Vita Sackville-West



Victoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson, CH (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and poet. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate affair with novelist Virginia Woolf.

Early life


Vita Sackville-West was born at Knole House in Sevenoaks Kent, the only child of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife Victoria Sackville-West, who were cousins. Her mother was the natural daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville. Christened "Victoria Mary Sackville-West", she was known as "Vita" throughout her life, to distinguish her from her mother.

The then laws of male primogeniture prevented Vita from inheriting Knole House on the death of her father. The house passed, with the title, to her uncle Charles Sackville-West, 4th Baron Sackville. The loss of Knole House would affect her for the rest of her life; of the signing in 1947 of documents relinquishing any claim on the property, part of its transition to the National Trust, she wrote that "the signing... nearly broke my heart, putting my signature to what I regarded as a betrayal of all the tradition of my ancestors and the house I loved."

Vita's portrait was painted by Hungarian born portrait painter Philip de Laszlo in 1910, when she was 17. Vita hated this particular portrait, which she thought made her look like a vacuous Edwardian aristocrat, and kept it in her attic throughout her life. (Sissinghurst by Adam Nicolson, The National Trust, 2008.)

Marriage
In 1913, at age 21, Vita married the 27 year-old writer and politician Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968), nicknamed Hadji, the third son of British diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock (1849–1928). The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had consecutive same-sex relations, as did some of the people gravitating around the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with whom they had some association.

These were no impediments to a true closeness between Sackville-West and Nicolson, as is seen from their nearly daily correspondence (published after their deaths by their son Nigel), and from an interview they gave for BBC radio after World War II. Harold Nicolson gave up his diplomatic career partly so that he could live with Sackville-West in England, uninterrupted by long solitary postings to missions abroad.

Following the pattern of his father's career, Harold George was at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, and author of biographies and novels. The couple lived for a number of years in Cospoli, Constantinople and were present, in 1926, at the crowning of Rezā Shāh, in Tehran, then Persia. They returned to England in 1914 and bought Long Barn, in Kent, living there from 1915 to 1930. They employed the architect Edwin Lutyens to help design a small parterre for the home.

The couple had two children: Nigel, (1917–2004), a well known editor, politician, and writer, and Benedict, (1914–1978), an art historian. In the 1930s, the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, in Kent. Sissinghurst had once been owned by Vita's ancestors, which provided a natural dynastic attraction to her following the loss of Knole House. There the couple created the renowned gardens that are now run by the National Trust.

Rosamund Grosvenor
Vita's first real friend was Rosamund Grosvenor (London, England, September 1888-30 June 1944), who was 4 years Vita's senior. She was the daughter of Algernon Henry Grosvenor, (1864–1907), her grandfather being Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury. Vita met Rosamund at Miss Woolf's school in 1899, when Rosamund had been invited to cheer Vita up while her father was fighting in the Boer war. Rosamund and Vita later shared a governess for their morning lessons. As they grew up together, Vita fell in love with Rosamund, whom she called 'Roddie' or 'Rose' or 'the Rubens lady'. Rosamund, in turn, was equally besotted with Vita. "Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out," she admits in her journal, but she saw no real conflict: "I really was innocent."

Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, invited Rosamund to visit the family at their villa in Monte Carlo; Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole House, at Rue Lafitte, and at Sluie. During the Monte Carlo visit, Vita wrote in her diary, " I love her so much ". UponRosamund's departure, Vita wrote, "Strange how little I minded {her leaving}; she has no personality, that's why." Rosamund died in 1944 from a German V1-rocket bombing. Their secret relationship ended in 1913 when Vita married.

Violet Trefusis
The same-sex relationship that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Sackville-West's personal life was with the novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter of the Hon. George Keppel & his wife, Alice Keppel, a mistress of king Edward VII. They first met when Vita Sackville-West was 12 and Violet was 10, and attended school together for a number of years.

The relationship began when they were both in their teens. Both married, she and Trefusis had eloped several times from 1918 on, mostly to France, where Sackville-West would dress as a young man when they went out, much as French poetess Baroness Dudevant, Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, a.k.a. George Sand, (1804–1876), had done with ailing younger Polish musician Frederic Chopin, (1810–1849),  some 100 years earlier, when residing as a couple, 1838 - beginnings of 1839, with her own 2 children,  in the island of Majorca, Spain.

The affair ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths until Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took their toll.

