Vita Sackville-West
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| Vita Sackville-West The Honorable Lady Nicolson |
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|---|---|
| Born | March 9, 1892 Knole House, Kent, England |
| Died | June 2, 1962 (aged 70) |
| Occupation | novelist, poet |
| Nationality | English |
| Writing period | 1917 - 1960 |
Victoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson, CH (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962), best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English poet, novelist and gardener. 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. She helped create her own gardens in Sissinghurst, Kent which provide the backdrop to Sissinghurst Castle. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate affairs with women like novelist Virginia Woolf.
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[edit] Early life
Sackville-West was born at Knole House in Kent, and her first love affair was with this ancient and huge house; because she was a woman, she could not inherit it, and this affected the rest of her life. She was the daughter of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife Victoria Sackville-West. Christened "Victoria Mary Sackville-West", she was known as "Vita" throughout her life. She was a descendant of Thomas Sackville, contributor to Gorboduc and Mirror for Magistrates. Her portrait was painted by Philip de Laszlo in 1910.
[edit] Personal life, marriage and bisexuality
Vita Sackville-West was a complex woman with deep and passionate attachments. The strongest and most enduring one throughout her life was to her husband, although she also had many lesbian relationships.
[edit] Her marriage
In 1913, Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson, at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, author of biographies and novels, and, crucially, a fellow bisexual in what would now be called an open marriage. Both she and her husband had several consecutive same-sex relations outside their marriage, as was common among the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists with which they had some association. These were no impediment 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. They were truly devoted to each other, and 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.
The couple had two children, Nigel, also a politician and writer, and Benedict, an art historian. In the 1930s, the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, in the rural depths of Kent, the county known as the garden of England. There they created the renowned gardens that are now run by the National Trust.
[edit] Relationship with Violet Trefusis
The same-sex relationship that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Sackville-West's personal life was that with novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter to courtesan Alice Keppel. They met when Sackville-West was age twelve and Trefusis ten, and attended school together for a number of years. A relationship started while both were in their teens. Both married, but by the time both of Sackville-West's sons were no longer toddlers, 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. The affair eventually ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took their toll, but Trefusis refused to give up.
Also, the two women had made 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,[citation needed] Sackville-West was by that time looking for a reason, 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 endeavour, the male character's name, Julian, being Sackville-West's nickname while passing as a man. Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to insist the novel not be published in England; her son Nigel (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?"
[edit] Affair with Virginia Woolf
The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf 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, Orlando's moment of conception was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on October 5th 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).
[edit] Other affairs
In 1931 Sackville-West became involved in an affair with journalist Evelyn Irons, who had interviewed her after The Edwardians became a bestseller.[1]
She was also involved with her sister-in-law Gwen St. Aubyn, Mary Garman and others not listed here.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Legacy
Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust. Its gardens are the most visited in England.
There is a brown "blue plaque" commemorating her and Harold Nicolson on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1.
[edit] Quotes
- "Her pearls burnt like a phosphorescent flare in the darkness." — Description of Orlando, from the final chapter of Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
- "Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong." — The opening sentences of Passenger to Teheran, Sackville-West's account of her own 1926 journey to visit Harold Nicolson in Iran.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Poetry
[edit] Novels
- Heritage (1919)
- Challenge (1923)
- The Edwardians (1930)
- All Passion Spent (1931)
- The Dark Island (1934)
- Grand Canyon (1942)
- The Easter Party (1953)
[edit] Translations
- Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino, by Rainer Maria Rilke trns. V. Sackville-West (Hogarth Press, London, 1931)
[edit] 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)
- Daughter of France: The Life of Marie Louise d'Orleans (Doubleday, 1959)
[edit] Further reading
- David Cannadine: Portrait of More Than a Marriage: Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West Revisited. From Aspects of Aristocracy, pp.210-42. (Yale University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-300-05981-7
- Robert Cross and Ann Ravenscroft-Hulme: Vita Sackville-West: A Bibliography (Oak Knoll Press, 1999) ISBN 1-58456-004-5
- Victoria Glendinning: Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983)
- Nigel Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West: Portrait of a Marriage. (The University of Chicago Press, 1998. First published 1973) ISBN 0-226-58357-0
- Peggy Wolf: Sternenlieder und Grabgesänge. Vita Sackville-West: Eine kommentierte Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen von ihr und über sie 1930 - 2005. (Daphne-Verlag, Göttingen, 2006) ISBN 3-89137-041-5
[edit] External links
- Fuller list of Vita Sackville-West's publications
- Vita Sackville-West as a garden designer
- Portrait photos at npg.org.uk [1] [2]
