The Scarlet Tree by Osbert Sitwell Chapter 2. In general, each Christmas [at Blankney Hall] the representatives of the older generation were the same, invariably numbering in their company my grandmother [Edith Somerset Countess Londesborough (age 69)], her brother-in-law [Arthur Walsh 2nd Baron Ormathwaite (age 80)] and sister [Katherine Somerset Baroness Ormathwaite (age 73)]. Lord and Lady Ormathwaite, and Sir Nigel (age 77) and Lady [her sister] Emily Kingscote (age 72). Lord Ormathwaite was even then over eighty — he lived to be ninety-three. Both he and his wife were of a deeply religious nature (it was very noticeable how much more devout were the old than their sons and daughters), and one of the favourite amusements of the children, I remember, was to hide in the broad passage outside the bedroom of this old couple, and listen to the vehement recitation of their lengthy and extremely personal prayers. Another frequent Christmas visitor, until her death in 1903, was Adza Lady Westmorland, who belonged to the same epoch, being the mother of my aunt, and a sister to the 8th Duchess of Beaufort and Lady Emily Kingscote (age 72). She was a godchild of Queen Adelaide, as was her nephew the Duke of Beaufort (age 60)¹. Adza Lady Westmorland, indeed, came of a family much devoted to Queen Adelaide, since she was the daughter of that Lord Howe — the 1st Earl Howe — whose singular conduct at the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, when King William IV was living there, had roused the malicious interest of Charles Greville. Lord Howe, a handsome young man "with a delightful wife", hovered dotingly round Queen Adelaide whenever she was in the room, remained gazing at her with eyes full of love and admiration, and behaved altogether, the diarist relates, as though "a boy in love with this frightful spotted majesty" .... Adza Lady Westmorland, as I remember her, was a very old lady in a Bath-chair, who wore a black dress and a large, shady black hat. But she still retained her wonderfully exquisite manners and her great charm, for both of which she had been celebrated. In her time, she had been responsible for several small social innovations for women, such as wearing tweeds and smoking cigarettes.

As for the young, they were for the most part the same as those we saw a few years before at Scarborough: my cousins, Raincliffe — Frank — , and Hugo and Irene Denison, Veronica and Christopher Codrington, Enid Fane (age 13) and her brother, Burghersh (age 14) — who was my particular friend and companion at that time, in the same way that Victor was my enemy elect — , Marigold Forbes, and other young relatives. Entertainments were provided for them — and, as we shall see in a moment, by them — with regularity. Presents were I do not know how much the old or the young plentiful .... enjoyed the parties — scarcely as much as the members of the ruling generation, I should say ; to the old, certainly, these Christmas festivities brought a feeling of sadness, of deposition.... Among the children, I am sure that the child who felt least happy, an alien among her nearest grown-up relations, was my sister. Acutely sensitive, and with her imagination perhaps almost unduly developed by the neglect and sadness of her childhood since she was five, she could find no comfort under these tents. She loved music, it was true — indeed, where music is, there, always, is her home but the music of this house meant little to her, and the formal conversation between children and grown-ups, even if they were trying to be kind, frightened and bored her ; while she did not care for the machinery of the life here ; the continual killings seemed to her to be cruel, even insane. She ought to have asked to go out with the guns, even if she herself did not shoot ; she might at least have attended a meet. And, if anything, my father's inclination to nag at her on the one hand, my mother's, to fall into ungovernable, singularly terrifying rages with her, on the other, because of her non-conformity, seemed stronger when there were people, as here, to feed the fires of their discontent, and other children to set a standard by which to measure her attainments. "Dearest, you ought to make her like killing rabbits," one could hear the fun brigade urging on my mother. But while my father was angry with his daughter for failing to comply with another standard — his for not having a du-Maurier profile, a liking for "lawn-tennis" or being able to sing or play the zither after dinner (it did not affect him that his wife's relations would have been very angry if she had attempted to play the zither at them), he was also disappointed on another score. She seemed far less interested than I was — or even Sacheverell who was only six or seven — in his stories about the Black Death (a subject he had been "reading up" in the British Museum), and she seemed to have no natural feeling for John The Victorians, Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy .... I think, appreciated Edith more than did the Edwardians. But Irene was the particular focus for grown-up attention and affection, not bccausc she was the only daughter of the house, but because the delicate loveliness of her appearance, with her fine skin and huge, dark-blue eyes, and a certain kind serenity, unusual in a child of her age, made everyone want to spoil her. But it was in vain she remained absolutely unspoilt, gentle, amiable, full of kindly fccling towards the whole world.

Note 1. Henry Adelbert Wellington FitzRoy, 9th Duke of Beaufort (age 60) (b. 1847), was named Adelbert after Queen Adelaide, and Wellington after the Iron Duke, his godfather and his father’s great-uncle. He died in 1920. His late Royal Highness the Duke Connaught (1850—1942) was one of the two last surviving godsons of the Duke of Wellington, the other and ultimate being the 4th Marquess of Ormonde (age 58) ( 1849-1943).