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

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

It is little wonder she was impressed by Yeats's performance. In the next two decades she would herself become a public presence who, as many have testified, could easily command the attention of a roomful of people, and, as Sassoon himself noted, the development of Sitwell's later oracular voice owes something to her admiration of Yeats (Corrigan 157). Her letter to Sassoon reflects her obvious pleasure on receiving the great man's attentions, as well as her appreciation of Yeats's eccentricity and strength of personality, qualities she expressed in her own way in her poetry, dress, and public life.

As Yeats would discover, there was no room in her life for Rosicrucianism, but he remained one of her supporters, and earned her lasting gratitude when he came to her defense in a letter to Wyndam Lewis, seeming, to Edith Sitwell at least, to reprove him for his attack on her in The Apes of God: "somebody tells me that you have satirized Edith Sitwell. If that is so, visionary excitement has in part benumbed your senses. When I read her Gold Coast Customs a year ago, I felt, as on first reading 'The Apes of God,' that something absent from all literature was back again ... passion enobled by intensity, by endurance, by wisdom" (776).

By late 1931, Yeats was spending most of his time at Coole Park attending to Lady Gregory during her final days, but in October or November, he visited Edith Sitwell's London flat, 22 Pembridge Mansions. Although by this time Yeats was somewhat removed from the gossip of the London salons, he was well-stocked the day of his visit:

Yeats came to tea with me on Saturday, and was in perfect form. He was grand on the subject of the Graves-Riding-Nicholson household, and told me one fresh item, which you may, or may not, know. i.e. that Robert sent Mr. Phibbs to Alexandria to fill the professorship that he (Robert) had once filled.(9) But the day after Mr. Phibbs arrived, he most unfortunately went to a party, and there met a very gentle and insignificant looking aged Egyptian to whom he, at once, started 'showing off' about his radical views. The Egyptian enquired, suavely: 'Are you a Sinn Feiner?' Whereupon Mr. Phibbs, anxious to impress, replied: 'Sinn Feiner! I am an Anarchist' (which was quite untrue.) Next morning he received an official note telling him to leave the country within twenty four hours. The old gentleman happened to be the minister of Education. But, as Yeats says, the truth of the story can't be vouched for, as Ireland is the Country of Legend. ( [November or December 1931])

The public Edith Sitwell who moved easily in the company of Yeats and Eliot and delighted in the gossip of dinner parties is happily present in many of the letters. But readers of the letters to Sassoon will discover another Edith Sitwell that the public image has unfortunately obscured. As Stephen Spender has said, "When one knew Edith well, one understood her, and realized that her kindness was a completely redeeming side of her nature. She was a very compassionate woman.... One knows enough about people to realize that these seemingly irreconcilable things, are really very reconcilable" (Elborn 171). An interesting example of the tension in Edith's personality between her genuine sensitivity and kindness, and the better known qualities associated with the formidable public personality, may be found in her account of a dinner she attended at Arnold Bennett's house: