#osbertsitwell — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #osbertsitwell, aggregated by home.social.
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"How delicious were those long picnics on the lake, in the wide, flat-bottomed boat, blue-painted, that yet rots somewhere in the disused stables; those long, hot, calm, drowsy, sun-spangled afternoons of childhood spent on that mirror-flat, cool surface, the slow movements and the sound of the rowlocks as Davis listlessly plied the oar, the hours in which we drifted, yet never wasted our time, for if Edith and I leant over the thick blue wall of the boat, we could watch the fish flickering in their checkered mail through trailing avenues of weeds."
One single sentence. One vivid memory.
#OsbertSitwell #EdithSitwell #Arcadia
Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 110
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"How delicious were those long picnics on the lake, in the wide, flat-bottomed boat, blue-painted, that yet rots somewhere in the disused stables; those long, hot, calm, drowsy, sun-spangled afternoons of childhood spent on that mirror-flat, cool surface, the slow movements and the sound of the rowlocks as Davis listlessly plied the oar, the hours in which we drifted, yet never wasted our time, for if Edith and I leant over the thick blue wall of the boat, we could watch the fish flickering in their checkered mail through trailing avenues of weeds."
One single sentence. One vivid memory.
#OsbertSitwell #EdithSitwell #Arcadia
Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 110
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My arrival, I think, cannot have impressed my parents so much as I would have liked, for they forgot to register my birth until six years later, in 1898, after my brother had been born.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 80
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My arrival, I think, cannot have impressed my parents so much as I would have liked, for they forgot to register my birth until six years later, in 1898, after my brother had been born.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 80
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Osbert Sitwell on George IV, whose mistress Lady Elisabeth Conyngham is one his mother's ancestors:
"[The king] enjoyed her company and that of her sons and daughters, because he loved family life --- so long as it was not that of his own family ---, he loved young people --- so long as they were not his own young people."
#OsbertSitwell #GeorgeIV #LadyElisabethConyngham
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 53
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Osbert Sitwell on George IV, whose mistress Lady Elisabeth Conyngham is one his mother's ancestors:
"[The king] enjoyed her company and that of her sons and daughters, because he loved family life --- so long as it was not that of his own family ---, he loved young people --- so long as they were not his own young people."
#OsbertSitwell #GeorgeIV #LadyElisabethConyngham
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 53
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Osbert's father, Sir George Reresby Sitwell, had inherited from his excentric and unrestrained ancestors the expensive habit of re-landscaping everything he owned.
Osbert quotes an old letter from his father's agent, outlining in desperation an overwhelming series of re-design plans by George Reresby. Among them,
"a new drive and terrace are to be made through Twelveacre Plantation and Goodness knows what is to be done to entertain a crowd of people in the field between the Woods if Osbert comes of age."
The book adds a footnote by Osbert:
"In the end, owing to various circumstances, nothing happened at all."
That footnote alone is worth an entire book!
Excentricity begets excentricity.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 25.
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Osbert's father, Sir George Reresby Sitwell, had inherited from his excentric and unrestrained ancestors the expensive habit of re-landscaping everything he owned.
Osbert quotes an old letter from his father's agent, outlining in desperation an overwhelming series of re-design plans by George Reresby. Among them,
"a new drive and terrace are to be made through Twelveacre Plantation and Goodness knows what is to be done to entertain a crowd of people in the field between the Woods if Osbert comes of age."
The book adds a footnote by Osbert:
"In the end, owing to various circumstances, nothing happened at all."
That footnote alone is worth an entire book!
Excentricity begets excentricity.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 25.
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Miss Charles Murdoch.
Osbert's great-grandfather was Sir George Sitwell, who married Susan Tait, the daughter of Craufurd Tait. Craufurd in turn was the son of John Tait and Charles Tait, née Murdoch. (*)
Yes, that's right, John had married a girl called Charles.
Why was she called Charles? The Murdoch's were an eminent Scottish family of Jacobite persuasion, who even after the defeat of the Jacobite cause wanted to signal their allegiance to the current claimant, the "Young Pretender", Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, grandson of James VII. Hence their daughter's name.
Politics by first name.
A bit like the stern names the Puritans gave to their children, "Deliverance" or "Prudence" or "Abstinence".
#OsbertSitwell #BonniePrinceCharlie #Jacobites
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 22.
(*) Wikipedia refers to Craufurd's wife as Charlotte, rather than Charles. I trust Osbert on this.
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Miss Charles Murdoch.
Osbert's great-grandfather was Sir George Sitwell, who married Susan Tait, the daughter of Craufurd Tait. Craufurd in turn was the son of John Tait and Charles Tait, née Murdoch. (*)
Yes, that's right, John had married a girl called Charles.
Why was she called Charles? The Murdoch's were an eminent Scottish family of Jacobite persuasion, who even after the defeat of the Jacobite cause wanted to signal their allegiance to the current claimant, the "Young Pretender", Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, grandson of James VII. Hence their daughter's name.
