Bloomsbury in the Bathroom

The Bloomsbury group seem to be a popular subject at the moment.  No sooner had they featured in Victoria Coren’s series on Bohemianism (see my post from last month) than Vivien Whelpton was taking a group of Sassoon and Owen enthusiasts on a walk around that district of London, pointing out such sights as the location of the Poetry Bookshop.  Next thing you know, the BBC is showing a dramatisation of the careers of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell; perhaps this is not such a coincidence, “themes” being the broadcasting corporation’s latest big thing.

Then, purely by chance, Strange Meetings comes to the top of my bedside book pile and I find myself re-reading Harry Ricketts’ account of the historic encounter between Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at Eddie Marsh’s flat in Raymond Buildings.  The SSF has visited Raymond Buildings twice, but never been able to gain access (people must have thought we were bonkers, standing in such an unprepossessing side street reading poetry out loud).   Vivien’s group did somehow manage to get onto the premises, though I get the impression there was nothing particularly inspiring to be found within the walls; one would have to work hard to reproduce the atmosphere of those heady days, a century ago, when Brooke and his literary friends frequented the area.

Brooke was well-acquainted with Virginia Woolf, so much so that he once invited her to come skinny-dipping with him.  If Life in Squares is anything to go by, this was a bit of a trend for the family; Vanessa Bell was shown sharing the bathroom with her husband’s gay friend, the artist Duncan Grant, who later became her lover.  Brooke, despite – or perhaps because of – his angelic appearance, had relationships with many women (and some men) before his untimely death.  Like most of the writers who were part of the Bloomsbury Group, he also had a nice line in satire.  Having felt out of his depth in the discussion at Marsh’s breakfast, Sassoon went to the zoo and got an equally cool reception from the chimpanzees, which he then recorded in a poem that attempted to emulate Brooke’s style.

  

For the benefit of anyone who may have had as much difficulty as I did following the early scenes of Life in Squares, Vanessa and Virginia were the daughters of Sir Leslie Stephen, who, besides being a writer and critic, was an accomplished mountaineer.  In addition, he was an Anglican clergyman with "strong opinions" (as Virginia put it), who believed in long walks and “muscular Christianity”.  In addition, he had two sons.  The older of these, Thoby, became the head of the family when Sir Leslie died, and is shown encouraging his sisters to follow their natural instincts now that their father is out of the way.  The younger brother, Adrian, shared in the Thursday night gatherings that formed the basis of the Bloomsbury Group, and had a homosexual relationship with Duncan Grant, whom he introduced into the gathering.  Great things were expected of Thoby Stephen, who shocked everyone by dying of typhoid, aged 26, and never fulfilling his promise.

You will already have gathered that the web of inter-relationships, both intellectual and sexual, is extremely complicated.  Bloomsbury must have been a little like Coronation Street, with every cast member at some stage becoming involved with every other cast member.  I think, however, that the general public has greater difficulty feeling any empathy with the Bloomsberries than it does with the fictional characters of popular soap operas.  George Simmers has already picked up on a lot of this in his blog so I need not elaborate further.

Naturally, the most interesting thing about the Bloomsbury Group, from my point of view, is their tenuous connection with Siegfried Sassoon, achieved partly through the activities of Lady Ottoline Morrell, who generously gave “jobs” on her estate to men like Duncan Grant and Clive Bell (Vanessa's husband) during World War I to save them from having to take the punishments handed out to other conscientious objectors. Ottoline, incidentally, is alleged to have tried to lure Grant to come nude bathing with her in a Garsington fishpond.

Siegfried Sassoon would become a friend of several other members of the Bloomsbury Group, including E M Forster and John Maynard Keynes; most had, like him, been undergraduates at Cambridge.  Sassoon was not, however, a man who would ever have accepted a labouring job (which would have been a piece of cake for someone of his physical attributes) rather than facing the music.  We can be thankful that he chose to make his protest against the war in other ways.

