HR Helen Rootham
IS Lady Ida Sitwell
OS Sir Osbert Sitwell, 5th Baronet
PT Pavel Tchelitchew
SS Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, 6th Baronet
Publications:
Bradford Sarah Bradford, Splendours and Miseries: A Life of Sacheverell Sitwell (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993).
CP Edith Sitwell, Collected Poems (London: Macmillan, 1957).
Craggs Stewart Craggs, Preface, v–xii, in William Walton Edition, gen. ed. David Lloyd-Jones, consultant Stewart Craggs (Oxford: OUP, 1998–), vol. 7: Façade Entertainments, ed. David Lloyd-Jones (2000).
Elborn Geoffrey Elborn, Edith Sitwell: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1981)
Fifoot Richard Fifoot, A Bibliography of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (1963; 2nd edition, revised, London: Archon Books, 1971).
Ford Charles Henri Ford, Water From a Bucket: A Diary 1948–1957 (New York: Turtle Point Press, 2001).
FWGC Sacheverell Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973).
Glendinning Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: A Lion among Unicorns (London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981).
LHRH Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, 5 vols (London: Macmillan, 1945–50).
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online).
Pearson John Pearson, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (London: Macmillan, 1978).
Salter Elizabeth Salter, The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (London: Bodley Head, 1967).
SL Edith Sitwell, Selected Letters, ed. John Lehmann and Derek Parker (London: Macmillan, 1970).
SLES Edith Sitwell, Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell, ed. Richard Greene (London: Virago, 1997; revised edn, 1998).
TCO Edith Sitwell, Taken Care Of (London: Hutchinson, 1965).
TG Osbert Sitwell, ed., Two Generations (London: Macmillan, 1940).
Tyler Parker Tyler, The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew (New York: Fleet, 1967).
Ziegler Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell: A Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998).
Institutions:
BL British Library
HRC Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
NYPL New York Public Library
PRO Public Record Office
WSU Washington State University, Pullman, Washington
Letters between Sitwell and Tchelitchew are from the Edith Sitwell–Pavel Tchelitchew Correspondence, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, unless otherwise stated.
Notes
PROLOGUE: WHY?
1 ES to SS, 24 December 1940, ES Collection, HRC.
2 ES to PT, 30 December 1940.
3 ES to PT, 6 June 1940.
4 ES to PT, 27 May 1941.
5 SLES, 14–15.
6 Unidentified newspaper interview, c.1962, in SS Collection, 5:2, HRC
7 Glendinning, 4.
8 See, for example, Spender’s interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
9 New York Times, 11 January 1959. Sitwell repeated the quip many times.
CHAPTER 1: FACTS OF LIFE
1 LHRH 2, 192.
2 LHRH 2, 142.
3 ES to Lady Colefax, Bodleian Library, Colefax Collection, Ms. Eng. C. 3169, ff. 67–8.
4 ES to Bryher, 26 December 1941. Bryher Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
5 ES to PT, 26 December 1945.
6 TCO, 20.
7 Fragment of journal, Works 179, ES Collection, HRC. This passage contains several deletions and interlineations. I have quoted the version that is most coherent.
8 LHRH 1, 57–63.
9 LHRH 1, 146–9.
10 TCO, 28.
11 ES, ‘Why I Look as I do’, Works U-V-W, ES Collection, HRC.
12 ES, unpublished autobiography, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
13 SS, Splendours and Miseries, 242.
14 Obituary of Lady Ida Sitwell, The Times, 13 July 1937.
15 FWGC, 298.
16 LHRH 1, 138.
17 TG, xx.
18 TCO, 41.
19 TCO, 30.
20 LHRH 1, 77.
21 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
22 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 12, ES Collection, HRC.
23 TCO, 27.
24 TCO, 29.
25 Draft of LHRH 1, OS Collection, 3.9, HRC.
26 This and the preceding paragraph are based on ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
27 LHRH 1, 244.
28 ES, ‘Christmas Past and Present’, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
29 An extended account of Christmas at Blankney may be found in LHRH
2, 179–208.
