Magro could be difficult, and his protective attitude to his employer became so irritating that Sacheverell grew to loathe ‘the Maltese’. At Renishaw the staff resented his pretensions, refusing to treat him as a ‘gentleman’. But Osbert rejected every criticism.
The improvement worked by the brain operation eventually wore off. In London Osbert sometimes went to his club, the St James’ in Piccadilly, where he made a tragic spectacle with his ravaged face and staring eyes yet still kept an air of Hanoverian distinction.8 He never ate at the club, for fear of spilling food over himself. When Magro came to take him home, he would be inserted with difficulty into a huge black overcoat with an astrakhan collar. He began to spend more time at Montegufoni for the sake of the climate.
In 1963 he broke with David Horner, whose promiscuity had been irritating him for some time. A year before, either drunk or chasing a handsome young cook, Blossom had fallen down a flight of stone stairs into a cellar at Montegufoni, cracking his skull and breaking an arm and several ribs. (There were rumours that he had been pushed.) A haemorrhage reduced him to a wreck, and despite a partial recovery he changed almost overnight into a querulous, fiendishly tempered old man who was incapable of controlling his rages. He also grew insanely jealous of Frank Magro. In consequence, when Osbert left for Italy in September he did so without Horner and never saw him again, after more than thirty years of friendship.
Renishaw became increasingly run-down. After the war, Osbert had even contemplated demolishing the ballroom until the house was classified as a building of historical importance in 1951.9 Roofs leaked, paper flapped on the walls. The gardens fell further into the decay into which they had been let slip during the war, with overgrown flowerbeds and unkempt lawns. Some of the statues were hidden by shrubbery.
During a visit in 1961 to retrieve Edith’s belongings, Elizabeth Salter was shocked by the neglect. Two years later, Nancy Mitford and her sister the Duchess of Devonshire found ‘a ghostly house’, Debo commenting, ‘I never saw such ingrained gloom’ – they doubted if Reresby would want to take it on.10
Osbert was further demoralised by Edith’s death in 1964, just before the publication of Taken Care Of, her embittered and sometimes spiteful autobiography. If occasionally grotesque, she had been the most gifted of the three, with a streak of genius. Throughout her life she suffered from loneliness and even terror, as he must have known; now that she was dead, did he reproach himself for letting Horner turn her out of Renishaw?
Evelyn Waugh’s last letter to Osbert, dated 10 December 1964, was one of sympathy for Edith’s death. ‘How well I remember climbing those stairs at Pembridge Gardens (?) Square (?) – sitting entranced by her anecdotes.’11 When Waugh himself died in the spring of 1966, Osbert – now a chair-bound wreck – wrote to his widow Laura to say how sorry he was. In her reply, she said of Evelyn, ‘I know he is much happier out of the world.’12 Osbert may well have envied him.
One consolation during these last years was John Lehmann, who had founded New Writing and The London Magazine. With the approval of all three he embarked on a study of the Trio as ‘leaders of taste in their time’. Its title, A Nest of Tigers, was inspired by Edith’s joke about herself and her brothers – ‘We are as happy as a nest of tigers on the Ganges.’ Lehmann let Osbert make corrections to the manuscript, so that the book, eventually published in 1968, ended up as a paean of praise. Osbert, who lived just long enough to have it read to him, was delighted. However, Sachie was incensed by the inclusion of Edith’s tale of being sent out when a girl to pawn their mother’s false teeth and buy a bottle of whisky. (This was to show that her childhood had not been unlike what she imagined was that of working-class poets.)
Back from Italy, Osbert visited Renishaw for a last time in the summer of 1965. He had grown so attached to Frank Magro while abroad that he let him eat with him in the dining room, which angered other members of staff. Although their employer could not put food into his mouth without Magro’s assistance, they refused to serve a valet and, when Osbert ordered them to do so, left en masse. He stayed on for another month, Frank cooking his meals and feeding him in the great red room beneath the family portraits. But the row had upset him so much that he trembled more than ever. He decided it was time to leave – for good.
