Renishaw Hall

by Desmond Seward

  The years at Renishaw during and after the war were Osbert’s most fruitful period. His first volume of autobiography was published in 1945; the last would appear in 1950. Although full of good stories narrated with feline wit, and containing fascinating reminiscences of aristocratic society and the great hostesses of London during the Edwardian twilight, it does not really work as biography, because its pathologically secretive author reveals so little of himself. He conceals his homosexuality, never mentioning Horner, and ends when he is only thirty. Nonetheless, for a time the book was an enormous success.

  ‘These five volumes have given him a secure place in English literature,’ wrote Waugh in 1952 in the Sunday Times, calling them ‘a masterpiece’. He claimed the Sitwells had ‘taught the grandees to enjoy their possessions while they still had them’, although comparatively few ‘grandees’ can ever have met Osbert, Edith or Sachie, read their books or visited Renishaw. However, another novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, was justified in observing that Osbert ‘anatomised’ his age and society. He had done so by using Renishaw as an ivory tower.

  Even George Orwell, scarcely an admirer of the patrician way of life, praised the autobiography, which, says Philip Ziegler, was ‘to be found in virtually every English house which bought books with any regularity; matching in popularity the Bible and Shakespeare, the histories of Arthur Bryant and the novels of Evelyn Waugh’.4 It sold well in America too, spreading Renishaw’s fame across the Atlantic. One reason for its success in England was nostalgia for the past, fuelled by the petty social controls and boredom of Attlee’s Austerity Britain – the period’s most popular film was Kind Hearts and Coronets. Renishaw became the emblem of a lost age.

  Sir George, who appeared in every volume, had (as L. P. Hartley put it) been turned into a ‘comic character as unforgettable as Don Quixote or the White Knight’. Some of the stories about him, such as his invention of a musical toothbrush and a miniature revolver for shooting wasps, are among the most enjoyable things in the book; but they belong to fiction, or are wildly exaggerated. Even Hartley, clever observer that he was, failed to realise that the portrayal was a lie. It was Osbert’s final, venomous settling of accounts.

  Much of the lie can be detected in the detail. For example, Osbert says that the ‘bevy’ (his name for father’s female admirers) included a Miss Fingelstone, ‘very strict and old fashioned in her ideas’, who lived in Venice, supporting herself by introducing well-heeled tourists to antique dealers and writing books on Venetian history. Among ‘the better-known titles were – and still are’, claims Osbert, ‘Byron – or Love on the Lido!, Round the Convents with Casanova and Amblings with Aretino’. However, a strict, old-fashioned lady is unlikely to have read the works of Venice’s two greatest pornographers.

  What Osbert says about his father is often very amusing, but nearly always untrue or exaggerated. Often the portrait is almost flattering, then followed by story after story of ludicrous behaviour that builds up relentlessly the impression of a bumbling, egotistical buffoon. None of Sir George’s achievements are mentioned, let alone leaving the family finances in a condition that enabled the Sitwells to go on living at Renishaw.

  Sacheverell was horrified. ‘It is most painful to realise your hatred for your father,’ he wrote after reading the first volume. ‘It is, I know, useless, to try and persuade you that, in his heart, he was in his queer way devoted to you.’5 In 1973, when Osbert and Edith were dead, he stressed how much he owed to George ‘for his intelligence and for his interesting mind, which have been cruelly derided, with no one to speak up for him and protect his memory’.6 He came to Renishaw even less, staying at Weston, where he pursued his fascination with the exotic and macabre in such strange books as Splendours and Miseries.

  Reresby, too, rejected the ‘sometimes unfair as well as cruel assessment’ of ‘a benevolent and understanding grandfather’.7 Throughout his life, he cherished the letters that Sir George had written to him when he was a small boy.

  Osbert’s revenge had buried the real George Sitwell in a merciless, long-drawn-out caricature that constitutes the most savage parricide in English literature. Ironically, he himself was far more impractical and self-indulgent than his fictional portrait of his father.

