Sassoon did not see Stephen again until the New Year, when he travelled down to Wilsford. Stephen had been at Fallodon with Lord Grey and appeared calm, though much subdued. Nanny Trusler had been a tower of strength to him there. Now in Wiltshire there were Sassoon and Edith Olivier to share the burden. Edith, unlike others of Stephen’s friends, did not resent the growing influence Sassoon was having on him. From the beginning she noticed ‘his quiet apartness’, which so few of the others possessed. Knowing of his success as poet and now as prose writer, she admired his willingness to encourage and guide aspiring writers like herself. It was remarkable what he knew about books, their provenance as well as their content. Above all she saw in Sassoon total dedication to helping Stephen regain his health and enjoyment of life. He could be relied upon to see Stephen through this crisis.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man was selling better than had been predicted. Faber decided to publish an illustrated edition and William Nicholson was commissioned to provide the drawings. Sassoon had called on him before going down to Wiltshire for the New Year. While Nicholson sketched, they talked, among other things about Robert Graves, Nicholson’s son-in-law. Sassoon had learned via Glen that what had been a ménage à trois – Robert, Nancy and Laura Riding – was now a ménage à quatre, an Irish poet named Geoffrey Phipps being the fourth. William Nicholson agreed with Sassoon that Graves had become ‘rather impossible’.

Someone else discussed was Max Beerbohm who, Nicholson said, was in town. This set Sassoon talking, Max being his hero as a writer, exceeding even Surtees in the use of wit and observation. Max and his wife Florence lived in Rapallo, on the coast road between Genoa and Viareggio. Their visits to England were few. Sassoon had sent each of his privately printed volumes to him as a token of esteem. But Max was not a good correspondent and rarely acknowledged a gift. This did not diminish Sassoon’s admiration. He did not feel the same warmth towards Beatrice and Sydney Webb, whose portrait Nicholson had just completed and Sassoon was invited to view. On entering the upstairs studio he was taken aback to find, sitting at a small desk, none other than the ‘incomparable Max’. They had last met in May 1923 at Gosse’s house when Sassoon had declared that in his opinion Max ‘was one of the best authors’. Their renewed meeting, at 11 Apple Tree Yard, was the beginning of their friendship, and of Max becoming the arbiter of Sassoon’s prose – especially the punctuation. January 9th was a red-letter day: Max and Florence came to Campden Hill Square for tea. They met Stephen, whom they liked; the liking was mutual. This high point encouraged Sassoon to start work on a second volume of Sherston, entitled with monumental unoriginality Memoirs Continued.

He also became friendlier with Rex Whistler. In February, Edith Olivier invited the two men to the Daye House for a weekend. Edith adored Rex. As for Rex’s feeling for Edith, that might best be described as puppy-love, Edith being more than 30 years his senior. She had a gift for making her home a centre for friendship and a harbour of calm and stability. The contemporary of their parents, she did not inhibit the young and enjoyed their vitality. Edith lived by clear standards of morality which emanated from a deep Christian faith, but she eschewed the judgemental. Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant and Rex Whistler warmed to her optimistic personality, as did other young people she came to know in the twenties. The relationship was symbiotic; their gift to her was unconditional friendship that released her talents as a writer. She had always wanted to be published, but her father’s suspicion of the arts in general put such ambitions beyond her reach. Now these young people rekindled the dormant ambition. She wrote romantic fiction and was moderately successful. It did not make her a fortune but for one whose financial resources were limited, every penny was a boost. Edith flourished in the last 25 years of her life in a way she could not have imagined.

She may well have inveigled Whistler and Sassoon down from London to help keep their friendship on an even keel. Rex was sensitive to the way Sassoon was monopolising Stephen to the exclusion of those whose friendships with him went back further than his. Even so, the weekend proved a happy affair, although it began with a near tragedy due to Sassoon’s reckless driving. He ploughed into a pond, which fronted on to a pub. Infuriated, the owner offered no help, but fetched a billboard, which bore the words THIS POND IS PRIVATE. It was Edith who had to summon help to ‘dig out poor Rex and Sieg’.

Whatever his other friends may have thought, Sassoon was determined to support Stephen through his period of grief and Stephen seemed not to object to being monopolised. His dependency grew; some friends noticed it, but if Sassoon knew of other people’s resentment, he ignored it. All that mattered was Stephen’s health. Actually most people were surprised by Stephen’s resilience. The outward appearance was deceptive. There was a recurrence of the TB germ. He was sent back to Haus Hirth for treatment and an extended period of convalescence. As ever, the faithful Nanny Trusler went with him. The Hirths, in particular Tante Johanna, were dedicated to nursing the tubercular and Stephen was much loved by them, while Sassoon was regarded as a hero. Dr Kaltenbach from Heidelberg believed that the best treatment for Stephen was a procedure known as pneumothorax, in which the lung is collapsed in order for it to rest. This, followed by plenty of fresh air, rest and food, brought recovery – sometimes.

In London, working at his book, Sassoon received a letter from Eddie Marsh telling him that he had been awarded the Hawthornden Prize for 1929. He replied: ‘Your letter made me sing in my bath. This prose success has astonished me.’ The success also brought him a shock when in February he received a letter from a Mr Edgar Newgass, who was somewhat put out by the description of him in Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. Sassoon’s use of the alias was not always effective. As Tony Lewison he sold the famous ‘Cockbird’ to Sassoon for the give-away price of 50 pounds. The offending sentence in the book was: ‘We marvelled more and more that anyone could be such a mug as to part with him for fifty pounds.’ The implication was that Newgass in the guise of Lewison had been taken for a ride.

Newgass was gracious enough to accept the explanation. His mother, who lived in Frant, was an acquaintance of Theresa’s; Newgass was at Henley House at the same time as Sassoon and a contemporary of Hamo Sassoon at Cambridge. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man elicited another more pleasant letter from Dorothy Hanmer, sister of Bobby and Sassoon’s former girl-friend, now wife of the Master of the Grafton Hunt, Harry Hawkins, and living at Daventry, Northamptonshire. She had received a copy and letter from Sassoon, who confessed to having passed her once in Bruton Street in London, but been too unsure of himself to speak: ‘I often think of the old days, I think we were both shy in those days! I have just read your book and loved it, it is most awfully interesting, and I think I know more about it even than most people.’ But Sassoon’s aliases foxed her when she wrote, ‘“Dick” at Litherland is Bobby of course?’ when in fact it was David Thomas.

Sassoon was looking forward to seeing Stephen again at the beginning of April in Germany. Edith Olivier and William Walton went to Haus Hirth a few days before him. The expenses of the ever-impecunious Walton were met by Sassoon, who had paid for his first trip there. They found Stephen in good spirits, having put on a few pounds. Edith wrote in her diary: ‘Tante Johanna says the specialist from Heidelberg writes full of hope over Stephen’s physical recovery, tho’ wondering how any one so heavenly, so unerlich, so spiritual, can face this rude world – Thinks him a Fra Angelico or a Botticelli. Is dazzled by his personality. Isn’t that marvellous from a German scientist.’ On 4 April, after lunch, Sassoon arrived and Edith noted: ‘Such a delight. He is most vivifying and so lovable. Everyone here adores him, host and hostess, and he adores them all.’ Edith also wrote that ‘Stephen’s happiness is beyond anything.’ On 15 April, Sassoon sent a letter to Glen saying that the doctors had given their permission for him to spend an hour in the afternoon and evening in Stephen’s room, that there was no danger of infection and they were ‘wonderfully happy’. A week later Stephen celebrated his twenty-third birthday. He came down to a party at lunchtime and opened his cards and presents.

Stephen’s health by May had greatly improved. The daily treatments continued and all the signs were good. If there was a cloud in the sky it was Nanny Trusler, whose vitality was showing signs of decline and she was becoming confused. The decision was made by Sassoon to move out of Haus Hirth into a vacant property in the nearby village of Breitenau. They had secured the help of an English nurse called Brambling, and each morning Stephen went to a local convent-cum-hospital for treatment. Everything was idyllic, marred only by Nanny Trusler’s condition. Stephen was not aware of the extent of the problem but he knew something was amiss and fretted. The decision was made to send her home to England. It was a sad parting. Although she had long been incapable of lessening the demands made on Sassoon, her presence was important to Stephen’s contentment. On her departure, Stephen’s dependence on Sassoon deepened, as did Sassoon’s commitment to him. Eddie Marsh, as Chairman of the Hawthornden Prize, asked Sassoon by letter whether he would receive the prize in London at the award ceremony. ‘I must remain here with Stephen,’ was the uncompromising reply. In the event the prize was accepted on his behalf by Edmund Blunden. This most faithful of friends was always solicitous of Stephen and never failed in his letters to send him warmest greetings. In fact, most of Sassoon’s friends accepted the friendship. So long as ‘old Sig’ was happy, so were they.