Siegfried also knew Lytton Strachey and another "Bloomsberry", the critic Desmond McCarthy, well.  He claimed that Strachey’s intellect and gentility made him feel inferior, like “a beefy young rowing blue”.  Was this the reason he did not become a member of the group?  I think not; they were a well-established clique, together since 1905 and not open to new members (apart from relatives) by the time Siegfried came into close contact with them.  Nevertheless, his sense of inferiority must have acted to prevent him getting onto intimate terms with the group as a whole, as shown by his reluctance to accept a dinner invitation from Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1923 because he feared a “rarified intellectual atmosphere”; he was greatly relieved to find himself taken into their fold – though Virginia’s affection for him seems to have been tempered with a lack of understanding of his character and experiences.  In this, no doubt, she resembled many people, especially women, who had had little or no direct contact with the reality of war.  Although herself a Modernist, she sympathised with his dislike of T S Eliot, but thought him behind the times, as did the Sitwells, with whom he had been friendly for some years.

Sassoon's relationship with the  Woolf family, however, continues through Cecil Woolf, his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson, and their “War Poets” series of monographs as well as through Dr Wilson’s magnificent two-volume biography of Sassoon.  

High Society

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may be expecting this post to be about cricket, since you would be aware that the annual match between Matfield Cricket Club and Sherston's XI took place last weekend.  Much as I enjoy watching cricket, something even more interesting happened to me on my way down to Kent.  

Polesden Lacey, near Dorking, although it belongs to the National Trust, is not a particularly old house by British standards.  It was built in the early years of the twentieth century, on the site of an older house, and soon afterwards sold to a society couple, the Grevilles, who moved in the very best circles.  Following her husband’s untimely death (though of course after a seemly period of mourning), Mrs Greville continued to entertain on a lavish scale.  Her visitors included King Edward VII and later his grandson, the Duke of York (who would become King George VI); the latter spent part of his honeymoon at Polesden Lacey.

As I looked around the photographs of Mrs Greville with some of her eminent friends, my eye was caught by a guest list that included the name “Arthur Sassoon”.  This is not really surprising; Arthur, a paternal uncle of Siegfried’s, was a wealthy banker who became a close associate of Edward VII.  He and his equally notable wife Louise lived in Brighton, where the King would sometimes stay while visiting his mistress, Mrs Keppel.  When Arthur died childless in 1912, he left over half a million pounds to the children of his brother Reuben. (Siegfried, son of his disgraced brother Alfred, got nothing.)

You may be thinking that this is not a very exciting discovery; what interested me was that the National Trust guide told me that Siegfried himself also visited Polesden Lacey.  Unfortunately the visitors’ books are not on open access, though I believe they are available to bona fide researchers, so I could not confirm what year his visit took place, or whether he was there more than once.  The connection appears to be through Osbert Sitwell, a regular visitor who was a close friend of Mrs Greville’s.  He was also, of course, a friend of Siegfried’s, though they fell out regularly.

What this discovery did was simply to confirm my impression that Siegfried got everywhere.  He probably never regarded himself as a member of “Society” – or if he did, with his personal preference for solitude and privacy, he would not have regarded it as being of prime importance. I can just picture him, in the “Gold Room” where Mrs Greville did most of her entertaining, surrounded by braying upper-class voices and perhaps feeling rather out of it at times.  Yet he would have enjoyed the feeling of acceptance that he got from such occasions.  No doubt he was introduced to the assembled company as "the famous war poet" or perhaps, if it was after 1928, as the author of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.

Another member of the RWF who was familiar with Polesden Lacey was a chaplain, Maurice Berkeley Peel (a grandson of Sir Robert Peel).  Maurice was almost in his fifties when he volunteered at the outbreak of war.  After a period spent recuperating at Polesden (then in use as a convalescent home) from a wound received at Festubert, Peel returned to civilian life as vicar of Tamworth from 1915 to 1917, with a Military Cross to his name for accompanying his men over the top and working to help the wounded.  He could not rest on his laurels and went out again to France with the RWF, where he was again decorated, the citation reading: "He went out to the advanced patrols with two stretcher-bearers and succeeded in bringing in several wounded men.  Later he worked for 36 hours in front of the captured position and rescued many wounded under very heavy fire."  Finally, in May 1917, Peel was shot dead while again working with the wounded in No Man’s Land.

So many great houses were used during the war as hospitals or homes for the wounded or needy.  The pattern would be repeated in the Second World War, when Siegfried's own home at Heytesbury House would open its doors, first to evacuees and later to American troops.  

