Renishaw Hall

by Desmond Seward

  For a time Lady Ida was banished from Renishaw, to live at Wood End by herself. From there, she bombarded her husband almost every day with harrowing letters in which she begged to come home. She also wrote to her son, imploring him to intercede.

  The situation was too much for Osbert, who had a nervous collapse and was given a long period of leave by the regiment. He spent it in Florence, regaining his equilibrium. His father then arranged for him to transfer as a subaltern into the Grenadier Guards, which he joined late in December 1912.

  Osbert found a Grenadier’s life less demanding than a cavalryman’s. Morning parades were at 10.00 a.m., after which the day was free for officers, unless on ceremonial duty at St James’s Palace, Buckingham Palace, the Tower or the Bank of England. They had three months’ leave, the only proper soldiering being a few weeks on manoeuvres in the summer. Even so, when the old Chelsea Barracks was pulled down, Osbert recalled bugles summoning him to ‘one unpleasant task or another’. He spent his free time at the theatre, the opera, the ballet or art galleries and read voraciously – not only modern writers such as H. G. Wells or Arnold Bennett, but Strindberg and Samuel Butler, the last two becoming favourite authors.

  As a young Guards officer who could amuse and knew how to flatter, he was sought after by London hostesses, whom he later recalled as the ‘vieillesse dorée’, receiving invitations to dinners and balls in palatial houses. Six foot three and beautifully dressed, if far from handsome he looked distinguished, with a profile that had become became positively Hanoverian – not unlike George III on a coin.

  He went regularly to parties given by the prime minister’s wife, Margot Asquith; at Grosvenor Street by Mrs George Keppel (the late King Edward’s mistress); and by his aunt Londesborough. The ones he liked best were Lady Cunard’s in Cavendish Square, because the other guests were so interesting – here he met Delius and George Moore, besides flirting with his hostess’s ‘nymphomaniac’ daughter Nancy. At a Cavendish Square dinner he sat next to the eighteen-year-old Lady Diana Manners, who was astonished when the foppish ‘guardee’ asked her, ‘What do you really think of Stravinsky?’

  The ponderous youth who had been such a clumsy failure as a cavalryman acquired confidence and poise, though he perhaps dressed a little too elegantly – his concern with making the right impression hinted at a certain insecurity. He loved dancing, and made a number of girl friends, including Lady Diana. However, when Mrs Keppel’s daughter Violet proposed to him (on the rebound, after her adored Vita Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson) he bolted out of the house, pretending he had an urgent appointment. Yet he says that he went everywhere with an eighteen-year-old girl whom he does not name – ‘to her, companion of my youth, I owe an inestimable amount of happiness and sorrow, of joy and regret’. If this is true, it was a purely platonic romance.3

  For the moment, Osbert was on good enough terms with his father to ask him to dinner at the Marlborough Club in Pall Mall, which he had just joined, and then to the Hippodrome theatre. He soon overspent his allowance of £700 a year, however. ‘One had to spend money,’ he wrote. ‘To this pursuit I brought the zest and sureness of touch inherited from my ancestors.’4 In consequence, within a few weeks of joining his new regiment he had run up debts – not large ones, but well beyond his capacity to pay. He had to ask his father to settle them, sending a letter of apology in his childish handwriting.

  As someone who put his trust in double-entry book-keeping and had been driven to the brink of insanity by his wife’s extravagance, Sir George was appalled, bombarding his son with stern letters. Early in 1913 he reminded Osbert of how his grandfather Lord Londesborough had nearly ruined himself, implying that he might take after him.

  When Osbert declined to give a detailed estimate of every expense for the next year (including what he would spend on cigarettes), his father reacted angrily. ‘If I had no previous experience [meaning Lady Ida] I would not feel it so much,’ he wrote. ‘But I am sick and sore to the soul from 26 years of the same experience, and I recognise in this the same ideas, part of the same cycle. If I could have felt you were in your heart sorry and would be more careful in the future, I would have paid.’

