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Britain's famous libel laws are hard on critics, fun for artists. Britain's famous Sitwells love fun. Last month, between bombs, they had their fun in court. The Three Sitwells are not an acrobatic act. They are Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the fractious, fastidious scions of Sir George Reresby Sitwell, fourth Baronet, Lord of the Manor of Long Itchington. Osbert is a poet, essayist, novelist (Before the Bombardment, Escape With Me). Sacheverell is an outstanding authority on baroque art and Liszt, author of a distinguished travel book (Roumanian Journey) and much verse. Edith usually dresses like...
...Edith Sitwell (by her own proclamation) has no sense of humor. But all the Sitwells are prankish as hippogriffs. Osbert's impish autobiographical notes in Who's Who are said to freeze the other Sitwells into stoney stares of amusement. All three delight in caressing authors and critics they do not like with their individual or corporate paws. Edith once called a poem of John Masefield's "dead mutton" and Poet Cecil Day Lewis "an electric drill with the electricity left out." She and Osbert presented prizes to "the authors most representative of the tedious literature...
...critics think it out loud. Most of them feel like the young man who at one Sitwell function whispered: "You know, the Sitwells are so cruel; so devastatingly cruel, don't you think? Do you think they are going to be too awfully cruel today?" Last year when Edith Sitwell's Anthology appeared, rash Reviewer Hamilton Fyfe thought he would like to find out how cruel the Sitwells would be if somebody criticized the Sitwells. In the 98-year-old London weekly Reynolds News he wrote: "Among the literary curiosities of the nineteen-twenties will be the vogue...
...last month the brothers strode into court attired in black Homburgs, black overcoats, elegantly-gathered silk scarves. Six-foot Edith wore a hat like a medieval mitre clapped dead-straight on her resolute forehead. The courtroom was packed with publishers, booksellers, literary celebrities, including pro-Sitwell witnesses, Novelist Charles Morgan (The Fountain), and Sinologist Arthur Waley...
...Edith testify: "I have advertised my books in the way all tradesmen advertise their wares...