Edith Sitwell as letter writer: Reading the letters to Siegfried Sassoon

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 1995 by Rand, Thomas

Far down the hill of time she stands, Remote--with careless folded hands, As one whose alien spirit stays In far-off lands of other days.

What like is she? A Memory? An Echo? For her speech is low And wistful as the lilac scent Of summer evenings long ago.

Frail; spiritual.... Compact she seems Of old French songs half-heard in dreams, Sweet songs ... sad songs ... sung by the Loire By Rene--or by Inlegar,

In those old, misty, far-back times When Angevin kings had names like chimes--Fulk Rechin; Nerra; Charles Martel; Rene--and Geofffrey Grisegonelle.(7) (Housman 10)

Unimpressed, Edith wrote, "I have replied: 'The description deludes. I am not frail and spiritual, but large, loud, hearty, and beefy. I am a capable woman, with large red hands, and a cheery laugh. Please don't ever do it again, as my public will not forgive me for any deception.' ... I call 'Far down the hill of time she stands' simply rude. I'm not as old as all that." She closes the letter with the comment, "I say, can't you just feel the lilac scent when I'm talking about Squire, Noyes, Laura [Riding], or Humbert [Wolfe]. To say nothing of dear little Coward and Sackville West" ([October 5, 1923]). Housman's well-meaning evocation of the persona Edith constructed in "Colonel Fantock" is not far off the mark, but Edith would be the sole architect of her persona, and unwelcome overtures to Edith Sitwell herself met a protective facade, in this case a beefy woman with large red hands. In this letter, her defensive nature combined with her equally strong sense of fun to produce an anecdote that reads like farce. Edith entertained her friend Siegfried with a comic spectacle of mistaken identities: a stranger's caricature of Edith Sitwell provoked her comic self-parody because the former did not match the aggressive persona she adopted in her skirmishes in the papers with the likes of Noel Coward and Vita Sackville-West. Being Edith Sitwell was exhausting work, but a good deal of fun.

Sitwell had a keen ear for gossip, and, again as David Higham and others have noted, a talent for bettering a story in the telling (202). Whether she is relating her latest harrowing encounter with T. S. Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, or telling of a conversation with a policeman about how John Galsworthy was supposed to have bitten Thomas Hardy's dog, or explaining that a poem by Humbert Wolfe had made her friend, Helen Rootham, physically ill, Edith Sitwell is always in command of her material and exhibits complete mastery of detail and fine timing. W. B. Yeats was a friend whose company often provided Edith Sitwell with entertaining, if sometimes awkward moments. From 1927 to 1928, Yeats playfully pressed her to join the Rosicrucian order. She made a reluctant proselyte, but as a letter to Sassoon shows, she was delighted by Yeats's missionary efforts:

A few days ago I lunched with him [Yeats] at the Ivy, of all places in the world. The manager, overcome with awe, practically threw away all the theatrical managers and originals and copies of Miss Tallulah Bankhead, and devoted himself, most respectfully, to Yeats, thereby calling the attention of the whole restaurant to us.--I did not bless him, as Yeats (who would like me to join the Rosicrucian order) boomed out, in a bittern-like voice, every now and then 'Come to Rapallo, and my wife and I will lay Hands upon you'.....and 'Every time my wife and I put hands in our pockets, we bring them out filled with the perfume of violets and lilies,--by purely mystical means.' And (archly) 'a friend of ours has a mother who might well be called a bit of a witch ' (shades of George Robey)(8) and 'Dulac lit the candles with his fingers.'--The actor managers and the originals and copies of Miss Tallulah Bankhead couldn't get over it. Nor could I. ([October 30, 1928])