VITA
I,
TheLrteof
V.Sackville-\\kst
Victoria
91endinning
Alfred A. Knopf
New York
r<
1983
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1983 by Victoria Glendinning
All rights reserved under International and PanAmerican Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain by
George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Ltd., London.
'f'R
,,031
A3SZ/..t/S
19'Z?3
For Paul
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Glendinning, Victoria.
Vita: a biography of Vita Sackville-West.
Includes index.
x. Sackville-West, V. (Victoria), 1892-1962-Biography.
2. Authors, English-20th century-Biography. I. Title.
~_~??:3Z',A.:35~,~8,. __~9'83_
823'·9I.2 [B]
83-47961
ISBN 0-394-52023-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
First American Edition
'< :
The Enclave and the Tower
I wonder if Niggs is right in thinking Ben is eccentric. I confess I do not
get the hang of Ben. What is the middle of his mind really like? ... I do
about never letting him down, but at the same time I think that the
the Grenadiers [N.igeIJ needs affection quite as much. I think he is very,",,·n '"
us both; and I thmk th~t under his assurance he is more [touching, n"C •• ";,,,
h?w than you w?uld beheve .... I wish to God Ben would marry, it
hIm all the good 10 the world, even if it was only a Platonic sort of marriage.
She disliked and distrusted Philip Toynbee, Ben's closest friend,
she thought encouraged Ben in his 'irresponsible' bohemian
"
establishment attitudes.
Harold had looked on his projected peerage, he told her, as 'a
ment, a consolation prize' for unfulfilled ambition. But now that it
be out of reach, 'I realize that I had come to desire the consolation
eve~ more than the prize itself: Vita gave him her second piece
advIce. In a letter of 6 January 1946, marked by her 'This is a
letter',. she advised him. to 'take the Labour whip' - in the
becomm.g a Labour-nomlllated peer. 'I see that you are in a jam, and
only satIsfactory solution I can see is for you to do what I have
gested.' Harold was infinitely more versed in the politics of politics
she, and need not have taken her advice; but in this matter he had
his bearings.
Harold duly told the Lord Chancellor, in April, that he might
pr~pa.red to. take the. Labour whip. Vita advised him to press his
~IS tIme ,wIth. the PrIme. Minister: 'I think - if I may say so make a'inistake in "ri.Cif"iiieittioning Cranfield [they had decided on
Cranfield' as his future title] to Attlee now that you have the cmmce ...1t
may well be that the whole suggestion has gone out of his head ...
reminder would do no harm.'
But H~ro.ld's 'remi.nders' resulted only in disappointment and
loss of d,gn~ty .. He d~d not formally join the Labour Party until
1947. By thIS tIme Vita was backtracking slightly - 'though not
hostile especially if it leads eventually to Lord Cranfield. Of course
not really like you being associated with these bedints. '
Vita, ?aving despatched at last her manuscript of The Garden, turned
attentIon to the real garden. She wanted to obliterate all traces of
neglect of the war years. 'Oh dear kind God, please let Vass live
and healthy until he is eighty at least, and never let him be retnoted
away. to anyone else's garden.' She concentrated on flowering
growmg vegetables was part of the discarded wartime men",lity"
though they always grew enough to supply the needs of the house.
She dashed off a murder story, commissioned for a desirable ".000:'
J4 1
with ease and pleasure. This was Devil at Westease, published by Doubleday in the United States (but never in Britain). Set in a tranquil West
Country village, it involves ·a Jekyll-and"Hyde double identity on the
part-of the mur4'erer; there is no motive, only the desire to co;nmit the
undetectable crime. The novel also poses a mora,! problem: d a great
artist is guiity of ;:l crime, should he be punished like anyone else, or
should he be protected from justice for the sake of his art? It is, as Vita
herself considered, an 'ingenious' story - but far-fetched and amateurish in execution.
