as a wistful creature of contrasts and contradictions, symbolised by the beautiful diamond rings she wore on a grimy hand; a warm, affectionate aunt who yet offered her nephew a cold ivory cheek and smiled as though it were an afterthought. Through small explanations from Theresa and his innate ability to reach below the surface of things, Siegfried recognised the sadness in his aunt’s life: the loss of the object of her love. If only, he mused, it could all be put right again; if only Auntie Rachel and Mr Beer could wake up and find that the threatening forces, now so destructive of their happiness, were but a dream and everything was as it had been.
If only the past could be undone – how he wished that for Weirleigh, too. Auntie Rachel used to visit them there. She was a shrewd judge of character and recognised in Theresa an unerring integrity and wisdom. Above all, she admired Theresa’s discretion about the behaviour of Alfred. The anger, disappointment and sense of betrayal Theresa must have felt remained unspoken, especially at Weirleigh. Whether one can hide such feelings from every child is a matter of conjecture; what is beyond dispute is the heart-rending impact it had on Siegfried.
Alfred returned regularly to Weirleigh to see his sons. Before he arrived Theresa would lock herself away in her room. From the nursery window high up in the house the boys would watch for the village fly to arrive at the main gate and roll into the driveway. Laden, as Sassoon recalls, ‘with guava jelly, pomegranates and funny toys which didn’t need too much taking care of’, Alfred would hurry to the nursery and spread his gifts before the boisterous trio. He knew how to entertain them with games on the nursery floor and out on the spacious lawns. The bond, already strong, was strengthened by each succeeding visit and deepened the desire for permanency. The depth of longing for all to be well again was recounted by Sassoon 50 years later with such artless intensity it is as though he had newly experienced it: ‘One autumn afternoon we were out in the garden and he was giving us a ride in the gardener’s handcart. We were all shouting and thoroughly enjoying ourselves when we came round the corner of some rhododendrons and met my mother. There she stood and we all went past her in sudden silence. I have never forgotten the look on her face. It was the first time I had seen life being brutal to someone I loved. But I was helpless, for my father’s face had gone blank and obstinate, and the situation, like the handcart, was in his hands. All I could do was to feel miserable about it afterwards and wonder why they couldn’t make it up somehow. For I wanted to enjoy my parents simultaneously – not alternately.’ So much of the later Sassoon is revealed through that experience. The young, sensitive Siegfried adapted to circumstances but his ‘memoried mind’ retained the imprint.
Mrs Mitchell, the nursemaid, was an unsympathetic character, unable to enter into the world of the child. Discipline took precedence over affection and rules prevailed over imagination. Nonetheless she assumed an importance in Siegfried’s young world, being the link between him and his absent father. Mrs Mitchell’s allegiance was unreservedly given to Alfred. She was aware of a provision made for her in his will, but the legacy of £100 a year was dependent upon her remaining with the children until they attained an age when her services would no longer be required. Her relationship with Theresa was anything but cordial. However, the prospect of the annuity made her resolute.
What Siegfried did not know was the likelihood of Alfred dying a relatively young man. He had developed tuberculosis and was advised to leave London and move to Eastbourne. In 1893 he took rooms on the south coast in the hope of arresting any further physical decline. Keen as ever to see his children, he made arrangements for Mrs Mitchell to bring them there. The first visit was a happy one when the father and the three boys were photographed together. They are not stilted and formal as most Victorians look in photographs but portray a sense of closeness and affection. Obvious, too, is the shared Sassoon likeness, in particular the striking resemblance Siegfried bore to his father with his deep-set eyes and cleft chin.
Alfred’s decline into acute tuberculosis was inexorable and by the end of the year he was confined to his bed. It is not known who told the boys of their father’s condition and the reason for the terrible cough; probably it was Mrs Mitchell. How sensitively she did so can only be guessed at, but the picture Sassoon painted of her in his memoirs leaves room to doubt her capacity for gentle reassurance. Siegfried prayed for his father’s recovery as fervently as he had desired the reuniting of his parents. Mrs Mitchell took Michael, Siegfried and Hamo for another visit to Eastbourne. It was to be memorable for more than one reason. Entering the room they saw, standing at the window, pensive and silent, a man who was introduced as their Uncle Joseph – Alfred’s elder brother. Also in the room was the redoubtable and until that moment unseen Flora Sassoon, their grandmother. Although she greeted them with a smile, this small, brown-faced old lady created an atmosphere of menace for the seven-year-old Siegfried.
The portraits in The Old Century are kindly drawn; Grandmama Sassoon and Mrs Mitchell are among the exceptions. Both had caused unhappiness to Theresa. Siegfried was not only the most sensitive of the three sons but also the most fervently protective of his mother. It is unlikely that he understood the complexities of the situation but children are instinctive in their loyalties. In the garden at Weirleigh he saw for the first time life being brutal to someone he loved and would never forget it.
In his father’s sickroom, Grandmama Sassoon unrolled a chart upon which was described the Sassoon family tree. It was with an air of bemusement that Siegfried followed her finger down the succeeding generations to the place where his own name and those of his brothers were inscribed:
And it comes back to me, that sense of being among strangers, with Pappy being killed by that terrible cough, and the queer feeling that although this new grandmama was making such a fuss of us, it would make no difference if we never saw her again. I can see myself gazing at the Family Tree and wondering what all those other Sassoons were like, and how my great-grandfather had managed to produce so many of them. And I remember my miserable feeling that the only thing that mattered was that my mother ought to be there, and that these people were unfriendly to her who loved my father as they had never done and would have come to him with unquestioning forgiveness. Even Mrs Mitchell was against her; for I knew, with a child’s intuition, how she had helped to keep them apart.
Such experiences explain why Sassoon preferred to think of himself as a Thornycroft. It was the last time he met his Uncle Joseph, the last time he met his Grandmama Sassoon and the last time he saw his father.
The Thornycrofts were fun to be with and so too were the Donaldsons, the family of Theresa’s sister, Frances. The family bonds grew even stronger when Grandmama Thornycroft came to live at Weirleigh. Sassoon’s description of this elderly lady is tender and admiring. Her black dress with white edges, her soft voice, stately walk, her serenity as she sat by the french windows and watched the seasons change in that year of 1894 are reminiscent of the later portraits of Queen Victoria. Age, too, can bestow an ethereal quality that summons up the past. This was an aspect of his grandmother which attracted Siegfried. He writes of watching her and seeing her transformed in his imagination into a beautiful young woman. One afternoon he watched her as she promenaded in the drawing room arm-in-arm with her son John. How grown-up, how dignified, how different in his young mind to the rent relationship between Pappy and Grandmama Sassoon: ‘I bless the Thornycroft sanity which I inherited from my mother.’
And not only their sanity, but also their creative imagination: Sassoon liked to create worlds of his own to which he could slip away, unnoticed and undisturbed. These were not worlds he could share with his brothers. If, as he has said, ‘My artistic side is derived from the Thornycrofts’, then Michael and Hamo could claim that they had inherited the Thornycroft delight in making things, repairing things, designing things. Siegfried did wonder why he was so impractical. His brothers’ interest in things mechanical isolated him. ‘We were as different as chalk and cheese,’ was how Michael described their relationship. Siegfried was fanciful and introspective: ‘I was in an undisturbed world of my own, localised and satisfactory as such worlds always are.’
In the hard winter of 1895 Mary Thornycroft died. Siegfried went to see her in
