To
Dame Felicitas Corrigan, OSB and the Benedictine
Communities at Stanbrook and Downside
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 WEIRLEIGH 1886–95
CHAPTER 2 TEACHERS 1895–1907
CHAPTER 3 POET AND SPORTSMAN 1907–14
CHAPTER 4 WAR 1914–16
CHAPTER 5 GARSINGTON 1916–17
CHAPTER 6 THE STATEMENT 1917
CHAPTER 7 CRAIGLOCKHART 1917–18
CHAPTER 8 AFTERMATH 1918–20
CHAPTER 9 TUFTON STREET 1920–1
CHAPTER 10 FRIENDSHIPS 1921–2
CHAPTER 11 TRAVELS 1923–4
CHAPTER 12 SHERSTON 1925–7
CHAPTER 13 STEPHEN 1927–8
CHAPTER 14 QUARRELS 1929–32
CHAPTER 15 HESTER 1933–7
CHAPTER 16 MARRIED LIFE 1937–9
CHAPTER 17 HEYTESBURY 1939–47
CHAPTER 18 SEEKING 1948–56
CHAPTER 19 ULTIMATE SPRING 1957–67
AFTERWORD
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copyright
I am grateful to Mr George Sassoon for permission to quote from the published and unpublished material of Siegfried Sassoon. I am also grateful to Max Egremont, Sassoon’s official biographer, for the generous help and permissions he has given me.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the contribution to Sassoon studies made by Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson. The Making of a War Poet, the first volume of her full-scale biography of Sassoon, has rightly been greeted as a tour de force. My biography is on a lesser scale and has benefited from the engaging details and insights to be found in Dr Moorcroft Wilson’s work.
A new critical study, Siegfried Sassoon: Scorched Glory, has been written by Paul Moeyes. Together with the critical study by Michael Thorpe published in 1967, this new work, full of ideas and interpretations, has widened my horizons and deepened my appreciation of Sassoon’s prose and poetry.
It is impossible to measure the contribution made by Sir Rupert Hart-Davis. No one has laboured longer or harder than he to safeguard and enhance the reputation of Sassoon, whom he knew and whose friendship he enjoyed. His encouragement during the writing of this biography as well as his counsel has been one of the great sustainments during the last two years. Sir Rupert has placed important Sassoon material in the Archives and Manuscripts Room, Cambridge University Library, including the fine-edited copies of the unpublished diaries. The gesture enriched an already fine collection.
Every student of Sassoon will readily admit their admiration for and indebtedness to Kathleen Cann. Her knowledge of the entire collection and eager involvement in each project, large or small, is an example of librarianship at its highest level.
My gratitude is extended to the following libraries, collections and museums for their help: New York Public Library (Berg Collection); Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; Bodleian Library, Oxford; St John’s College, Cambridge; Clare College, Cambridge; Merton College, Oxford; St John’s College, Oxford; Royal Archives, Windsor Castle; Royal Collection, St James’s Palace; Osborne House, Isle of Wight; British Library, Colindale; BBC Archives Caversham; National Portrait Gallery; National Library of Wales; National Library of Scotland; Leeds University (Brotherton Collection); University of Wales, Cardiff; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Liverpool Public Library; Glasgow City Library; Westminster Library and Chelsea Library; Cardiff City Library; Pembrokeshire County Library; Neath Town Library; Kent County Library; Northampton County Library; Lambeth Palace and Fulham Palace Libraries; Public Records Office, London; Public Records Office, Trowbridge, Wiltshire; Imperial War Museum; Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; Royal Welch Fusiliers, Caernarfon and Wrexham; Beaulieu Motor Museum; Marlborough College; Eton College; Christ’s College, Brecon; St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington; Napier Institute of Technology, Edinburgh; New Beacon School, Kent; Local History Societies at Brenchley and Matfield, Kent, and at Warminster; Convent of the Assumption, Kensington Square, London, and Hengrave Hall, Suffolk.
Many individuals have given me their help, for which I express my gratitude. In particular I would like to thank the following: The Earl of Oxford and Asquith; Miss Rosemary Olivier; Claire Blunden; Mother Margaret Mary; Sister Jessica Gatty; Sir Giles Loder; Dennis and Diana Silk; Lady Helen Asquith; Heather James; Ian Davie; Andrew Pinnell; Carol Rothkopf; Kenneth Lohf; The Hon. Mary Morrison; Sarah Morrison; Hugo Vickers; Philip Hoare; Maureen Borland; Mark Amory; Jocelyn Galsworthy; Celia Liddington; Jane Seabrook; Dr Harri Pritchard-Jones; Euryn Ogwen Williams; Keith Williams; Howard Jones; Menna Phillips; Rhys John; Penelope Middleboe; Jane Tremlett; Richard Frost; Kostas Georgiadis; Raymond Jenkins; Joe Sassoon; Dr Paul Newgass; Roger Lockyer; Rachel and Brian Griffiths; Charles Wheeler; Sir Alec Guinness; Christopher Thornycroft; William Hethrington; Lionel Dakers.
This biography would not have been possible without the experience and support of Metro Publishing and its staff. Paul Singer – my indomitable researcher, Margaret Body – my guide through the wilderness of syntax, punctuation and spelling, Richard Cohen – my publisher and editor and Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson – my agent, have been unfailing in their patience.
My family has asked me not to thank them!
Unveiling a memorial stone to Walter de la Mare in 1961, Siegfried Sassoon told his listeners in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral how 50 years earlier he had first encountered the de la Mare magic in the poem ‘All That Is Past’. His letter of thanks and the author’s reply marked the beginning of a lifetime’s friendship. It was while I was working in a second-hand bookshop in an effort to supplement a meagre student grant that the Sassoon magic first came to me as I turned the pages in a second-hand copy of his Collected Poems and found the hauntingly beautiful poem ‘Alone’. The delight was cumulative; the effect permanent.
Simplicity of style, a tale well told (this applies to his poetry as well as his prose), humour and pathos are among the reasons why after 40 years his work still captivates me. He was a master of English prose whose appeal lies, for me at least, in the apologia which prefaces all his work: ‘I have been true to what I have experienced.’ Deeply emotional, he suspected the dispassionate – for him the heart always led the head. This priority showed itself in his response to the continuation of the Great War, to the economic deprivation which blighted the lives of so many in the 1920s, and above all in his personal relationships. Late in life he confessed his belief in the religion of the heart but he had practised it from his earliest years. It was a creed which brought him disappointments and periods of great unhappiness which, had he inhabited ‘the cold altitudes of the intellect’, might well have been avoided or at any rate mitigated. Like many another he learned that the emotional life has disciplines as demanding as the intellectual.
Throughout his long life Sassoon never lost the naïveté which typified the work of three of his literary heroes, Henry Vaughan, William Blake and John Clare. Like theirs, his work generates hope and affirms that to be human is an extraordinary gift, even when life