Osbert

Or Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet to give him his full name and title, was involved in the posts of 12th, 19th and 20th just past.

And now I have just finished the third volume of his autobiography, 'Great Morning'.

The strongest impression was that this was an aesthete who, apart from doing time in the Grenadier Guards (of whom he had much fonder memories than those from his rather shorter time with the Horse Guards), seemed to be very keen on opera & ballet and seemed to be on dinner terms with many of the great and the good from those walks of life, the likes of Sergei Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky. He also did his time in the trenches of the first war which, unlike many of his friends, he survived to live to the ripe old age of 75, to die at Montegufoni, his castle near Florence. Is he turning at his grave to know that the place is now a wedding venue, complete with wifi and farm holidays? See http://www.montegufoni.it/en/castle_tuscany.php. But be careful, for some reason, gmaps is no longer dishing out map references, and those given at the web site are near enough but not exactly right: 43° 40. 25 N 11° 05. 42 E.

I share one anecdote from his grenadier days, from the time just after the start of the first war. It seems that he had been reported by a temporary officer for having taken drink with a private soldier in the Café Royal, something quite clearly forbidden in Standing Orders. But Osbert explained to the Lt. Col. of the Regimental Orderly Room, that the private soldier in question was a famous sculptor by the name of Jacob Epstein whom he did not propose to cut just because he had gone for a soldier. The Lt. Col., on this occasion anyway, allowed the matter to drop. Wikipedia confirms that Epstein did indeed serve, albeit briefly, and also supplies a thread linking him to one Wynne Godley, a gentleman whom I once disturbed, by phone, while he was at his luncheon. Presumably, since he was disturbable, sandwiches at his desk. Very pleb.

Another of his friends was one Sir Denis Anson, of whom he relates two incidents. The first concerned his nipping twenty feet down a drain pipe to recover a handkerchief that a young lady had dropped from a balcony, the second his diving off a pleasure boat, to his death, early one morning in the Thames. The first incident reminds me of the hero in 'The Return of Don Quixote' (1927), the second of the male lead in 'Zuleika Dobson' (1911), the one post-dating and the other pre-dating the incidents in question. What, I wonder, were the connections, if any?

Then there was his spendthrift mother and his odd if learned father. A father who while spending huge sums of money on buildings, contents and gardens, used to spend happy hours working through his sons' accounts to make sure that they were managing wisely on their allowances. He was also a habitué of the British Museum reading room, to which he used to take his special cushion.

Moved this morning to get the other two volumes from the Amazon second hand department, rather more expensive than the Raynes Park free library. But I have learned that there are a lot more copies floating about over the waters, either in Eire or the US, than there seem to be in this country. I drew the line at buying another copy of the engaging book about Brighton, by the same author, which we once owned, then retired and now regret. See January 24th 2007 in the other place, a time when I clearly had more on, less time on my hands and notices were rather shorter than they are now.