Edith Sitwell

by Richard Greene

  Hopper was just one of the journalists interested in Sitwell that autumn. ‘Never before, I think, has anyone attended their own Memorial Service,’ Sitwell wrote to Coward of the concert planned for 9 October at the Festival Hall: ‘The Press is madly excited at my being 75, and is looking forward avidly to my funeral.’55 At other times, she referred to the event as her centenary – but she loved it. Francis Sitwell and the violinist John Woolf organised the concert in cooperation with the Park Lane Group, which promoted young musicians. Having been transported to the hall by ambulance, Edith was wheeled on stage by Francis; she read some of her own recent poems. Peter Pears sang Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain, and Sebastian Shaw and Irene Worth performed Façade, with William Walton conducting. The programme also included selections from Rossini and Mozart. Britten had been expected to perform, but he was too ill, so his place was taken by the twenty-two-year-old virtuoso pianist Stephen Bishop (now known as Stephen Kovacevich); Britten’s friend Neill Sanders played the horn.56 Sitwell joked about Shaw’s growling recitation, but raved over Pears’s performance of the Canticle; she wrote to Britten: ‘What a great artist! I invariably have to wear black spectacles when I hear that work. I never get over it. My words, and the suffering, seem to have been born with the music.’

  After the concert, there was a supper party at the hall; among the guests (apart from family and performers) were Sir Malcolm Bullock, Sir Frederick Ashton, the Clarks, the Snows, Harold Acton, Cecil Beaton, Cyril Connolly, Sir John Gielgud, Victor Gollancz, Graham Greene, John Lehmann, and Carson McCullers.57 Edith had organised the seating carefully, but Georgia moved people about, separating McCullers from her nurse. McCullers’s illnesses had by now affected her mind. Sitwell told Maurice Bowra: ‘she will get up suddenly and kiss people and say “May I touch you.” I thought that she would respect Father Caraman’s cloth, so put her next to him. Not a bit of it! She kept on getting up and asking if she could touch him.’58

  It was one of the last great nights of Sitwell’s life. She wrote to Francis: ‘I didn’t get to sleep till past 6. I was so excited.’ She thanked him profusely: ‘You are a superb organiser and a born impresario. Kenneth Clark says there has been nothing like it in our time.’59 There was, however, one last event in her seventy-fifth birthday celebrations. Francis had booked her on to This is Your Life. Given that she had a heart murmur, Eamonn Andrews could not spring his usual surprise, as it might simply kill her – in which case the programme would need a different title. She was inclined to say no to the planned programme until she heard that her old maid Velma Leroy was making the journey from California. Broadcast on 6 November, the show brought together Osbert and Sachie, her cousin Veronica Gilliat, Cecil Beaton, Arthur Waley, Geoffrey Gorer, George Cukor, and others. The sentimental climax was Velma Leroy’s declaration that Edith was ‘the world’s most marvellous woman’.60

  Salter recalled that the following months were a falling back to earth and that Sitwell slipped into a depression. Indeed, a doctor judged then that she had suffered from depression throughout her life – not a surprising diagnosis.61 Her spirits were briefly lifted at the end of November by a luncheon with Cecil Beaton and the Queen Mother.62 A little more good news came on New Year’s Day: the University of Hull would grant her an honorary doctorate in June.63 In January 1963, however, an infection threatened to become pneumonia, so Farquhar urged that Sitwell be moved out of London and if possible out of England. When Salter described how she had once seen extraordinary gems for sale in Colombo, Sitwell herself proposed that they go on a round-the-world voyage.64 Both Salter and Francis Sitwell were uneasy about this idea, but as Dame Edith told Jane Clark, ‘the whole of Harley Street’ was telling her to go.65

  Transported to Tilbury in an ambulance, Dame Edith was carried aboard the SS Arcadia, where she found flowers from Graham Greene, Sherman and Jeanne Stonor, and other friends waiting in her state-room.66 For the first few days she had the company of Sachie and Georgia on their way to Gibraltar. After that, she was in the hands of Farquhar and Salter. During the voyage Sitwell worked on the early chapters of her memoir,67 reshaping a good deal of old material, eliminating nuances and adding ferocity. Though Sitwell was still capable of pleasant conversation, treated those around her with courtesy, and could tell a good story, her writing had lapsed into rancour. The memoir is, at times, less a record of her life than of her moods while writing it.

