espite spending so much time in Italy, Sir George had scarcely been idle in England. He continued to be a part-time soldier, commanding the Second Volunteers, Prince of Wales Yorkshire Regiment, from 1904 until 1908, when he retired as an honorary Colonel. Admittedly, this involved little more than a fortnight’s army camp in the summer during which, in uniform and mounted on a charger, he reviewed his troops and watched them drill or perform simple manoeuvres.
Where he achieved most was in his writing and at Renishaw. He had already written one or two books, which he had himself printed at his own press in Scarborough, notably Letters of the Sitwells and the Sacheverells. According to his son, his literary output also included such titles as Lepers’ Squints, The History of the Fork, Domestic Manners in Sheffield in the Year 1250, Marriage Chests of the Middle Ages and The History of the Cold. No copies survive, which is scarcely surprising as they never existed outside Osbert’s imagination – he took every opportunity to make his father look a fool.
When his major Italian expeditions came to an end after the purchase of Montegufoni, George wrote a book about what he had seen. In September 1909 John Murray published On the Making of Gardens: Being a Study of Old Italian Gardens, of the Nature of Beauty, and the Principles Involved in Garden Design, by George Reresby Sitwell. Sadly, this little volume, less than ninety pages long, did not cause the sensation for which he had hoped, although it was admired by experts.
Arguing that his father was obsessed by the Mediterranean view that gardens were meant as places of rest and peace rather than for displays of blossoms, Osbert later claimed he knew nothing about flowers and did not even like them, believing they must not attract attention by hue or scent but ‘form vague pointilist masses of colour that could never detract from the view’.1 This was simply not true, as can be seen from Sir George’s unequivocal statement that ‘It was a new revelation of beauty to the present writer when in 1882 he saw at Wortley a bed filled with single dahlias and herbaceous flowers.’ (Wortley Hall near Sheffield, then the seat of the Earls of Wharncliffe, is still famous for gardens which include an immensely long and beautiful herbaceous flower-bed.)
While damning the book’s lush style as a Victorian period-piece from the days of Walter Pater – ‘couched in phrases often of stilted beauty’, etc. – Osbert grudgingly conceded that the principles it defined were invaluable (‘so my gardening friends, whose judgement I trust, tell me’) in the practical design of gardens, in the counterpoint of light and shade, and in the correct use of water as a device for variation.2
The Story of an Old Garden, written by Sir George in 1921 but never printed, tells us how in the 1880s he had excavated the foundations of the formal garden destroyed by his great-grandfather. From surveys and rentals, he found that it dated from before 1594 and had been remade when the house was built. A decade later, some boxes of old legal papers were sent to him. ‘My feelings may be imagined when I opened out a large plan upon parchment of the year 1766, showing the various gardens in detail.’3
He then added a restored version of the original gardens to the overall scheme that he had designed and laid out in 1886–9. This was essentially a symmetrical scheme. The best way of appreciating it is to stand in the centre of the Middle Lawn’s steps with the Hall behind you, from where you can see that the gardens are merely a foreground to the view of the natural boundaries beyond – which is why he placed the statues looking away from the house, to draw the eye outward. The flowers on the borders were limited to pink, blue or mauve, giving a sense of peace that did not distract one’s eye from the symmetry.
From 1899 to 1904, Renishaw had been leased to a rich Sheffield businessman. When Sir George regained possession, he set about transforming the gardens in the light of what he had seen abroad. This was when he added the statues and marble fountains he had bought in Italy. Among the statues were two by Tiepolo’s friend Caligari, placed at the south end of the ‘Middle Lawn’. One is Diana, with a little hound, and the other is Neptune, who ‘has risen from his watery realms and is drying his backside with a stone bath towel’ (this description of Neptune can only have come from Sir George’s grandson, Reresby).4 He also added two carefully sited lakes, which were dug by unemployed fishermen whom he hired at Scarborough.
While working on the gardens, Sir George had consulted an expert on the subject living nearby: Francis Inigo Thomas, whose mother was Louisa Lucy’s sister. Thomas had illustrated Blomfield’s The Formal Garden in England (1892) and designed some famous gardens, including one at Sandringham. He sent plans that incorporated his ideas. In addition, George was in close touch with the renowned Gertrude Jekyll, besides seeking the advice of her professional partner Edwin Lutyens – the pair were famous for their new ‘natural’ style of gardening, which combined shrubs and herbaceous borders while making full use of the architectural background. Yet what was done at Renishaw was essentially George’s own creation, as can be shown from The History of an Old Garden.