Politics by first name.
A bit like the stern names the Puritans gave to their children, "Deliverance" or "Prudence" or "Abstinence".
#OsbertSitwell #BonniePrinceCharlie #Jacobites
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 22.
(*) Wikipedia refers to Craufurd's wife as Charlotte, rather than Charles. I trust Osbert on this.
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Osbert Sitwell on his great-great grandfather:
"Typical of the age in which he lived, his existence was chiefly divided between sport and building, the two curses of my family, though as a rule not to be found united in a single person, but ruining alternate generations."
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 14
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Osbert Sitwell on his great-great grandfather:
"Typical of the age in which he lived, his existence was chiefly divided between sport and building, the two curses of my family, though as a rule not to be found united in a single person, but ruining alternate generations."
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page 14
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Though I have loved the companionship of the clever, the beautiful, the sensitive, yet the pretentious have never pleased me, and with the simple have I often found refuge.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page x
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Though I have loved the companionship of the clever, the beautiful, the sensitive, yet the pretentious have never pleased me, and with the simple have I often found refuge.
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page x
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Men die, even the most evil, and stupidity perishes as much as grace. By its nature, the triumph of ape over man can be but temporary. Between them Art is, and always has been, the dividing line.
#OsbertSitwell #art #resistance
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page vi
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Men die, even the most evil, and stupidity perishes as much as grace. By its nature, the triumph of ape over man can be but temporary. Between them Art is, and always has been, the dividing line.
#OsbertSitwell #art #resistance
Left Hand, Right Hand (1945), page vi
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Reading and re-reading these sentences again and again. Such powerful sentiments, expressed with such precision.
The Intriduction was written by Osbert Sitwell sometime in 1943-45. The sense of historical exhaustion is immediate and unmediated. Reading this passage in 2026, I can touch the end-of-an-era exhaustion of 1943 like I touch the coffee mug on the table in front of me.
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Reading and re-reading these sentences again and again. Such powerful sentiments, expressed with such precision.
The Intriduction was written by Osbert Sitwell sometime in 1943-45. The sense of historical exhaustion is immediate and unmediated. Reading this passage in 2026, I can touch the end-of-an-era exhaustion of 1943 like I touch the coffee mug on the table in front of me.
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All works of art that are purely imaginative --- poems, novels, stories --- are pulled out of the future as you may pluck a roasted chestnut out of the fire, scorching your hand in the process.
But in this cruel and meaningless epoch, behind the bars of which I now write, neither past nor future seem to have any existence; only the present which contains the dead ashes of the past.
Since the whole life and its background is being dissolved to chaos before our eyes, it is impossible --- because our balance from day to day remains too precarious --- to wrest a book from the future. In consequence, I have resolved to start the story of my life.
#OsbertSitwell #LeftHandRightHand
Macmillan 1945, page v
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All works of art that are purely imaginative --- poems, novels, stories --- are pulled out of the future as you may pluck a roasted chestnut out of the fire, scorching your hand in the process.
But in this cruel and meaningless epoch, behind the bars of which I now write, neither past nor future seem to have any existence; only the present which contains the dead ashes of the past.
Since the whole life and its background is being dissolved to chaos before our eyes, it is impossible --- because our balance from day to day remains too precarious --- to wrest a book from the future. In consequence, I have resolved to start the story of my life.
#OsbertSitwell #LeftHandRightHand
Macmillan 1945, page v
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Spending a couple of days in the splendid home of my aristocratic friend N, house-sitting and dog-sitting whilst he is taking his vintage Bentley to a racing event.
When I stay in another's home, I try to find a book from my host's library that is new to me and that somehow reflects on the host's life and personality.
Today it is Osbert Sitwell's autobiography, Left Hand, Right Hand. In four volumes, 1945-49. (Parts were published earlier in magazines from 1943.)
In my hand I hold the first edition of Vol I, published 1945. It was purchased by N's mother at the time, she signed it on the title page in her beautiful, energetic handwriting. N was a toddler when she read it.
I may quote a few passages over the next few days. Will post these separately, connected via the #OsbertSitwell tag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Sitwell
#Sitwell #LeftHandRightHand
#autobiographies #PersonalLibraries -
Spending a couple of days in the splendid home of my aristocratic friend N, house-sitting and dog-sitting whilst he is taking his vintage Bentley to a racing event.
When I stay in another's home, I try to find a book from my host's library that is new to me and that somehow reflects on the host's life and personality.
Today it is Osbert Sitwell's autobiography, Left Hand, Right Hand. In four volumes, 1945-49. (Parts were published earlier in magazines from 1943.)
In my hand I hold the first edition of Vol I, published 1945. It was purchased by N's mother at the time, she signed it on the title page in her beautiful, energetic handwriting. N was a toddler when she read it.
I may quote a few passages over the next few days. Will post these separately, connected via the #OsbertSitwell tag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Sitwell
#Sitwell #LeftHandRightHand
#autobiographies #PersonalLibraries