Edith Sitwell
Page 53
15 ODNB.
16 Pearson, 50.
17 TCO, 88.
18 Matthew Sturgis, op. cit., 385.
19 LHRH 5, 163. OS’s account of the Sitwells’ forty-year friendship with the painter is found on 163–206. See also the long memoir OS provides in Walter Sickert, A Free House! Or the Artist as Craftsman, xiii–liv.
20 David Greer, op. cit., 76–107.
21 ODNB; Valerie Langfield, Roger Quilter, His Life and Music, 34.
22 Transcriptions in Works 329, ES Collection, HRC.
23 David Greer, op. cit., 114–15, 123.
24 Walter Sickert, ‘Idealism’, Art News, 12 May 1910, 208.
25 Matthew Sturgis, op. cit., 362.
26 The Scotsman, 6 March 2004.
27 Salter, 67.
28 Walter Sickert, ‘Post-Impressionists’, Fortnightly Review, January 1911, 107.
29 SLES, 96.
30 Barbara Cassell, Foreword to Constance Lane, The Three Rectories, vii.
31 SS interviewed by John Pearson, 18–19 December 1974, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
32 Matthew Sturgis, op. cit., 374–96.
33 Fragment of letter to OS [c. June 1913] in Works, 40:1, ES collection, HRC.
34 ODNB.
35 Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Biography (revised edn, London: Penguin, 1979), 452n, 590n. Further information from Ana Monrabal of the National Gallery.
36 Matthew Sturgis, op. cit., 421.
37 Walter Sickert, ‘The Post-Impressionists’, op. cit., 102.
38 Works 328, ES Collection, HRC.
39 A thorough account of Sitwell’s debt to the Symbolist movement may be found in Patricia Clements, Baudelaire & The English Tradition, 218–59.
40 SS, Apologia in Prose, Dodecameron, unpag.
41 ODNB.
42 Joan Wake, ‘My First Meeting with Edith Sitwell’, in The Early Unpublished Poems of Edith Sitwell, ed. Gerald W. Morton and Karen P. Hegelson (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 71–2.
43 ES, ‘Nocturne’, Works 329, ES Collection, HRC.
44 CP, 3.
CHAPTER 7: THE GREAT WARS
1 SLES, 277.
2 SS interview with Geoffrey Elborn, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
3 The Times, 5 November 1914 and 15 March 1915.
4 A letter read out in court and quoted in Daily Mail, 13 March 1915.
5 LHRH 3, 82–90.
6 SLES, 5.
7 Ibid., 8.
8 Ibid., 7–8. The date of the letter should be corrected to 8 May 1911.
9 LHRH 1, 175–7.
10 Ibid. 3, 110.
11 SS to OS, 2 March 1912, OS Collection, 24:12, HRC.
12 SS to OS, n.d., OS Collection, 24:12, HRC.
13 Who Was Who, 1929–40.
14 SS to OS, n.d., OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
15 Ziegler, 34.
16 LHRH 3, 161.
17 The Times, 5 November 1914.
18 LHRH 3, 166.
19 The Times, 5 November 1914.
20 LHRH 3, 166.
21 Daily Mail, 15 October 1913. A number of the newspaper sources used in this chapter were first identified by Bradford, whose detailed account of the court cases has been very helpful to me.
22 Daily Mail, 11 March 1915.
23 Ziegler, 39.
24 LHRH 3, 164.
25 Willie [Martin] to OS, OS Collection, 24:7 (unidentified correspondence), HRC.
26 John J. Withers to OS, 20 November 1912, OS Collection, 24: 11, HRC.
27 SS to OS, 26 December 1912, OS Collection, recip. files, HRC.
28 ES, autobiographical draft, Works 282, HRC.
29 TCO, 79.
30 SS to OS, 20 February 1913, OS Collection, HRC.
31 IS to SS, 6 June 1913, Weston Papers. Cited by Bradford, 51.
32 Daily Mail, 12 March 1915.
33 Daily Mail, 15 and 16 October 1913.
34 HR to OS, OS Collection, Correspondence, 24.2, HRC.
35 SLES, 11.
36 Kelly’s Directory of Paddington and Bayswater for 1918.
37 SLES, 67.
38 GRS to ES, 8 June 1914, ES Collection, HRC.
39 Archbishop Davidson to Blanche Sitwell, 18 February 1915, Lambeth Palace Library.
40 SLES, 277.
41 Ibid., 18.
42 LHRH 3, 282–3.
43 TCO, 75.
44 SS to OS, 18 August 1914, OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
45 SS to OS, 12 September 1914, OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
46 The Times, 5 November 1914.
47 Sir George Lewis to OS, 6 November 1914, OS Collection, 24:11, HRC.
48 Archbishop Davidson to Blanche Sitwell, 24 November 1914, Lambeth Palace Library.
49 Information from the website of the Scarborough Maritime Heritage
Centre: www.scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk.
50 LHRH 4, 75.
51 Daily Mail, 16 January 1915.
52 Daily Mail, 23 January 1915.
53 Daily Mail, 13 February 1915.
54 Archbishop Davidson to Blanche Sitwell, 8 February 1915, Lambeth Palace Library.
55 ODNB.
56 Daily Mail, 15 March 1915.
57 ODNB.
58 Daily Mail, 9 and 10 March 1915.
59 Daily Mail, 10 and 11 March 1915; The Times, 10 and 11 March.
60 Daily Mail, 12 March 1915.
61 The Times, 11 March 1915.
62 Daily Mail, 13 March 1915. The Times for the same date reports the amount as £125. For Moat’s departure see LHRH 3, 188.
63 SLES, 19.
64 Daily Mail, 13 March 1915. The Times for the same date has a slightly different transcription of the exchange, which gives the judge a greater tone of exasperation.
65 The Times, 15 March 1915.
66 LHRH 3, 166.
67 Bradford, 63.
68 TCO, 78.
69 Archbishop Davidson to Blanche Sitwell, 17 May 1915, Lambeth Palace Library.
70 Wake’s note to a letter from Davidson to Blanche Sitwell, 17 March 1915, Lambeth Palace Library.
71 Letter to Joan Wake [May 1915], The Early Unpublished Poems of Edith Sitwell, ed. Gerald W. Morton and Karen P. Hegelson (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 69.
72 SLES, 20.
CHAPTER 8: I DO HOPE IT ISN’T LADYLIKE
1 SS to OS, 17 March 1913, OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
2 SS to OS, 30 March 1913, OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
3 Information on Jennings is chiefly taken from Hugh Cudlipp, Publish and Be Damned!, 125–30. See also Maurice Edelman, The Mirror, 27–8.
4 SLES, 10.
5 The Early Unpublished Poems of Edith Sitwell, ed. Gerald W. Morton and Karen P. Hegelson, 2.
6 SLES, 191.
7 Ibid., 15.
8 Ibid., 14–15.
9 ES, The Mother and Other Poems (Oxford: p.p. by B. H. Blackwell, 1915), 18.
10 SLES, 18.
11 Allanah Harper interview with Geoffrey Elborn, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
12 Works 259, ES Collection, HRC.
13 TCO, 79–81; drafts of TCO in Works 259, 277, and 278, ES Collection, HRC.
14 Draft of TCO, Works 278, ES Collection, HRC.
15 SS interview with Geoffrey Elborn, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
16 A search for confirming evidence at the PRO has come up empty.
17 LHRH 3, 47.
18 Draft of TCO, Works 277, ES Collection, HRC.
19 SS interview with Geoffrey Elborn, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
20 Salter, 56.
21 TCO, 80.
22 ‘Aubade’, CP, 16.
23 Census Online, PRO. Jane Fenwick’s place of birth is given as Yorkshire.
24 Fifoot, 19; SLES, 234; the recent price was advertised on www.bertramrota.co.uk
25 SLES, 20–1.
26 See TLS Centenary Archive.
&
nbsp; 27 ES to Denys Kilham Roberts, n.d. [c.1942], Holland Library, WSU.
28 The Times, 15 July 1937.
29 SLES, 22.
30 SS to OS, n.d. [c. March 1912?], OS Collection, 24:5, HRC.
31 SLES, 23.
32 Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1, 311.
33 See OS, ‘Night’, Wheels, First Cycle, December 1916, 18.
34 Draft of article c.1926, Works 11, ES Collection, HRC.
35 Philip Warner, The Battle of Loos, 1.
36 For what follows see especially Ziegler, 55–7; LHRH 4, 93–6.
37 LHRH 4, 94.
38 ES to DH, 18 January 1943, OS Collection, HRC.
39 See, for instance, the anthology Scars Upon My Heart, ed. Catherine Reilly.
40 ES, ‘The Dancers’, Clowns’ Houses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1918), 25.
41 SLES, 24.
42 LHRH 4, 116.
43 SLES, 14–15.
44 ‘Clowns’ Houses’, Twentieth Century Harlequinade and Other Poems, 11–14.
45 ‘Some Forms of Expression in Modern Poetry’, lecture c.1923, Works 15, ES Collection, HRC.
46 Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso, 105.