Theresa’s reaction, according to Sassoon’s diary for 9 June 1928, was, ‘she thinks S. “a dear boy”’. At a later date, probably post-1933, that original opinion carries an amendment: ‘she very soon decided otherwise! – divining his essential heartlessness’. It is unlikely that she would have approved of this friendship if she suspected there were sexual aspects to it, but she knew that it was counterproductive openly to oppose her son’s actions. There is a letter she wrote to Stephen acknowledging a drawing he had sent her. It is dated 5 May. The year is omitted but likely to be 1928, some eight months after Sassoon and Stephen met.

The letter gives the impression that she was struggling to find something to say. It is without doubt an echo of what her son described as his mother’s calling voice: ‘formality tinged with reserve’. Before leaving for Germany, Sassoon had written to Glen, concerned about Theresa’s health. She had, he wrote, ‘a slight infection of both lungs. Her eldest sister, Mrs Donaldson, died last night and this will not aid her recovery.’ Sassoon had a real fear that Theresa would die suddenly and leave him bereft. Even the slightest cold would awaken foreboding in him. Stephen’s fear of losing Nanny Trusler was understandable to Sassoon. At the end of July Stephen was advised to return home. He arrived in time to take his last farewell of the woman who meant as much, possibly more, to him than his mother. She died on 14 August, aged 71. Within nine months Stephen had lost the two most important people in his life: Sassoon now occupied that central place.

Sassoon set himself two aims: to keep Stephen occupied and to prevent his strength being drained by the demands of inconsiderate friends. Providentially the first aim coincided with Stephen’s intention to refurbish the interior of Wilsford and redesign some of its exterior aspects. It was symbolic of a new beginning. Sassoon ensconced himself at Wilsford for the rest of the summer and watched over Stephen. He was rigorous about visitors and, in the politest way possible, suggested they postpone their plans for a little while. One such was Rex Whistler, who took it not in best part – understandably so. Sassoon was also cancelling his own obligations to friends and this, in the case of the Sitwells, was cause for spiteful and resentful remarks. The boundary between monopolising and shielding was a difficult one to draw, certainly one that needed tact in its execution. Tact was not one of Sassoon’s gifts.

In September Glen was appearing in a new production of Chekhov’s The Seagull. To give Stephen a respite from the refurbishing at Wilsford, Sassoon wrote to Glen asking him to get tickets for the opening night. Stephen wrote afterwards to Glen in glowing words: ‘Your performance seemed like that of a being from another world.’ Blunden came to Wilsford, his genial spirit bringing bright moments to the autumnal days. It was through these surprises that Sassoon tried to keep Stephen in a happy frame of mind. It was not totally effective: grief persisted and a depressing heaviness hung about the invalid. Plans had already been laid by Sassoon to take Stephen away for the winter to the warm climate of Sicily, where Sassoon would work on the second half of the memoirs, revise some poems and develop others. Whatever excitement he felt about the trip, it could not have been greater than that on his having persuaded Max to read the manuscript of Memoirs  Continued. He had asked Max when he and his wife visited Campden Hill, never really believing that Beerbohm would agree. What was more, the Beerbohms had invited Sassoon and Stephen to bring the manuscript in person to Rapallo. However, before they could leave a crisis with a script by another friend occurred, over which Sassoon had to take immediate action.

In the summer the situation in the Graves household in Hammersmith had been a period of high drama verging on farce. Put briefly, Robert and Laura were lovers; Nancy and Phipps were lovers. Laura, however, was in love with Phipps and believed he was in love with her. Robert believed he could be loyal to Nancy without being faithful. Nancy decided to leave Robert and live with Phipps; Phipps had agreed to live with Laura. When the four of them tried to sort out the confusion and duplicity, Laura opened a third-floor window, got out on the ledge, said to the other three, ‘Goodbye, chaps’ and jumped. Her attempt at suicide failed but Graves himself came under suspicion of attempted manslaughter, the police at first thinking that he had pushed Laura out of the window during the quarrel. Literary London feasted on the incident. Sassoon, who was in Germany with Stephen, had heard the news. He wrote to Glen on 16 June from Garmisch: ‘The Graves–Riding episode appals me.’ Riding was not only seriously injured; she was in serious trouble with the police for suicide at that time was illegal. She was also in England on a visa. Her illegal action meant she was in danger of being deported. Graves wrote to Eddie Marsh asking him to use his influence with the authorities. Meanwhile Nancy went off with Phipps to Oxfordshire to be with her children. Graves was in terrible state of mind, made worse by a serious shortage of money. His publisher, Jonathan Cape, agreed to Graves’s idea of a war memoir to be published towards the year’s end. Graves worked at break-neck speed to meet a deadline set for October. The pressure this imposed on him and the other worries had their effect on the finished product; there were serious factual errors and indiscreet references. Anxious to get away from England, Graves and Laura Riding went to France, where they made the spontaneous decision to make a new start in Mallorca. They were living on the island when the book was published in mid-November.

Cape had sent a review copy to Blunden, probably at Graves’s suggestion. What Blunden read appalled him. As a reader of war memoirs he wanted accuracy and detail from authors. The war was a unique happening and nothing written about it should detract from that uniqueness. Graves on every count betrayed his calling. Writing to Sassoon, Blunden was savage in his criticism: ‘R. G[raves]’s reminiscential neuroses arrived and I began a letter about them to you, but broke off. I don’t think a worse book was ever flung together. His unreliability, obvious in all passages where I was able to test from my own information, destroys his war scenes. His self-importance and cold use and slaughter of others ruin the possible solace of a personality.’ Blunden condemned the ‘bombastic and profit-seeking display’ that Graves had made of Sassoon’s private affairs. Graves had included a poem in letter form which Sassoon had sent him in August 1918; its personal nature and allusions made it mostly inaccessible to the general reader and Sassoon clearly would not have wished it ever to be published. That apart, permission to publish the poem had not been sought. More serious was the reference to Wilfred Owen being accused of cowardice by his Colonel: ‘unpardonable and inaccurate’ averred Blunden. On Tuesday, 12 November Sassoon went to the offices of Cape and demanded a copy. What he already knew via Blunden paled into insignificance when his eyes lighted upon the content of pages 289/290. Graves, without naming Weirleigh, Theresa or Sassoon, wrote of a visit he made to a wounded fellow officer, who lived in Kent:

Sassoon recognised the story. Amazingly, for a perceptive reader, Blunden did not, on first reading, connect the extract with Sassoon’s mother. He suggested, in an effort to comfort Sassoon, that others would not realise its origin either, but Sassoon was taking no risks. The reviewers were already at work; someone like J. C. Squire, whom he met that morning with a review copy under his arm, was too experienced not to make the connection, especially as the preceding and succeeding paragraphs named Sassoon. He wrote to Cape threatening legal action unless the extract was deleted. Cape knew that the firm could not publish until it conformed. Next day, 13 November, he sent a telegram inviting Sassoon to his office and, with apologies, agreed to his demands. He then wrote to Graves, who in reply expressed surprise that Sassoon was upset but he was quite prepared to be led by Cape. Goodbye to All That was published on 18 November 1929, each copy containing pages with blank spaces.

As he left for the Continent, Sassoon was grappling with preoccupations. Stephen needed and demanded constant attention. In the next months this was unlikely to decrease. Graves’s book, with its numerous references to Sassoon, vitiated his enthusiasm to continue his own memoirs. Then there was Blunden, who was embroiled in painful discussions about the custody of his children, Clare and John, in anticipation of divorce proceedings. Sassoon had offered to become John’s legal guardian, an offer which Blunden welcomed but Mary rejected. Above all, he hoped that his mother would not read Goodbye to All That. It was not until they reached Rapallo and Max that these preoccupations receded. ‘An enchanting experience,’ Sassoon records, ‘the hospitality of Mrs Max so perfect. Their liking for me and Stephen so blissfully comforting.’ Max peppered their talks with the wry observations of someone who had the measure of the world. There was so much about him which reminded Sassoon of Robbie Ross, that matchless style of the sardonic dandy offering a wave from the other side of the war – ‘His style is so complete and so exquisitely entertaining. His leisurely anecdotes are so interwoven with his delicious mimicries and social intonations. Max produces a feeling of having had just enough good wine to make one happy.’

Sassoon was lighter of spirit as he travelled south to Naples and on to Sicily. His poetic voice returned with ‘Presences Perfected’ and ‘We Shall Not All Sleep’, both hauntingly beautiful and mysterious, audible only to ‘the ears of the heart’. In the drier, warmer climate, Stephen’s health improved. This was a mixed blessing. He made demands on Sassoon’s time, wanting to explore the countryside and scour the seashore for shells to add to his Wilsford collection. Sassoon, always resentful of time lost, of any distraction or interruption, explained to Stephen that there was a further purpose to their stay on Sicily apart from the restoring of his health. Stephen did not understand. A compromise was reached in which afternoons would be given to Stephen’s pursuit of shells, mornings to writing and evenings to relaxation and contentment. As the days passed the island captivated them. For Sassoon it was the finding of ‘The Heart’s Paradise’, a poem he composed in March and which had appeared in The Nation and Athenaeum on 5 April:

But that glimpse of Elysium was no antidote to the ‘mental inflammation’ caused by Goodbye to All That; it persisted, it rankled, it intruded upon his thoughts, it seemed to inhibit the ink from running smoothly through the pen. Putting the episode aside was not made easier by the correspondence from Blunden, which picked away at the sore. The letters contained epithets and asides which fell below Blunden’s normal conciliatory, genial approach to life in general and people in particular. Imitating Blunden’s schoolboy name-calling, Sassoon became silly and juvenile. Names such as von Rubberneck or a new title for the book, A Welsh-Irish Bull in a China Shop, did nothing to reduce the temperature.

Blunden was under duress himself and this may account for his perverse behaviour. His marriage was ending and he was working too hard. Sassoon wrote to admonish him for taking on too great a load of reviewing and editing but Blunden needed the income. His persistence in combing over the Graves’ matter might well have been a symptom of his frustration with his own tangled affairs. Blunden’s letters are out of character: he felt resentment towards Graves for making injudicious statements to Mary about his alleged drinking habits, and Graves’s tendency to pontificate on good and bad poetry, including Blunden’s – all these grievances created bad feelings between the two. The book opened the floodgates of pent-up resentment.

Leaving a situation half-resolved was not Sassoon’s way. This was especially true when feeling wronged or belittled. Neither could he allow those whom he loved or admired to be the victims of calumnies. When roused, Sassoon could be wounding and withering in defence and attack. In the case of Graves these feelings were tempered, but only slightly. Fed by Blunden’s letters and by his own nagging annoyance, he decided that he would write to Graves. The letter was restrained in its censuring of the inaccuracies; the spirit was friendly, despite the disappointment. In explaining why he had neglected Graves since 1927, Sassoon was almost apologetic. He emphasised that he too had commitments which were all-consuming and which brought their own worries. With that as a preface he itemised Graves’s actions which were responsible for the present state of their relationship, in particular his belittling of Gosse and his vulgar exploitation of Hardy’s memory, recounting the spiritualistic activity, Sassoon’s alleged comments about his mother’s irrational behaviour and his dead brother’s unworthiness of his mother’s grief. As for the references to the war, the Medical Board and its consequences, Graves’s defective memory had betrayed a friendship and portrayed a fiction. If the book confirmed anything at all it was Graves’s own self-importance. Naïvely, Sassoon ended the letter: ‘It may interest, and even please you to know that, although I made a new will last year, you will still be consoled for my death to the extent of £300 a year tax paid. I have written this letter to relieve my mind, and no reply is necessary. We must agree to differ, especially on matters of “good taste”. But I implore you not to write anything more about me.’

It was impossible for Graves not to pick up his pen. Typically he launched forth and forthrightly. Gosse was ‘a vain, snobbish old man’. Hardy was ‘good, consistent and a truthful man [but] I do not believe in great men’. As for Stephen, ‘never met him and you never mentioned him to me’. With some other asides Graves came to what were, to his mind, the cross-currents which disturbed their friendship: ‘your homosexual leanings; your jealousy of Nancy; later Nancy being in love with you (which no doubt you noticed and were afraid of); your literary friendships which I could not share; finally your difficulty with the idea of Laura’. Graves’s reply had cleverly moved the ground away from the alleged failings of his own book. Finally, with regard to the legacy, Graves was not interested in jam tomorrow. Three years before and during the intervening years he had needed assistance. If he had been helped then, he would not have been forced to write the book in haste and Sassoon, Blunden and others would not now be criticising it at leisure.

Sassoon’s response was immediate: an itemised list of Graves’s accusations challenged by his own counter-accusations. The correspondence was solving nothing. Like all quarrels it was profitless, even as a cathartic exercise. Graves did not reply – he had made his point and wanted to get on with his work. Thirty years later, in reply to a question about this altercation, Graves said: ‘He had quarrelled with me, not I with him.’

In one of those odd coincidences that marked Sassoon’s life, Graves’s letter reached him on 1 March, the day Sassoon’s memoir of the war reached the point where he meets Graves for the first time. In that memoir, Graves is re-named David Cromlech: the first name identifying him as Welsh, and Cromlech being the Welsh word for a Celtic burial chamber or grave. The portrait of Cromlech is not a flattering one: he is greatly disliked by his fellow officers and regarded as truculent by his superiors. Would the portrait of Cromlech have been more flattering had the letter and dispute come later?

