ir George Reresby Sitwell, fourth baronet of Renishaw, came of age on 27 January 1881. In June, to take advantage of warmer weather, there was a great party in celebration in the grounds of the Hall, attended by all Derbyshire as well as the tenants, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech congratulating his nephew being reported by The Times in full. It looked as if the golden years of Sitwell Sitwell had returned, once again based on solid wealth.
Already unmistakably distinguished, George was over six feet tall, slim and well built, with aquiline features, reddish hair and curiously pale blue eyes. He wore a moustache (later a pointed beard) and possessed the art of dressing in such a way that you knew he was well dressed but could not say why. Impeccably mannered, he was at the same time aloof, although he had plenty of charm if needed. Despite his children comparing him to Melone’s portrait of Cesare Borgia, he looked exactly what he was – a late Victorian, upper-class Englishman of the ‘earnest Eighties’, who would not have seemed out of place in one of Anthony Trollope’s last novels.
A lady who met him at about this time described George to her husband. ‘A curious specimen of highly bred and educated young England, twenty, and full of Galton’s books on heredity, physiological and psychological questions, old prints, the German school of etchings . . . He told me what he would like best would be to live at Nuremberg and collect old books.’1 He also told her, ‘I often suffer from nerve exhaustion myself, but with me it takes the form of rheumatism in the deltoid muscle, and yields at once to Galvanism.’2
Too aware of his gifts, an only son without a father who was idolised by his mother and sister, he had grown up obsessively self-centred. If he had not inherited Louisa Lucy’s religion, he possessed her frugality and puritanism, her love of beauty, and much of her kindness. An impish, impenetrably private sense of humour that he never intended anybody else to share was all his own. (His jokes were always with himself.) He was the hardest of all the Sitwells to understand because so complex.
He had fitted in at Eton well enough, contributing a poem, ‘Parodies Regained’, to the Eton Chronicle and playing the Field Game, an uninspiring form of football. For the rest of his life he ordered clothes from the Eton tailor, Tom Brown (if sometimes patronising Henry Poole). He made few friends there, however; and nor did he make any at Oxford, despite his guardian writing seventy letters of introduction. But he joined the Christ Church Shakespeare Society, and at one meeting read from Macbeth – the parts of the murderer Lennox and the third witch. He also rowed, hunted a bit and played tennis.
While fond of his mother and sister, he was glad to escape from their stifling piety, and became an atheist. His sceptical attitude towards the next world was confirmed when as an undergraduate he exposed the celebrated medium, Mrs Florence Cook, seizing hold of her during a ‘séance’ at the British National Association of Spiritualists, an incident reported in the Daily Telegraph for 13 January 1880. He was so proud of this feat that he included it in his Who’s Who entry – ‘captured a spirit at the headquarters of the Spiritualists’.
Yet George respected his guardian, staying at Lambeth Palace whenever he visited London until Tait’s death in 1882. Just before he came of age, the archbishop sent him a letter of advice (signed ‘A. Cantuar’) which, despite his lack of religion, he followed in most respects. Throughout his life he gave at least a tenth of his annual income to charity, while he made his mother a generous allowance on top of her jointure of £700, endowed his sister with a decent fortune in case she chose to marry, and contributed handsomely to the family fund for Uncle Fred’s maintenance in the asylum until he died in 1884, besides helping Fred’s three sons.
He acted on the archbishop’s admonition: ‘act up consistently in all your tenancy responsibilities both in directly doing what is right to the people on your estates, and also in seeing that as large a number of other people as possible benefit by your good fortune’.3
On buying The Scarborough Post George briefly turned foreign correspondent, travelling to Moscow in 1883 for Alexander III’s coronation at the Kremlin. His patrician appearance, set off by the uniform of a Yorkshire Dragoon (dark blue piped with silver and a plumed steel helmet), gained him a seat in the cathedral – unlike such veteran journalists as George Augustus Sala. He was therefore able to send home an eyewitness account of Metropolitan Leontius crowning the giant Tsar – ‘Sasha the Bear’ – and his tiny Danish Tsarina.
Rather than the fussy eccentric of Osbert’s malicious portrayal, Sir George in his early years was thoroughly conventional, hunting, riding in steeplechases and cycling, playing lawn tennis, golf and cricket. (He was an admirer of Dr Grace.) He installed a golf course which is still in the park, and gave the local cricket club land to use for a pitch. He became a Justice of the Peace, served as High Sheriff and joined the Carlton Club in London. He also enjoyed part-time soldiering in the Yeomanry as a Captain in the Yorkshire Dragoons, attending a cavalry course at Aldershot in 1885.
What he hoped for most was a career in politics. Between 1884 and 1895 he contested the generally Liberal seat of Scarborough as a Conservative in seven elections, winning in 1885, losing the next year and winning again in 1892, when he ousted the Gladstonian Liberal Joshua Rowntree. He was a tireless canvasser, knocking on every voter’s door, and a natural orator who was at his best addressing audiences of over a thousand in the days before megaphones. Having sat as an MP during the premierships of Gladstone and Lord Rosebery, asking a few questions in the House but never making a maiden speech, he finally lost the seat in 1895.
