Sacheverell Sitwell
English writer
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Through World War I
Early life
Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire on 15 November 1897 and brought up in Derbyshire. He was the youngest child of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall, and the former Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison. Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell were his older siblings.
His paternal grandparents were Sir Sitwell Sitwell, 3rd Baronet and his wife Louisa Lucy Hutchinson (daughter of the Hon. Henry Hely Hutchinson). His maternal grandparents were William Denison, 1st Earl of Londesborough and Lady Edith Somerset (a daughter of the 7th Duke of Beaufort), who claimed descent through female lines from the Plantagenets.
Sitwell was educated at Eton College. In World War I he served from 1916 in the British Army, in the Grenadier Guards. After the war he went to Balliol College, Oxford but did not complete a degree, and was heavily involved in Osbert and Edith's projects.
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Career
Sitwell's poetry collection A Hundred and One Harlequins attracted some attention in 1922, but the first works to gain more widespread notice and acclaim were three prose studies of painting, architecture and music: Southern Baroque Art (1924), German Baroque Art (1927) and Spanish Baroque Art (1931). Cyril Connolly called Southern Baroque Art "a milestone in the development of our modern sensibility". A series of books on music and musicians - including Mozart (1932), Liszt (1934) and shorter essays on Scarlatti, Offenbach and Tchaikovsky (Valse des Fleurs, 1941) - were also highly influential.
The Dance of the Quick and the Dead (1936) established a new strand of his work, evoking "outcast and vagabond societies; their music, their dress, their customs and rituals". This was the first of a series of lengthy autobiographical, travel and art-based "fantasias" that are among his most original works. Later examples include The Hunters and the Hunted (1947) and For Want of the Golden City (1973). Although most often associated with exotic art, culture and foreign travel, Sitwell also established himself as a connoisseur of English art and architecture, with the publication of British Architects and Craftsmen (1945, issued as a Pan paperback, 1960), concluded by his final publication, the anthology Sacheverell Sitwell's England (1986).
Poltergeists (1940) reviewed poltergeist cases over the centuries. Sitwell concluded that many, though not all, cases could be explained by human trickery (conscious or unconscious) and hysteria. Journey to the Ends of Time (1959), was "a kaleidoscopic series of meditations on death and the possibility of survival".
As his poetry was so severely criticised, particularly by those who disliked the Sitwells in general, and although Canons of Giant Art (1933, including the highly praised poem 'Agamemnon's Tomb') was a work of considerable impact, he refused to publish any of his poems for many years. Constant Lambert's setting of his early poem The Rio Grande for chorus and orchestra (taken from The Thirteenth Caesar, and other Poems, 1924) was first performed and broadcast in 1928 and has retained its popularity. In 1967 Derek Parker published a selection of his poems in the summer edition of Poetry Review, including 'Serenade to a Sister', an elegy for his sister Edith. An Indian Summer (1982), with a preface by Peter Quennell, collecting together 100 of his best most recent poems, was his final volume of poetry.
Later life
Sitwell was an early member of the New Party, a group established in 1931 by Oswald Mosley and containing former members of the major British political parties.
In his later life he withdrew from the publicity that attached to the Sitwells collectively, instead preferring to travel and concentrate on writing. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his elder brother Osbert in 1969. He was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1984. His main residence was Weston Hall, Northamptonshire, the family home and he served as High Sheriff of Northamptonshire for 1948.
Personal life
On 12 October 1925 Sitwell married Georgia Doble, the daughter of Arthur Richard Doble, a wealthy Canadian banker. They had two sons:
- Sir Sacheverell Reresby Sitwell, 7th Baronet (1927–2009), who married Penelope Forbes, the daughter of Col. Hon. Donald Alexander Forbes (brother of the 8th Earl of Granard) and Mary Doreen Lawson (a daughter of Andrew Sherlock Lawson and granddaughter of the 14th Viscount Mountgarret), in 1952.
- Francis Trajan Sacheverell Sitwell (1935–2004), father of Sir George Sitwell, 8th Baronet. He was also a member of White's and St James's clubs.
Georgia Doble had difficulty adapting to married existence and missed the social life in London. Despite affairs on both sides, they remained deeply attached to each other until the end and never officially separated. The personal correspondence of Doble, preserved at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, include letters with David Stuart Horner and Frank Magro, Osbert Sitwell's partners, and friends like Lawrence Audrain, John Lehmann, Loelia Lindsay, René Massigli, Evelyn Waugh, and Mae West.
Sitwell died in October 1988 at the age of 90. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his elder son Reresby.