Memoirs Continued was completed almost two years to the day after Sassoon finished Memoirs of Fox-Hunting Man. At the insistence of Faber, the title was changed to Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Sassoon was not happy with the final chapters – ‘If I had written them in solitude they might have been stronger.’ But he did not regret the time spent with Stephen, collecting Venus Ear shells and then sitting on the beach cleaning them. As they prepared to leave Sicily, the irritations caused by Stephen and the petty disputes between them slipped into the background. He had been happy – and he was still – but it was a happiness tinged with foreboding.

In Sicily

During the return journey to England Sassoon was plagued with doubts about the future: ‘I dread any human relationship which will make demands on me.’ A week later he is more specific, seeing the friendship resolving itself into a conflict ‘in which I must choose between giving up my work as a writer or giving up my enslavement to Stephen’s possessiveness’. When they reached Paris, Stephen’s favourite city, but one which always made Sassoon miserable, they quarrelled: ‘A sad ending to our half-year abroad.’ Sassoon had always struggled with Stephen’s mercurial temperament – childlike and childish. Sentences from the diary speak of the need to handle him carefully, of tearful outbursts because his trustees were counselling more prudence in Stephen’s spending, and Sassoon having to coax him back into feeling happy again: ‘I am sometimes very clumsy with him, forgetting how easy it is to hurt his feelings. Learning how to manage S., I am being taught not to be egotistical and domineering.’

Stephen went to Wilsford; Sassoon to London. He was happy to see Blunden again, despite the continued pressure under which ‘little B’ tried to keep together the different strands of his life. And there was cricket! The Australians were touring and an afternoon at Lord’s watching them play Middlesex brought relief to troubled spirits. This was the first match he had watched in two years – too long an absence. He wrote – almost in mitigation for such an omission – that he ‘had read the scores every day’. He regarded the summer as the season for revising his work, sometimes for re-writing but never for creating. Above all it was the season of freedom, for getting out and about and walking. Weirleigh in June was incomparable. Theresa was in high spirits: Fenner the housekeeper was laid low with phlebitis and nothing reinvigorated Theresa more than having someone in the house ill. Weirleigh, however, now had competition for Sassoon’s loyalty – Wilsford. Walking the lanes and across the Wiltshire Downs, he was entranced by their beauty and the solitude offered but Stephen’s erratic temperature marred the carefree days of middle June. This was followed by a rapid decline in his energy. Nurse May, who had come to Wilsford to nurse Stephen full-time, brought worse news to Sassoon: the latest sputum test had revealed TB. ‘My heart became like a lump of lead.’ They waited for Dr Kempe to arrive before telling Stephen. Sassoon wept as he had done 40 years before over his consumptive father. It was Edith Olivier who came immediately and concurred in Sassoon’s conviction that Dr Kempe and the others were not taking the situation seriously enough and how much better it would be if Stephen returned to the care of the German doctors and Haus Hirth. Rex Whistler phoned about his visit to Wilsford the following weekend. Sassoon annoyed him by suggesting he stay with Edith at the Daye House. Sassoon suspected that part of Stephen’s decline was due to friends encouraging him into too much excitement and activity: ‘I have to cope with S.’s friends who all want to come and see him.’ Sassoon’s instincts were right but the friends misinterpreted his motives. Another dissident was Nurse May, who objected to Sassoon busying himself with matters medical. Edith Olivier began to suspect that Nurse May’s objection was based on her own infatuation with Sassoon: ‘It is the fury of a woman scorned,’ declared the romantic novelist.

‘I am going to keep everyone away for the next two weeks if possible,’ Sassoon wrote in his diary and he was successful in his efforts. But the style and tone of his letters were too pedantic and ruffled the feathers of old friends like Cecil Beaton:

The first visitor came a month later – Glen Byam Shaw, who stayed during the first weekend of September. Friends such as Rex and Cecil Beaton were peeved at their exclusion from Wilsford when Sassoon’s intimates were given an unimpeded welcome. It was very petty but, as Sassoon learnt, pettiness was characteristic of these relationships. Glen and Edith Olivier realised the sacrifice as well as the effort Sassoon was making to save Stephen. He was even exceeding Stephen’s own family in his concern to secure the best medical advice. So involved was Sassoon that he did not recognise the signs of Stephen’s selfishness when on 23 September he was told that Stephen had decided to be alone for at least the next 10 days. Sassoon left Wilsford.

He took full advantage of being back in London, dining with E. M. Forster and with Blunden, who was busier than ever at The Nation, with the Morrells and the Waltons. All made their enquiries about Stephen. Sassoon was high in his optimism – Stephen had gained nearly two pounds in weight. ‘All he needs is rest, air, and food, and freedom from worry,’ he wrote after visiting Wilsford on 4 October. In fact things were looking up generally. Dick de la Mare wrote to say that Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man had sold over 27,000 copies and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer had topped 24,000.

