Damian Collins - Charmed Life - The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon

A number of Philip’s Oxford friends joined various respectable institutions after graduating. Julian Grenfell became a professional soldier, Charles Lister went to the Foreign Office, and Patrick Shaw Stewart followed his first-class degree with a fellowship at All Souls and a position at Baring’s Bank. It was not clear what Philip would do next. He did not need to make money, and there was no requirement that he should take an active interest in the family firm. He would accompany his father on occasional visits to the office of David Sassoon & Co. in Leadenhall Street, and also to some political meetings and speaking engagements in the constituency.

However, from the summer of 1909, halfway through Philip’s Oxford career, and for the next ten years, death did more than anything to shape the course of his life. Philip would lose in succession his parents, his surviving grandparents and then, in the First World War, a great number of his friends. With death as his constant companion, he could not have been blamed for being imbued, as he would later remark, ‘with a fatalism purely oriental’. 23By this he meant the idea that life is preordained, and that nothing can be done to avoid the fate for which you are destined. Philip would certainly follow the path his parents had set out for him, but his response to each of the blows which death delivered shows a determination to rise to the challenges they presented, and not to be cowed by them.

In early 1909, Philip’s beloved mother Aline was diagnosed with cancer, and her health failed fast. On 28 July, aged just forty-four, she died at her family’s home in the Avenue de Marigny and was buried alongside her grandfather in the Rothschilds’ family tomb at Père Lachaise. The whole family was devastated, and Aline’s friends tried to rally around the children. Frances Horner wrote to Philip in Paris immediately after her friend’s death to remind him that ‘You will return to a country that loved her and will always love her children.’ 24Philip was given the string of pearls that Edward had presented to Aline on their wedding day, in the expectation that he would one day give them to his own bride. Instead he often kept them in his pocket, rubbing them occasionally – in order, he would tell friends, ‘to keep them alive’. fn11Philip believed, as he would later tell Lady Desborough, that the greatest burden of sorrow was felt for those who had to live on without Aline, rather than for his mother herself, whose life had been so tragically cut short. 25

Edward Sassoon never recovered from the loss of his wife, and became a withdrawn figure, remote even from other members of the family. In the winter of 1911 he was involved in a collision with a motor car on the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes and remained badly shaken by the accident. His health further deteriorated in the new year, as a result, it was discovered, of the onset of cancer. Just as with Aline, the end came all too rapidly and he died at home in Park Lane on 24 May 1912, a month short of his fifty-sixth birthday. His coffin was enclosed in the Sassoon mausoleum in Brighton, alongside that of his father, Albert. The twenty-three-year-old Sir Philip, now the third baronet, and his seventeen-year-old sister Sybil were left with the grief of having lost both parents in less than three years. Their maternal grandparents had also both died, in 1911 and 1912, first Baron Gustave de Rothschild and then their grandmother, to whom Sybil had been particularly close. Frances Horner again wrote to Philip: ‘You have both been so familiar with grief and suffering these two years [that it] must have [made] a deep mark on your youth.’ 26

Philip did not receive the normal orphan’s inheritance, as tragic circumstances had contrived to make him one of the wealthiest young men in England. Along with his title, he received an estate from his parents worth £1 million, including the mansion at 25 Park Lane, a country estate and farmland at Trent Park, just north of London, and Shorncliffe Lodge on the Kent coast at Sandgate. There was also property in India, including his great-grandfather’s house at Poona, and Edward’s shares in David Sassoon & Co. These came with the request in his father’s will that he should never sell them to outsiders and thereby weaken the family’s control of the business. He honoured Edward’s request and remained a major shareholder, although he never took much of an interest in the business. Philip took up residence alone at 25 Park Lane. It was felt that brother and sister should not live together, so Sybil moved in with their recently widowed great-aunt, Louise Sassoon, at 2 Albert Gate near Hyde Park. fn12

Edward left one further gift for Philip, for whom he had such high hopes, stating in his will that it was his ‘special wish’ that his son should ‘maintain some connection with my parliamentary constituency’. This request merely emphasized an undertaking that he had sought from Philip before he died. Sybil remembered that when their father was ‘very ill and they knew he was not going to recover, they asked my brother to take his place’. 27It was also reported in the newspapers the day after Edward died that ‘it is freely stated that Mr Philip Sassoon … will be put forward’ as parliamentary candidate for Hythe. 28

It was not unusual for sons to follow their fathers into politics, but the final decision on the candidate would be made by the party leader, Andrew Bonar Law. The former MP Sir Arthur Colefax was also staking a claim to the seat and his experience was much greater than Philip’s, who had made his first public political speech just a few weeks previously, an address to the Primrose League fn13in opposition to Home Rule for Ireland. Bonar Law was advised, however, to give the young Sassoon the chance to stand. This was not purely down to sentiment, but was chiefly because of the large financial contributions that the Sassoon and Rothschild families had made to the local constituency party funds over many years. Both Philip and Colefax addressed the meeting at Folkestone town hall where the local Conservative Party adopted their candidate, but it was clear that the overwhelming majority were with Sassoon.

Philip’s selection meant that there was no time to grieve for his father, as the by-election was to be held on 11 June. He threw himself into the campaign, building on the goodwill people felt towards Edward, and working hard to fulfil his father’s final wish that he should be elected. In his election address Philip set out his credentials as the Conservative and Unionist candidate: opposing home rule as something which would in his opinion cause grave troubles in Ireland, supporting tariff reform to give preference to goods imported from the British Empire, and calling for further investment in new battleships for the Royal Navy. 29He could certainly rely on the support of the Folkestone fishermen, who had carried Edward Sassoon’s banner and party colours on their boats moored in the harbour at the general election in 1910, and did the same during Philip’s campaign. They were set against the Liberal government’s free-trade policies that allowed French fishermen to land their fish in Folkestone tariff free, while British vessels were charged if they brought any of their catch into French ports. Philip also received backing from the licensed victuallers in the constituency, continuing the traditional support the Tories enjoyed from the drinks industry. 30He upset some of the more traditionalist Conservative MPs during the by-election by supporting the suffragette campaign for votes for women. At his first public meeting of the campaign, he was accused by some in the audience of being too young, but the newspapers reported that he ‘promised to grow out of that if they gave him the chance’. 31His performance at the meeting was also reported by the local newspapers as an ‘amazing success’.