The last years of Osbert’s life were lived out at Montegufoni, nursed by Magro. When he died in 1969 he had become almost blind, slumped in his wheelchair with his head on his chest, muttering inaudibly and forgetting in mid-sentence what he was trying to say. A heart attack finished him off in May. Sachie and Georgia, with their sons Reresby and Francis, were at his deathbed, and he was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Florence.
Sacheverell went on writing for nearly twenty more years. His books still found readers, if a dwindling band, and in 1984 he was made a Companion of Honour. He got on better with Reresby after Georgia’s death, occasionally visiting Renishaw. He died aged ninety in 1988.13
Today, few people read Osbert’s autobiography, and Sachie’s Southern Baroque Art is a museum piece. Edith continues to have admirers, however – a recent biographer calls her one of ‘the great poets of her generation’, although not everyone may agree.14
Yet it would be wrong to relegate the Trio to the level of their old Bloomsbury rival Lytton Strachey (even less read) and dismiss them as mere minor writers who occasionally had something interesting to say. Instead, they should be seen through Waugh’s eyes, as stimulating personalities who made a remarkable impact on their generation and on the taste of their period.
‘For all their faults, the Sitwells were a dazzling monument to the English literary scene,’ wrote Cyril Connolly, looking back at the twenties.15 They are well worth studying if we want to understand England in the heady years after the First World War. At the time, they really did seem delightful and deleterious.
Somewhat ironically, Renishaw Hall – which played a vital part in inspiring all three of them – does a better job of preserving their memory than any of their books.
Chapter 24
RENISHAW REBORN
hen Osbert left England in 1965, he gave Renishaw to Reresby Sitwell – who, as Sachie’s elder son, was ultimate heir to the baronetcy. What made this a little less painful was Osbert’s fondness for his nephew. He told friends, ‘Renishaw is made for Reresby and Reresby for Renishaw,’ and that he liked to ‘think of them as belonging to each other’.1 In the event, Osbert had far more grounds for saying this than he can ever have guessed.
Born in 1927, Reresby was tall, heavily built and high-coloured. He had the same thick hair as his uncle, to whom physically he bore a certain resemblance, if his voice was not so deep. He had tremendous presence and zest for life, a keen sense of fun, and his laughter filled the room; his arrival at a boring party had the impact of a mass blood transfusion. He was fond of wine, cigars and good conversation, and was an enthusiastic traveller. Because of his appearance, some observers thought him a throwback to the Sitwell squires of the Regency; but he neither hunted nor shot, from dislike of inflicting pain.
Although he could write – as he showed in a book on Mount Athos co-written with John Julius Norwich, the preface to a new edition of Hortus Sitwellianus and a fine booklet on Renishaw – he lacked any sense of vocation as a writer, no doubt intimidated by the family’s output. On the other hand, he would always show impeccable taste in pictures, furniture and gardens, together with a strong feeling for family history.
Like Osbert, he loathed Eton, which he remembered as cold and dirty because of the war. In contrast, he enjoyed National Service with the Grenadier Guards, during which he was commissioned and spent nearly three years in occupied Germany. (His company commander Miles Fitzalan-Howard, later Duke of Norfolk, recalled that he was a natural soldier – ‘very good with the men’.) After going down from Cambridge and various unsatisfying jobs, he became a wine merchant in a firm whose senior partner was Bruce Shand, father of the future Duchess of Cornwall.
In 1952 Reresb
y married a beautiful Anglo-Irish girl, Penelope Forbes, who came from a background even more patrician than Lady Ida’s. (The Forbes have been noble since 1442 while her uncle, the eighth Earl of Granard, was Master of the Horse to Edward VII and George VI.) Despite her childhood being overshadowed by the death of her father in a motor accident, Penelope became a formidable, resourceful personality, no less colourful than her husband. She was a tall, slim, striking brunette whose intelligence was on a par with her looks – during the war she had worked as a code-breaker.
Unshakably loyal, Penelope gave Reresby rock-like support throughout their long marriage and proved to be the ideal partner for the renewal of Renishaw Hall. She was well equipped to deal with an impossible mother-in-law, brushing aside repeated attempts at interference. (The archives are full of abusive letters from Georgia.) Nor did she take any notice of Sachie’s outrage when, asking his granddaughter the name of her dachshund, he was told ‘Heinz Sacheverell Sitwell Prickles’.