  Osbert had refused to keep his yearly expenditure within his allowance of £700. ‘You would not give up your servants, would not promise not to book theatre tickets, not to smoke less expensive cigarettes,’ went on Sir George. ‘And you seemed to be under the impression that the money to pay the old bills was falling from the sky . . . This difference between us has been growing like an evil tree until it has now led to a break of the old relations.’

  ‘Loyalty to your regiment will oblige you to dress well,’ admitted the volunteer colonel. Yet ‘there should be some feeling of shame, not only on spending on clothes, cigarettes, etc., much more than I do, but at having to be self-indulgent at all.’ (This is the puritan voice of Louisa Lucy.) ‘You should be self-denying in small things, must realise that you must make some return to the world, must work and take trouble without grumbling, must not complain about boredom when you have a single dull day. Then I shall be able to feel real respect for your character.’5

  An (unjustified) suspicion that his soldier son wore lace pyjamas did not help matters. By the summer of 1914, Sir George felt he had had enough. One morning Osbert received a letter from his father ordering him to leave the Grenadiers, place himself on the Reserve, and return to Renishaw. A job was waiting for him in the office of the Town Clerk of Scarborough, where he would find fewer opportunities for extravagance. He had to obey or starve.

  In 1913, a poem by Edith called ‘Drowned Suns’ appeared in the Daily Mirror. It was her first published verse. Delighted at being paid two sovereigns, she began to nurse the wild hope that she might have a career as a poet, encouraged by the paper publishing further poems.

  By now Lady Ida had returned from exile at Wood End, and was drinking more than ever. Her noisy rows with Sir George became intolerable. Edith complained bitterly that her mother, incoherent from whisky (and something very like paranoia), was declaring frantically that ‘only middle class people look down on her’.6 Nothing could possibly have been worse than the atmosphere at Renishaw.

  Although penniless (apart from a legacy of £100 a year) and despite her mother’s hysterical protests, Edith decided to leave Derbyshire, accompanied by Helen Rootham. In May 1914 Edith pawned a little diamond brooch, after which the pair pooled their scanty funds and took a train to London, where they found refuge at Miss Fussell’s boarding house for ladies in Bayswater. Sir George paid the rent.

  Soon they moved to Pembridge Mansions, a grim red-brick block in nearby Moscow Road, into a sparsely furnished top-floor flat up four flights of stone stairs (there was no lift). They kept body and soul together on buns, packets of soup and tins of beans. Again, Edith’s father paid the rent, but little else. For a time, she worked as a clerk in the Chelsea Pension Office, earning 25 shillings a week. Despite her poverty, she began to give literary tea parties. Yet she never uprooted herself from Renishaw altogether, returning there every summer.

  Sir George’s parsimony must be seen in the light of an obsessive insecurity. He could not forget his grandfather’s ruin, how debt had helped to destroy his father – financial worries had overshadowed his early childhood. Moreover, not just his wife but her whole family were pathological spendthrifts.

  Having inherited a rent roll of £100,000 a year together with investments worth two million, his father-in-law Lord Londesborough had squandered huge sums on chorus girls, theatrical ventures, racehorses and yachts; and despite a lavish marriage settlement, his widow went to moneylenders. Ida’s equally self-indulgent brother kept a private fire-engine at hand so that he could rush to conflagrations, fire stations being paid to alert him.

  Understandably, George feared his children might have inherited extravagance from one side or the other, putting everything that he had restored and created at Renishaw at risk. He was shaken to the core by Osbert’s jokes about mon
ey, such as, ‘Look after the pounds and the pennies will take care of themselves.’

  Yet something more than Sir George’s anger at his son’s extravagance must have made Osbert hate his parent so bitterly; something that was never put on paper. Sachie, too, depended for money on his father, who gave him far less, but he did not react like Osbert. The most plausible explanation (and it is only a guess) is that Sir George suspected early on that his eldest son was homosexual, and would never produce an heir to carry on the Sitwell line – a crushing blow to a man who set such store by primogeniture. Although his affection for his son never wavered, he could well have voiced these suspicions in a way that proved traumatic for Osbert, who may not yet have accepted his homosexuality.