Even while living in Tuscany between the wars, he returned almost annually to make further improvements, his last addition being the fish pond in 1936, although this was not to be completed for over three decades. Renishaw suited perfectly his axiom that a house must be subordinated to its garden. The grim northern aspect of the Hall, with its bleak grey walls above flat, flowerless turf, hid what lay beyond, so that after walking through to the other side of the house the visitor was spellbound by the unexpected, enchanting vistas to the south.
At the same time, Sir George renewed Renishaw’s interior, creating a new stairwell with a (modern) ‘Jacobean’-style staircase of natural oak which was later stained black by Osbert. He also employed Lutyens to redesign the billiard room as another fine drawing room that linked the Great Drawing Room with the ballroom. It was given a coved ceiling, windows on to the park, a French window into the garden and two black columns flanking the ballroom door.
Lutyens also refurbished the ballroom, which now housed many of his employer’s recently acquired paintings and furniture (notably the enormous Brustolon chairs). Sir George even suggested that he might redecorate a room in the ‘Aubrey Beardsley style’, but did not ask him to take the idea any further.5 While he enjoyed Beardsley’s drawings, it may well have been a joke – Lutyens never realised that his host enjoyed teasing him.
When Edwin Lutyens first came to Renishaw in September 1908, he reported to his wife that besides helping to restore the gardens and the work inside the hall, ‘Sir George wants me to build a little water palace, one room on the lake, which would be a delightful thing.’ This suggestion, too, may have been a joke. Lutyens was on firmer ground, however, in observing that his new employer ‘affects all things Italian’. Presumably he was referring to his unfashionable taste for the Baroque.6
Sir George never ceased to improve Renishaw, placing a particularly fine Neapolitan cabinet in the dining room. However, in 1911, because it was costing him £500 a year in insurance fees, he sold one of the house’s great treasures – Perugino’s Three Maries – to John Pierpont Morgan for £30,000.7
He worried about every aspect of decoration, down to the last detail. In June 1905 his agent received a letter from him listing which rooms were to be repainted and repapered and how, and which pictures were to be cleaned, varnished or rehung. A French window must be made for the ballroom, opening onto the lawn, so it could be used as a drawing room. ‘Take down all curtains and put up again in a month’s time,’ ordered the letter. ‘Syringe poison into all the worm-holes in the furniture’ – the furniture being the old oak chairs from seventeenth-century Renishaw.
Lady Ida never commented on what her husband was achieving inside the house or in the gardens. She spent as much time as possible on a chair in the Gothic porch on the north side, proclaiming her disinterest. However, she presided graciously enough over his entertaining. George could well afford this, since his changes at Renishaw and Montegufoni were all paid for by money he made on the Stock Exchange.
Far from unsocial, he gave annual parties at the Hall for the Doncaster races in September, although racing bored him. These parties were always on an extravagant scale, with chefs and extra footmen being engaged and German bands hired (housed in the Sitwell Arms) while new linen and delicacies were purchased, with the family’s silver plate brought in from the vaults of the local bank. He often entertained as many as thirty houseguests.
He also went regularly to dinner parties in London. On 2 June 1910 he recorded in his notebook,
The Williamsons had at dinner Prince Frederick (of Prussia), Mrs George Cornwallis-West – formerly Lady Randolph Churchill – Lord Hothfield, Sir Robert and Lady R. Manners, Sir Trevor (he collects old Japanese lacquer) and Lawrence and their daughter, Sir Hugh Lane, Mr Creighton, Mr Pierpont Morgan the great collector, Ida, Edith and I.
Lawrence was president of the Royal Horticultural Society, and Lane (who went down with the Lusitania) was a lover of Impressionist art, his collection becoming the nucleus of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.
Characteristically, in the entry for the dinner party, Sir George also notes, ‘Lutyens writes that for flat stone borders to flowerbeds he never puts less than 15 inches.’8 – for his mind always remained fixed on Renishaw. Osbert Sitwell says dismissively that his father ‘abolished small hills, created lakes, and particularly liked to alter the levels at which full-grown trees were standing’.9 In reality, inspired by what he had seen in Italy, he had accomplished something breathtakingly original, transporting the Mediterranean to Derbyshire.
In doing so, he showed that he was one of the finest landscape gardeners of his age. Osbert claimed mockingly that his father told him he wanted to go down in history as ‘the great Sir George’; but that is what he was. He received little recognition in his lifetime, from his children or from anyone else. One day, however, a grandson would understand his vision for Renishaw Hall, and would see that it came true.