Penelope never forgot her first visit by herself to Renishaw during the mid-1950s, having recently married Reresby. Osbert gave her a pleasant welcome, as he liked and admired her, while she found him amusing. Yet the atmosphere at lunch was not exactly easy. The new butler, who was in love with his employer, resented beautiful ladies. Nor did the agent seem to like women. After walking by the lakes, she had to clean soot off her shoes and stockings.
The evening was even more daunting. Save in one room, lighting was still provided by oil lamps or candles. After dinner, Edith, her alarmingly Gothic new aunt, announced, ‘Dear child, it is time you went to bed,’ picking up two huge silver candlesticks, one of which she handed to her. Having led Penelope up stairs and along a pitch-black, seemingly endless corridor to a cavernous bedroom, she left her cowering in the darkness with the single candle.2
Despite this unpromising start, the couple fell hopelessly in love with Renishaw, and became devoted to every stone and blade of grass. Years later, Reresby captured its spell perfectly when he wrote of a
strange compelling atmosphere which seems always to have held a mysterious grip upon all who live or work here, an enchantment that will not appeal to everyone – and may well be tempered by the vagaries of climate – but has led one visitor, the artist Rex Whistler, to declare that Renishaw ‘was the most exciting place he knew’.3
It was also the most exciting place known by Reresby and his wife. ‘Renishaw looks more beautiful in this lovely spring each time we go there,’ he wrote to Osbert in March 1966. ‘No wonder you found handing it over such a terrible wrench . . . I wonder what you will think of some of our minor alterations and re-groupings of furniture? On the whole I think many of the things we have done are what you would have got round to if you were more mobile.’4 Yet despite many invitations, Osbert never returned to the place he had loved above all. ‘Although I should very much like to see Renishaw again, I cannot see myself travelling to Sheffield under any circumstances,’ he explained to Penelope in a letter of January 1968. ‘But if I ever made up my mind to come to Renishaw, you and Reresby must be there too.’5
For a few years, however, Renishaw had a rival in Reresby’s affections – Montegufoni. In August 1968 he wrote to Osbert after learning that he, and not Sachie, would inherit the great Tuscan castello.
I have to thank you for so many things . . . above all, of course, for Renishaw and all its treasures – so many of them surprises I never expected, the family estates, the farms and the woods I have got to know so well these last few years, all these things and now the promise of more.
Your letter in fact reached me yesterday morning. I should, of course, have written to you at once but, although I never doubted your word, once you had made your decision and told me, yet somehow I felt stunned and unable to marshal my thoughts on paper. All I can say is that, poor Christian as I am, my fervent prayers are that your present comparative improvement in health will long continue and that you will be spared a good many years more to enjoy Montegufoni.6
The embittered Blossom still managed to be a nuisance. Suspecting that he was no longer going to inherit Montegufoni as Osbert had once promised, despite having plenty of money he demanded some of Renishaw’s more valuable pictures, which he insisted had been given to him. Osbert told his nephew to take no notice.
For some years after Osbert’s death Reresby spent a few weeks each summer at Montegufoni, and his enjoyment of the castello’s Chianti led him to plant a vineyard in Derbyshire. Finally, however, realising he must choose between Renishaw and Montegufoni, he chose Renishaw. It was a brave choice with a Labour government in power and Denis Healey threatening to ‘squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked’. It was also a lucky one. Had he stayed in Tuscany, the flamboyant ‘Barone Inglese’ up at the castello could well have become a target for kidnappers when the Brigate Rosse – the Italian revolutionary movement – emerged at the end of the decade. Montegufoni was sold in 1976.
To a large extent what Reresby and Penelope did at Renishaw, inside and out, was to turn Sir George’s plans into reality. To begin with, however, even to live in the house was a daunting experience. Upon taking over in autumn 1965, they and their young daughter Alexandra had to live with electric light in only a few rooms and no heating. It was so cold that during that first winter they sometimes preferred to read the newspapers in the warmth of the car. It all needed vast expenditure to put right. When heat and light finally came, separate electric circuits were installed to reduce costs.