47 TCO, 85.
48 Denise Hooker, Nina Hamnett, 106.
49 TCO, 83.
50 LHRH 5, 238–9.
51 Ibid. 5, 229.
52 This portrait draws from LHRH 5, 207–44; ODNB.
53 Lecture c.1922, Works 9, ES Collection, HRC.
54 ODNB.
55 LHRH 5, 238.
56 ES, ‘Wheels’, Wheels, First Cycle (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1916), viii.
57 Lois Gordon, Nancy Cunard, 63.
58 Fifoot, 81.
59 Iris Tree, ‘1’, Wheels, First Cycle, 57.
60 Quoted in Wheels, Third Cycle, (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1919), 102.
CHAPTER 9: THE TANGO
1 ODNB. What follows relies heavily on Diana Holman-Hunt, Latin Among Lions.
2 Diana Holman-Hunt, op. cit., 20.
3 Ibid., 69.
4 ODNB.
5 Harold Acton interview with John Pearson, 8 April 1973, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
6 Elizabeth Salter interview with Victoria Glendinning, April 1978, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
7 Diana Holman-Hunt, op. cit., 166.
8 Ibid., 185.
9 Bradford, 182.
10 Lois Gordon, Nancy Cunard, 62.
11 SLES, 78.
12 TCO, 89–90.
13 Aldous Huxley, Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith, 132.
14 Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, 218.
15 Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, 386.
16 SLES, 26–7.
17 Siegfried Sassoon, Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915–1918, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, 197; cited in Jean Moorcroft Wilson, op. cit., 15.
18 LHRH 3, 268.
19 Richard Greene (ed.), Graham Greene, 398–9.
20 ES, ‘Plutocracy at Play’, Clowns’ Houses (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918), 27–8.
21 LHRH 5, 35–67, is an extended portrait of Gosse.
22 TCO, 95–6.
23 LHRH 5, 63.
24 Ibid. 5, 56.
25 TCO, 93.
26 LHRH 5, 54.
27 Ibid. 5, 41.
28 Quoted in Ann Thwaite, Edmund Gosse, 472.
29 T. S. Eliot, The Letters of T. S. Eliot, ed. Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, 1, 206.
30 LHRH 4, 32–3.
31 Aldous Huxley, op. cit, 141
32 Hubert Nicholson, ‘Glimpses of Edith Sitwell’, unpublished MS in Glendinning files of Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
33 Geoffrey Gorer interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
34 Lyndall Gordon, T. S. Eliot, 107–8.
35 Lyndall Gordon e-mail to Richard Greene, 17 March 2008.
36 ES, Clowns’ Houses (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918), 7.
37 Ibid., 14.
38 Ibid., 26.
39 Siegfried Sassoon to OS, 3 July [1918], Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
40 LHRH 5, 103. OS’s account of Owen includes pp. 89–109.
41 Quoted in LHRH 5, 106.
42 SL, 19.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 20.
45 SLES, 31–2.
46 SL, 23.
47 Wilfred Owen, Poems, intro. Siegfried Sassoon (London: Chatto & Windus, 1921), ii.
48 LHRH 5, 232.
49 Sitwell’s letters to Nichols are quoted in Anne and William Charlton, Putting Poetry First, 74–7.
50 Ibid., 77.
51 Ibid., 186–7.
CHAPTER 10: ALICE IN HELL
1 Ethel Grant to ES, 22 August 1964, recipient file, ES Collection, HRC.
2 Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso, 114.
3 Ibid.
4 Osbert’s description of Armistice Day can be found in LHRH.
5 SLES, 29.
6 ‘Recent Poetry’, The Sackbut, II:4 (October 1921), 38.
7 ES to Elizabeth Salter, 1 September 1958, Holland Library, WSU.
8 Virginia Woolf, A Moment’s Liberty, ed. Anne Olivier Bell, 57.
9 TCO, 85–6.
10 Ibid., 86.
11 SL, 199.
12 ES to Robert Graves, n.d., Robert Graves Papers, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
13 SL, 40.
14 Draft of newspaper article, Works 211, ES Collection, HRC.
15 Draft of review of Men Without Art by Wyndham Lewis, Works 235, ES Collection, HRC.
16 Denton Welch, The Journals of Denton Welch, ed. Michael De-La-Noy, 15.
17 James King, The Last Modern, 64 and 122.
18 John Skeaping, Drawn from Life, 85.
19 ‘Herbert Read’, Works 232, ES Collection, HRC.
20 ES to Marguerite Bennett, n.d., ES Collection, HRC.
21 Form letter for Anglo-French Poetry Society, n.d., ES Collection, HRC.
22 Preliminary list of members, Anglo-French Poetry Society, n.d., ES Collection, HRC.
23 ‘Lecture’, Works 332, ES Collection, HRC.