Archbishop Tait had told his godson to put aside any income from coal in case the seam ran out, so he invested it in South African mining stock before most financiers saw the potential of its gold and diamonds. He also bought shares at Newcastle in three newly built merchant ships (Thropton in 1887, Scottish Prince in 1888 and Asiatic Prince in 1889), besides buying two small railways. He even acquired shares in Gimbels, the new American department store. Nor did he forget his guardian’s advice to make sure accounts were settled twice a year – ‘every bill to be examined and paid, and that you always ascertain that you have received more than you have spent . . . guard against excess in any one point of expenditure or any failure in receipts’.
The most looked-up-to figure in Scarborough was the fabulously rich Lord Londesborough, who lived at Londesborough Lodge in The Crescent, a large neoclassical villeggiatura that stood next door but one to Wood End. As the town’s new MP, Sir George was invited to lunch. Understandably, he was gratified by the summons.
Lord Londesborough possessed a tall, thin, swan-necked daughter of seventeen, Ida Emily Augusta Denison, who looked like a Burne-Jones heroine. Her small and lovely head was adorned by a Grecian nose and huge dark brown eyes, while she carried herself majestically, having been taught deportment by the ballet dancer Marie Taglioni. A complete lack of brains, possibly because of a childhood illness, was disguised by her cheerful, lively manner. Almost illiterate – no governess on earth could have worked the necessary miracle – she was pitifully unworldly, with an allowance of one shilling and sixpence a week pocket money, even if her mother saw that she wore pretty clothes.
In autumn 1886 George proposed to Ida after meeting her twice, at luncheon. He admired not just her beauty but her quarterings, her mother being a daughter of the seventh Duke of Beaufort and thus a Plantagenet through a bastard line. George was marrying up. However, with several daughters to marry off, her parents welcomed the prospect of such a wealthy son-in-law – especially Lady Londesborough, who dreaded being left as a badly-off widow.
Only the Londesborough’s medical adviser Dr Dale struck a note of caution, strongly advising that in view of Ida’s immaturity the wedding should be postponed for a year or two, but her parents ignored him. As for Ida herself, far from being married against her will, as her daughter Edith claimed, she fancied she was deeply in love. There are some pathetic letters in the archives at Renishaw, childishly expressed and badly spelt, in which Ida tells George how devoted she is to him, promising to be a good wife.
‘My own darling, I rejoice to hear of your happiness, though you have taken away poor old mother’s breath by talking of being married in a month,’ Louisa Lucy wrote to George on 9 October, having received an affectionate letter from Ida. ‘I am quite sure that I shall love her, she has a warm heart and a sweet, simple nature.’ Canny as always, Louisa Lucy, too, was worried about Ida’s childishness, but reassured herself by quoting ‘Uncle Richard’ as saying, ‘I do honour a man who will go into a schoolroom and choose for himself.’ She sent Leckley to Renishaw to ensure that everything would be in perfect order for the house’s new mistress.4
The wedding took place in London at St George’s, Hanover Square on 23 November 1886, conducted by Randall Davidson, Dean of Windsor (who was the late Archbishop Tait’s son-in-law) and by Lord Londesborough’s chaplain, the bride’s brother acting as best man. The choir sang ‘The voice that breathes o’er Eden’. A lavish collection of presents included costly jewellery for Ida and – because of his interest in history – an ancient teapot, recently dug up at Scarborough Castle, for the bridegroom. The Dean told Louisa Lucy how struck he had been by Ida’s beauty and by the couple’s ‘quiet reverence’ during the service. But it was a miserable, foggy day. Immediately after the reception they left for Renishaw and married bliss.
According to one story, during the very first night a tearful bride was found wandering down the drive in her nightgown. She insisted on going home to her mother, who had apparently neglected to tell her about the physical side of marriage. However, Lady Londesborough sent Ida back to her husband at once and they left Renishaw to continue the honeymoon abroad.
When the couple returned to Scarborough at dusk on New Year’s Day 1887, the local lifeboat crew drew their carriage from the station to Londesborough Lodge, escorted by 500 cheering townsmen who waved flaming torches. The spectacle was marred by a woman in the crowd dropping dead from fright.
George and his bride settled at Scarborough, which, apart from a sojourn at Renishaw every summer, was to be their home for many years. They rented a number of houses, including Belvoir Lodge, until Louisa Lucy gave them Wood End in 1903. Three children were born: Edith in 1887, Osbert in 1892 and Sacheverell in 1897. Not unsocial, the couple acquired a small circle of Scarborough friends – including George du Maurier, famous for exquisitely drawn cartoons in Punch, some of which made flattering use of Sir George and Ida as models.