Osbert held a joint reading at the Town Hall. Edith appeared in a black dress and red cape, wearing what she called her ‘Lady Macbeths’ – her silver necklace and bracelets. She read clearly and dramatically, and afterwards Pavlik went backstage to congratulate her. She remarked glumly that she would probably not see him again as he was avoiding her.18 The reading was followed by a luncheon in the Sitwells’ honour attended by five hundred people at the Waldorf-Astoria, at which there was a formal debate among various writers and artists including James Michener, the novelist, and Edward Weeks, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, on whether ‘something valuable and lasting would come out of the confusion of the contemporary age’. At the end, Edith Sitwell proposed that it was time once again for the poet to walk hand in hand with the priest (New York Times, 9 and 21 November 1948).
On their tour, the Sitwells ranged north to Buffalo, Toronto, and Hamilton, south to Washington and Lynchburg, and west to Kansas City – with sell-outs at every stop. On 20 December in Boston, she was, as she told Minnie Astor, confronted after a reading by a psychiatrist who wondered why she wrote about Christ rather than the dignity of man: ‘I said “Isn’t Christ good enough for you? Surely he is the dignity of man. And what do you want me to put my trust in, – the atomic bomb?” I then bowed from the waist, and said I feared I was keeping him from his friends.’20 For Sitwell, the Second World War had shown that secular humanism was a dead-end and that the real human narrative was of sin and redemption. Over Christmas, Edith and Osbert remained in Boston, which she thought like an ‘English Cathedral city’. Harvard was ‘beautiful’ even though everything was closed. Christmas morning brought a curious tableau: ‘A large owl has gone to live in a courtyard, and in the morning, the courtyard is one huge graveyard of the bones of mice.’21
Just before Christmas, Sitwell received a copy of Denton Welch’s new book Brave and Cruel, and Other Stories, which she thought his ‘infinitely best’ work, but then heard from Welch’s friend, the philosopher and biographer Maurice Cranston, that he had died on 30 December. Sitwell wrote back: ‘I shall never forget him. Dear, living young creature, who would have done so much.’22
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