Renishaw Hall
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Sitwell Sitwell’s new dining room, 1795, his first major addition to Renishaw. The apse (for displaying his racing trophies) was inspired by one at Keddleston.
Sir George Sitwell (1797–1853) as a young man, by Octavius Oakley. A keen sportsman, he rented Balmoral for the shooting before the castle was acquired by Queen Victoria.
Sir George in later life, anon. Ruined by an encumbered estate, theft and a bank failure, he shut up Renishaw and sold most of its contents.
Sir Reresby Sitwell (1820–1862). Overwhelmed by financial worries, he tried unsuccessfully to sell Renishaw and then died young of cancer.
Louisa Lucy, Lady Sitwell (1831–1911), Reresby’s widow and an unsung heroine, whose financial acumen and determination saved Renishaw.
Sir George Sitwell (1860–1943) by Henry Tonks, 1898. An art collector and a gifted landscape gardener, he created modern Renishaw.
Lady Ida Sitwell (1869–1937) aged 19, by Sir William Blake Richmond. Her fecklessness gave her husband a breakdown and earned her a spell in prison, but nonetheless she possessed enormous charm.
The Sitwell Family – Sir George and Lady Ida, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell – by J. S. Sargent, 1900. The clothes were the artist’s suggestion.
Lady Ida in her prime by Bassano, 1904. She was known to give away as many as three of her smartest dresses to friends during her lunch parties.
The last photograph of Sir George, in 1943 at Locarno, Switzerland. He had fallen into the hands of a sinister couple called Woog, who plundered his bank account and were even suspected of murdering him.
Two of Sir George’s Italian statues, Amazon and Warrior, at the entrance to the Wilderness at Renishaw.
The Sitwell Family at Renishaw, in August 1930. The three year old Reresby was already devoted to his grandfather. Photo by Cecil Beaton. (Courtesy of Sotheby’s.)
Edith Sitwell by Rex Whistler, 1929. This is among Whistler’s best portraits and possibly the most successful of Edith, who is sitting in one of the Brustolon chairs acquired by her father.
Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969), by Frank Dobson, 1923, which T. E. Lawrence so much admired that he bought a cast and later left it to the Tate Gallery.
Osbert’s ‘Hanoverian’ profile when he was in his prime, a photograph that helps to explain why Virginia Woolf thought he had ‘a very sensual royal Guelf face’.
Salvator Rosa’s Belisarius in Disgrace, the finest picture at Renishaw, purchased by Osbert in 1946.
The North Front at Renishaw Hall, by John Piper. Osbert assembled the largest collection of Pipers in private hands and it is still at Renishaw.
The Dining Room alcove at Renishaw by John Piper, a rare interior by the artist.
The Ball Room wing at Renishaw by John Piper.
Another view of the North Front at Renishaw Hall by John Piper.
The Temple in the Wilderness at Renishaw.
Reresby Sitwell in 1966, the year after he had taken over Renishaw. He is holding a copy of Mount Athos, the book that he wrote with John Julius Norwich and A. Costa.
Reresby Sitwell (1927–2009) at Renishaw in the late eighties. Photo by Nuala Allason.
Penelope Sitwell, by Molly Bishop.
The Great Drawing Room at Renishaw, reconfigured and redecorated by Reresby and Penelope Sitwell.
Another view of the Great Drawing Room.
The Ballroom at Renishaw, reconfigured and redecorated by Reresby and Penelope.
The entrance hall from the staircase at Renishaw.
The south front of Renishaw from the gardens.
Alexandra Sitwell and her husband Rick Hayward.