Tours, Tanks and Trotter

Another Western Front Association War Poets Tour has come and gone, leaving one small band of enthusiasts suffering serious withdrawal symptoms.  It is, however, very satisfying to note that Siegfried Sassoon is the only poet who has been prominently featured on each of the first four tours, largely as a result of the variety of his military experience and the extent of his geographical travels – but also, I think, because of the quality of his work and his versatility as a poet and prose writer.  So perhaps no coincidence that, for the first time, the majority of passengers on the tour were members of the SSF.

Siegfried, despite his looks, talent and achievements (and most of the female contingent agreed he was the best-looking of the six poets on the cover of this year’s accompanying booklet, with Richard Aldington coming in second), was always vulnerable to self-doubt; he paints a picture of himself as a soldier which is appealing in its modesty.  This is just one of the many secrets of his success.  But of course, it wasn’t all about Siegfried.  Graves, Aldington and Gurney all had a major role this year, and we also focused our attention on some lesser-known poets, such as 26-year-old Bernard Freeman Trotter, a graduate of Canada’s McMaster University and author of the touching “Ici Repose”. 

The tour was more sparsely attended than usual, which was a shame but possibly due to the fact that it covered some of the lesser-known actions of the war, including Loos and Cambrai - the latter, of course, known mainly as the battle where the British forces made their first effective use of tanks.  Anyone who did not book just because they hadn't heard of these actions would have to be uninterested in the literature of the war, as the visits to some of the more obscure battlefields and cemeteries not only protected us from the annoyance often caused by other large groups of tourists but also exposed us to some truly inspiring poetry – and prose - from a large range of writers.  They also missed a two-night stay at one of the best hotels on the Western Front, the Hotel Béatus at Cambrai, with its wonderful gardens, comfortable rooms, friendly staff and excellent restaurant.  And as you can see from the photo, the weather was lovely.

On the third night, unfortunately, we had to move to Lensotel, but were pleasantly surprised that such a large hotel in such an uninspiring location could provide such good service.  For those who do not know the area, Lens is situated in the midst of the coal-mining region of northern France, a district now suffering as much from post-industrial deprivation as most of the traditional coal-mining areas of the UK (though they have been given a branch of the Louvre to try and make up for it).  Imagine fighting in such a landscape, using industrial landmarks such as the (now departed) Cuinchy brickstacks as an impromptu trench system.

Yet the best thing about the tours is not the selection of visits, or the high standard of guiding, or even the poetry.  It’s the chance to get together with people who are interested in the same things and whom we’ve come to regard, over the years, as friends.  In this year’s group, there were only three passengers who hadn’t been with us in previous years and I think they would agree that they had no difficulty fitting into the established core of enthusiasts.  This may be partly because we are a cross-section of Western Front Association members and SSF members, so everyone has an existing connection.  No longer do the military-minded group and the literary-minded group eye one another in a guarded fashion across the restaurant tables; those who were not truly interested in war poetry have long since fallen by the wayside.  

Now we are as one, and for this we can thank Vivien Whelpton and Clive Harris and the symbiotic relationship they have developed.  With encouragement from Viv, we do not hesitate to argue the case for our favourite poets.  So what if we disagree on the merits of E A Mackintosh's "verse", or whether Sassoon is better-looking than Aldington?  Healthy debate helps us learn from one another.  Even the redoubtable John Richardson was keen to admit that he has come round to admiring Jean Moorcroft Wilson as a biographer - and as usual, John's war poetry quiz was much anticipated and hotly contested.

Originally there was to be a series of only five War Poets tours, but Battle Honours has agreed to run at least two more – one specifically on Sassoon in 2017 and another on Owen in 2018.  Book yourself on one and don’t miss out on a treat that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Siegfried among the Bohemians

Someone asked me recently what Siegfried Sassoon saw in Stephen Tennant.   The second episode of Victoria Coren's new TV series, "How to be Bohemian", focused briefly on Tennant and the "Bright Young Things".  This group, nominally - but not really - the subject of Evelyn Waugh's 1930 novel Vile Bodies, included others who were among Siegfried's close friends and associates: the Sitwells, Rex Whistler and Beverley Nichols, not to mention Waugh himself.