In February 1946 she got the proofs of The Garden from Michael
Joseph, and wrote in her diary, 'Depressed by these. It is worse than I
feared, - not a patch on The Land though that's not saying much.' She
had been anxious about it all along, writing to Harold the previous
October:
What worries me a bit, is being so out of touch with poetry as it is being
written today. I get so many volumes sent to me by the Observer and also by
would-be poets themselves, and I see that the influence of Tom Eliot and the
Stephen Spender-Auden school is paramount - yet I can't get into gear with it
at all. It is just something left out of my make-up. I think perhaps it has
something to do with my dislike of politics ... I mean just a lack of interest in
what must always be temporary things.
She loathed, she said, her virtuosity, 'my skill, - it's just like a pianola
reeling off.... Why, then, should it make me so unbearably happy to
write poetry, when I know that it is all out-of-date rubbishy words that
mean simply nothing at all to Ben's generation? Will it ever mean anything to anybody's generation? I doubt it.' Her misery over the proofs
provoked a return to what Harold, with an equal misery, called h~r
'muzzy moods'. Waiting for The Garden to come out, she worked frantIcally in her own garden - 'You see, I am prepared to devote all my
energies to the garden, having abandoned literature.' The day before
the poem was published, she went and hid herself in the wood <from
sheer misery'.
There was a particular reason for her despair. In March she went to a
meeting of the Poetry Committee of the Society of Authors, chaired by
Denys Kilharn Roberts at his rooms near Harold's old apartment in
King's Bench Walk. The committee - which included Edith Sitwell,
Walter de la Mare, Henry Reed, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice and
George Barker - was to plan a poetry reading to be held at the Wigmore
Hall in the presence of the Queen. Vita made no comment in her diary at
the time; only in 1950, in depression, did she write: 'I don't think I will
ever write a poem again. They destroyed me for ever that day in Denys
Kilham Roberts' rooms in King's Bench Walk.'
342
The Enclave and the Tower
J43
!
I,
I
What had happened is explained in a letter she wrote to
Sackville-West in 1951., consoling him for his exclusion
National Book League's exhibition of the 100 best books by 'reIPreSo"lta_·····
tive authors' since 1920. (Harold's Some People and Vita's The
,.,\ ','
in.) Vita told Eddy about 'something which hurt me so much that I have··
never told it to anyone, - not even to Harold.' It was that at the meeting "
Vita's name had not been put forward by any of her fellow committee
members as one of the poets to read their work at the Wigmore Hall.
Now I don't set myself up to read poetry very well; but I know that I am
audible, which is more than can be said for some of them j so the onli,"
inference to be drawn is that they didn't think me, worth putting up on the
platform - in other words, my poetry wasn't good enough. It had the effect on
me that I have never written a line of verse since then. l
'
The aspiration of Vita's life had been to be a poet - and to be known and
acknowledged as a poet of lasting significance. As a young woman her
work had met with acceptance and acclaim; she had never had to
struggle against neglect. That is perhaps why this rejection, this loss of
ratification, seemed so absolute and damning.
The sad irony is that The Garden is a more interesting and a finer poem
than The Land. In The Garden, which is a little shorter than the earlier
poem, there are many occasions when, as she wrote in it, <Martha's
garaen turns to Mary's cell'; it is not a gardening treatise in verse so
much as a long meditation exploring her personal metaphysic in time of
·_·_··_-··--war. She dedicated··it to old Mrs Drummond:
The weeds in my garden remain as green,
And I cannot tell if I bring you pleasure,
But the one little patch I have cleared for you
That one small patch of my soul is clean.
In the dedication she wrote of the loss of ardour that ageing brings, of
the 'deathly rest' sought
By a heart gone weak and a spirit cired
By the long delusion of things desired.
Yet in the poem she quotes four lines from Eliot's The Waste Land- 'April
is the cruellest month ... ' - only to refute their pessimism with
passion: 'I will believe in Spring' :
Would that my pen like a blue bayonet
Might skewer all such cat's-meat of defeat.
