Oddlet: Sir George Sitwell · 1 min read
Nov 3, 2026
Obdurate
Sir George Sitwell invented a musical toothbrush and a wasp-shooting revolver, but what defeated him was the colour of his dairy cows.
Sir George Sitwell inherited a baronetcy at the age of two, took Eton and Oxford, and at twenty-five was elected Conservative MP for Scarborough. His 1909 book On the Making of Gardens was praised by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. Harold Nicolson called him a stylist of distinction.
He had views on the rest of reality too.
At Eton he built a musical toothbrush that played "Annie Laurie" as one brushed. At Renishaw he designed a small revolver for shooting wasps. He personally pitched Gordon Selfridge a savoury faux egg with a smoked-meat yolk, a compressed-rice white, and a synthetic-lime shell. Selfridge, a man who sold nearly everything, declined.
Then Sir George looked out across the lawns at Renishaw and decided the dairy cows clashed with his taste for blue and white.
He had them stencilled in Chinese willow pattern.
The cows, he complained, were obdurate and perverse. They forced him to abandon the scheme.
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- Wikipedia — George Sitwell — Core biographical dates (born 27 January 1860, London; died 9 July 1943, Locarno, Switzerland), succession to baronetcy 1862, education (Eton, Christ Church Oxford), parliamentary career (Scarborough 1885–86, 1892–95), marriage 1886, three children, purchase of Montegufoni 1909, permanent residence there from 1925, 81-year, 89-day baronetcy tenure.
- Wikipedia — Left Hand, Right Hand! — Documents Osbert Sitwell's five-volume autobiography (1944–50) and the sixth volume 'Tales My Father Taught Me' (1962) as the primary literary source for the anecdotes about Sir George's eccentricities.
- Sitwell Society — Sir George — Family-society biographical page: marriage 26 November 1886, death 8 July 1943 at Locarno, Wood End in Scarborough as family residence 1870–1934, publication and 1951 reprint of 'On the Making of Gardens,' relationship with butler Henry Moat, Harold Nicolson's stylistic praise.
- Gardenvisit.com — Sitwell, George Reresby — 'On the Making of Gardens' (1909) as a design treatise from Italian Renaissance research, Sir George's Italian garden at Renishaw c.1890, praise from Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, purchase of Montegufoni after his 1901 nervous collapse, Italian travels with valet Henry Moat.
- Henry Poole & Co. — Sir George Sitwell
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