Henry, 1st Earl of Londesborough (1834-1900) was one of Osbert Sitwell’s (1892-1969) grandfathers so unsurprisingly he features in Osbert’s memoir Left Hand, Right Hand.
“My grandfather Londesborough was devoted to children and had a fascinating manner with them. He liked to take Edith or me – or sometimes both of us, though there was scarcely room – for a drive in his buck-board, a then fast and dashing equipage (there were of course no motors in those days), balanced precariously on two enormous wheels and drawn by, one would have said, a permanently bolting horse.
My grandfather chose this vehicle, because it could be driven over the countryside, without following a road, and could actually cross ditches without its occupants incurring any mishap worse than a severe shaking. But he was a famous whip, the President of the Four-in-hand Club, and we trusted him implicitly even when the drive became unusually exciting. As a rule we first went through Raincliffe Woods, to the beautiful and celebrated Forge Valley, where a groom would be waiting to take the reins.
My grandfather would give him orders to meet us in some other valley, while we walked up one of the steep hills, thickly covered with trees, and down the other side. The woods were large, however, and the meeting-places difficult to find as in the Forest of Arden, and if the arrangements he had made went wrong, as most frequently they did, my grandfather’s language – famous, like his son’s after him, for a wealth and warmth of imagery that, perhaps, suffering a metamorphosis, is to be traced, identically, in the poetry and writings of three of his grandchildren – for a moment echoed far and wide. Suddenly he would remember our presence, and hush his voice for the sake of the young, so that only very occasionally we glimpsed the real works of art at the end of these fascinating and unfamiliar vistas.”
I was reminded of Left Hand, Right Hand when I heard an excellent adaptation of Tales My Father Taught Me on BBC Radio 4 Extra early on Saturday morning.
“Sir John Gielgud stars as the eccentric former Conservative MP Sir George Sitwell. Father to Edith, Osbert and Sacheverel, Sir George was an autocratic recluse whose main preoccupations before the First World War were running the family estate at Renishaw, research into medieval pig-keeping and making sure his son Osbert wasn’t allowed to do what he wanted. Not heard since its original broadcast, Sir John Gielgud was 86 when he took this role and knew the Sitwells. Renee Asherson plays Lady Ida Sitwell. First broadcast on Radio 4 in May 1990.” (BBC website)