24 Arnold Bennett, ‘Concerning James Joyce’s “Ulysses”’, Outlook, XLIX (29 April 1922), 337–9.
25 Draft of TCO, Works 258, ES Collection, HRC.
26 Musical Times, 1 May 1914, 331.
27 Musical Times, 1 December 1916, 554.
28 SLES, 240.
29 Musical Times, 1 June 1920, 422.
30 T. S. Eliot, The Letters of T. S. Eliot, ed. Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton, 1, 487–9.
31 ES to Robert Graves, n.d., Robert Graves Papers, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
32 Harold Acton interview with John Pearson, 5 March 1975, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
33 TCO, 183.
34 Quoted in ES to Elizabeth Salter, 28 November 1957, Holland Library, WSU.
35 Elizabeth Clegg, ‘Meštrovi, England and the Great War’, Burlington Magazine, 740–51.
36 Helen Rootham (trans.), Kosovo. I am grateful for Neil Ritchie’s observations on Lavrin’s possible role in the translation.
37 Quoted in Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative, 22.
38 Edwin Muir, An Autobiography, 174.
39 See, for example, his poem ‘Stanzas on Painting’ in H. C. Rutherford (ed.), Certainly, Future, 51–2.
40 The copy is in the New Atlantis Archive, Special Collections, University of Bradford Library. An undated letter from ES to Mitrinovi in the same archive also uses the word ‘pupil’.
41 Andrew Rigby, op. cit., 12–15 and passim.
42 ODNB.
43 His inscribed copy of Helen Rootham’s Fundamentals of Music and their Relation to Modern Life is in the New Atlantis Archive, Special Collections, University of Bradford Library.
44 Andrew Rigby, op. cit., 85–109 and passim.
45 Dimitrije Mitrinovi, ‘Aesthetic Contemplations’, Rutherford,
Certainly, Future, op. cit., 36–7.
46 Geoffrey Gorer interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
47 See ‘Creaking Sarah and Laughing Sal’, Nation, 13 October 1923, reprinted in The Best British Short Stories of 1924, ed. Edward J. O’Brien and John Cournos (Small, Maynard, 1924), 221–5. This anthology also includes Edith Sitwell’s ‘Undergrowth’, 230–43.
48 These translations appeared in the Pastiche column of the New Age, 27:22 (30 September 1920), 324, and 28:18 (3 March 1921), 216; her translation of the traditional ‘Song of the Building of Skadar’ appeared in 24:8 (22 May 1919), 71–2.
49 ‘Music’, New Age 30:21 (23 March 1922), 276–7.
50 ‘Music’, New Age 30:8 (22 December 1921), 93.
51 Edwin Muir, ‘Recent Verse’, New Age 28:24 (14 April 1921), 284.
52 Wallace Martin, The New Age Under Orage, 282.
53 Edwin Muir, review of The Hundred and One Harlequins by Sacheverell Sitwell, New Age 31:17 (24 August 1922), 211.
54 Helen Rootham, Fundamentals of Music and their Relation to Modern Life, 2.
55 CP, 296.
CHAPTER 11: TOO FANTASTIC FOR FAT-HEADS
1 ES, ‘Stopping Place’, The Wooden Pegasus (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1920), 82.
2 ES, ‘The Ape Sees the Fat Woman’, The Wooden Pegasus, 46.
3 ES, ‘The King of China’s Daughter’, The Wooden Pegasus, 57.
4 Geoffrey Grigson interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
5 ES, ‘Solo for Ear-Trumpet’, The Wooden Pegasus, 105.
6 Salter, 57.
7 ES, Children’s Tales (From the Russian Ballet) (London: Duckworth, 1920), 7–8.
8 Ibid., 12–13.
9 ‘Igor Stravinski and the Modern World’, New Age 19:8 (23 June 1921), 92–3. The article is continued in 19:10 (7 July 1921), 118. I am grateful to Neil Ritchie for drawing my attention to this article, which is not recorded in Fifoot.
10 The development of the sequence can be seen in Fifoot.
11 SS, ‘The Octogenarian’, An Indian Summer, 16–19.
12 ES, ‘Some Notes on my Own Poetry’, CP, xvi.
13 SS, Liszt, 30–1.
14 LHRH 4, 180–1; Craggs, vi.
15 William Walton interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, Tulsa.
16 LHRH 4, 184–5.
17 See William Walton interview with John Pearson, Sitwell Collection, McFarlin Library, Tulsa; Neil Ritchie, ‘Footnote to Façade’, The Book Collector; SLES, 38.
18 Craggs, vi.
19 Salter, 166.
20 SLES, 34–5.
21 ES to Valery Larbaud, 10 March 1922, Médiathèque Municipale Valery Larbaud, Vichy.