30 TCO, 26.
31 SL, 198.
32 Reresby Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells, 3–5.
33 Evelyn Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, 780.
34 Reresby Sitwell, op. cit., 4–5.
35 TG, xvii; LHRH 1, 20.
36 Reresby Sitwell, op. cit., 5.
37 Pearson, 21.
38 Archbishop Davidson’s letters to Blanche Sitwell may be found in the Lambeth Palace Library.
39 SS, Foreword, Hortus Sitwellianus (Wilton: Michael Russell, 1984), 9–10.
40 ES to Lady Colefax, n.d., Colefax Collection, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. c. 3169, f. 105.
41 TCO, 66–7.
42 TG, xxxiii.
43 TG, 170–1.
44 TCO, 69.
45 GRS, Idle Fancies in Prose and Verse, 69.
46 SS, Foreword, Hortus Sitwellianus, 9–10.
47 I am grateful to the college archivist, P. Hatfield, for information on Sir George’s time at Eton.
48 LHRH 2, 159.
49 Christ Church Tutor’s Book and Collections Book. I am grateful to the college archivist, Mrs Judith Curthoys, for information on Sir George’s time at Christ Church.
50 GRS and Carl Von Buch, letter to the editor, The Times, 12 January 1880.
51 Ibid. See also Daily Telegraph, 13 January 1880, Evening Standard, 12 January 1880, and LHRH 1, 256–7.
52 LHRH 1, 61n.
53 GRS, Preface (unpaginated), The Barons of Pulford.
54 Pearson, 22.
55 Muriel Spark, ‘A Drink with Dame Edith’, Literary Review.
56 TCO, 22.
57 TCO, 26–7.
CHAPTER 2: A SENSE OF PLACE
1 ‘Shipwrecks and Storms’, http://www2.northyorks.gov.uk/unnetie/ storyboards/east_coast/the_sea.cfm. Further information from Mark Vesey of the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, relying on research by Arthur Godfrey. See: www.scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk.
2 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
3 ES, ‘Eccentricities of Fashion’, Works 206, ES Collection, HRC.
4 ‘Waltz’, CP, 144.
5 LHRH 1, 120–5.
6 Ibid., 85–7.
7 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 42, ES Collection, HRC.
8 Ibid.
9 LHRH 3, 299–300.
10 Andrew Clay, e-mail to Richard Greene, 22 December 2009.
11 ES, ‘Readers and Writers’, The New Age, 1562, n.s., 31: 16 (17 August 1922), 196.
12 ‘No More’, An Indian Summer (London: Macmillan, 1982), 20.
13 LHRH 1, 19.
14 Ibid. 2, 36–9.
15 SS, All Summer in a Day, 79.
16 LHRH 2, 36–7.
17 Ibid. 1, 104.
18 SS, All Summer in a Day, 27.
19 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 271, ES Collection, HRC.
20 SS, Foreword, Hortus Sitwellianus (Wilton: Michael Russell, 1984), 9.
21 OS, Tales My Father Told Me, 20.
22 Reresby Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells, 13.
23 GRS, On the Making of Gardens, 46–7.
24 SS, The Homing of the
Winds, 10.
25 LHRH 1, 254.
26 TCO, 32–3.
CHAPTER 3: SERVANTS AND SURGEONS
1 Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), 173.
2 LHRH 1, viii.
3 Comments by Peter Dixon Knagg in OS file of Rache Lovat Dixon collection, National Library of Canada.
4 See LHRH 1, esp. 94–107. The following discussion draws from these pages.
5 Rose Ellen Hepwell to ES, n.d., ES Collection, HRC.
6 TCO, 28, and LHRH 1, 126.
7 LHRH 1, 100n.
8 Ibid. 1, 99.
9 TCO, 28.
10 LHRH 1, 101–2.
11 Online Register of Births, PRO.
12 1901 Census Online, PRO; LHRH 1, 95 and 127.
13 LHRH 1, 89.
14 Ibid. 1, 96.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid. 1, 172.
17 OS, Before the Bombardment, 144.
18 TCO, 27.
19 LHRH 2, 6–7.
20 Davis to OS, 11 December [1912?], OS Collection, HRC.
21 ES, autobiographical fragment, Works 12, ES Collection, HRC. See also ES’s poem ‘Mademoiselle Richarde’, first published in the Spectator, 31 May 1924, but omitted from her Collected Poems of 1957.