The TV series explores the phenomenon and its origins, but inevitably scratches the surface.  What does it actually mean to be "Bohemian"?  The concept, or at least its name, originates from an old term for the gipsies of eastern Europe, who lived the kind of free-and-easy lifestyle that was both despised and envied by more conventional society.  The idea of pursuing this alternative way of life out of choice, rather than necessity, seems to have started in the early nineteenth century in - where else? France.

Siegfried Sassoon, though undoubtedly eccentric in many ways, was not, I feel, Bohemian, either by nationality or by nature, but he did associate with people who led what has come to be known as a "bohemian" lifestyle.  The kind of people we associate with "bohemianism" tend to be artists of one kind or another - poets, painters, musicians (though I must say I have met some who live the dream but have absolutely no creative talent of any kind).  As a result of such associations, he flirted with the lifestyle.  In other ways, he could hardly have been more conventional or less bohemian.

Stephen Tennant's bohemianism was essentially a pose, possibly his means of rebelling against his respectable and generally un-bohemian family; his elder brother, Edward "Bim" Tennant, joined the Grenadier Guards (as did the Sitwell brothers, though Osbert at least proved very unsuited to a military career) and Stephen's stepfather, Sir Edward Grey, had been Britain's Foreign Secretary before and during the First World War (in which Bim was killed). That arch-bohemian, Oscar Wilde (to whom Sassoon was of course inextricably linked through his friendship with Robert Ross), put this idea into words thus: "The first duty in life is to assume a pose.  What the second is, no one has yet discovered."

I'm sceptical about the claims of any rich person to be truly bohemian.  As Coren pointed out, one of the essential features of the authentic bohemian life is a shortage of money, often leading to starvation, tuberculosis, hypothermia, and other experiences we associate with the dramatis personae of Puccini's La Bohème.  Stephen Tennant certainly never came close to starving - he had Sassoon washing peaches for him on their drive through Italy in 1928 - but Stephen did in fact suffer from TB, and I feel sure he was conscious of how much this unfortunate fact contributed to his image.  Tennant was also an artist, contributing illustrations to an edition of Siegfried Sassoon's poetry.

Siegfried, though nowhere near as rich as the Tennants, was never in serious financial difficulty. The only time he might have known hunger, albeit briefly, was while on active service at the Western Front.  Yet in the circles in which he moved, he could hardly help associating with those who led a bohemian lifestyle, either genuine or affected.  Lady Ottoline Morrell, one of his best friends and most loyal supporters, was surely bohemian in her ways.  Siegfried's description of her clothing at their first meeting suggests he was struck by her unconventionality; he was, at that time, not yet an accepted member of the literary fraternity, and his meetings with people like Rupert Brooke and W H Davies (a true bohemian who had lived as a tramp in the USA) only made him feel excluded.

The Morrells accepted and welcomed Sassoon into a community of writers and artists that included Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington, Gilbert Spencer and Aldous Huxley.  Members of the Bloomsbury Group, such as Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell and Lytton Strachey, were often house guests at Garsington Manor; they certainly played at bohemianism.  Yet it was also at Garsington Siegfried was also introduced to people such as W B Yeats and Bertrand Russell, who seem to me not to fall into the bohemian category, despite Yeats' interest in spiritualism and Russell's belief in sexual freedom.

Another eccentric individual mentioned by Coren was Edward Carpenter, the writer who would nowadays probably be described as a "gay activist".  It was to Carpenter that Siegfried had written in 1911, seeking reassurance about the homosexual inclinations that so troubled him.  Carpenter was a vegetarian, an environmentalist, a socialist and many other things that made him stand out and would have marked him as "bohemian" whether he liked it or not.  Bohemian, also, was Siegfried's first lover, Gabriel (real name William) Atkin, an artist who came to rely on Siegfried for financial support.  Atkin subsequently married a writer, enjoyed various addictions, and was dead by 1937.

Some of these associations must have rubbed off on Siegfried Sassoon.  He appears to have been untroubled by Stephen Tennant's penchant for cross-dressing and to have participated in the parlour games and other activities promoted at Garsington.  From his own limited resources, he was glad enough to offer financial assistance to other poets, artists and musicians, some of whom depended on this to give them the opportunity to practice bohemianism.  In photographs taken by Lady Ottoline, however, Siegfried always looks uncomfortable and out of place, even allowing for the constraints of early 20th century photography and the affected poses his hostess required of her subjects.

But bohemian?  I think not.  Sassoon was too conventional, too well brought up to be a rover.  Hard as he may have tried to live the artist's life, he remained a fox-hunting man at heart.   

A Private Occasion of Family and Friends

In the run-up to the bicentenary of a certain great battle, I thought it would be appropriate to share this guest post from our old friend Dr Gerald Morgan of Trinity College, Dublin.  Although it has nothing directly to do with Siegfried Sassoon, it brings to mind earlier conflicts of which Siegfried must have been aware during June 1915, as he began his service as an officer with the RWF at the Western Front:

The 1st Duke of Wellington, appointed commander of the Anglo-Netherlands army on Napoleon's escape from Elba, left Vienna on 29 March 1815 accompanied by Lord William Pitt Lennox,  fourth son of Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, as one of his aides-de-camp  and arrived in Brussels on 4 April 1815 to prepare for what turned out to be the decisive battles with Napoleonic France at Quatre Bras and Waterloo on 16 and 18 June 1815. On 6 April he was at a dinner party with the Richmonds. On 22 May 1815 he was accompanied by Lady Georgiana Lennox (third daughter of Charles Lennox) in inspecting Hanoverian and Brunswick troops at Vilvorde.

The Duke of Richmond, a notable cricketer and founder-member of the MCC, was an old friend from Dublin as far back as the late 1780s, when he and Arthur Wesley (as Wellington then was) were aides-de-camp in Dublin Castle to the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Marquess of  Buckingham (1787-1789). 

The Duke of Richmond was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1807-1813 when Wellington himself (1807-1809) and his elder brother, William Wellesley-Pole (1809-1812), were Chief Secretary. Richmond's eldest son, Charles, Earl of March (Westminster and TCD), was aide-de-camp to Wellington in the Peninsular War in 1810-1814 and at the time of the ball aide-de-camp to the Prince of Orange (who was wounded at Waterloo).

The Duchess herself, a formidable lady who produced seven sons and seven daughters for the Duke, was born Charlotte Gordon, eldest daughter of Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon, who raised the 92nd (originally 100th) Regiment of Foot, the Gordon Highlanders. They distinguished themselves at the ball, as they were later to distinguish themselves in the battle, with a display of highland reel and sword dance in the presence of their Commanding Officer, John Cameron of Fassiefern (mortally wounded at Quatre Bras, dying in Waterloo village itself on the night of 16 June 1815).

As Wellington prepared himself and Europe in Brussels in April, May and June 1815  for the decisive battle, he would perforce have had to attend many balls. He himself, for example, hosted a concert, ball and supper for the King and Queen of the Netherlands and the young Prince of Orange on 28 April and on 27 May a Grand Ball in honour of Field Marshal Prince Blucher of Prussia. The trust engendered between these two men on such an occasion assured Europe of victory at the end of the day at Waterloo. More worthy of comment on that occasion, perhaps, was the fact that Wellington danced always with the young (born 23 May 1793) and no doubt adoring Lady Frances Caroline Webster-Wedderburn (nee Annesley, second daughter of the 1st Earl of Mountnorris). She was pregnant at the time and gave birth to a son, Charles Byron, in Paris on 28 August 1815.

The Duchess of Richmond's ball of 15 June 1815, however, was a private not public event, organised and paid for by the Richmonds and held at their residence in the Rue de la Blanchisserie. It was the Duchess herself who controlled the invitations (some 230 in all), and the Lennox family turned out in force, although the Duchess was helped by Capt John Gurwood (10th Hussars) (wounded at Waterloo) in making the arrangements, since just over half of the guests were military officers.

Naturally many Irish men and women of note were present at the ball. Sir William Ponsonby of Imokilly, Co. Cork, was there (killed leading the famous cavalry charge of the Union Brigade at Waterloo). So too Sir Denis Pack of Kilkenny.  So too was Henry, Earl Conyngham, his wife, Elizabeth, Countess Conyngham, and three of their children, including Viscount Mountcharles, a name still famous in Slane today. 

So too the lady who had attracted so much of Wellington's attentions on the dance floor. Lady Frances Webster-Wedderburn evidently inspired him by her presence and beauty as the fateful day approached. Thus he wrote to her on the morning of the battle, at.3.30 a.m. on 18 June 1815, to assure her of the 'desperate battle on Friday (16 June), in which I was successful'  and of the need to make preparations for a possible move from Bruxelles (sic) to Antwerp,  and again at 8.30 a.m. in the immediate aftermath of the battle to tell her that 'the finger of Providence was upon me', as it surely must have been.

But the price of victory was ' immense'. No wonder Wellington was overcome by the loss of his friends after the battle. 

The people of Ireland, and particularly of Summerhill and Trim, Co. Meath, may well be proud of such a man to this day. I have no doubt that the battle would have been lost without him. Blucher would have exposed his troops to the French guns at Waterloo as he did at Ligny.

In Siegfried's Library

One of the most important rooms, if not the most important room, in Heytesbury House during Siegfried Sassoon's tenure was the Library.  Yesterday I, along with other members of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship, was lucky enough to be in that room - although it is no longer the library.  

After Siegfried's death, his son George lived in the house for a time before selling it.  Then began a period of neglect, when parts of the house were badly damaged by fire, and it was some years before it was habitable again.   When residents moved in who appreciated the house and its history, it was gradually restored to its former glory, but some things naturally changed, and another room is now used as the library, while the huge and interestingly-shaped room in which Siegfried kept his books now houses a snooker table.  The view of the gardens and grounds remains intact, and is possibly enhanced by not having the windows lined with bookshelves.

Interest in the printed book also continues at Heytesbury, which was a highlight for the bibliophiles among our members, several of whom own first editions and other curiosities about which they shared information during our tea.  We were supplied with drinks and a choice of cakes (not, of course, while handling books) while we chatted about the house.  We also listened to Dennis Silk's memorable Radio 4 programme - now, unbelievably, more than ten years old - which gave us a wonderful mental picture of what the house was like when Siegfried sat recording his poems on a reel-to-reel tape recorder while occasionally tapping out his pipe on the grate.

Successive owners of the apartment that contains the rooms where Siegfried spent most of his time have been very kind in allowing Sassoon enthusiasts entry from time to time.  Last time I visited, it was pouring with rain and we only ventured into the garden for a few moments to look at "Blunden's Beech".  On this occasion, the weather was kind, and we spent some time outside, looking at the changes made to the grounds over the decades since the poet died at his Georgian mansion in 1967. Most upsetting for Sassoon was the news that a new road, the A36, was to be constructed across part of his estate.  Although he did not live to see it as it is now, with the house cut off from the village by the highway, he would not have approved of this development any more than he would have liked seeing the modern houses that now take up a large section of the grounds.

I am sure he would have loved the garden, though.  Now that the house is divided into apartments, the individual residents have their own private areas as well as sharing the wider grounds, and the garden one sees from the library window contains statues, an ornamental pond, and a striking stone obelisk installed by previous owners.  There is still plenty of unspoilt greenery around too, with many mature trees as well as a weedy little cedar that has been planted in an unsuitable location and as yet refuses to thrive.  Perhaps one day it will be rival to its massive relation that grows close by.

As we passed up the drive towards the house, Diana Silk shared with us her memories of the walled garden and stables, both now converted for other uses.  After becoming engaged to, and subsequently marrying, Dennis, she spent many happy hours at Heytesbury House, sometimes with her children. Siegfried's own marriage, to Hester Gatty, with whom he moved into the house in 1934, did not last, but it is evident from some of the photographs we looked at that Siegfried and Hester did enjoy great happiness in their early years at Heytesbury.  Had that not been the case, why would Siegfried have remained there after the Second World War (in the course of which the house was also occupied, first by evacuees and later by American troops)? 

One of the attractions of the Heytesbury estate for Sassoon must have been the cricket pitch, now separated from the house by the road.  Siegfried played, or attempted to play, cricket into his seventies, and also made frequent visits to Downside Abbey, about 25 miles away, where he had joined the "Ravens" cricket team, recruiting his long-standing friend, the poet Edmund Blunden, as well as Dennis Silk (at one time captain of MCC), to play alongside him.

Visitors to Heytesbury House in the latter years who wrote down their memories of visits included Anthony Powell, Margaret Keynes, Muriel Galsworthy and Charles Causley.  Edmund Blunden, Siegfried's most enduring friend, was of course a visitor, and Dennis also recalls Hester returning from Scotland to see her estranged husband.  Dennis has often told us how Siegfried used to complain about "never seeing anyone" - whereas in fact the house welcomed regular visitors of all shapes and sizes.  The wheel has turned full circle, with the SSF now having members all around the world, all of whom would love to have had the experience a few of us were able to enjoy yesterday at Heytesbury.

Perspectives

As so often happens with this blog, several strands have come together in my mind (while I was gardening) and once again it leads around to war art.  Although this was initially prompted by the Perspectives programme on British TV the other night, in which Eddie Redmayne, currently flavour of the month because of his recent Oscar win, presented his thoughts on the topic, there have been other contributory factors.  I'll come to those later.

Redmayne, it turns out, is not without qualifications for his role as presenter, having studied art history at Cambridge.  Although he perhaps not as fluent a presenter as, say, Alistair Sooke, he is more eloquent than most, and the programme was consequently much better than I'd been expecting. The art does, of course, speak for itself to a certain extent.  You can admire and appreciate the work of Paul Nash, C R W Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and David Bomberg (Redmayne's "favourite") without having a degree in art history.  Colour television certainly helps with that; perhaps it's ironic that the general public in 1914-1918 would not have had much opportunity to see some of these works in their full glory.

David Bomberg - "Sappers at Work"

Apart from the omission (again) of Isaac Rosenberg, who is presumably disregarded partly because he was a poet and has thus been pigeonholed to be dealt with in TV programmes about poetry, another war artist who rarely gets a mention is Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959).  A notable painter of horses, Munnings was the man who captured Major-General Jack Seely and his horse Warrior in oils, as I recently learned from Brough Scott's book Galloper Jack.  The painting is now in the National Gallery of Canada, in recognition of Seely's service as commander of the Canadian cavalry during the war, and Munnings seems to have had as hard a time as almost anyone, at times working a short matter of yards from the front line. 

Another of his paintings, Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron, depicts one of the last cavalry charges of the war, one which came to be regarded as a success and won Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew a posthumous VC.  Brough Scott's book, making a valiant effort to be unbiased in dealing with the exploits of his grandfather, Jack Seely, suggests that it achieved little and was less than critical to the final outcome of the war.  Munnings could not have captured the action "live", as a photographer might, but he did paint it the year it happened and personally knew the participants.  His skilled depiction of the horses' suffering may, however, be the key to the painting's success.  (Flowerdew, incidentally, was saddled with one of the same personal disadvantages in life as Siegfried Sassoon; his middle name was "Muriel".)

The other strand in my thinking about war art this week is the painting at the centre of the Danish drama series, 1864, a work which again strives for neutrality by depicting the Danes as the (albeit unwitting) aggressors in the Second Schleswig War.  I gather that it's about as historically accurate as The Tudors, but that's not really relevant to my subject.  In an English-language scene, James Fox as Lord Palmerston admits that "Only three men in Europe have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein Question: the Prince Consort, who is dead; a German professor, who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it." 

The painting, which a rebellious present-day teenager finds in the attic of the mysterious old "Baron" for whom she is working as a carer, also appears in the opening credits of each episode.  Whether it is a real contemporary painting or a plot device created specifically for the series I have not yet discovered, but it sends the girl into a hallucinatory episode where she begins to notice the presence of other 19th century artefacts (a pistol, a sword) around the place, and becomes frightened by the idea of the war.  In other scenes it is suggested that the present generation has little comprehension of what it meant to fight, just like the two main characters, the brothers Peter and Laust, who go cheerfully off to soldier at the behest of the "Baron" of their own time.  (Naturally, one is put in mind of Sassoon's poem "Memorial Tablet".)

Although the early episodes don't fully illustrate the horrors that are no doubt coming to the two boys, the first scenes featuring the Baron's son returning as a war hero (in fact, his father has bribed officialdom to conceal the evidence of his cowardice) give us a pretty good idea of the potential psychological damage, as Baron junior begins a reign of terror over the estate workers.  He will, of course, have to go back, and he's not looking forward to it.  

I don't have a snappy conclusion to this blog.  I merely observe how visual depictions of war can combine with the written word to build up a picture that may or may not be accurate.  Say "the Western Front" and most people will immediately visualise desperate-looking, dirty, hungry men in trenches, closely followed by a desolate landscape of murdered trees.   Is that how it really was?