OWNERS OF RENISHAW
George Sitwell, 1625–67
Francis Sitwell, 1667–71
George Sitwell, 1671–1723
Francis Sitwell, 1723–53
William Sitwell, 1753–76
Francis Hurt Sitwell, 1776–93
Sir Sitwell Sitwell, 1793–1811
Sir George Sitwell, 1811–53
Sir Reresby Sitwell, 1853–62
Sir George Sitwell, 1862–1925
Sir Osbert Sitwell, 1925–65
Sir Reresby Sitwell, 1965–2009
Alexandra Sitwell (Mrs Rick Hayward), 2009–present
NOTES
Foreword
1. Evelyn Waugh, Sunday Times, 7 December 1952.
2. H. Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete (London, Methuen, 1948), p. 208.
3. Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences or Courteous Revelations (London: Macmillan, 1950), p. 41.
Chapter 1: The Cavalier
1. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from Sir George Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, 2 vols (Scarborough: for George Sitwell, 1900–1), vol. I.
2. Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand! (London: Macmillan, 1945), p. 13.
3. The two grants of arms hang in the library at Renishaw.
Chapter 2: ‘Mr Justice Sitwell’
1. Sir Reresby Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells (Derby: Derbyshire Countryside Ltd, 2001).
2. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, vol. II.
Chapter 3: A Mathematician
1. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, vol. II, and Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells.
Chapter 4: The Merchant Squire
1. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, vol. II, and Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells.
Chapter 5: Passing on the Torch
1. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, vols I and II, and Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells.
2. Sir George Sitwell, The Hurts of Haldworth and Their Descendants at Savile Hall, The Ickles and Hesley Hall (Oxford: University Press, 1930), p. 225.
Chapter 6: A Regency Buck
1. Renishaw Archives (hereafter R.A.), Sir George Sitwell’s Red Notebook C, p. 58 (Print Room).
2. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 17.
3. Joseph Friedman, ‘New Light on the Renishaw Commode’, Furniture History Society Journal 1997, pp. 136–42.
4. E. A. Smith, ‘The Yorkshire elections of 1806 and 1807: a study in electoral management’, Northern History 2 (1967), pp. 62–90.
5. Osbert Sitwell (ed.), Two Generations (London: Macmillan, 1940), p. 40.
6. R.A., Box 139, Bundle 2.
7. R.A., Box 139, Bundle 1.
Chapter 7: Ruin?
1. R.A., Box 139, Bundle 1.
2. Sitwell, Renishaw Hall and the Sitwells, p. 8.
3. Sitwell, Two Generations, p. 62.
4. Ibid., p. 61.
5. Ibid., p. 74.
6. Ibid., pp. 23–4.
7. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
8. Ibid., pp. 130–1.
9. Ibid., pp. 18–20.
10. Ibid., p. 120.
11. R.A., letter (1881) from Georgiana Sitwell to Sir G. Sitwell.
12. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 18.
13. Sitwell, Two Generations, p. 139.
14. Ibid., pp. 145–6.
Chapter 8: Camping in the Wreckage
1. Unless otherwise stated, material quoted in this chapter comes from the diaries of Louisa, Lady Sitwell (R.A., Box X3).
Chapter 9: An Unsung Heroine
1. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 40.
2. R.A., Box ex 28.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 29.
6. Ibid.
7. R.A., Farrer & Co. Box.
8. Edith Sitwell, Taken Care Of (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 59.
9. Letter from Ethel Smyth, quoted in Appendix D of Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, pp. 261–4.
10. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 156.
11. R.A., Box 24 c1869/70.
12. Sitwell, Two Generations.
13. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, p. 67.
14. R.A., OS (oversized) Drawer 2.
Chapter 10: The Golden Years Return?
1. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 50.
2. Osbert Sitwell, Great Morning (London: Macmillan, 1948), p. 50.
3. R.A., Bundle 2.
4. R.A., Box 147.
Chapter 11: A Miserable Marriage
1. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, p. 20.
2. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 223.
3. R.A., Box 147, Bundle 9.
4. Ibid.
5. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, pp. 20–1.
