Aunt Edith’s long-lost address book exceeded all expectations
A chance find in the family attic revealed a ‘Who’s Who’ of an incredible literary life, says Henrietta Sitwell
It was 10.32am on Wednesday when the gavel banged down on the auctioneer’s podium. A gasp echoed around the room at Dreweatts auction house. Applause erupted as my great aunt Edith Sitwell’s address book, which had a pre-sale estimate of only £200-£300, sold for £52,000. In those thrilling two minutes, the room buzzed, telephones rang and bids came in from the US and Europe and online. The bidding leapt to £4,000 immediately, then up and up. I listened and watched in amazement as it hit £20,000, then £30,000. Surely, I thought, it couldn’t go any higher — but it did. £35,000, £40,000, until we reached that astonishing final sum.
The scale of international interest has amazed us Sitwells. That Edith’s address book alone could muster 260 times its low estimate is testament to her followers’ devotion and her status as an iconic poet of the 20th century. As we approach the centenary of the first performance of her avant-garde piece Façade, Edith’s extraordinary poems set to music and her reputation as a remarkable literary talent are undiminished.
It was only earlier this year, sorting through 300 years of Sitwell family ephemera, that I discovered her address book in one of the many attics at our family house, Weston Hall in Northamptonshire. When I was little and visiting my grandparents at Weston, those nine attics were too frightening to brave, with their long dark passageways, creaking doors and rickety stairs. But decades later, I dutifully helped clear them out. My mother, brothers George and William and I had made the heartbreaking but financially necessary decision to sell our beloved home.
The day of my great find was gloomy, midwinter lockdown, and I had spent most of the morning in the smallest attic lit by a single lightbulb. One last unopened box beckoned from the corner; I peeled back the thick brown tape and picked out an insignificant-looking black, leatherbound book. “Insolent women with the shrieking children!” read the first entry I happened upon. Oh, the sympathy I felt for whomever this insult was directed at – I have two young children of my own.
I called William over to take a closer look. Flicking through more of the pages we began to realise that we had stumbled upon something special. It read like a Who’s Who from the world of music, theatre, publishing, film and ballet. Entries included the Queen Mother at the Castle of May, Evelyn Waugh, Gore Vidal, Cecil Beaton and Graham Greene. The handwriting looked familiar and quickly it dawned on me that what I held was the address book of my great aunt Edith. Although I never met her, I instantly recognised her humour pouring out of its pages. We laughed out loud at “That Blasted Priest”, “Psychopath who insulted me after television”, “The American who wants to bring his wife to tea” and “Cat Torturers names withheld by the horrible woman magistrate”.
We ploughed on with our unpacking, occasionally retreating downstairs when defeated by the cold, or the sheer enormity of it all. Three centuries of family history included exquisite lace belonging to the 18th century ladies of the house and trunks containing my Canadian greatgrandfather’s travel memorabilia.
There was an extremely rare and valuable Ottoman atlas and even an invitation to my grandparents, Sir Sacheverell and Georgia, Lady Sitwell, to meet Joseph Stalin at a dinner party in London.
Growing up amongst the pictures, furniture and other works of art, I was well aware of the extraordinary generations that came before me; Susanna Jennens, the first to be given the house as a Valentine’s present in 1721, to Colonel Hely-Hutchinson, who fought at the Battle of Waterloo.
Sitting in the auction room last week waiting for Edith’s address book to go under the hammer, there were rows of faces I didn’t recognise, who couldn’t have known that the chair they were bidding for used to be in my bedroom, or that it was me who found this little book in an attic on that freezing January morning.
Now this incredible record of a fascinating literary life has found a new home in the UK – and it might spare me a bit of cash to fix my broken car.