AVIEW OF SIR OSBERT
SITWELL
Sir Osbert Sitwell and
Laughter
in the Next Room,
the fourth vol–
ume of his five-volume memorial
to a passing age, have appeared in
this country almost simultaneously.
In that his autobiography is one
of the most highly personal docu–
ments since Rousseau's
Confes–
sions,
though without any of its
indiscretions, it seemed apropos to
tum a projected review of the
book into an interview with its au–
thor. Sir Osbert, at the moment of
writing, has only been in this coun–
try just over a week, confined, for
part of the time, to his hotel with
an attack of that most aristocratic
of afflictions-gout. Dazed by the
opulence and the speed of life, his
impressions of this country, which
he has visited only once before (for
two months in 1926) are mostly
confined to extrasensory and extra–
territorial perceptions.
He was born in 1892, the elder
son of Sir George and Lady Ida
Sitwell, and his family tree stretch–
es its branches into the distances
beyond the Norman invasion of
England. Behind
him
he has a
family-tradition of several hundred
years of blood sports, landed-gen–
try ideals, and general philistinism,
and with it he has engaged, abet–
ted by his sister Edith and his bro–
ther Sacheverell, in a relentless
battle, using as weapons a passion–
ate dedication to the arts and a
1364
scathing contempt for most of
what the tradition has stood for.
To his mother and father, his
aunts and uncles and their circle
of friends he was suspect almost
from the moment that he could
talk-and they to
him
from the
moment that he could form an
opinion; and his battle has there–
fore been a personal as well as a
general one. Though he would
nev€r be so ill-mannered as tp say
so, it is probably his greatest sat–
isfaction that he is now far better
known as a novelist, poet, essayist,
and short-story writer than as the
son of his father, for whom his af–
fection as a human being was al–
ways in conflict with his dislike
for what he represented.
At fifty-six he is a very impos–
ing figure. Tall and slightly stoop–
ed, he has a dignity and calm
which, at the cost of a cliche, can
only be described as Olympian,
emphasized by an immobility of
face and body that gives the
im–
pression of his being clad entirely
in armor and helmeted-with the
vizor down. His voice
is
quiet with
something of the quality of Stras–
bourg pate, his manner disarming;
and his humor is much enhanced
by an element of surprise engend–
ered by the tranquility of his man–
ner-and muted, it must be added,
as far as malice is concerned, by a
sense of discretion obviously ac–
quired in the hard school of the
literary squabble.
As his opinions about this coun-