6. Osbert Sitwell, The Scarlet Tree (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 20.
7. R.A., Box 565, Bundle 1.
8. Sitwell, Scarlet Tree, p. 43.
Chapter 12: Sir George’s Italian Cure
1. Sitwell, Letters of the Sitwells and Sacheverells, vol. I, p. ii.
2. Reresby Sitwell (ed.), Hortus Sitwellianus (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1984), p. 3.
3. Ibid., pp. 36–8.
4. Ibid., p. 109.
5. R.A., Box X13, Green Note Book 1907–10, p. 100.
6. Ibid., p. 13.
7. Ibid., p. 58.
8. Sitwell, Hortus Sitwellianus, p. 33.
9. R.A., Box X13, Green Note Book 1907–10, p. 110.
10. R.A., Box X13, Bundle 1, card No. 64.
11. R.A., Box X13, Green Note Book 1907–10, p. 125.
12. Ibid., p. 75.
13. In the Val di Pesa, in the Chianti.
14. R.A., Box 532/1; also in Sitwell, Great Morning, p. 51.
15. R.A., Box 470, Bundle 4.
Chapter 13: A New Renishaw
1. Sitwell, Hortus Sitwellianus, p. 15.
2. Ibid.
3. R.A., Sir G. Sitwell, The Story of an Old Garden, Box 100 (ex X48).
4. David Kesteven, Renishaw Hall Gardens (Derby: Abbey, 2010), p. 10.
5. R.A., Box X13, Green Note Book 1907–10, p. 106.
6. Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (eds), The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife, Lady Emily, (London: HarperCollins, 1985), p. 157.
7. Renamed Madonna with Two Saints Adoring the Child, today this is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
8. R.A., Box 13. opp. p. 104.
9. Sitwell, Hortus Sitwellianus, p. 20.
Chapter 14: Renishaw Children
1. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 104
2. Ibid., p. 111.
3. Osbert Sitwell, ‘A Door that Shuts’, in Selected Poems, Old and New (London: Duckworth, 1943), p. 66.
4. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, p. 32.
5. Sacheverell Sitwell, All Summer in a Day (London: Duckworth, 1926), p. 79.
6. Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), p. 39.
7. Sacheverell Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City (London: Thames & Hudson, 1973), p. 417.
8. Sacheverell Sitwell, Splendours and Miseries (London: Faber, 1943), p. 242.
9. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, p. 41.
10. Percy and Ridley, Letters of Edwin Lutyens, p. 157.
11. R.A., Box 408/6.
12. Sitwell, Scarlet Tree, p. 305.
13. Sitwell, Great Morning, p. 96.
14. Elizabeth Salter, The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (London: Bodley Head, 1967), p. 91.
15. Richard Greene, Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius (London: Virago, 2011), pp. 105–6.
Chapter 15: Leaving the Nest
1. Sitwell, Great Morning, p. 13.
2. Ibid., p. 141.
3. Ibid., p. 228.
4. Ibid., p. 13.
5. J. Pearson, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (London: Macmillan, 1978), p. 72.
6. Richard Greene (ed.), Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell (London: Virago, 2007), No. 18.
Chapter 16: The Great War, and Lady Ida’s Ordeal
1. Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998), p. 54.
2. Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room (London: Macmillan, 1949), p. 78.
3. R.A., Box 565, Bundle 1.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Greene, Selected Letters, No. 21.
7. Sitwell, Taken Care Of, p. 20.
8. Sitwell, Splendours and Miseries, p. 242.
9. Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City, p. 292.
10. Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, pp. 79–85.
11. Ibid., p. 105.
12. Sitwell, Selected Poems, Old and New, p. 157.
13. Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, p. 113.
14. Derek Parker (ed.), Sacheverell Sitwell: A Symposium (London: B. Rota, 1975), p.76.
15. Grover Smith (ed.), Letters of Aldous Huxley (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 141.
16. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 4.
Chapter 17: ‘Sitwellianism’
1. Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, p. 129.
2. Barry Day (ed.), The Complete Verse of Noël Coward (London: Methuen, 2011), p. 53.
3. Cecil Beaton, The Wandering Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961), p. 163.
4. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (eds), The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols (Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1975–80), vol. III, p. 428.