  Even so, he shared Sir George’s passion for Renishaw, adding further treasures. He recovered the original crescent-shaped table for the dining room apse – slightly shortened, it was otherwise intact – and, besides such eccentric objects as Robin Hood’s putative bow and an outsize Regency bookcase that covered an entire wall, he bought two genuinely important pieces of Baroque art. One was Salvator Rosa’s magnificently sombre Belisarius in Disgrace in 1946 (in a frame designed by William Kent), which now hangs at the end of the ballroom and is the finest picture in the house, not excepting the Copley or the Sargent. The other was Tiepolo’s Rinaldo and Armida.

  He purchased Henry Walton’s The Three Young Surgeons (from a descendant of one of the surgeons) as a pair for Walton’s Cherry Barrow. He also bought a large number of twentieth-century drawings and paintings, mainly from the Leicester Galleries. The artists included Picasso, Augustus John, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Paul Nash, Gino Severini, Rex Whistler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, Thérèse Lessore, Ethelbert White and C. R. W. Nevinson.

  Osbert’s success gave a boost to Edith, who had arguably been the most popular poet of the war years – Cyril Connolly declaring that her verse possessed the purest poetical content of any modern poet, not excepting Yeats, Eliot or Auden. The two older Sitwells became national figures, Edith being made a Dame of the British Empire in 1954 and Osbert a Companion of Honour four years later. Life magazine called them ‘England’s most celebrated literary family’.

  Seen as equals in achievement, Osbert and Edith toured the United States together, arriving in New York at the end of October 1948 to stay at the St Regis Hotel. Both lectured as far afield as Buffalo, spending Christmas in Boston, fêted and lionised, before sailing home in March. They had made a considerable impression on the Americans, even if one journalist thought they seemed ‘as remote from the Century of the Common Man as the Aztecs’.8

  Also in New York, Waugh was green with envy, writing to Nancy Mitford that Osbert and Edith are known as ‘The Fabulous Sitwells’ and having ‘one hell of a time’. He says Osbert has let his hair grow so long that he looks like Einstein. Asking them if Sachie was there too, he was told blandly, ‘Alas, Sachie is serving as High Sheriff of his County and therefore unable to leave the United Kingdom’. (Because it meant bringing Georgia too, Osbert had refused to pay the fare for his cash-strapped brother, who was furious at being left behind.) In another letter, Waugh denies he is jealous of Osbert, saying no sane man can envy his ‘ostentatious progress’ through the USA, and claiming implausibly that it has increased his sales by only eighteen copies.9

  The visit’s outstanding event was a party in Manhattan given by a legendary bookstore, the Gotham Book Mart, for the Sitwells to meet American writers. The most famous of these were the poet Marianne Moore and two young men, novelist Gore Vidal and playwright Tennessee Williams. Others included William Rose Benet, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Eberhart, Charles Henri Ford, Horace Gregory, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and José Garcia Villa. Two English poets were there, too, Auden and Spender.

  ‘The group photograph has something of Aquinas’s Vision of the Heavenly Host, with poetry’s angels and archangels grouped around their virgin queen’, comments the Trio’s biographer, John Pearson.10

  The pair returned in summer 1950 to lecture as far afield as Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio. They went back again early in 1951, visiting Hollywood, where Edith gave readings from Shakespeare – flatteringly, during the sleep-walking scene from Macbeth a spectator had to be carried out of the hall screaming and frothing at the mouth.

  She was introduced to Marilyn Monroe as a publicity stunt by a journalist who hoped they would quarrel spectacularly. Instead, they made friends, perhaps because each
glimpsed the other’s vulnerability. ‘In repose’, Edith said of Marilyn, ‘her face was at moments strangely, prophetically tragic, like the face of a beautiful ghost.’11 However, Edith did not take kindly to the attentions of the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. When there was an outbreak of rabies in Hollywood, she told everyone the outbreak had been caused by ‘Miss Hopper going round biting dogs’.12

  Although Edith liked George Cukor, she was exasperated by his attempts to make a film out of her book Fanfare for Elizabeth (really the story of Anne Boleyn), with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the lead roles. Afterwards, she recalled a scriptwriter’s contribution, ‘This is the scene where you have those Cardinal guys threatening the King with everlasting damnation. And the King says, “That’s O.K. by me, boys! Go right ahead. You tell your boss the Pope that I am King of England – and to hell with his everlasting damnation.”’13