  Chapter 16

  THE GREAT WAR, AND LADY IDA’S ORDEAL

  t 8 a.m. on 16 December 1914, Scarborough was awoken by enemy shells, fired by three German battleships so close inshore that the inhabitants could see the sailors who were working the guns. The shelling went on for nearly an hour. Scarborough Castle, the Grand Hotel, three churches and numerous houses were badly damaged, while eighteen townspeople were killed or mortally wounded and many more seriously hurt. Panic-stricken men, women and children ran into the surrounding countryside.

  Sir George was at Wood End, which was damaged by shrapnel during the bombardment (Osbert says his father insisted that the Germans shelled Scarborough because they knew he was there). He took shelter in the cellar while, true to form, Lady Ida stayed resolutely in bed. After this Sir George decided that he and his wife should live as far away from the sea as possible, which meant Renishaw, where they spent the rest of the war – their longest period of unbroken residence.

  Osbert had been only too glad to be recalled to the Colours by the Grenadiers on the day before war was declared. It meant an escape from the ghastly life that his father had been planning for him at Scarborough Town Hall. He ordered his ‘soldier-servant’ Robins to pack his evening clothes, which would of course be needed when the British occupied Berlin; but instead of going to France with the British Expeditionary Force, he fell ill and was left to guard the Docks, missing the Mons Campaign.

  Having recovered, he received his marching orders two days after the Scarborough bombardment. ‘My darling Boy,’ wrote his mother, ‘I miss you too dreadfully, it is all too awful – Darling, I could not stand seeing you leave . . . if ever I have been hard or cruel or unkind, please forgive me and realise I adore you and if it was in my power I would do anything in the world for you.’1

  He went into the line near Fleurbaix just before Christmas, shortly after his battalion had been given a severe mauling. He recalls how shaken he was by ‘the first sight of the flying fountains of dead earth, the broken trees and mud, and at the first sounds, growing ever more ominous as one drew nearer to the bumping and metallic roaring which resembled a clash of comets . . .’.2 The routine was four days in the trenches, then out for four days’ rest before going in again. Sir George sent him antiseptic soap, waterproof boots and tins of Keating’s flea-powder – ‘tell me what you want, just as a schoolboy does, and I’ll see to it’.

  In March 1915, Osbert was recalled to London in case he should be needed as a witness at his mother’s trial. In November the previous year, her suit against Field had been heard in the King’s Bench Division. Field, stated Lady Ida’s lawyers, had defrauded her of £7,775. Anxious to conceal he was an undischarged bankrupt, he offered no defence. Judgement and costs were awarded to the plaintiff after a short hearing; but it was a Pyrrhic victory, as Field was penniless and could not pay.

  Worse still, the heirs of the moneylender Owles (who by then had died) wanted to be repaid his £6,000. But Sir George remained fully convinced that there was no need to settle. When a prosecution for fraud was brought against Field and Lady Ida early in 1915, instead of paying the money – which he could easily have afforded – Sir George and his lawyers made the mistake of thinking his wife could not possibly be found guilty; it was not as if she had been signing cheques in someone else’s name. They were unaware of the letters that she had written to Field.

  The trial took place at the Old Bailey in March. In his statement to the court, George revealed the strain his marriage had put on him. ‘She was seventeen years old when I married her,’ he said. ‘It was clear that her education had been neglected, but I thought her mind and character would develop if taken out of those surroundings. Ever since the time of her marriage she has been quite unable to appreciate the value of money. She has never understood business matters and she has never been able to appreciate the liabilities into which she has from time to time become involved.’3 He described how often he paid her debts, after she had promised she would never ask him again.

  Medical evidence was produced to show the defendant was not responsible. Dr Salter, who had attended Lady Ida for twenty years, described her as suffering from nervous problems, including insomnia, loss of memory and even an inability to walk – in 1911 she had been confined to her room for three months. Any calculation of figures was beyond her, he insisted, her mental development having been ‘arrested by serious illness in childhood’. Dr Vernon Jones, who had also treated her for twenty years, stated that Lady Ida’s capacity for understanding business matters was nil and that she was ‘incapable of acting alone in any important matters . . . an easy prey to anyone who advised her or sought to guide her actions’.4

  What Sir George had not taken into account was Mr Justice Darling, who had little sympathy with the rich while less privileged people were suffering from wartime privations and the daily shock of casualty lists. He turned against Lady Ida after her letter asking Osbert to find ‘some boy’ to guarantee her loans was read out in court – on the face of it, a damning piece of evidence – and refused to take into account the doctors’ testimony.

