Word: renishaw
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Seven sitting rooms of the Sitwell family seat, Renishaw, were used as studies by Sir George. Piled upon their floors like snowdrifts were heaps of documents concerning his incredible projects and affairs. Boxes of papers were neatly labeled, though not often correctly: thus, the box inscribed "Osbert's Debts" might well contain instead papers on "Pig-Keeping in the 13th Century," or "The Use of the Bed," or "My Advice on Poetry...
...George Reresby Sitwell of Renishaw was an extraordinary man. He spent money like water, dabbled in medieval lore, invented a musical toothbrush that played Annie Laurie. In a milder way, his wife, Lady Ida, was extraordinary too. Though she invented nothing, she also spent money like water (she once paid a large price for a pig said to be psychic), as befitted a daughter of the Earl of Londesborough and a descendant of the royal Plantagenets...
...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 man." To prove it, he once tried to have "all the white cows in the park stenciled with a blue Chinese pattern...
...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...