  These visits to the United States were the climax of the Sitwell renaissance, but became too exhausting. The health of both siblings was failing, in particular Osbert’s. Together, they made a final tour in 1957. Osbert continued to exchange letters and books with American writers with whom he had built lasting friendships, such as Marianne Moore and Lincoln Kirstein of the New York City Ballet – dedicating a book to Kirstein and his wife Fidelma.14

  Secretly, Osbert Sitwell regarded Evelyn Waugh as his only equal as a writer. Waugh, who guessed at this flattering opinion, pretended to reciprocate. He congratulated Osbert warmly when the autobiography’s fourth volume came out, writing from Piers Court on 29 May 1949, ‘Very many thanks indeed for Laughter in the Next Room . . . an entirely delightful volume.’ He described it in less enthusiastic terms to Nancy Mitford. ‘Osbert’s book is queer, isn’t it,’ he confided.15 He thought some of his friend’s opinions dangerously progressive.

  Yet he paid Osbert the compliment of keeping him informed about his own work. In August 1951, referring to a new novel, he told Osbert, ‘It is all Small Arms (‘Musketry’ to you) and ante-room tippling. I get so obsessed with military dialogue I can’t stop.’16 This was Men at Arms which, fortunately, would not make Osbert so jealous as had Brideshead Revisited.

  In September 1952 Waugh confided to Ann Fleming, a little nervously, that the New York Times had commissioned him to write a profile of Osbert. ‘Though it is all love & praise it is certain to give deathless offence,’ he says. He jokes how he has been tempted to write that, just as Osbert’s ancestor styled himself Sitwell Sitwell, ‘Sir Osbert should have taken the name Hurt Hurt.’ Waugh says he has refrained, to have a shot in the locker ‘in case he turns nasty’.17

  No doubt, the article contained praise. The ‘Grand Old Man of English Letters’, Osbert’s life was one of unbroken enrichment, his latest book always his best, wrote Waugh, recalling how wonderful the Sitwells had been in the 1920s. Yet the portrait’s compliments were tongue-in-cheek – ‘The bland, patrician features . . . the courteous manner (Mr Turveydrop ameliorates the stern carriage of Sir Leicester Dedlock in this baronet) . . . a hint of alertness and menace.’18 (Anyone who read Dickens would have known that Mr Turveydrop and Sir Leicester are among the most ludicrously pompous characters in all English fiction.)

  Osbert accepted the praise, concealing any resentment he may have felt. He knew enough about writing to realise that Evelyn Waugh was probably the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century, and valued his prickly friendship sufficiently to put up with a certain amount of mockery. Fortunately, Waugh never went any further. He was too fond of staying at Renishaw, which he ranked with other great houses where he was welcome, such as Chatsworth or Longleat.

  Chapter 23

  DECAY

  n 1950 a specialist informed Osbert that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, possibly due to undiagnosed encephalitis (a viral inflammation of the brain) caused by the Spanish flu that had nearly killed him thirty years before. Because of inadequate medication, Parkinson’s was an even worse affliction than it is now. But for some years Osbert managed to lead a reasonably normal life.

  In August 1957 Waugh paid him another visit, writing when he got back to Combe Florey, ‘Thank you for days of enchantment.’1 He recalled it a little differently in a letter to the Duchess of Devonshire. ‘The talk is mostly of medicines. I just managed to keep my end up on sleeping draughts but Mr Hartley has us all beat by a great [insect] bite in the left foot over which he has consulted two doctors and a chemist.’2 It was Waugh’s last visit.

  Despite his increasing disability, Osbert continued to write and went on sending copies of his books to Waugh, who in 1959 thanked him for yet another, Fee Fi Fo Fum. This was a reinterpretation in a 1950s setting of English fairy stories, such as Jack and the Beanstalk. Waugh, who had just returned from Africa, adds, ‘I was asked to dinner by a native chief in Tanganyika who said “Don’t dress. Come in your tatters and rags.”’3

  By now, Osbert fell over constantly. When he lunched at Chatsworth in the summer of 1960, he had to be carried into the dining room by the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Antrim. Ann Fleming, who was present, reported to Waugh that ‘during the meal his fork started knocking against his plate, the din was awful, and it was difficult to maintain unembarrassed conversation’.4

  In October that year he underwent an operation on the brain. The result was encouraging. To some observers, he looked healthy enough, while his speech and handwriting improved. But it was a temporary respite that would last less than three years.