She does not offer a facile optimism in exchange:
There is n.othing to_add but the fact that we had the vision
And this was a grace in itself, the decision
We t,ook between hope and despond j
,
The different way that we heard and accepted the call ;
The different way
~
We tried to respond.
The 'vision' is, in part, the garden and its flowers:
You dreamed us, and we made your dreams come true.
We are your vision, here made manifest.
You sowed us, and obediently we grew,
But, sowing us, you sowed more than you knew
And something not ourselves has done the rest.
Vita's <something not ourselves' is not the loving God of the New
Testament. Here she writes of hungry birds:
It is not you they fear, but one another.
Christ would have said that bird to bird was brother,
But Christ and Nature seldom speak alike.
It is a fierce, lonely universe outside the paradise garden, the <little
perfect world' :
For our life is terribly private in the end,
In the last resort j
And if our self's a stranger, what's a friend?
A pretty children's game of let's pretend!
The inner landscape is as much in focus as the garden vista. A note in
her manuscript headed 'General Themes' begins: 'Courage in Adve~­
sity. Determination to find pleasure and not to succumb. No sentlmentality. Struggle. Weeds. Death and -Loss. Success and rewards.'2
The seasons in The Garden are the seasons of life as well as of the year.
The Garden is a poem of menopause, in which the horticultural lists and
litanies of species and processes are as much the occasion as the purpose
of writing. The art of making a garden, she wrote here, is to 'Marry
excess with an adroit repose' - a balance she vainly tried to maintain in
her life, threatened not only by war from outside but by
The rabble in the basement of our being,
Ragged and gaunt, that seldom rush to light
M 0 5 T of the material from which this book was built was, at the time of
writing, at Sissinghurst Castle: Vita's mother's diaries, letters and
scrapbooks; Vita's diaries, cuttings books, notebooks and many manuscripts, published and unpublished; letters to Vita from childhood friends,
from Rosamund Grosvenor, and Violet (Keppel) Trefusis; the huge correspondence between Vita and Harold Nicolson; copies of Harold Nicolson's diaries; and a mass of letters to Vita from publishers, strangers, fans,
friends, family and lovers. Harold and Vita's letters to each other, Vita's
early diaries and the diaries of her mother are now (1983) in the safe-keeping
of the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana.
To give a separate reference for every item quoted from the Sissinghurst
material would encumber these pages unprofitably. Where no source
reference is given, it is to be assumed that the document quoted was at
Sissinghurst. Particularly important letters or diary entries are dated in the
narrative; all others can be dated by month and year from the context. If a
letter is quoted out of chronological context, a reference is given. References are given for letters from other sources, quotations from printed
books, and for material from university or library collections. The letters
from Vita to Evelyn IrQns,Eardley Knollys, Alvilde Lees-Milne and James
Lees-Milne were, at the time of writing, in the possession of the recipients.
PROLOGUE
3 VSW, Knole and the Sackvilles, 1922
1 For the facts of Vita's mother's
4 idem
5 VSW, 'To Knole', Poems of West and
2
background I am indebted to Susan
Mary Alsop, Lady Sackville, 1978
VSW, Pepita, 1937
PART!
