Renishaw Hall

by Desmond Seward

  A lady who met him at about this time described George to her husband. ‘A curious specimen of highly bred and educated young England, twenty, and full of Galton’s books on heredity, physiological and psychological questions, old prints, the German school of etchings . . . He told me what he would like best would be to live at Nuremberg and collect old books.’1 He also told her, ‘I often suffer from nerve exhaustion myself, but with me it takes the form of rheumatism in the deltoid muscle, and yields at once to Galvanism.’2

  Too aware of his gifts, an only son without a father who was idolised by his mother and sister, he had grown up obsessively self-centred. If he had not inherited Louisa Lucy’s religion, he possessed her frugality and puritanism, her love of beauty, and much of her kindness. An impish, impenetrably private sense of humour that he never intended anybody else to share was all his own. (His jokes were always with himself.) He was the hardest of all the Sitwells to understand because so complex.

  He had fitted in at Eton well enough, contributing a poem, ‘Parodies Regained’, to the Eton Chronicle and playing the Field Game, an uninspiring form of football. For the rest of his life he ordered clothes from the Eton tailor, Tom Brown (if sometimes patronising Henry Poole). He made few friends there, however; and nor did he make any at Oxford, despite his guardian writing seventy letters of introduction. But he joined the Christ Church Shakespeare Society, and at one meeting read from Macbeth – the parts of the murderer Lennox and the third witch. He also rowed, hunted a bit and played tennis.

  While fond of his mother and sister, he was glad to escape from their stifling piety, and became an atheist. His sceptical attitude towards the next world was confirmed when as an undergraduate he exposed the celebrated medium, Mrs Florence Cook, seizing hold of her during a ‘séance’ at the British National Association of Spiritualists, an incident reported in the Daily Telegraph for 13 January 1880. He was so proud of this feat that he included it in his Who’s Who entry – ‘captured a spirit at the headquarters of the Spiritualists’.

  Yet George respected his guardian, staying at Lambeth Palace whenever he visited London until Tait’s death in 1882. Just before he came of age, the archbishop sent him a letter of advice (signed ‘A. Cantuar’) which, despite his lack of religion, he followed in most respects. Throughout his life he gave at least a tenth of his annual income to charity, while he made his mother a generous allowance on top of her jointure of £700, endowed his sister with a decent fortune in case she chose to marry, and contributed handsomely to the family fund for Uncle Fred’s maintenance in the asylum until he died in 1884, besides helping Fred’s three sons.

  He acted on the archbishop’s admonition: ‘act up consistently in all your tenancy responsibilities both in directly doing what is right to the people on your estates, and also in seeing that as large a number of other people as possible benefit by your good fortune’.3

  On buying The Scarborough Post George briefly turned foreign correspondent, travelling to Moscow in 1883 for Alexander III’s coronation at the Kremlin. His patrician appearance, set off by the uniform of a Yorkshire Dragoon (dark blue piped with silver and a plumed steel helmet), gained him a seat in the cathedral – unlike such veteran journalists as George Augustus Sala. He was therefore able to send home an eyewitness account of Metropolitan Leontius crowning the giant Tsar – ‘Sasha the Bear’ – and his tiny Danish Tsarina.

  Rather than the fussy eccentric of Osbert’s malicious portrayal, Sir George in his early years was thoroughly conventional, hunting, riding in steeplechases and cycling, playing lawn tennis, golf and cricket. (He was an admirer of Dr Grace.) He installed a golf course which is still in the park, and gave the local cricket club land to use for a pitch. He became a Justice of the Peace, served as High Sheriff and joined the Carlton Club in London. He also enjoyed part-time soldiering in the Yeomanry as a Captain in the Yorkshire Dragoons, attending a cavalry course at Aldershot in 1885.

  What he hoped for most was a career in politics. Between 1884 and 1895 he contested the generally Liberal seat of Scarborough as a Conservative in seven elections, winning in 1885, losing the next year and winning again in 1892, when he ousted the Gladstonian Liberal Joshua Rowntree. He was a tireless canvasser, knocking on every voter’s door, and a natural orator who was at his best addressing audiences of over a thousand in the days before megaphones. Having sat as an MP during the premierships of Gladstone and Lord Rosebery, asking a few questions in the House but never making a maiden speech, he finally lost the seat in 1895.