Max Beerbohm and William Nicholson encouraged him to start a third volume, based on the post-war years. The possibility had already presented itself to Sassoon who, as a start, had taken the relevant diaries down to Wilsford, believing at the time that he would be spending all the autumn and the winter with Stephen. There were doubts in his mind about ‘meddling in the memoirs prematurely’. There were other obstacles, too: ‘The parts about love-affairs must of course be separated from the rest. (They make uncomfortable reading.)’ They would also be illegal reading. Gabriel Atkin would only feature, if at all, as an acquaintance from the north.

On 8 October he dined at the Reform. Perusing the guest list, he read the name of his erstwhile lover. They met, they shook hands, but Sassoon did not speak to him and that evening only conversed with Gabriel’s host, Sir Roderick Meiklejohn, friend of Robbie Ross and resident at Half Moon Street. Sassoon’s diary records that Gabriel was looking ‘healthy but much coarsened’. He was at the Reform for a private dinner to mark the opening of an exhibition of his watercolours; Sassoon made a point of visiting it. During the five years since last Sassoon had seen him, Gabriel had been a male prostitute first in Lyon and then in the south of France. Sassoon’s financial help to him had ceased years before and would only have recommenced had there been evidence of reformation. In 1930 he married Mary Butts, a minor writer and, like himself, careering towards disintegration with the help of drink and drugs. The marriage ended in divorce. By 1936 they were both dead, Gabriel at 39. If Sassoon felt anything for him on that night at the Reform it went unrecorded.

Similarly with Philipp of Hesse, who married Princess Mafalda of Savoy, daughter of King Umberto the Second of Italy. They became two ne’er-do-wells in Fascist Europe, scuttling between Hitler and Mussolini, and on their behalf  using their royal connection to make contact with the Duke of Windsor. Having served their masters well, they were sent to Buchenwald, where Mafalda died in 1945 and from where Philipp was released. In his abandoned fourth volume of memoirs, Sassoon recalls friendships with the likes of Gabriel and Philipp as happening at a time ‘when sex was making a fool’ of him. While in London he also met another couple from his past – Jim and Delphine Turner. He recorded the meeting with a vicious dismissal of Turner: ‘Five years ago I parted from the Turners. He is a recognized failure and I am ditto a success.’ The entry is an exception to the usual charitable reticence employed by Sassoon when writing about those with whom he had quarrelled. Where his anger did spill on to the page, he usually revised the entry. This one remained unaltered – clearly he meant what he wrote.

Sassoon returned to Wilsford for what he thought would be a prolonged visit but, within four days, on 4 November his diary records: ‘Stephen has lost a 1lb – my presence excites him. So we arranged I should stay away until 22 November. We parted with emotion and I went upstairs to pack and caught sight of my white face in the glass. Such scenes are very trying. S wrings my heart. He is so pathetic and childlike.’ Stephen was continuing to play cat-and-mouse with him. Sassoon put it all down to another bout of weakness. The week before Christmas, having invited Sassoon for the Tuesday, Stephen sent a telegram postponing the visit by two days, then sent another telegram on the original Tuesday telling Sassoon to ‘come at once’. In a hired Daimler, the enthralled Sassoon went to Stephen, who greeted him with complaints of being neglected for so long. Edith Olivier, Walton and his mistress, Imma Doernberg, Princess of Erbach-Schonberg, came to lunch on Boxing Day. They caught only a glimpse of Stephen. As 1930 died, Sassoon stood on the doorstep at Wilsford and listened – ‘New Year Bells were sounding clear and peaceful and a drift of a white cloud across the stars.’

In a letter to Glen dated 17 January, Sassoon complained of feeling nervy, a condition he attributed to the constant attention he was giving Stephen and his lack of company. The isolation was of his own doing: his ban on visitors was strictly adhered to and continued to cause offence to many of Stephen’s friends. Sassoon believed that the invalid himself did not want visitors and was being ‘sensible and self-controlled’ about everything; Sassoon was not on his own at Wilsford, nor doing the nursing. Nurse May was there full-time but she and Sassoon continued to be at loggerheads. Stephen observed it all from his bed, probably more than a little pleased that people were fighting over him, but he tired of the diversion and in February decided that Sassoon must leave the manor. It was his second expulsion, for which he blamed the nurse not Stephen, and he fully expected to be back in Wilsford soon and Nurse May out of a job. While waiting for the call, he took himself away to Switzerland for April and May, where William Walton and Princess Imma were on holiday in Asconia. From there on 19 May, he gleefully wrote to Glen that Nurse May had been replaced by Nurse Turnbull. The change of regime brought an invitation for Sassoon to visit Wilsford in June.