KNOLE
CHAPTER 1
1
2
VSW, The Edwardians, 1930
VSW, <Leopards at Knole', Collected
Poems, 1933
East, 1917
6 VSW, Nursery Rhymes, 1947
7 VSW, 'Shameful Reminiscence',
Little Innocents, ed. Alan PryceJones, 1932
8 VSW, 'Autobiography of 1920', in
Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, 1973
416
Notes and Sources
PART V THE ENCLAVE AND
THE TOWER
CHAPTER 33
I
CHAPTER 30
Berg, 6 November 1951
2 Huntingdon Library
3 Anne Scott-J ames, Sissinghurst: The
I
2
James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson,
vol. II
Philippe J ullian and J oho Phillips,
Violet Trefusis
Making of the Garden
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 31
To Eddy Sackville-West, 30 June
1950. Berg
2 Yale, 13 October 1948
3 Denton Welch,Journals, 1952
1
I
2
Yale, 3 September 1957
James Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson,
vol. II
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 32
Yale, 19 December 1949
Yale, 4 October 1949
) Yale, 5 July '949
4 Yale, 18 January 1950
5 New Statesman, 21 January 1950
6 J ames Pope-Hennessy, A Lonely
Business, ed. Peter Quennell, 1981
I
2
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
University of Sussex
Dearest Andrew (VSW's letters to
Andrew Reiber), 1979
'A Dream" Collected Poems
To Hamish Hamilton, 8 May 1968
20 August 1957
25 November 1952
VSW, The Garden, 1946
BOOKS BY
V.SACKVILLE-WEST
430
Index
Index
Nicolson, Sir Harold. contd
loses satchel and papers, 365 ; and
poll. 392.-3 ; on Daughter ofFrance, 394 ;
and father's Monarchy, 401 ; divorce. 407
Nicolson, Philippa (nee Tennyson
d'Eyncoun later Lady McAlpine; Nigel's
wife), 377-80. 385> 389, 407
Nicolson. Vanessa {Ben's daughter), 386
.
Niggeman, Elvira, 32.8, BO, B3, 338
'1931' (poem), 2.41
mother's death, 368--9; and brother
No Signposts in the Sea, 398-400
Freddy, 369-70; health anxieties, 372-3 ;
Norbury, Lucy Henrietta Katharine,
Countess of, 2.90
North Africa, 351-2.
Northcli£fe Lectures (University of London),
'7l
'Notes on a Late Spring' (article), 137
'Novice to her Lover, The' (poem). 361
Neville Terrace, 338, 341, 356-7, 369-70,
373 ; seeks peerage, 339-40, J 51-2.; joins
Labour Party, 340, 351 ; reports 1946
Paris Peace Conference, 344-5 ; National
Trust work. 349; loses N.Croydon byelection, 351-2; and Dymentpoem, 363
j
in Albany apanment, 373. )80, 396;
KCVO, 375 ; honorary Fellow of Balliol.
377; stroke, }SI poth birthday gift, )86 j
winter cruises, 386,391-2,397.402-3;
Lees-Milne biography of, 390; deafness,
396; reviews in Observer. 401 ; and V's
final illness and death, 403-4; death, 406
Ponraitof 4 Marriage, 67, III, 158,2.72.,405
Possingworth Marior, Blackboys, 106
Potocki, CountJoseph, 32., 40, J60
Powerscourt, Sheila. Viscountess (Sheila
Wingfield), j73 .
'~rodigal,
(poem~ 58,
·Prokos~. Frederick, 2J2.
Pryce·Jones; Alan, 371, 375
Pucci, Orazio, Marchese, JI-J-, 36. 39-40,
49,62., 133
Punnett, H.C. (builders), 2.35
Pym, Violet, 348; 360-1, 371, 393, 398
'.The'
NurseryRhymes,35 0
Quennell, Peter, 2.86
Quinlan (manservant), 404
Observer (newspaper): prints V's poems, 86,
12.2.; reviews The Land, 167; V reviews
Rainbow (comic), 12.7
WORKS : Helen's Tower, 2.80; Journey
tojava. 387 j King George v, 354;
Monarchy, 398, 401 ; Peacemaking. 264;
Public Faces, 252 j Some People, 1)0,342;
Tennyson, Il7. 130
Nicolson, Juliet (Nigel's daughter), 379-80
Nicolson. Luisa (nee Venova; Ben's wife),
366,382.-3,386,391,393,402.
