was critical of Harrison Weir’s architectural ideas, which she constantly attacked as wasting so much space. Nonetheless the house enveloped her and for the next 60 years was the centre of her life. Of Weirleigh and its garden the adult Siegfried wrote, ‘it is the background to all my dreams both pleasant and unpleasant.’ Wandering through the rooms for the first time is like revisiting familiar surroundings, so accurate and vibrant are Siegfried’s descriptions of them. This is especially true of the square, light-oak staircase, which rises past the room where he and his brothers were born. As one stands at the top and looks down the well, the spirit of place which he evokes in The Old Century and in his poetry, is almost palpable:
Down the glimmering staircase, past the pensive clock,
Childhood creeps on tiptoe, fumbles at the lock.
Out of night escaping, toward the arch of dawn,
What can childhood look for, over the wet lawn?
The documentary quality of his prose and poetry captures the essence of Weirleigh – the house, the garden and the distant prospect of the countryside: ‘Looked at from our lawn, the Weald was, in my opinion, as good a view as anyone could wish to live with. You could run your eyes along more than twenty miles of low-hilled horizon never more than ten or twenty miles away. The farthest distance had the advantage of being near enough for its details to be, as it were, within recognisable reach. There was, for instance, a small party of pine trees on the skyline toward Maidstone which seemed to be keeping watch on the world beyond – a landmark on the limit of my experience they always seemed, those sentinel pines.’
At Weirleigh, Theresa created a typical upper-middle-class country home of the nineteenth century: Anglican, sociable, self-confident and organised. The staff, augmented by occasional help, comprised cook, scullery maid, parlour maid, nursery maid, gardener, groom and stable-lad. The grounds lay to one side and in front of the house. An upper, lower and bottom lawn were each separated by briar and clematis hedges; there was a peony walk, an herbaceous walk, a lawn tennis court, with an orchard to its right and, beyond, a kitchen garden fenced in by apple trees and gooseberry bushes. The perimeter of the garden was lined with rhododendrons, conifers and pine trees. Alfred and Theresa made few alterations. They did, however, extensively refurbish the stables and renovate Harrison Weir’s studio near the house, which afforded space on the top floor for Alfred to set out his library and gave him solitude to play his violin, attempt some sculpture and paint landscapes of the Weald visible from the window. Theresa worked on the ground floor, filling her canvases with angels and seraphim, religious symbols and epiphanies of the spiritual world.
The Sassoons quickly established contact with the local gentry. Squire Marchant and his children, in particular his daughters May and Bessie; Major Horrocks and his sister Clara; Captain Ruxton, a gentleman farmer who was always ready to ‘roll-up his sleeves at harvest time’. Theresa would order the trap and Richardson the groom would drive her hither and thither as she visited those who were within calling distance. Relatives and friends from further afield took the train and alighted at Paddock Wood to enjoy a day or even longer. The cavalcade of characters who worked at Weirleigh, or lived in the Weald, as well as those who came to visit, are immortalised in Sassoon’s memoir of childhood, The Old Century, and also in his Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. Theresa was an accomplished horse-woman and enjoyed a day’s hunting. She was a country person who relished the rural life, much as her forebears had done in Cheshire and Norfolk. Alfred was not by nature or breeding a countryman. At Matfield he helped the local cricket team and added substantially to its batting strength. He was also a fine host and a somewhat frustrated entertainer, particularly in music and song. Theresa and he enjoyed the house being full of guests; but the dilettante in him was restless and the train from Paddock Wood to London became an increasingly regular means of escape.
Their three sons arrived in quick succession. Michael was born within the first year of the marriage, Siegfried in 1886 and the youngest, Hamo, in 1888. A nursemaid was employed, after the fashion of the day, a Mrs Mitchell from nearby Tunbridge Wells. The arrival of a nursemaid in many households meant that parents spent little time with their children. Not so Theresa and Alfred. They were attentive, even doting. The outward bliss, however, belied a growing tension. They were no longer in love. Alfred’s excursions to London became more frequent. It gradually emerged that he was involved in an affair with the American authoress Julia Constance Fletcher. Writing under the name of George Fleming, she achieved her greatest success with Kismet, a Nile novel. In 1889, after five years of marriage, Alfred left Weirleigh to be with his lover in Kensington, in a house within a stone’s throw of the church in which he had married. Theresa and Alfred never spoke to each other again.
Theresa faced the separation in a manner entirely consistent with her straightforward and practical approach to life. Her family helped, of course, being solicitous in both their visits and letters. Hamo, the brother closest to her, rounded on the faithless Alfred with unsavoury racist observations. At this time he was busy building his reputation as a sculptor. Recognition came quickly and his work eventually occupied central sites in London; Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament, General Gordon on the Embankment and Gladstone in the Strand. One of his works, ‘The Sower’, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, caught the eye of Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘I saw the Academy. There was one thing, not a picture, which I much preferred to everything else there – Hamo Thornycroft’s statue of the Sower. A truly noble work and to me a new light.’ John Thornycroft, the elder brother, was busy too, working with his brother-in-law, John Donaldson, in the marine engineering works at Chiswick, where according to Sassoon, ‘Uncle John designed the boats and Uncle Don did everything else.’ Hamo and his brother prospered and were knighted for their work. Their father, John Thornycroft, saw only the beginnings of their success. He died in the year of Siegfried’s birth and four years before the break-up of his youngest daughter’s marriage. His last sculpture, a vigorous representation of Boadicea and her daughters, was without a permanent situation in London at his death. In her last years Mary set herself the task of securing it a worthy and prominent position. Eventually it was erected at the Whitehall end of Westminster Bridge, directed threateningly towards the Houses of Parliament.
Theresa and the three boys were always of close concern to all the Thornycrofts and also to one other relative who, in the affections of Michael, Siegfried, Hamo and Theresa, stood almost supreme – Rachel Sassoon, Alfred’s only sister. She had defied her mother’s command to ostracise her brother. At first her defiance was furtive but then quite open. Flora, having registered her strong disapproval, did not proceed to make it a cause for estrangement. However, three years after her brother’s apostasy Rachel, too, married out. Frederick Beer was a person of consequence, immensely wealthy and the owner of the Observer newspaper. He married Rachel in 1887 and as a wedding gift bought the Sunday Times for her. Ostensibly she became Editor of both papers. It is to be doubted that her lifestyle would have made possible any intense involvement. She took a particular interest in new publications, as her nephew, the young Siegfried, deduced from all the review copies which lay in piles around the house. Her qualities were many, notably defiance in the face of bigotry which fuelled her revolt against her mother and support for Alfred. She also campaigned for another Alfred – Dreyfus, her voice and that of her papers being among the first to detect and expose the anti-Semitism that sought to destroy an innocent man and would have done so, but for the voices of conscience and justice.
The Beers lived in grandeur at Chesterfield Gardens, Mayfair. Siegfried recalls visiting in the late nineties, having been met at Charing Cross Station by the brougham, complete with groom and coachman. Auntie Rachel showered the boys with gifts and treats. Frederick Beer is recalled by Siegfried as a shadowy figure meandering through the vast rooms, cigar in hand. On subsequent visits he vanished to an upstairs room and Siegfried never saw him again. Mr Beer was suffering from inherited syphilis about which his wife knew nothing. In fact she refused to believe he was ill in any way and went on arranging the house and domestic affairs as though her husband would at any moment walk down the marble stairs, cigar in hand, ready for whatever duty or pleasure life
