Word: osbert
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...scions, says Sir Osbert Sitwell, have a tail. A scion's tail, Sir Osbert explains, is the life of his ancestors, who spread out behind him like a peacock's fan, and whose influence is present "in every gesture and look, in every decision he takes." Sir Osbert is not only a scion with a tail that runs back almost to Piltdown man, but one of Britain's most iridescent contemporary writers (England Reclaimed, Escape with Me). Left Hand, Right Hand ("the lines of the left hand are incised unalterably at birth . . . those of the right hand...
...Osbert's father was fourth baronet and Lord of the Manor of Long Itchington. "It is quite evident," he once remarked, "if you've read the family letters, that we've been working up toward something for a long time." At these words Osbert "experienced a slight lifting of the heart." But his father was not referring to the literary notoriety of his three children.* Sir George, wealthy landlord of the great Yorkshire estate of Renishaw (inherited by Sir Osbert in 1943) believed that art was merely "part of the general make-up of the cultured...
...propose to do much," Sir George would say casually, "just a sheet of water and a line of statues." He also liked practical jokes, if he was not the victim. Once he arranged a collapsible Chippendale chair for a stout alderman, then accidentally sat on it himself. When Osbert laughed, Sir George reproved him sternly: "I might have most seriously injured my back...
Psittacosis and Circus Clowns. Periodically, Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell visited their fabulously wealthy grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Londes-borough. When the Earl went bathing, a mile of red carpet was laid down from his Scarborough villa to the sea. When he inherited his estate, he promptly gave all his chief servants checkbooks "so that they could draw on his funds . . . without worrying him." An excessive fondness for parrots caused the Earl's death (in 1900, from psittacosis). His hawk-faced wife, who once caused Napoleon III to burn with a hard gemlike flame, ran Londes-borough Lodge...
...famed U.S. Portraitist John Singer Sargent put the whole Sitwell family on canvas. (The picture is now at Renishaw.) "No picture, I am sure," says Sir Osbert, "could have given the artist more trouble, for my father held strong views concerning the relationship of the patron to the painter." Though Sir George rarely mounted a horse, he insisted on being portrayed in a dark grey riding jacket and boots...