In the days when I was trying to entertain my mum on Sunday afternoons, we once went
for a walk around the grounds of Renishaw Hall, home of the Sitwells, and a short drive
from my mum’s house in Sheffield.
We were greeted at the entrance, not all that warmly, by some venerable old party who may have been Sir George Sitwell, though I suppose it could have been some other venerable old party.
I can’t remember anything else about the gardens or the walk.
I’m not sure that many people read the Sitwell’s these days (I’m not sure very many people ever did – though I seem to remember enjoying Osbert’s Great Morning) - but I did just find a quotation from Edith Sitwell about walking (more or less).
She writes
‘The great sins and fires break out of me
like the terrible leaves from the bough in the violent spring.
I am a walking fire, I am all leaves.”
Here she is walking her dog – some leaves, no fire:
How very different from the home life of our own dear Tilda Swinton who has done a photo-shoot for Tim Walker at Renishaw Hall, dolled up as Edith, to whom she is apparently distantly related.
She's wearing some schmutter by Michael Kors which I don’t think Edith, for all her eccentricity, would have been seen dead in.