  When they reached Colombo, Salter went ashore and brought back a selection of gems. Sitwell picked out a large aquamarine for purchase, and returned the rest. Salter soon discovered that she had broken the law in bringing unbought stones to the ship, and it was only by luck that she and Sitwell were not imprisoned for smuggling. The ship then sailed on to Australia, where reporters crowded Sitwell’s cabin at Melbourne and Adelaide. The ship reached Sydney on 3 April, where Sitwell was to disembark. She was too worn out to deal with another gaggle of journalists, so Elizabeth Salter took her place, describing what it was like to work for Sitwell and recounting her experiences as a crime writer in Britain.68 As an Australian success story, she had some star power of her own. However, she had to promise a press conference with Dame Edith Sitwell.

  Sitwell was taken off the ship in secret when the crowds dispersed. She settled in at the Fernleigh Castle in the suburb of Rose Bay. This hotel had a hilltop view of the harbour and the bridge. As the Arcadia sailed away, it came as close to the shore as the captain dared and in front of the Fernleigh Castle blew its horn three times in salute to Sitwell.69 On 16 April, she gave one of her classic press conferences, this time lying back on her bed and wearing a wide hat. Owing to her illness, she asked the reporters to photograph only her hands. She said she had just one face but that if she had a dozen they could have them – then she gave in and allowed the photographs. She declared herself ‘mad about Australians’. The reporters wanted her opinion of the Australian accent, so she asked, ‘Isn’t it the same as the English accent?’ The reporters took great interest in the photographs she had laid out of her three cats, Shadow, Leo and Belaker: ‘They never say anything silly, you see, and that’s something.’ When asked whether she had been a handful for her parents, she responded, ‘My parents were a handful for me. They weren’t parents I would recommend to anybody.’70

  She gave a private interview to Audrey Armitage of the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Poems have parents. Those parents are ideas. I start with one idea – or a scene – like the old Roman road that runs through my brother’s property in Derbyshire. I wanted to write a poem about that. Behind the road stands a field of ripe wheat. That was the beginning of one poem, then another idea was added and worked on … I don’t have a complete idea when I start writing, nor do I know how it will be worked out.’ She seems to have been talking about ‘The Little Ghost Who Died for Love’.71 Unknown to Sitwell, Armitage was one of the country’s most prolific pulp novelists, specialising in cheap sex and cadavers, yet she had loved Sitwell’s poetry since her student days. In her article, she noted with sadness the wheelchair pushed against a wall – the implications were obvious. The article appeared under the headline ‘Farewell to a Genius’.72

  They sailed out of Sydney on 17 April in the Dutch ship Willem Ruys, but their passage across the Pacific was turbulent. Some passengers wandered about in life-vests, claiming the ship was doomed – provoking contempt from Sitwell when she heard of it. Yet even though Henry Moat had trained her to stand up to the sea, she was herself very ill when they reached Panama City. On the morning after they docked in Miami, Farquhar sent Salter to find a priest. Sitwell had started to haemorrhage during the night. A doctor considered her well enough to travel on to Bermuda, where another doctor thought her bleeding might be fatal. She was taken ashore in a little tossing boat, and, for the first time in her experience of Edith Sitwell, Salter heard ‘sounds of fear’ from her. Despite her own anxiety, Salter had to sail back alone to England with their luggage. Farquhar remained with Sitwell in Bermuda. Once tests proved that the
bleeding – caused by a varicose vein at the base of her neck – was not lethal, she was flown home. This was one of the very few times in her life that she boarded an aeroplane.

  Back at the Greenhill flat, she stabilised and the threat of pneumonia receded. Nevertheless, she was too fragile to attend a dinner of the Royal Society of Literature on 25 June, so sent Sachie to receive her scroll as a Companion of Literature (C.Lit.).73 She was also obliged to miss the degree ceremony in Hull three days later where she was to have received her fifth honorary doctorate.74 Late in July, pneumonia finally took hold. She wrote to Evelyn on 12 August: ‘I am only just come out of hospital. I was picked up unconscious, and rushed to hospital, where the doctors thought I was dying, and told Elizabeth that if I survived the night I had a 50-50 chance of surviving. I had very bad pneumonia, and was delirious.’