  Archbishop Tait had told his godson to put aside any income from coal in case the seam ran out, so he invested it in South African mining stock before most financiers saw the potential of its gold and diamonds. He also bought shares at Newcastle in three newly built merchant ships (Thropton in 1887, Scottish Prince in 1888 and Asiatic Prince in 1889), besides buying two small railways. He even acquired shares in Gimbels, the new American department store. Nor did he forget his guardian’s advice to make sure accounts were settled twice a year – ‘every bill to be examined and paid, and that you always ascertain that you have received more than you have spent . . . guard against excess in any one point of expenditure or any failure in receipts’.

  The most looked-up-to figure in Scarborough was the fabulously rich Lord Londesborough, who lived at Londesborough Lodge in The Crescent, a large neoclassical villeggiatura that stood next door but one to Wood End. As the town’s new MP, Sir George was invited to lunch. Understandably, he was gratified by the summons.

  Lord Londesborough possessed a tall, thin, swan-necked daughter of seventeen, Ida Emily Augusta Denison, who looked like a Burne-Jones heroine. Her small and lovely head was adorned by a Grecian nose and huge dark brown eyes, while she carried herself majestically, having been taught deportment by the ballet dancer Marie Taglioni. A complete lack of brains, possibly because of a childhood illness, was disguised by her cheerful, lively manner. Almost illiterate – no governess on earth could have worked the necessary miracle – she was pitifully unworldly, with an allowance of one shilling and sixpence a week pocket money, even if her mother saw that she wore pretty clothes.

  In autumn 1886 George proposed to Ida after meeting her twice, at luncheon. He admired not just her beauty but her quarterings, her mother being a daughter of the seventh Duke of Beaufort and thus a Plantagenet through a bastard line. George was marrying up. However, with several daughters to marry off, her parents welcomed the prospect of such a wealthy son-in-law – especially Lady Londesborough, who dreaded being left as a badly-off widow.

  Only the Londesborough’s medical adviser Dr Dale struck a note of caution, strongly advising that in view of Ida’s immaturity the wedding should be postponed for a year or two, but her parents ignored him. As for Ida herself, far from being married against her will, as her daughter Edith claimed, she fancied she was deeply in love. There are some pathetic letters in the archives at Renishaw, childishly expressed and badly spelt, in which Ida tells George how devoted she is to him, promising to be a good wife.

  ‘My own darling, I rejoice to hear of your happiness, though you have taken away poor old mother’s breath by talking of being married in a month,’ Louisa Lucy wrote to George on 9 October, having received an affectionate letter from Ida. ‘I am quite sure that I shall love her, she has a warm heart and a sweet, simple nature.’ Canny as always, Louisa Lucy, too, was worried about Ida’s childishness, but reassured herself by quoting ‘Uncle Richard’ as saying, ‘I do honour a man who will go into a schoolroom and choose for himself.’ She sent Leckley to Renishaw to ensure that everything would be in perfect order for the house’s new mistress.4

  The wedding took place in London at St George’s, Hanover Square on 23 November 1886, conducted by Randall Davidson, Dean of Windsor (who was the late Archbishop Tait’s son-in-law) and by Lord Londesborough’s chaplain, the bride’s brother acting as best man. The choir sang ‘The voice that breathes o’er Eden’. A lavish collection of presents included costly jeweller
y for Ida and – because of his interest in history – an ancient teapot, recently dug up at Scarborough Castle, for the bridegroom. The Dean told Louisa Lucy how struck he had been by Ida’s beauty and by the couple’s ‘quiet reverence’ during the service. But it was a miserable, foggy day. Immediately after the reception they left for Renishaw and married bliss.

  According to one story, during the very first night a tearful bride was found wandering down the drive in her nightgown. She insisted on going home to her mother, who had apparently neglected to tell her about the physical side of marriage. However, Lady Londesborough sent Ida back to her husband at once and they left Renishaw to continue the honeymoon abroad.

