English Eccentrics I’ve Known or Almost Known - The Sitwells, Eve Disher and Me

What led me to putting this video together was an extraordinarily tenuous connection I once had with Sir Sacheverell Sitwell (1897-1988), brother of Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell.

As a kid living in London, we knew Eve Disher (1894-1991), a minor Bloomsbury Group painter and great friend of British documentary film pioneers Sir Arthur Elton (Bart.), John Grierson and Basil Wright. Sir Arthur had also amassed Britain’s largest collection of industrial art, and had edited Marxist art historian Francis D Klingender’s ‘Art and the Industrial Revolution’ (1948) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_....

But I am digressing.

One day at Eve's flat over-looking Eccleston Square in Knightsbridge, the phone rang and it was Sachervall Sitwell - one of the famed eccentric sibling triumvirate of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. My partner of that time, Peter Upton, can remember faintly his voice, as he strained to catch something of the conversation. The tone was deepish and resonant, and the speech rather over-worked and artificial quality, as though straining to be remarkable.

Sir Sachervall was a writer, who was mostly known for his books on architecture, particularly of the Baroque period. He was also an art and music critic. Just before coming back to Australia to go to university, I was on holiday round what was then South East Germany with Christopher Turner to look at Baroque churches and abbeys - a copy of Sitwell’s ‘German Baroque Art’ (1927) tucked under my arm.

Quite unexpectedly, Eve Disher came back into my life recently when I saw one of her paintings for sale on the internet - ‘Still Life of Arum Lilies and Tulips 1940 Gouache n Oil on Paper on Board 72 x 47 cm’. It was in fact one that I remember hang on the drawing room wall of the Eccleston Square apartment. Of course I bought it and it made its journey from Paris to Sydney.

As well as some images of the Eccentric Sitwells, I have included two of Eve Disher (one with my friends Peter Upton and Julia Elton) and a photograph of the painting I bought. As the audio for these images, I have added Edith Sitwell reciting ‘A Man from a Far Country' (from ‘The Sleeping Beauty’) to music by William Walton.

The film footage here begins with a 1959 interview with Dame Edith, who as a poet is perhaps best remembered today for her collaboration with Sir William Walton on ‘Facade’ (1922) in which a series of abstract poems counter-pointing music were recited through a megaphone in a hole in a stage curtain.

The second piece of film footage is an interview with Sir Sacheverell who is recalling youthful impressions of William Walton.

Enjoy!