Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Matfield in Kent. Although Sassoon was described in his lifetime as a ‘quintessential Englishman’, it is incongruous that not one of his names is of robust Anglo-Saxon origin. His mother was responsible for the choice of the forenames. She admired the operas of Wagner, hence Siegfried. The middle name was given to mark the esteem in which she held a certain Canon Loraine, who had prepared her for confirmation and thereafter gave her spiritual guidance. There is no evidence that Siegfried was unhappy with the choice. Of his surname he was less enamoured. ‘Sassoon is the name I go by, a mere susurration in eternity – to oblivion with it!’ For him, in his formative years especially, the name carried nuances far removed from the joy which it denotes in Hebrew. It was synonymous with broken relationships and ostracism. ‘Ever since I could remember, I had been remotely aware of a lot of rich Sassoon relations. I had great-uncles galore, whom I had never met, and they all knew the Prince of Wales, who sometimes stayed with them at Brighton. Never having received so much as a chuck under the chin from any of these great-uncles, I couldn’t exactly feel proud of them for being so affluent but I was, as a matter of course, impressed by the relationship, and often wondered what they looked like.’ He need not have wondered. His father’s face and a look in the mirror would have revealed the exotic physical characteristics he shared with his forebears.
In 1858 Sassoon David Sassoon, Siegfried’s paternal grandfather and known as S.D., became the first of the family to set foot in England. The Sassoons had set their feet in many other places. Sephardic Jews, they had wandered over the centuries from Palestine to Spain and Syria. The branch from which Siegfried descended flourished first in Baghdad then in the city of Bombay, from whence in pursuit of their commercial interests individual members travelled afield, in particular to Asia and China. S.D. was one of nine children from two marriages, he being the eldest of the second brood. The names of his brothers and sisters are a mixture of their Hebrew ancestry and the family’s deep respect for the British Empire – Albert, formally Abdullah, and Arthur balancing Reuben and Aaron, and the girls matching Kate with Rebecca. The children were well educated, confident, clannish and sagacious. Within the business, cultural and religious life of the Jewish community in India during the nineteenth century the Sassoons flourished under the founder of the modern dynasty, David Sassoon. Despite becoming immensely wealthy and influential he remained a modest man and possessed a generous spirit. Wealth was regarded as a means to an end. Hospitals, libraries and synagogues received substantial endowments. But however great their wealth or their commercial and social success, nothing was achieved at the expense of their loyalty to the Jewish faith.
Having developed the business eastwards, David Sassoon looked for new opportunities in England, where the cotton trade in the north was expanding. Of his sons he believed that S.D. was the best suited to further the family interests. S.D. travelled alone and established an office in Leadenhall Street in the City of London. Within a matter of months he was joined by his wife, Fahra, their three-year-old son Joseph and a three-month-old daughter Rachel. Fahra anglicised her name to Flora but, though an admirer of her adopted country, she arranged the household to reflect the customs and beliefs of Judaism. They bought a house called Ashley Park near Walton-on-Thames, which had once been the residence of that indefatigable builder of vast properties, Cardinal Wolsey. S.D. was as inveterate a bibliophile as Wolsey was a builder. He mined material from his extensive library for inclusion in his essays on aspects of culture and his study of languages. Preoccupied with business and immersed in learning, he was left little time to enjoy the fresh air of Ashley Park and its green slopes leading down to the Thames. Flora was not interested in commerce, nor the social scene. Small, outspoken and of a quixotic temperament, she found her main pleasure in her children and in music. In 1861 a third child and second son was born and given the names of Alfred Ezra. He would become Siegfried’s father.
S.D. did not enjoy robust health. He was tall and thin, giving the impression of frailty. His father did not expect the demands of the London office to be onerous and, given his son’s interest in Western culture, thought it an ideal location for his health and fulfilment. So it might have been, had not circumstances intervened. The Civil War in America and the blockade of the southern ports denied supplies of cotton to the factories in the north of England. All eyes turned to India and the East. Suddenly the Leadenhall Street office became pivotal and made demands on S.D. which he found difficult to meet. In the oppressively hot summer of 1867, as he waited to meet a business acquaintance in the foyer of the Old Langham Hotel, Sassoon David suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 35.
Reuben Sassoon was sent from Bombay to continue his late brother’s work. Over the next decade he was followed by his other brothers. Each would achieve commercial success, social notoriety and royal favour. The Prince of Wales was not prejudiced against Jews, nor against those who had amassed fortunes through trade. His attitude was not entirely altruistic; he needed the Sassoons and others to underwrite his ceaseless demands for social distraction. House parties, horse racing, gambling and gargantuan dinner-parties required a constant flow of money. The Sassoons were more than able to meet the demand. Each son inherited £500,000 on the death of David Sassoon, to which were added the profits of the trading company. They bought houses in London and on the south coast of England, which were put at the disposal of the Prince and his social circle. They were given royal honours, including knighthoods; they were admired, no doubt they were envied, certainly they scaled the social heights of Edwardian England, but to Siegfried they were the great-uncles who never so much as gave him a ‘chuck under the chin’.
Throughout his life Siegfried made few references to his Jewish ancestry and even fewer acknowledgements of his indebtedness to it. Indeed it was only in his last years and in response to a questioning friend that he recognised how his paternal side had given him religious, poetic and prophetic insights. ‘You are right about my inheritance. I sometimes surmise that my eastern ancestry is stronger in me than the Thornycrofts. The daemon in me is Jewish.’ The Thornycrofts knew the Sassoons of Ashley Park but neither family on first acquaintance could have guessed how their destinies would intertwine to produce a poet, a prose-writer and a quintessential Englishman.
Thomas and Mary Thornycroft were Siegfried’s maternal grandparents. Both were descendants of English yeomanry – Thomas’s roots lay deep in Cheshire and Mary’s in Norfolk. They were sculptors and met while studying and practising under the auspices of Mary’s father, John Francis, who had moved from East Anglia to London. Mary, born in 1809, was nearing her thirtieth year when Thomas arrived at the Francis home near Regent’s Park. He was seven years younger than Mary but this made no difference to the almost instant attraction they felt for each other. In 1840 they were married and ventured to Rome to pursue their studies before returning to England and establishing a home and studio first in Stanhope Street, then at Wilton Place in Knightsbridge. Sculpture was not an easy living but the Prince Consort was an enthusiastic patron, as was the Queen. Public commemoration and private decoration brought expanding opportunities from which Thomas and Mary benefited. The register of the Royal Collection contains an impressive list of the Thornycrofts’ contribution. Osborne House, the private retreat of the Queen and Prince Albert on the Isle of Wight, contained numerous examples of Mary’s work, many still there today. The greater part of Thomas’s work was commissioned by public corporations to fill city squares and town halls with illustrious city fathers in effigy.
Between 1841 and 1853 seven children were born: two sons and five daughters, of whom Georgiana Theresa, the future mother of Siegfried, was the youngest. Contemporary accounts describe her as petite, with red hair and a shy smile. Although the last of the brood, she was not over-shadowed by her siblings. From an early age she showed an independent spirit and a witty turn of phrase. She was particularly close to her brother Hamo and remained so. All the children inherited the creative genes of their parents as painters and sculptors. Reading the list of admissions to the life classes at the Royal Academy one sees the names of Mary Alice, student May 1863; Helen, student January 1868; William (Hamo), student June 1869; then Theresa, June 1870. Thomas and Mary were enlightened parents. Hamo’s daughter, Elfrida Manning, wrote that the ‘girls would never have thought of themselves as advanced, yet they did everything that their modern successors, liberated by the bicycle, did in the next generation. They