Nicolson, Nigel (second son): on Long Bam,
79; birth, 83 ; childhood, 94-50 100, III,
147; on V's duality, 105; publishes
Portrait ofa Marriage, Ill, 158,2.72.,405;
writes to Rainbow, 12.7; and father's
Teheranposting, 146; schooling, 152.,
180, 192., 2.350 2.40; injured, 165 ; flu, 180;
in schoplholidays" ,,I92.~9.Ik9, ..2.Zo..;..and
father's absence in Berlin, 194; relations
with mother, 2.17, 2.71-2., 2.83, 2.87, 32.0,
331,339-40,349,355,363 ; Italian
holiday, 2.3}-4; On parents' wedding
anniversary, 2.45 ; and parents' US [Qur,
2.57. :160; appendicitis, 2.64; deprecates
poetry, 2.68, 2.72.; fails Oxford
preliminaries, 2.71 ; relations with father,
2.72. ; and father's Leicester candidacy,
2.82. ; and grandmother's death, 2.82.-3 ;
Oxford degree, 2.83, 2.94; on Pepita, 290;
war service, 3°3, 320, Bo-l ; and
V. Woolf's death, 316; marriage
prospects, 317, B I ; heir [Q Sissinghurst,
317.380,406; as prospectiveMP, 331 ;
returns from war, 334; in Neville Terrace.
338; praises The Garden, 344; and
Shirley Morgan, 344, 349, 355 ; in
Hebrides. 346; in Weidenfeld and
Nicolson (publishers), 355 ; MP for
Bournemouth West, 363. 372; Albany
aparnnent, 373 ; marriage, 3n-8;
children, 379-80, 389 ; publishes Lolita,
391; loses BOumemouth constituency
for, 2.78, HI ; V's gardening articles in.
H6-7, 350, 370-1, 378-9. 397, 400; HN
reviews for, 401
Oliva, Juan Antonio de (Pepita'S husband), 2.
Omega Workshop, 88, 178
Onlooker (magazine), 2.5
Orchard and Vineyard (poems). 122-3. U7-8
Ortega, Catalina (Pepita's mother), 2.
Orwell, Sonia, 392.
Osuna, Duke of, 358
Palewski, Gaston, 366
Palmer, Herbert E., 2.40
Parrot. Mr and Mrs, 369
Parsons, Alan. 206
Parsons, Trekkie, 387
Passenger to Teheran, 165> 170
Patterson, Mrs (nurse), 1
PEN Club. 12.7, 130, 135
Penns·in·the·Rocks, Withyham, Sussex, 192.,
2.2.3,2.78-9,371
Pepita UosefaDurin), 2., 2.9-31. 89. 285. 358
Pepita, 14, 35, 103, 2.85-6. 288.....,I, 349
Persia, 154, 15~, 171-4
Pinsent, Cecil, I J2.
Pippen, Aileen: The Moth and the Star, 387
Pirandello, Luigi. 212
Pitter, Ruth, 2.88
Piu·Rivers, Michael, 392.
Plank, George, 135, 165, 2.2.2., 2.64, 2.90
Platt. Ronald, 389, 393, 395
Plomer, William. 251
Poems of West and East, 85-6
Poetry Review (magazine), 134. 361-3
Pope·Hennessy,James, 360, 364-5, 373
Raikes, Commander Reggie, 55, 71,12.4
Ravensdale, Mary Irene Cunon, 2.nd
Baroness, J2.0
Raverat, Jacques. 143
'Reddin' (unpuhlishednovel), 119-2.I, 12.7;
rewritten as poem, 170, 195, 2.29, 2.66
Reed, Henry, HI
Reiber, Andrew, 401
Reina de/Mar (ship), 391
Reith, John, Baron, 246, 2.54Renoir, Auguste, 71
Reza Khan, Shah of Persia, 157
Rice, Mt1;, ,305
'Rich'elieu' (juvenile work), 2.5
Riess, Frau (photographer), 2.12.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 19J, 196.241
Rinder, Olive (,Olga'), 2.40-2., 244, 2.46, 2.489,2.51.2.5 6,2.63
Roberts, Denys Kilham. 341
Robson, Major (JP), 350
Rodin, Auguste, 56, 60, 69, 71-2.