5. Gabriele Finaldi and Michael Kitson, Discovering the Italian Baroque: The Denis Mahon Collection (London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 12.
6. Parker, Sacheverell Sitwell: A Symposium, p. 16.
7. Ibid., p. 62.
8. Rebecca West, ‘Two Kinds of Memory’, in The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928).
9. Allan Wade (ed.), The Letters of W. B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p. 776.
10. Anthony Powell, Messengers of Day (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), p. 38.
11. Penelope Middleboe (ed.), Edith Olivier From Her Journals 1924–48 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p. 98.
12. Nicolson and Trautmann, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. III.
13. Ibid.
14. R. L. Mégroz, The Three Sitwells: A Biographical and Critical Study (London: Grant Richards Press, 1927).
15. Powell, Messengers of Day, p. 35.
16. Cyril Connolly, The Evening Colonnade (London: David Bruce and Watson, 1973), p. 300.
Chapter 18: Rivalry with Bloomsbsury
1. Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell, p. 1.
2. Parker, Sacheverell Sitwell: A Symposium, p. 16.
3. Ibid., p. 4.
4. Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell, p. 101.
5. Nicolson and Trautmann, Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 466.
6. Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 19.
7. R.A., Bundle 510.
8. R.A., Bundle 9.
9. Salter, Last Years of a Rebel, p. 58.
10. Glendinning, Edith Sitwell, pp. 194–5.
11. Sitwell, For Want of the Golden City, p. 277.
12. Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God (London: Arthur Press, 1930), p. 322.
13. Glendinning, Edith Sitwell, p. 85.
Chapter 19: Renishaw as Patronage
1. Parker, Sacheverell Sitwell: A Symposium, p. 12.
2. R.A., Box 501, Bundle 3.
3. Ibid.
4. Greene, Selected Letters, No. 65.
5. Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), p. 128.
6. Salter, Last Years of a Rebel, p. 60.
7. Peter Quennell, The Marble Foot (London: Collins, 1976), p. 131–2.
8. Rupert Hart-Davis (ed.), Siegfried Sassoon: Diaries 1920–22 (London: Faber, 1981), pp. 75–8.
9. Middleboe, Edith Olivier, pp. 79–80.
10. Beverley Nichols, The Sweet and Twenties (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1958).
11. Powell, Messengers of Day, p. 164.
12. Christabel Aberconway, A Wiser Woman? A Book of Me
mories (London: Hutchinson, 1966), p. 8.
13. Percy and Ridley, Letters of Edwin Lutyens, p. 411.
14. Sir Peter Quennell, personal communication from a stay at Renishaw in 1978.
15. Salter, Last Years of a Rebel, p. 186.
16. Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), pp. 329–30.
17. Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell, p. 160.
18. Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, p. 313.
Chapter 20: Marking Time in the Thirties
1. Middleboe, Edith Olivier, pp. 79–80.
2. Sir George Sitwell, Idle Fancies in Prose and Verse: Being Eight Short Lyrics with a Preface and Postscript (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1938), p. vi.
3. Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 166.
4. Letter from Sir George Sitwell to Reresby Sitwell, 28 November 1936, courtesy of Penelope, Lady Sitwell.
5. R.A., Box 537/ Bundle 13.
6. Letter from Sir George Sitwell to Reresby Sitwell, 19 July 1937, courtesy of Penelope, Lady Sitwell.
7. Pearson, Façades, p. 323.
8. Sitwell, Idle Fancies, pp. 71–2.
9. R.A., Box 501/ Bundle 3.
10. Letter from Sir George Sitwell to Reresby Sitwell, 26 November 1939, courtesy of Penelope, Lady Sitwell.
11. H.M. to author at a luncheon given by Sir Steven Runciman at the Athenaeum, June 1998.
Chapter 21: Renishaw and the Second World War
1. Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell, p. 240.
2. Bryher, The Days of Mars: A Memoir, 1940–1946 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 22.