22 Online Register of Births, PRO. Death notice, The Times, 3 April 1963.
23 Lydia King-Church to GRS, 1 April 1903, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
24 LHRH 2, 97.
25 ES to GRS, 17 March 1903, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
26 ES, ‘Notes on my Childhood’, Works 92, ES Collection, HRC.
27 TCO, 42–3.
28 Ibid., 39.
29 ES to GRS, 12 February 1903, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
30 SLES, 248.
31 ES, draft of speech, Works 166, ES Collection, HRC.
32 Renishaw Papers, Box 37 and 577:9.
33 ES to PT, draft, Works 246, ES Collection, HRC.
34 Jessie Bradley to Geoffrey Elborn, 1 July 1977, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
35 LHRH 2, 21–2.
36 SS interview with Geoffrey Elborn, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa. For information on Dawson, see Fiona Richards, ‘William Baines and his Circle’, Musical Times, vol. 130, no. 1758 (August 1989), 460–3.
37 SS interview with John Pearson, 18–19 December 1974, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa. LHRH 1, 204–8, contains an extended portrait of Rubio.
38 Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
39 ES, ‘Notes on My Childhood’, Works 92, ES Collection, HRC.
40 This corrects the suggestion in Glendinning, 27–8, that the specialist was Heather Bigg.
41 A. H. Tubby, Deformities, 133.
42 For a brief overview of scoliosis, see the website of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons: www.aaos.org.
43 A. H. Tubby, op. cit., 122–3.
44 Ibid., 163.
45 TCO, 53.
46 A.H. Tubby, op. cit., 166–7.
47 Ibid., 517, and F. Gustav Ernst, A Guide to the Selection and Adaptation of Orthopædic Apparatus, 40–1.
48 See ES, ‘Notes on My Childhood’, Works 92, ES Collection, HRC.
49 See Elborn, 84.
50 ES, Alexander Pope (London: Faber & Faber, 1930), 22.
51 ES to GRS, 8 January 1903, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
52 TCO, 40.
53 F. Gustav Ernst, op. cit., 15–19.
54 TCO, 42.
55 Lydia King-Church to GRS, 1 April 1903, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
56 LHRH, 2, 152.
57 1901 Census Online, PRO.
58 ‘Butt, Dame Clara’ and ‘Rootham, Cyril (Bradley)’, www.groveonline.com.
59 1891 and 1911 Censuses Online, PRO.
60 Who Was Who.
61 ES to PT, 22 September 1950.
62 LHRH 2, 153.
63 SS interview with John Pearson, 18–19 December 1974, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
64 ES refers to such a translation in ‘What Do We Mean by Liberty’, Sunday Referee, 5 May 1935; reprinted in Salter and Harper (eds), Edith Sitwell: The Fire of the Mind: An Anthology. (New York: Vanguard Press, 1976), 174. Another reference occurs in a letter from ES to PT, 5 December 1935. I have not found that this translation was ever published.
CHAPTER 4: GROWING EYEBROWS
1 LHRH 1, 225. The date of Sargent’s visit is drawn from David Greer, A Numerous and Fashionable Audience, 58.
2 Reresby Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells, 4 and 10; and The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, 21.
3 LHRH 1, 229.
4 TCO, 51.
5 Ibid., 50–1.
6 LHRH 1, 232.
7 David Greer, op. cit., 59.
8 LHRH 2, 6.
9 Ibid. 2, 113.
10 GRS, On the Making of Gardens, vii.
11 SS interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
12 Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
13 Ibid., Box 546:7.
14 Louisa, Lady Sitwell’s diary, Renishaw Papers, Box 30.
15 Ibid.
16 ES to PT, 16 September 1942.
17 Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
18 Ibid.
19 This Is Your Life: Dame Edith Sitwell, BBC, 6 November 1962.
20 HR to IS, 4 November 1904, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
21 ES to GRS, 6 October 1904, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
22 SLES, 277–8.
23 ES to Florence Sitwell, 25 February 1905, Renishaw Papers, 546:7.
24 LHRH 2, 153.
25 Ibid. 2, 243.
26 ES to Florence Sitwell, 25 February 1905, Renishaw Papers, 546:7.
27 See Princess Salm-Salm’s memoir, Ten Years of My Life (London, 1876); Robert N. White, The Prince and the Yankee (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003).
28 HR to GRS, 25 January 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
29 HR to GRS, 2 February 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
30 What follows is closely based on David G. Schuster, ‘Personalizing Illness and Modernity: S. Weir Mitchell, Literary Women, and Neurasthenia, 1870–1914’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
31 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An
Autobiography (1935; reprinted, New York: Harper Colophon, 1975), 91–6. Cited by Schuster, 718.
