#29 English Women by Edith Sitwell
When seeking an explanation for the accomplishments of a high achiever we search between genetics and environment, and frequently find it impossible to allocate between the two. Nature or nurture. But how much more perplexing is the question when one family generation has three (or more) high achievers? Have they been driven by driven parents? Is it due to the outworkings of their particular version of sibling rivalry? Is it simply genetic?
The Sitwells were a remarkable family, from parents notable but not necessarily remarkable. Certainly solid though, with origins in sixteenth century iron-making (nails, saws) culminating in the “Gothic pile”, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, and a baronetcy. The father, Sir George Sitwell, fourth baronet, is described as eccentric and reclusive; and he wrote unpublishable books. The mother, Lady Ida, in addition to treating daughter Edith badly, also spent time in prison for fraud. How then was each of the three children of Sir George and Lady Ida a high achiever?
The middle of the Sitwell offspring, Osbert Sitwell, fifth baronet [1892 to 1969], was an accomplished writer – although eccentric enough to post a Who’s Who entry: “Educated during the holidays from Eton”. He wrote numerous volumes of fiction and poetry, plus five volumes of autobiography. He suffered from Parkinson’s Disease from his mid-‘60s, and had to abandon writing in his later years. He never married. By the way, the (one volume) 1999 biography of Osbert Sitwell by Philip Ziegler is very fine.
The youngest of the Sitwell offspring, Sacheverell Sitwell, sixth baronet [1897 to 1988] was also a writer – more than 50 volumes on art, music, and architecture, and 50 volumes of poetry.
And Edith, the older sister [1887 to 1964]? Her angular physique and her curved spine (attributed to Marfan Syndrome) were but parts of her eccentricity. In adult life she spoke in a declamatory style, and habitually dressed in black and wore turbans or toques. Yet she was sufficiently mainstream to be created a DBE in 1954. “She remains forever as a true British one-off.” Apart from simply being famous for being famous, Edith Sitwell is best remembered for writing the verses for Façade, and for reciting those verses (from behind a curtain) at the first performance. With music by William Walton, Façade was a cause celebre in 1922; and remains, today, one of the masterpieces of British music/verse/whimsy.
Having digressed to look at the Sitwells, now to see what Edith made of English Women. The book is a surprise: it is not, as the title might suggest, a survey of English womankind, the racial origins and admixture, the heroinism, the stoicism, the manifest virtues on display in wartime (this was 1942). No, Sitwell has taken English Women to mean a survey of some 20 individual women. As a project, I think that 20 potted biographies is an inferior endeavour to a broader survey but, perhaps, this was the area of Sitwell’s comfort or competence. Or an indication of her eccentricity. My copy of this volume is sans dust jacket, hence it’s without the publisher’s note that might explain the background. It is what it is, though; and Sitwell has some incisive comments.
The first chapter is nominally about Catherine Blake, wife to William Blake, painter and poet. But the one-line reference to Catherine Blake – “the most wonderful wife who has ever supported and comforted a man of genius” - serves simply as an example of the unrecorded English women to whom our author might have paid tribute had there been more space: “those women who have never found fame, but whose daily example has helped to civilise our race.”
Then follow the thumb-nail sketches. Here's a sample.
In less than one page of text Elizabeth Tudor (Queen Elizabeth 1st) [1533 to 1603] receives unstinting homage: “This strange contradiction of a woman whose life, seen from one aspect, was barren, seen from another, infinitely fertile, was consistent only in her greatness.”
Sarah Jennings, the Duchess of Marlborough [1660 to 1744], did not mince words, and this trait – notwithstanding her position as wife of the Duke and her prominence at Court – eventually alienated her to Queen Anne. “She had a soldierly courage and honesty, a character incapable of lying or of condescending to use tact, which appeared to her a minor form of lying. With this unbending character she had a violent temper which she made no effort to control.” She was prone to contradict, and would not allow the Queen an unwarranted last word. When the final estrangement came the Queen, even when challenged, offered no explanation. Sarah Jennings remained feisty to the end. As Sitwell puts it: “One by one the lights were put out in the house of the woman who had played so great a part in the social history of her age. But still she remained. She was eighty-four when the last light of all was extinguished and she was at peace.”
