12 APRIL 1945, Page 16

Les Neiges d'Antan

Right Hand, Left Hand. By Sir Osbert Sitwell. (Macmillan. 15s.) -

IN embarking upon an autobiography a longue haleine, of which this volume is, so to speak, only a preliminary row, Sir Osbert

takes us with him on a most entertaining voyage of social history.

The story takes us only to the Boer War, when Sir Osbert was: but eight or nine years old, so that personal experience does not much enter •into it—except that it is only fair to say that Sir Osbert makes

no claim to have possessed' an innocent eye. But this book is only the prelude.---we are given what led up to the, life to be related, the

ancestry, and the surroundings of infancy, the material being largely documentary we are shown with delicate skill how the memory may be huilt up, how we get our impressions of what people are like, and of what life is about. It is a "ditcursive and disqui- sitional " medley, which gathers coherence as it goes along, and by this means we get a lively portrait of an age as it was lived by the fortune-favoured part of the community, what was still then, in a very real sense, the ruling class.

Sir Osbert possesses the first and most important quality of an autobiographer, an intense interest in himself ; he is concerned in the first instance to find out how he and his sister and brother came to be what they are. How is it that one generation should consist of three most distinguished writers? What is the mixture, con- taining, as is the English way, the blood of a whole pageful of names famous in history mingled with yeoman and working-class blood, producing characteristics of fanatical building, fanatical sport, a dash of music, evangelicism, agnosticism—all with a great love of the countryside, which will bring forth literature? It is, of course, beyond the power of a super-Mendel to disentangle the genes ; but to state the problem gives Sir Osbert innumerable opportunities for fishing out strange incidents, enchanting characters and odd stories ranging from the brutal to die occult.

" In this cruel and meaningless epoch . . . neither past nor future seem to have any existence ; only the present; which contains the dead ashes of the past." ' But was there really more meaning and less cruelty in the past age?—or ages? As we journey through the past presented to us, of which Sir Osbert makes the ashes glow, and live momentarily in the semi-regal state the Sitwells enjoyed at Scarborough, meet this or that relative or dependent, hobnob with the butler or hear an Archbishop of Canterbury being damned on the telephone, hunt a tiger through the woods at Renishaw or re- capture the side-ache of laughing at the very sight of Dan Law,

stand by a great lady engaged in her pious munificence or sit in Sargent's studio while he is terrifically at work—as in short we voyage through this fascinating document, the past becomes a phantasmagoria, full of colour and clashes, of excitement and sorrows: but—meaning? It would take an astringent philosophy of history to extract meaning ; and the cruelty was at a different level.

However, it is the human, individual element that matters, and Sir Osbert's gifts as a novelist serve him well in tracing his beauti- fully clear portraits. We must all the time keep in mind that this book is a preparation ; the main figures have not yet become active. It is true that we already see Miss Sitwell emerging from her crushed childhood—she was a girl, and had no business to be clever (a suspect and alarming quality in either sex), 'but was to be docile, and if possible sporting, until she should grow up miracu- lously endowed with that astonishing degree of character which marks the women of the last age: Sir Osbert himself is still dimmer, being younger, and Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell is hardly there at all.

Sir Osbert of brings a mature judgement to bear on the companions of his youth, and those whom he met subsequently— since there are frequent dashes forward in time—and on the whole he is placidly tolerant. Yet he can draw the line. He never liked the poor relatives who lived by going from house to house on the ground that they were " such fun," nor the " Why? Why, d'you suppose? " party that criticised the Sargent group, nor, oddly enough, Roger Fry, for whom he seems to have entertained a deep dislike. He is infinitely curious about his father, with his craze for building and landscape gardening, his passion for the medieval, his devotion to genealogies which led him even to encounter the re- doubtable Horace Round, who delighted the children by sliding " with abandon down the whole length of the banisters." "` Don't laugh,' their father reproved them: 'These Great Men have their little Idiosyncrasies.' " This is the portrait which so far stands out the most vividly, the portrait in which Sir Osbert reveals most strongly that pietas which runs through the whole book and warms the prose ; though the portrait of his grandmother, Louisa Lady Sitwell, runs it a close second, supported as it is by an appendix by Dame Ethyl Smyth. The book is profusely illustrated with por- traits old and new, and with pictures of Renishaw by Mr. John Piper, and we close it glad to know that this is only Chapter One of a work which is to extend to as many volumes as life allows Sir Osbert to comment on, a work the aim of which is " to beguile, and not to improve the mind." BONAMY DOBREE.