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Vita (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West (1892-1962) | |
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English poet and novelist, born into an old aristocratic family, proprietors of Knole House in Kent. Vita Sackville-West wrote about the Kentish countryside and she was the chief model for Orlando in Virginia Woolf's novel of that same title from 1928. Sackville-West's best known poem, The Land, was awarded the Hawthorne Prize in 1927. The country habit has me by the heart, Victoria Mary Sackville-West was the only child of Lionel Edward, third Baron of Sackville, and Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West, his first cousin and the illegitimate daughter of the diplomat Sir Lionel Sackville-West. She was educated privately. As a child became interested in poetry, and penned her first ballads at the age of 11. "I don't remember either my father or my mother very vividly at that time, except that Dada used to take me for terribly long walks and talk to me about science, principally Darwin, and I liked him a great deal better than mother, of whose quick temper I was frightened." (Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson, 1973, p. 5) Vita's mother considered her ugly – she was bony, she had long legs, straight hair, and she wanted to be as boyish as possible. Her social life was active, she wore Cartier jewelry, danced at Buckingham Palace, and talked with the Prince of Wales. Between 1906 and 1910 Sackville-West produced eight novels and five plays. Chatterton: A Drama in Three Acts (1909), was privately printed. In 1913 she married the diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson, with whom she lived a long time in Persia and then at the Sissinghurst Castle in Kent; they bought the place for £12,375. At first Vita played her role as a dutiful wife, but then her husband admitted that he had a male lover. The marriage endured despite their homosexual affairs, Vita was responsible for breaking up several marriages and she took one lover after another with the tacit agreement of her husband, but Harold's affairs were less passionate than Vita's. They had two children, the art critic Benedict Nicholson and the publisher Nigel Nicolson. In 1923 the art critic Clive Bell introduced Sackville-West to
Virginia Woolf; the two became lovers. According to an anecdote, when
Nigel was a child and an adult person told him, that "I suppose you
realize that Virginia loves
your mother?" he had replied, "Well, of course she does, we all do." ('Nigel Nicolson: Vita and Virginia and Vanessa,' in The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of
Memoirs and Commentary, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum, 1995, pp. 334-335) Her
intimate encounters with Virginia Woolf she marked as "X" or "!" in her
diaries. In spite of their relationship she never became a
part of Bloomsbury group of artists and scholars. Vita had also affairs with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department, Mary Campbell, married to the poet Roy Campbell, but her life long companion was Violet (Keppel) Trefusis, the daughter of Alice Keppel and Ernest Beckett, who became the second Lord Grimthorpe. A few years after Violet's birth, Alice became mistress to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. Vita's relationship with Rosamund Grosvenor ended in 1913. She had first met Rosamund at the age of six; Rosamund four years older. Violet and Vita had also met as children. Violet, who was two years younger, gave Vita a lava ring in 1908 when they both were teen-agers – it was her first gesture of affection and tenderness, but they did not meet much before the late 1910s. Vita kept the ring for the rest of her life. The relationship continued until after their respective marriages. At one point they "eloped" to France but in 1921 Violet returned to her husband Denys Trefusis. In her letters to Vita, she called her by a man's name, varying from Julian and Dimitri to Mytia. Violet was "Lushka". Denys destroyed Vita's letters to his wife. Trefusis's letters to Vita from 1910 to 1921 were published
between 1989 and 1991. This long relationship was the subject of
Sackville-West's secret diary and gave material for the novel Challenge
(1924), which was not published in England until 1976. The
original manuscript was dedicated to Violet, but for the publication
she substituted it with a quotation from George Borrow's novel The
Zimbali. Challenge depicted a Greek vineyard owner, Julian,
Vita's alter ego, who is torn between his love for his cousin, the
gentle Eve, and for his island home, Aphros. At the end he says to Eve,
"You hated the things I loved. Now you've killed those things, and my
love for you with them. You've killed everything I cherished and possessed." (Ibid., p. 285) Julian's revolution fails and Eve chooses her
own fate. The plot was picked up again in The Dark Island
(1934), which featured the imaginary island of Storn, two miles
off the coast of southern England. Vita's stand-in is Sir Venn, who
cannot leave his wet and dark castle there. The novel was
dedicated to Gwen St. Aubyn, Harold's younger sister and Vita's lover
at the time. Virginia Woolf said that the work was too closely
associated with her personal life; she did not have the necessary
distance to make it an independent work of art. Violet's reply in the literary dialogue was the novel Broderie Anglaise (1935), in which Vita was Lord Shorne, Virginia Woolf the acidic Alexa Harrowby Quince, and she herself was Anne Lindell. In Woolf's Orlando, which came out in 1928, Vita was featured as the androgynous title character and Violet was the chief model for a Russian princess called Sasha after a white Russian fox Orlando had had as a boy. Sackville-West's father died in 1928 and his brother became
the fourth Baron Sackville, inheriting Knole. Her husband decided in
1929 to resign from the foreign service and devote himself to
literature. They purchased Sissinghurst Castle, a near-derelict house,
and started to restore it. In the 1930s Sackville-West published The
Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931), and Family
History (1932). These bestsellers portrayed English
upper-class manners and life. Pepita (1937) was the story of
her grandmother, who was a Spanish dancer. Her passionate gardening
was rewarded in 1955 by the Royal Horticultural Society. Sackville-West
also published several books about gardening and kept a regular column
at the Observer from 1946. "If you have room in your garden at the top of the bank or slope, I would urge you plant Cornus mas,
the Carnelian cherry. This cornel or dogwood produces its yellow
flowers early, and is one of the best flowerers for forcing indoors." (A Joy of Gardening, introduction by Ulrich Baer, 2023, p. 3) In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She died of cancer on June 2, 1962. Harold Nicolson died six years later. Sackville-West believed in equal rights for women. She is best remembered for her novels but her most enduring work was perhaps the garden at Sissinghurst Castle, evidently the joint creation of Harold and Vita, and as Nigel Nicolson suggested the true "portrait of their marriage." Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage (1973) was based on her parents' journals and notes, and described their private life and marriage. Later it was made into a television mini-series in 1990, starring Cathryn Harrison, Janet McTeer and David Haigh. For further reading: Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson (1973; Erään avioliiton muotokuva, suom. Riitta Kallas, 1975); Sackville-West: A Critical Biography by Michael Stevens (1974); The Jessamy Brides: The Friendship of Virginia Woolf and V. Sackville West by Joanne. Trautman Banks (1973); Vita's Other World: A Gardening Biography of Vita Sackville-West by Jane Brown (1985); The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska (1985); Violet to Vita, The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska and John Phillips (1989); Vita and Harold, edited by Nigel Nicholson (1992) Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf by Suzanne Raitt (1993) Vita by Victoria Glendinning (2005); A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd (2011); Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison (2015); Vita & Virginia by Sarah Gristwood (2018); Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning (2018). Note: The Hogarth Press (see Virginia Woolf) used to print books in Sissinghurst Castle's tower, including 13 titles by Sackville-West. The most important work was T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Selected works:
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