When they met he found Stephen little improved in health or demeanour. There was little possibility of rekindling their affair but Stephen invited him to visit again in July. Came the day and came a letter postponing the arrangement, Stephen pleading a chill. The cat-and-mouse game affected Sassoon’s brittle temper. ‘I’ve been so disagreeable lately,’ he wrote to Glen, who was hoping to see him before leaving for a tour of South Africa, a meeting Sassoon postponed more than once. Another symptom was his inability to settle down to life in the Campden Hill Square flat. He booked into the Hyde Park Hotel; clearly minimalism in furniture and limited space were no longer on the agenda. By the autumn nor was London: he moved out and never lived there again.

In October 1931 he took a lease on Fitz House in the small Wiltshire village of Teffont Magna (Edith Olivier and her sister Mildred had once lived there). Situated on the southern perimeter of Salisbury Plain, it was also within easy distance of Wilsford and Stephen. This was a strange move, when to all appearance their affair was petering out. Sassoon nursed the hope that the embers would flare again. He was not invited to Wilsford but was kept informed of Stephen by the two sisters who tended the gardens there, Beryl and Eileen Hunter, whom he nicknamed ‘Really and Truly’. They also allowed him to stable his newly-acquired horses there. To be riding again after nearly eight years was a therapy; being close to Wilsford, even though exiled from it, brought its comfort. But the agony of exclusion was bruising, especially when he heard in November that Rex Whistler had been allowed to visit. Six months had passed since Sassoon had seen Stephen. There was a letter from him in August, a birthday message in September and in December ‘a frostily inscribed New Year Card’.

He could find no escape from the pervasive desire to be with Stephen. There had been a distraction when Theresa was taken seriously ill at Christmas and underwent an operation in January. ‘The only good result,’ he told Glen, ‘was that it made me realise how much she means to me and what a wonderful character she is.’ His letters to Glen make it clear that he still believed himself to be central in Stephen’s life – ‘I do not intend to be discarded without a fierce struggle, because I can’t help believing that any future he has depends very much on me for its success.’ His tone was just as earnest when writing to Max Beerbohm: ‘He could never be moderate in anything he did; and as at least half of me is loitering about in his locality waiting for him to get well, I am not an impartial judge of his methods of enduring this dreadful illness. But if only we could do something to help him, obstinate little creature as he is.’

Perhaps he should have followed Cecil Beaton’s example and just sent him a bunch of red roses and gone about his own business – but then Stephen was his business. Rex Whistler when he visited just indulged his friend with gossip and nonsense. Few if any understood Stephen better than Rex. If only Sassoon could see him again but without that possibility, he could only rely on friends – William Walton, Edith Olivier and the Hunter sisters ‘Really and Truly’ – for news. Then in August, as a result of persuasion by his cousin Violet Bonham Carter, Stephen agreed to see him. Inevitably their conversations were strained but at the end of the second, on the 19th, there was a trace of the old harmony – not enough, however, to hide from Sassoon that something was terribly wrong.

Stephen’s lungs were declared free of tuberculosis but he had become the victim of a more sinister affliction. Sir Henry Head in the light of much that he was told by Sassoon deduced the illness was psychological: Stephen was in the grip of a neurosis. His biographer writes, ‘The pent-up emotional stresses of the last years – Pamela’s and Nanny’s deaths – had been held back to some extent by his affair with Siegfried; as that began to break down, so the trauma of past loss manifested itself.’ Stephen had leant on Sassoon but found no release in a relationship that was demanding rather than consoling. Having lived in a world of make-believe, a world created for him by his mother and in which he was indulged by Nanny, he was emotionally incapable of handling reality in two of its most powerful manifestations – life-threatening illness and death.

In October he was admitted to Swaylands, a private clinic in Penshurst, Kent. The Cassel Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders, as its name suggests, was another Craiglockhart. Sasson visited him there twice in November and three times in February. There was no invitation to visit on 21 April, Stephen’s twenty-seventh birthday. Sassoon wrote to Swaylands rebuking Stephen for his tantalising, teasing behaviour, which was destroying their friendship. The rebuke was met with crushing disdain and dismissal from Stephen and delivered via his specialist, Dr T. A. Ross.

Indeed, there was nothing more anyone could do.