  Evelyn was now fairly senile. Edith addressed her as ‘My darling’ and gave the only answer she could to her concerns: ‘I have written straight off to Mr. Musk, asking him to send you through some money.’75 That autumn, Evelyn fell and broke her hip and was never again able to leave the hospital. To avoid distressing Edith, who for all her complaints about Evelyn continued to care about her, Salter held back the news until mid-December. After Christmas, Salter was sent to Paris again to negotiate financial arrangements for Evelyn. Edith would continue the allowance, but the French authorities would have to cover medical expenses. Salter also went to the flat. With the help of a neighbour, she found in Edith’s old bedroom a further group of Tchelitchews hidden behind a bookcase, among them the pastel of Sitwell in profile that many regard as the finest of all his portraits. They also discovered a cupboard that had been wallpapered over. In it were fifty-six more of Sitwell’s large notebooks, including the manuscript of I Live Under a Black Sun.76

  Sitwell lent the portrait and other pictures to the now defunct Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle in New York to be part of a retrospective of 350 works of Pavel Tchelitchew from 21 March to 19 April 1964. The Museum of Modern Art lent Hide and Seek, and, after much diplomacy, the Soviet government lent Phenomena, which Tchelitchew had willed to the Russian people. The show was the main attraction on the opening day of the new gallery, drawing 3358 visitors, some of them merely curious about the building’s marble architecture. It was nonetheless a hugely successful exhibition, with Tchelitchew lauded by critics, among them John Canaday of the New York Times: ‘As a straight draftsman, Tchelitchew was as expert and graceful an artist as recent decades have produced.’77 There was no question of Dame Edith Sitwell travelling across the Atlantic, but she followed all the reviews, and heard from an excited Monroe Wheeler that her portrait was generally thought to be the best in the exhibition. Sitwell had the satisfaction of seeing Tchelitchew’s reputation higher than it had been for many years. It faded, of course, but not in the months she had left to her. Despite all the grief Pavlik had caused her, she could go to her grave believing that with him she had been involved in greatness.

  Through that winter the Australian composer Malcolm Williamson, later Master of the Queen’s Music, visited Sitwell on a number of occasions. A friend of Salter and Gordon Watson, he had recently completed an opera of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. Now, with the encouragement of Benjamin Britten, he was writing another based on The English Eccentrics, to be performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in June. Sitwell was thrilled by his work, and despite extreme pain attended its first London performance at the City Temple Hall on 14 July.

  Although her memory was slipping in matters of detail, Sitwell retained her wit, but whatever she had of good judgment deserted her. She experienced unremitting pain from sciatica, fibrositis in her arm, a lingering infection in her finger, eye-strain, and migraines. And she was still drinking far too much. She continued to rain letters upon the editors of newspapers and literary journals. Some of the letters were well crafted. For example, she saw in the TLS (14 November 1963) a review entitled ‘Ugh’, which compared reading various books by William Burroughs, including The Naked Lunch, to ‘wading upstream through the drains of a big city’. Her response appeared on the 28th:

  Sir,

  I was delighted to see, in your issue of the 14th instant, the very rightminded review of a novel by a Mr. Burroughs (whoever he may be) published by a Mr. John Calder (whoever he may be).

  The public canonisation of that insignificant, dirty little book Lady Chatterley’s Lover was a signal to persons who wish to unload the filth in their minds on the British public.

  As the author of Gold Coast Customs I can scarcely be accused of shirking reality, but I do not wish to spend the rest of my life with my nose nailed to other people’s lavatories.

  I prefer Chanel Number 5.

  Edith Sitwell, C.L.

  This was great fun for readers, but it was erasing the sense that she had been a considerable, perhaps an outstanding poet, and replacing it with the belief that she was an amusing reactionary and an irritable crank.