  On 13 March he ensured, with a summing-up overstating the case against her, that she was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud. He then sentenced her to three months’ imprisonment in Holloway. She had been condemned as an accessory for aiding and abetting Field, without any allowance for circumstances.

  Despite his age, Julian Osgood Field got eighteen months’ hard labour, served at Wormwood Scrubs. He never recovered, dying alone in a room in the slums of Kilburn in 1925 and leaving just over £13.0s.0d. – as Osbert, always a good hater, gloatingly records in an appendix to Great Morning.

  A horrified George sent a twenty-eight-page document to the Home Secretary, arguing that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.

  The truth is that Lady Ida has no knowledge of the world, no education, no knowledge of affairs. It is a poor maimed brain . . . incapable of acting alone. Lady Ida’s power of resistance and independent action may be judged from the fact that in the first of these transactions she was dragged, feebly protesting, to Leslie, the moneylender whom she knew had half ruined her mother eight years before. Everyone who knows Lady Ida knows that under pressure she will plead guilty to mistakes and faults she has not committed.5

  But there was no mercy, and Ida’s experiences in Holloway cannot have been all that different from those of Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, even if she was treated with a certain degree of respect. Yet she was tougher than Wilde. When a local doctor’s wife proposed calling on her, Lady Ida refused to see the woman, saying that she was someone whom she would never have received at Renishaw and did not see why she should do so at Holloway. She also declined the Archbishop of Canterbury’s offer to visit her, as it might embarrass both of them.

  ‘Mother came out yesterday and I went to see her at Aunt Millie’s,’ Edith reported to Sachie on 19 May, Lady Ida having been released early. ‘She seems absolutely unchanged; rather nervous, it is true, but she actually made jokes about the life in there.’6 Lady Ida went straight home to Renishaw to recuperate. Lying in the next bedroom to her daughter, she called out during the night, ‘Edith, have you ever been happy?’ When Edith said, ‘Yes, haven’t you?’, her mother replied, ‘Never bir
d-happy, but I have three very nice children.’7 After that, relations were better between them.

  Sachie was sent home from Eton by an understanding housemaster. He never forgot his mother’s ‘calm and dignity during, and after, the extraordinary and unlikely tragedy that befell her’.8 Nearly sixty years later, he wrote of ‘a terrible time in our family . . . which was to tie the three of us together, two brothers and sister, in our determination to live, and leave a mark of some sort or kind’.9 This was the period when he wrote his first poems.

  Sir George’s failure to save their mother from going to prison intensified Osbert’s hatred. Not only was he horrified by Lady Ida’s imprisonment, but he sympathised with her extravagance, which he had inherited, if not to the same manic extent. By now, he was quarrelling more than ever about money with his father, who increasingly feared his son and heir might already be far along the road to inevitable ruin.

  Osbert went back to the trenches, this time with the Grenadiers’ second battalion, with whom he served for nearly a year. Rats and mud were ubiquitous, the water came up to his knees and he lived on hot rum to ward off the cold. Sleep was impossible – once, after being pulled out of the trenches, he slept for an unbroken eighteen hours – and he developed a horror of moonlight after seeing a young soldier shot in No Man’s Land.

  The boredom was as bad as the menace. He said that in ‘these coffin like ditches where death brooded in the air’ one day was as sad, cold and hopeless as the next. He developed ‘a sort of careless courage’, but it dismayed him whenever he heard a brother officer who felt the same way remark, ‘The Boches won’t get me now! I’ve been out here too long.’ He noticed that men who said this were dead within a few days, even hours. The one thing that saved him from going mad was reading – Dickens, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky.10 Like more than a few others, he would later claim that the war had been his university.