Rodmell: Monk's House, 140, 163.293, 3u13,3 87,397
Romilly, William Gaspard Guy, 4th Baron,
m
Romilly, Diana, Lady (nee Sackville·West),
63,2.32.
Rosandic, Toma(sculptor), 2.78
Royal Horticultural Society, 370, 382.
Royal Society of Literature. 168, 381
Rubens, Olive (later Nation) : relations with
V's father, 53, 58-9, 62., 71, 95, 100, 171,
218; as Ben's godmother, 73-4; home at
Knole, 77, 82.-3, 88, 95> 103 ; and V's
escapade with Violet Trefusis. 100; V's
father wishes to marry. 138 ; and death of
V's father, 188-9; marriage to Gen.
Nation. 2.87; on V's mother in Pepita. 2.89
43'
Rubens, Walter, 43. 62.. 71, 77, 95
Russell, Claude, 55-6
Ru'ssell, Elizabeth, Lady: The Enchanted
April. 2.69
Russia, J2., 160, 172.
Russian ExhibItion. London (19I7), 84
Sackville Setded Estates Trust, 359
Sackville, Anne, Lady (formerly Bigelow; 4th
Baron's wife), 190, 400
Sackville, Charles Sackville·West ('Uncle
Charlie'), 4th Baron, 12., 188-90, 290,
32.6, 368, 400. 404
Sackville, Edward Sackville·West, 5th Baron
('Eddy): childhood, 14; and Knole. 83,
151, J62., 188-9, 2.17, 2.76, 32.6, J2.8, 359.
400; family, 12.4; on V and Bloomsbury,
141 ; homosexuality. 143, 162.; meets
Campbells, 177; on Cyril Connolly, 195 ;
in Berlin, 2. I 2. ; helps translate Rilke, 2.4 I ;
atSmallhythe, 251 ; praises The Dark
Island, 2.75 ; relations with V, 2.86, 2.91,
311; Catholicism, 327; on Ben and Nigel.
332. ; letter from V on exclusion from
poetry reading, 342.; congratulates V on
CH, 351 ; lives in Ireland, 389; succeeds
to title, 404; on V's death, 406
SackvilIe, Jacobine, Lady (nee Hitchens j 6th
Baron's wife), 378
Sackville, Lionel Sackville·West, 2.nd Baron
('O'Mann'; grandfather), 1-4, 2.9-31,2.,90
Sackville, Lionel Sackville·West, 3rd Baron
(,Tio', 'Dada'; father): and V's binh,
1-2. ; family and background. 4 ; courtship
and marriage, 4-5 ; relations with V, 1516. 2.2., 2.9. 48, 56, 78, 189 ; relations with
wife, 16-18, 53, 78, 83; affairs, 17-18, 2.1,
27,32.,43.59,77,83.95, 100;
inheritance, 30-1, 35 ; in Monte Carlo.
40 ;,and HN. 43-5, 49-50, 60; theatricals,
53; and SCOtt's will. 57, 84; and Astor, 71;
visits V in Constantinople, 71 ; and World
War I, 72.-3, 78; and V's childhood, 73-4;
gallstones, 83 ; marriage breakdown, 103 ;
requests divorce, 138, 145 ; death, 18s.....,;
estate, 192.; in Pepita. 2.90
Sackville, Lionel Sackville-West, 6th Baron,
359, 368 , 378, 39 8
Sackville, Mortimer Sackville·West, 1st
Baron, 2, 4
Sackville, Thomas (16th century), 9, 14-5
Sackville, Vic[Qria, Lady (mother; 'BM'):
and V's binh, 1 ; background and family,
2.-4 ; courtship and marriage, 4-5 ; at
Knole. 10, 15 ; and V's childhood. II-I3;
relations with V, 14-16,2.1-2.,2.6,31,56,