  She became unhappy with the noise at Greenhill – children playing, the lift door banging, the loud talk of other tenants. Suspecting that a leak from upstairs had been the cause of her recent illness, she told Waugh that she lived in ‘an odious small flat under one occupied by the son of the local undertaker, who succeeded in giving me pneumonia – in an effort, I suppose, to be of use to his Dad’.78 She also thought the place too small to receive her guests in and too small for the cats, of which there were now four. Salter looked for better accommodation in central London, but was refused by landlords who would not tolerate so many pets. Finally, in May 1964, she found a cottage in Hampstead, at 20 Keats Grove, across from what had once been the home of John Keats. David Higham would be one of her new neighbours. Best of all, the landlady liked cats. While Salter set up the new house and Farquhar took a holiday, Dame Edith went to Bournemouth with another nurse. Francis stayed with her there and, as he told Victoria Glendinning, watched her drink a double martini at breakfast.79 It was about this time that she was asked by a journalist how she felt: ‘Dying, but apart from that I’m all right.’80

  Upon her return to what she called ‘Bryher House’, Sitwell found all her books assembled in one place for the first time in decades. Her Third Folio of Shakespeare was displayed in a glass case. Her Tchelitchews were hung throughout the house, and the lost portrait from Paris was placed on the wall opposite her bed. Since she seldom stirred from bed, that painting was in her sight most of the time until she died. Sitwell declined in the early summer, but rallied under treatment from a new doctor. When Julian Symonds tried to start a row with her in the pages of the London Magazine – a clever piece of geriatric bear-baiting – she had to delegate her side of the argument to John Lehmann.

  In September, she received a visit from Marianne Moore, who wrote to Osbert on 13 September:

  Edith – She seemed to me, firm and resolute, – was in bed, waited on by ardent Sister Farquhar; and presently Miss Salter came in – so encouraging and beautifully dressed. Sister Farquhar made tea despite my protest and Edith let her delay my Taxi, for I was just leaving, so fearful of doing Edith harm. In fact I had written to her, a little detailed news of our London experiences and plans – so I would not be tempted to elaborate and stay too long. Edith’s left forefinger was bandaged – very trying for her – an infection following pneumonia … Hoping in spite of all, that I may see you and Edith, somehow, some sunny day – in New York, valiant Osbert.81

  Father Caraman visited her and expected on one occasion to hear her last confession, but as Edith told one of her last visitors John Freeman, ‘I routed him.’ She said she did not feel like a pious conversation with the priest so pretended to be asleep, but she opened one eye and glimpsed him in a chair beside her bed, ‘surreptitiously helping himself to the cat’s biscuits’.82

  Salter stitched together the fragmentary chapters of the memoir, and on 8 December, Graham Nicol, an editor at Hutchinson, came with illustrations for the book. Sitwell grumpily rejected some photograp
hs of her parents. He told her that her work on it was now finished and that there would be proofs soon. She said, ‘Thank the lord for that.’83

  That night she suffered a haemorrhage and was taken to St Thomas’s Hospital for a blood transfusion. Francis saw her briefly. Sachie and Georgia hurried to London and were waiting in a corridor with Reresby when a doctor told them that she had died of heart failure.84 On 14 December, a Requiem Mass was celebrated by Father Martin D’Arcy at Farm Street and her funeral took place later in the day at Lois Weedon church near Weston Hall.85 Osbert was too ill to leave Montegufoni.

  Georgia wrote to Evelyn Waugh that Edith was the first Catholic to be buried in the church cemetery since the Reformation.86 By mistake, she was actually buried in the plot beside Lady Ida. Knowing that his sister had spent most of her life trying to get away from her mother, Sachie obtained the permission of the Home Secretary to have her moved (The Times, 5 April 1965). Dame Edith Sitwell’s grave now overlooks a pleasant valley where sheep graze immediately beyond, and the grass slopes down to some quiet fish ponds. On her gravestone is a bronze plaque by Henry Moore of a child’s hand in that of an old man to signify the continuance of life through the generations.87 Engraved below it are lines from ‘The Wind of Early Spring’:

  The past and present are as one –

  Accordant and discordant, youth and age,

  And death and birth. For out of one came all –

  From all comes one.

  Abbreviations

  Persons:

  DH David Horner

  ES Dame Edith Sitwell

  GRS Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet

  GS Georgia Sitwell (Lady Sitwell)