Literary Rivals
THE SITWELLS
Sassoon first made contact with the Sitwells in 1917, when Edith wrote in admira - tion of his protest against the war. In his early years in literary London they were significant figures in his life, and Sassoon met Stephen Tennant at Sacheverell Sitwell’s, but over the following years: “he became irritated by their petty quarrels, their publicity seeking - which he thought copied from Whistler and Wilde - and their literary self-indulgence... A part of the trouble was that their taste for the fantastic and for modernism, and their contempt for the Georgians, made Sassoon feel old-fashioned, even dull” ( Egremont ). They became a favourite subject for Sassoon’s private caricature and ridicule, as seen in the following examples.
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