The two women had made, apparently, a bond to remain exclusive to one another, meaning that although both women were married, neither could engage in sexual relations with her own husband. Sackville-West received allegations that Trefusis had been involved sexually with her own husband, indicating she had broken their bond, prompting her to end the affair. By all accounts, Sackville-West was by that time looking for a reason for breaking up the relationship, and used that as justification. Despite the poor ending, the two women were devoted to one another, and deeply in love, and continued occasional liaisons for a number of years afterward, but never rekindled the affair.

Vita's novel Challenge also bears witness to this affair: Sackville-West and Trefusis had started writing this book as a collaborative endeavor, the male character's name, Julian, being Sackville-West's nickname while passing as a man. Her mother, Lady Victoria Sackville-West, the "illegitimate" Spanish-British daughter of the 2nd Baronet Sackville, Lionel, married to a cousin, Vita's father, recognized as third Baronet Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to insist the novel not be published in England; but her own son Nigel Nicolson, (1973, p. 194), however, praises her: "She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"

Virginia Woolf, née Stephen
The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf, sister of Vanessa Bell, both daughters of Leslie Stephen, founder of the monumental British Dictionary of National Biography, wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature", as a result of this affair.

Unusually, the moment of the conception of Orlando was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on 5 October 1927: "And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other" (posthumous excerpt from her diary by husband Leonard Woolf).

Other affairs
Vita Sackville-West also had a passionate affair with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department. "Stoker" was the pet name given to Hilda by Sackville-West, during their brief affair between 1929 and 1931.

In 1931 Sackville-West became involved in an affair with journalist Evelyn Irons, who had interviewed her after The Edwardians became a bestseller.

She was also involved with her sister-in-law Gwen St. Aubyn, Mary Garman and others not listed here.

Well known writings
The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. This novel was faithfully dramatized by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller.

Sackville-West's science-fantasy Grand Canyon (1942) is a "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The book takes an unsuspected twist, however, that makes it something more than a typical invasion yarn.

In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in The Observer called "In your Garden". In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee.

She is less well known as a biographer, and the most famous of those works is her biography of Saint Joan of Arc in the work of the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography of Saint Teresa of Ávila and Therese of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, a biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography of her own grandmother, Spanish dancer, married to a Spaniard, entitled Pepita., the lover and mother of many kids, male/female by British diplomat and second Baronet,  Lionel Sackville-West, (1829–1908), as stated extensively above, running by 2010 at some 11 editions in English. For instance, the 1985 edition by Telegraph Books, (ISBN 9780897607858). The first edition was Doubleday Publishers, 1937. There was another by Amereon, date unavailable for the moment, (ISBN 9780848811501).

Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems.

Legacy


Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust, given by Sackville-West's son Nigel in order to escape payment of inheritance taxes. Its gardens are famous and remain the most visited in all of England.

A recording was made of Vita Sackville-West reading from her poem The Land. This was on four 78rpm sides in the Columbia Records 'International Educational Society' Lecture series, Lecture 98 (Cat. no. D 40192/3).

A plaque on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1, commemorates her and Harold Nicolson

Poetry

 * Chatterton (1909)
 * A Dancing Elf (1912)
 * Constantinople: Eight Poems (1915)
 * Poems of West and East (1917)
 * Orchard and Vineyard (1921)
 * The Land (1926)
 * ''King's Daughter (1929)
 * Sissinghurst (1931)
 * Invitation to Cast out Care (1931)
 * Solitude (1938)
 * The Garden (1946)

Novels

 * Heritage (1919)
 * The Dragon in Shallow Waters (1921)
 * The Heir (1922)
 * Challenge (1923)
 * Grey Waters (1923)
 * Seducers in Ecuador (1924)
 * Passenger to Teheran (1926)
 * The Edwardians (1930)
 * All Passion Spent (1931)
 * The Death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (1932)
 * Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour (1932)
 * Family History (1932)
 * The Dark Island (1934)
 * Grand Canyon (1942)
 * Devil at Westease (1947)
 * The Easter Party (1953)
 * No Signposts in the Sea (1961)

Translations

 * Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino, by Rainer Maria Rilke trns. V. Sackville-West (Hogarth Press, London, 1931)

Biographies/Other works

 * Passenger to Teheran (Hogarth Press 1926, reprinted Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2007, ISBN 978-1-84511-343-8)
 * Knole and the Sackvilles (1922)
 * Saint Joan of Arc (Doubleday 1936, reprinted M. Joseph 1969)
 * Pepita (Doubleday, 1937, reprinted Hogarth Press 1970)
 * The Eagle and The Dove (M. Joseph 1943)
 * Twelve Days: an account of a journey across the Bakhtiari Mountains of South-western Persia (M. Haag 1987, reprinted Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2009 as Twelve Days in Persia, ISBN 978-1-84511-933-1)