  When the couple returned to Scarborough at dusk on New Year’s Day 1887, the local lifeboat crew drew their carriage from the station to Londesborough Lodge, escorted by 500 cheering townsmen who waved flaming torches. The spectacle was marred by a woman in the crowd dropping dead from fright.

  George and his bride settled at Scarborough, which, apart from a sojourn at Renishaw every summer, was to be their home for many years. They rented a number of houses, including Belvoir Lodge, until Louisa Lucy gave them Wood End in 1903. Three children were born: Edith in 1887, Osbert in 1892 and Sacheverell in 1897. Not unsocial, the couple acquired a small circle of Scarborough friends – including George du Maurier, famous for exquisitely drawn cartoons in Punch, some of which made flattering use of Sir George and Ida as models.

  Yet the ‘golden years’ were turning into lead.

  Chapter 11

  A MISERABLE MARRIAGE

  uperficially, all seemed well, especially during Sir George’s three years as a backbench MP. If he did not achieve very much in his chosen career, he enjoyed the amenities of the House of Commons, the ‘best club in London’. Behind the scenes, however, his marriage was going badly wrong, even if Edith exaggerates in saying that her mother found herself in ‘a kind of slave bondage to an equally unfortunate and pitiable young man’.1

  George realised that he had made a disastrous choice. Years later, he wrote of how after they were married, he discovered that Lady Ida (as she became in 1887 when her father was created an earl) did not even know the multiplication tables, and possessed no idea of the value of money.

  Her priorities became clothes, jewellery and champagne. When her husband cancelled her orders for cases of champagne, she turned to whisky, and was only saved from destroying herself by his watchful eye. She spent as uncontrollably as she drank. On at least eight occasions he gave her large sums, totalling over £20,000, with which to settle bills. In addition, he later calculated that during the first thirteen years of married life, to fend off writs he had to pay bills for lesser debts at least every three weeks.

  For all Ida’s faults, her husband was touchingly proud of her beauty. Soon after their marriage, he decided to have her portrait done. Having thought briefly of commissioning Alma-Tadema, he chose Sir William Blake Richmond, who produced an unattractive picture typical of the eighties. Wearing a turquoise blue silk coat, Ida holds a zither, an instrument she had probably never seen; but the face is lovely, such a good likeness that her husband nearly had it cut out and framed. Dissatisfied, he contemplated having her painted by Jacques-Émile Blanche. Finally, he decided on a group portrait of the family by John Singer Sargent, a conversation piece to complement Copley’s study of the Sitwell children a century before. It was finished early in 1900.

  The £1,500 fee, huge for those days, was in fact a bargain, since Sargent had not yet acquired his full popularity. He makes George strikingly handsome and Edith almost pretty, but does not quite do Ida justice. Some thought he gave the baronet a crooked nose and Edith a straight one, the reverse of real life, because he felt sorry for her.

  In his autobiography Osbert belittles the picture, arguing that Sargent could not compete with Copley. He also ridicules his father for wearing riding breeches when he seldom rode.2 But a newly discovered letter shows it was the painter who insisted on these clothes, not his patron.3 The group is undoubtedly one of the finest of all Sargent’s works.

  Early in April 1900, while viewing the portrait at Sargent’s studio, Lord Londesborough collapsed from a bout of flu. He then developed pneumonia, which killed him. (Osbert claimed imaginatively that it was the more exotic malady of psittacosis, caught from a parrot.) Writing to his agent and former tutor Peveril Turnbull, Sir George comments that his father-in-law had ‘had a remarkably kind and amiable manner and disposition’, and that Lady Ida was very upset. He adds that the new earl, her brother William, ‘will be what the family call badly off, that is to say he will only have £40,000 a year to begin with and death duties to pay out of that, but eventually there will be £60,000’.4

  He adds that his wife will now have an income of £600 instead of £300 from the Londesborough estate. ‘She really ought to have had this on marriage for though it is possible to dress fashionably on £300, it is certainly not easy for girls who have been been brought up in this way.’ As he gave Lady Ida £500 a year, this should have made her self-sufficient, but she was already wildly extravagant. Nor had he reckoned with the dowager.