After modernising the kitchen in the former Preserves Room (the old kitchen, with its copper pots and pans, being kept as a museum) – and after providing seventeen bedrooms with baths – there still remained the problem of staff, the upstairs–downstairs world having vanished with the war. During the 1960s, many owners of great houses who had not yet learned to live without servants abandoned the struggle, selling their homes.
At Renishaw, the problem was solved by staff from the village, finally culminating with the charming Pat and Sheila – renowned for their beautiful frilled aprons and splendid hairstyles – who came in daily to cook as well as clean. They produced (and at the time of writing still produce) meals reminiscent of a good French restaurant.
Until 1979 the butler (unpaid) was Leedham, who did not notice the passage of time, and much to Alexandra Sitwell’s embarrassment laid a child’s small knife and fork for her on her twenty-first birthday. On retiring, he was replaced by a weekend butler, Philip – otherwise an electrician – who was fascinated by life at the hall. (‘There’s diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs in there,’ he remarked during dinner for a ball at Chatsworth.)
The immediate task, Penelope recalled, was just tidying up. Then she and her husband embarked on a methodical restoration, the first room reclaimed being the ballroom from use as a junk room. It was repainted as a temporary measure by the then cleaners’ husbands, and given curtains that Penelope made herself. Sir George’s Brustolon chairs were moved into it from the Great Drawing Room, as was Belisarius in Disgrace. Most rooms were repapered fairly quickly, but as late as 1975 discoloured paper still flapped on the walls of the Duke’s Wing.
Gradually Renishaw became a masterpiece of decoration. The Great Drawing Room was repainted in subtle colours. Instead of being carpeted its wooden floor was stencilled and then varnished by Paul and Janet Czainski with designs inspired by the floor of Empress Maria Feodorovna’s state bedroom, which Reresby and Penelope had seen at the Pavlovsk Palace in St Petersburg. An immense Regency colza-oil chandelier from Sir Sitwell’s time was converted to electricity, lighting the room as it had never been lit before.
The dining room regained some of its original furnishings. Five of its Chippendale dining chairs were returned from Weston, then joined by three more found at an antique shop in Sheffield, the set being completed by a skilled cabinetmaker.
Another drawing room became ‘the Print Room’, with eighteenth-century engravings pasted on its walls in place of wallpaper, inspired by one seen in a great I
rish house. The walls of the Stone Hall (the old stairwell) were covered with a hundred blue and white plates brought back from China by Osbert. The ghost wing was given electric light, which at last got rid of its uncanny atmosphere.
Penelope went to a London workshop to learn gilding so that she could put life back into faded furniture and picture frames, while the cabinets and commodes were cleaned and renewed. The collection continued to grow, one acquisition being a big Derbyshire Blue John urn of about 1810 that was joined by two Blue John topped tables.
Some of the bedrooms, such as Osbert’s, ‘Lady Margaret’s’ or ‘the Duke’s’ needed little refurnishing, but others had been sadly neglected. Mouldering ostrich plumes were removed from the four-poster beds while country house sales were regularly attended to find better tables and chairs. All received new curtains and carpets.
Osbert’s study was left untouched. Reresby would sometimes invite one or two guests into it, then read them his uncle’s story of the only recorded English vampire, imitating Osbert’s deep voice, which made for an unsettling performance. When there alone, he himself thought it had an eerie feeling. One afternoon, leaning out of the study window in a reverie, he suddenly felt a cold hand pressing down on the back of his neck. For a few long seconds he remained petrified, unable to move – only to find that a creeper growing on the wall outside had become detached and fallen on him. As his uncle had written in ‘Night’, the poem which conjured up the haunting of Renishaw Hall, ‘A shudder from the ivy that entwines/The horror that is felt within its grip . . .’ ‘Night’ was much admired by Reresby, who read it again and again, feeling it reflected his own sense of hearing faint echoes of what had happened there long ago.
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