  Meanwhile, Edith’s feud with David Horner came to a head. In her letters to Sachie she referred to ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’, ‘the creature’ or ‘the animal’, later claiming that only her newfound religious faith had stopped her from murdering him. She was shocked by his homosexual affairs. It is only fair to say that even observers less biased than Edith found Blossom grotesque, W. H. Auden laughing at him as ‘a rose-red cissy, half as old as time’.5

  Horner returned Edith’s loathing, claiming that she had been driven mad by sexual frustration and ought to be in a lunatic asylum. By now her drinking was out of control, she fell frequently and made noisy scenes, all of which he cited in support of his theory. Penelope Sitwell recalls an atmosphere of mutual hatred that was quite terrifying. When Edith went to hospital with a kidney infection, David insisted that Renishaw did not have the resources to look after such a sick woman and gave Osbert an ultimatum – either he or she must go.

  In August 1960, Edith was forced out of what had been her home for two decades, even leaving behind Rex Whistler’s portrait. Despite her formidable personality, she could not cope with the day-to-day business of life: her finances were in chaos, and she had little ready money. No doubt, her father had supposed Osbert would provide for her, in the way he himself had provided for Aunt Floss. But her brother gave her nothing.

  She took refuge at her London club for ladies, the Sesame, saved from bankruptcy by an admirer, Elizabeth Salter, who acted as her unpaid secretary and put her affairs in sufficient order to provide her with an adequate income.

  It seems odd that he should behave so cruelly, as in some ways he was a kind man. (Although an agnostic, he had urged Edith to become a Catholic because he thought it might give her peace of mind.) But, ruthless in the pursuit of his own comfort, he would not tolerate the prospect of endless rows. As a friend of Sacheverell, the Byzantinist Sir Steven Runciman, observed, ‘The Sitwells could never stop quarrelling with each other.’6 Yet once they had been so united.

  In a poem, ‘Serenade to a Sister’, Sachie expressed his sadness at being banished from Renishaw, ‘the lost paradise’.

  Why

  cannot I walk into the wood

  We called the wilderness

  Beyond the statues of the warrior and the amazon?

  Why

  cannot I walk into the wood

  Through the wooden gate

  where I was often frightened as a child

  And look down to the lake between the trees?7

  Edith must sur
ely have shared his sense of loss.

  Meanwhile, Osbert was far from forgotten in the land of letters. In January 1961, Graham Greene sent him a copy of the recently published A Burnt-out Case, inscribed, ‘For Osbert with great affection’. Greene was an old if not a close friend, who back in the twenties had told Osbert how much he enjoyed his verse, while Osbert admired his novels.

  Early in 1962, Tales My Father Taught Me, which Osbert had begun years before, appeared as a postscript to his memoirs. In the final chapter, ‘The New Jerusalem’, Sir George – cutting the usual ludicrous figure – advises his son to emigrate to Canada or America and build a new Renishaw, a replica of the old. Although suavely amusing, the book was a last vicious kick at his parent – time had not diminished Osbert’s hatred. On this occasion, however, more than one reviewer realised the portrait bore little resemblance to reality.

  The three Sitwells appeared together at a concert given at the Festival Hall on 9 October 1962 to celebrate Edith’s seventy-fifth birthday. In a wheelchair, heavily fortified by alcohol, during the first half Edith read in that beautiful voice some of her poems; these were intermingled with a Rossini sonata, a Mozart divertimento and Benjamin Britten’s setting of Still Falls the Rain, which was sung by Peter Pears. The second half was a performance of Façade, conducted by William Walton.

  It was the very last appearance of the ‘delightful but deleterious trio’.

  Blossom’s nemesis arrived in January 1963, when Osbert engaged Frank Magro as his valet. A Maltese bachelor in his thirties, a clerk in a travel agency and in no way a professional ‘gentleman’s gentleman’, Magro was fascinated by his employer. Catering for Osbert’s every whim, he not only washed, shaved and dressed him, but managed his correspondence and read to him – including the twelve volumes of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, in English. Soon he was promoted to private secretary. Horner, who recognised a rival, detested him.