  While not without charm when she deigned to use it, the widowed Lady Londesborough was a thoroughly selfish, ill-tempered woman whom Edith pictured in her prime as ‘living in luxury like a gilded and irascible wasp in a fine ripe nectarine’.5 Now she found, as Osbert put it, ‘horses and carriages and grooms and houses and gardens and jewels and plate, and indeed the whole luxurious decoration of life by which she had been so long surrounded snatched away at a single grab’.6 She turned to moneylenders, who very nearly ruined her. Worse still, instead of helping to control her daughter’s spending, she not only encouraged her but tried to use her as a source of income.

  In 1905, while Ida was in hospital with appendicitis, the dowager countess made her sign a document demanding a separation from Sir George unless he paid Ida’s latest batch of debts and settled a large yearly allowance on her. She signed because her mother told her that her brother Londesborough would have to pay the debts if George refused. Ida then changed her mind.

  Desperate for money, the dowager had hoped to use her daughter as a milch calf who would pay her own bills. George recalled bitterly that ‘Lady Londesborough’s actions nearly killed Lady Ida and prevented me from being able to exercise restraint over her expenditure.’7

  It was not just extravagance that wrecked the marriage. Ida was incapable of sharing her husband’s interests in any way, or of giving him the slightest support. According to her daughter Edith, she lay in bed reading newspapers or trashy novels but could remember nothing of what she read. Otherwise, all she did was play bridge or watch the golfers in the park, or give large luncheon parties without warning her husband. She had constant tantrums, screaming and threatening to throw herself out of the window. And she possessed a wounding tongue.

  One reason for her lassitude was chronic ill health. She was consumptive, and nearly died in 1904 after losing a lung. Her tuberculosis made her dangerously vulnerable to any sort of infection and, in the end, was indirectly responsible for her death. Sickness and lack of vitality affected her temperament, contributing to the irrational outbursts of anger. Edith later said that her rages were the only reality in her life. They were increasingly fuelled by heavy drinking.

  George, whose own life was meticulously organised, was maddened by the chaos surrounding his wife and goaded by the constant rows; while Ida, gregarious and fascinated by new faces, found his detachment infuriating. While he counted every penny, she loved shopping sprees – even when an old lady, she said she never dared visit Paris for fear she might spend money like a drunken sailor. No more ill-matched couple can be imagined, but divorce would have meant social ostracism. Although Ida did not take lovers, some of his family suspected George of siring one or two red-haired bastards, but there is no evidence.

  Something of what he had to put up with can be glimpsed from the story of the Learned Pig (‘able to
foretell the future’) that Ida bought at a Conservative Party bazaar in Scarborough. Although its psychic powers deserted it on its arrival at Renishaw by train, she could not bear to have it killed, instead boarding it out secretly at various farms. When an enormous bill for housing and feeding – and grooming – the animal eventually reached her husband, he immediately ordered it to be destroyed. Any mention of the pig always enraged him.

  Yet Lady Ida possessed a bewitching charm, enlivened by a wonderful sense of fun. If empty-headed, she inspired affection. When young, she was very gay and very generous, says Edith, adding that she had an appealing, childlike quality. Osbert, who adored his mother, writes that her delight in driving through summer woods at night had something of a child’s in it, as did her imitations of odd people – she was a gifted mimic – and her enjoyment of ridiculous situations. Children loved her because she treated them as friends, never laughing at anything they said. If a woman friend admired a bracelet or a dress, she immediately gave it to her, sometimes giving away several dresses after lunch. ‘Take it, darling.’

  Occasionally, she could even be kind about her husband. Warning Osbert not to mention a secret luncheon for sixteen guests because his father made such a foolish fuss about bills, she added, ‘But whatever one may say about him, there’s no one else like him.’

  She, too, had her pet eccentricities, such as a length of hangman’s rope twisted round her bedhead for good luck. It was in keeping with her strange, fey nature that she should be unafraid of Renishaw’s otherworldly denizens. When little Osbert went into her bedroom in the mornings and asked his mother if she had slept well, she would often answer, ‘Oh, fairly well, although the ghosts were about again’ – as if they were of no more account than owls or mice.8