The mise-en-scene for the story of Lady Esther Stanhope [1776 to 1839] was extraordinary; and of her creation. Daughter of the Earl of Stanhope, Lady Esther “glittered angrily for a while in the society of London, then, having seen its true worth, left it forever……”. After the death of her fiancé in battle she retired to Wales, then six years later (in 1810) left Britain accompanied by her doctor, her maid, and her footman. She never returned, and after years of adventures settled at Djoun near the top of Mount Lebanon. In the meantime, her travels endeared her to the tribespeople of the Middle-East. “Her progress had been that of a queen”, and she wrote from Damascus that she was “the darling of all the troops, who seem to think that I am a deity because I can ride, and because I bear arms; and the fanatics all bow before me because the Dervishes think me a wonder.” In June 1813 she wrote: “I have been crowned Queen of the Desert……If I please, I can now go to Mecca alone. I have nothing to fear.”
Elizabeth Fry [1780 to 1845] made the time not only to be the “wise and loving” mother to her sixteen children but also to spend a lifetime doing great work for humanity. That work comprised the reform of the English prison system. Her first visit to Newgate – “this man-created hell, in which God must have appeared to the prisoners in the guise of a devil” – led to Fry founding a school in the prison, with a governess selected from among the prisoners! And to an enquiry by the House of Commons, at which Fry appeared. And to the formation of a committee for the assistance of prisoners. Soon, Sitwell asserts, “visitors to the prison saw no more an assemblage of abandoned and shameless creatures, half-naked and half-drunk…….the prison no longer resounded with obscenity and imprecations and licentious songs”. In time, Fry’s reach was trans-national, with influence in France and Germany; and (we are told) the Czar, under Fry’s influence, freed souls from debtors’ prison. Moreover, Fry was instrumental in stopping the persecution of Lutherans in Russia. “So deeply was she loved that her journeys resembled royal progresses, great crowds assembling and clamouring to touch her hand.”
At four o’clock in the morning of 8th September, 1838, the great paddlesteamer, Forfarshire, foundered in a severe storm on Harker’s Rock, a rocky island nearby to Brownsman Island and its lighthouse, the Longstone Light. Aware of the tragedy were lightkeeper, William Darling, and his twenty-two-years-old daughter, Grace. Through the gloom Darling and daughter could perceive the wreck, but could see no survivors. Yet there might be people clinging to the wreck. The Darling sons were away on the mainland, and it was up to father, who knew it was hopeless to try to row across, and daughter, who knew it was the right thing to try. The lifeboat could not handle the fierce sea, but the smaller 21-feet cobble was designed for local conditions......but ordinarily it took three men to handle the cobble! Grace made it clear that if her father would not go she would go alone. So, they went. The wild conditions determined that they take a roundabout route, some 1.5 km – and there were survivors! Four men (all seamen) and a woman were brought back to the lighthouse; and then those men and William Darling returned to the wreck and rescued four more – all told, nine survivors from the complement of 62. Grace Darling became a national heroine, a role that did not rest easily. A benefit fund was established. The Queen contributed. Artists vied to paint Grace’s image. In 1842 Grace Darling was diagnosed with consumption, and she died in October of that year, aged 26.
Does Edith Sitwell think that there is nothing left to say about Emily Bronte [1818 to 1848], or is she content merely to include Bronte in her list knowing that Bronte has already spoken eloquently for herself? We are given barely more than 400 words. The issue is Bronte’s lack of an external life: “The life of this woman of genius is like that of the wind and the rain, knowing no incidents and but few landmarks.” “There were incidents, but apart from these that wild life was lived in the heart and the mind.” The publication of the volume of poetry by the three Bronte sisters, and “the infinitely more important appearance of Wuthering Heights in 1847, these were the events of her life".
Sitwell concludes with a lovely tribute to Virginia Woolf, the only one of her profiles that is of her generation and known to her. Woolf [1882 to 1941] had died a year earlier. “She was allied to many things in nature; she had the profundity of a deep well of water. But when she was talking, and listening to the talk of others, you felt she was like a happy child chasing butterflies over the fields of an undying summer.” “In conversation with her everything became exciting. She made thoughts fly to and fro more quickly.” “Equally enchanting as talker and listener, she encouraged the conversation of her friends, she teased them gently, clapping her hands with pleasure and excitement when they scored some point.” “Her beauty was great and she had the kind of unconscious elegance of some tall thin bird, with its long legs and delicate feet, and wondering turn of the head. With this she had a charm which had occasionally an innocent mischievous character, like that of a child.” Wow!
Gary Andrews
