Sir Philip Sassoon by John Singer Sargent Sir Philip Sassoon said that he might have been interestin
Sir Philip Sassoon by John Singer Sargent Sir Philip Sassoon said that he might have been interesting had he slept with Michelangelo’s male muse Cavalieri or invented the wireless instead of Marconi. He would not have felt such “a worthless loon”, he added, if he had painted Velázquez’s court painting Las Meninas or written Wuthering Heights. These hankerings show the essence of the man: a classy aesthete, with a love of big names and modern gadgets.Despite his self-deprecation, though, Sassoon had a fulfilling life. In 1912, in his early 20s, he inherited a fortune with a baronetcy, and was elected as Conservative MP for Hythe – a constituency that, in the 1920s, his political opponents did not even bother to contest. In 1915 Field Marshal Haig, commander-in-chief of British armies on the western front, selected him as his private secretary. A few years later the prime minister, David Lloyd George, appointed him as his political secretary. He held interesting government posts during most of the interwar years.Haig quipped that in recruiting Sassoon to his staff, he had attached a first-class dining car to his train. It is as a host with superb French chefs that Sassoon is remembered most. He liked to buy people’s friendships, to receive them in surroundings that he had beautified, and to embellish himself. Even as an Eton boy he gave ruby shirt studs and diamond cufflinks to other pupils. Thereafter he spent his wealth in ceaseless coddling of the English governing classes. -- source link
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