32 SLES, 251–2.
33 ES to GRS, 27 January 1904, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
34 ES to GRS, 4 March 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
35 ES to GRS, 10 May 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
36 HR to GRS, 15 May 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
37 ES to Florence Sitwell, 25 February 1905, Renishaw Papers, 546:7.
38 ES to Florence Sitwell, 21 April 1905, Renishaw Papers, 546:7.
39 HR to GRS, 6 February 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
40 ES to GRS, 17 June 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
41 ES to Florence Sitwell, 5 September 1905, Renishaw Papers, 546:7.
42 ES to GRS, 4 November 1905, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
43 HR to GRS, 29 September [1906], Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
44 HR to GRS, 14 October [1906], Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
45 ES to GRS, 18 October 1906, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
46 ES to GRS, 7 November 1906, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
CHAPTER 5: BRINGING OUT
1 ODNB.
2 LHRH 5, 13–24.
3 Nicola Shulman, A Rage for Rock Gardening, 42–7.
4 ODNB.
5 IS to GRS, n.d., Renishaw Papers, Box 36. Lady Ida’s penmanship is extremely illegible; transcriptions of it are frequently tentative.
6 IS to GRS, 16 May 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
7 IS to GRS, 22 May 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
8 1911 Census.
9 Constance Lane, The Three Rectories, 121.
10 ES to Denys Kilham Roberts, n.d. [c.1942], Holland Library, WS
U.
11 ES to GRS, 19 June 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
12 Constance Lane, op. cit., 122.
13 ES to GRS, 19 June 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
14 The Times, 8 July 1907.
15 ES to GRS, 19 June 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
16 Constance Lane, op. cit., 121.
17 Ibid., 121–2.
18 Constance Sitwell, Frolic Youth, 8. Note: the author assigns events to 1905, which, because of internal references to political events such as the Hague conference, must have occurred in 1907.
19 Ibid., 18.
20 ‘A Self-Developed Person’, Yorkshire Weekly Post, 1936: Edith Sitwell: The Fire of the Mind: An Anthology, ed. Elizabeth Salter and Allanah Harper (New York: Vanguard Press, 1976), 68.
21 LHRH 2, 298–9.
22 Adela Lane to Lady Sitwell, 17 February 1908, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
23 These letters are in the private collection of Neil Ritchie.
24 Constance Sitwell, Bounteous Days, 33.
25 A.H. Tubby, Deformities, 166–7.
26 ES to Florence Sitwell, n.d. [June 1908], Renishaw Papers, Box 546:7.
27 The description of the party is drawn from LHRH 2, 294–300.
28 Recollections of Veronica Gilliat (née Codrington) on This Is Your Life: Dame Edith Sitwell, BBC, 6 November 1962.
29 IS to OS, 28 October 1908, Renishaw Papers, Box 501. Cited in Ziegler, 32.
30 Constance Sitwell, Bounteous Days, 123.
31 Constance Sitwell, Bright Morning, 56–7.
32 LHRH 3, 73–6.
CHAPTER 6: BECOMING A POET
1 LHRH 3, 46.
2 SL, 104 and 252; LHRH 3, 45–6; Elizabeth Salter, The Last Years of a Rebel, 20–1.
3 Lady Sitwell to GRS[?], 6 January 1907, Renishaw Papers, Box 36.
4 ES, Introduction, Swinburne: A Selection (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960), 47.
5 Ibid., 50–1.
6 Salter, 20.
7 See David Greer, A Numerous and Fashionable Audience, 1, 80, and 108–14. I am also indebted to David Greer for entertaining my queries about Swinton and Edith Sitwell.
8 Draft of ‘Coming to London’, Works 259, ES Collection, HRC; printed in London Magazine 4:4 April 57, 39–44.
9 ES, autobiographical draft, Works 273, ES Collection, HRC.
10 David Greer, op. cit., 36–7.
11 Ibid., 77–80 and passim.
12 Matthew Sturgis, Walter Sickert, esp. 345–59. This section and the rest of the chapter owe a considerable debt to Sturgis’s work, as well as Greer’s.
13 David Greer, op. cit., 71; Matthew Sturgis, op. cit., 355.
14 Autobiographical draft, Works 273, ES Collection, HRC.
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