Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters, edited by Nigel Nicolson, Volume 3 (Collins 1968)
Long Life by Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997)
Farming on a Battleground by A Norfolk Woman (Geo. R. Reeve Ltd 1950)
The Five of Hearts by Patricia O’Toole (Ballantine Books 1991)
Tottington: A Lost Village in Norfolk by Hilda and Edmund Perry (Geo. R. Reeve 1999)
Mujeres Malagueñas en el Flamenco by Gonzalo Rojo Guerrero (Ediciones Giralda)
The Disinherited by Robert Sackville-West (Bloomsbury 2014)
Inheritance by Robert Sackville-West (Bloomsbury 2010)
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West (Hogarth Press 1930)
Knole and the Sackvilles by Vita Sackville-West (Ernest Benn 1922)
The Land by Vita Sackville-West (Heinemann 1926)
Pepita by Vita Sackville-West (Hogarth Press 1937)
Portrait of a Marriage by Vita Sackville-West and Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1973)
The Countryside of East Anglia by Susanna Wade Martins and Tom Williamson (Boydell Press 2008)
The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams (Yale University Press 2013)
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press 1928)
Acknowledgements
I owe the idea for this book to a short essay on memoir that I wrote at the invitation of Johnny de Falbe and Dan Fenton at John Sandoe Books. To them and to the gifted Fenella Willis, I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to write about the sadnesses and the joys of past days.
The staff of the London Library have, as ever, been unfailingly helpful to me and to Clemmie Macmillan-Scott, who immersed herself expertly on my behalf in the history of mid-nineteenth-century flamenco and in the social dance of late-nineteenth-century Washington, D.C.
Joan Matthews and Bronwen Tyler, both local Norfolk historians, have been brilliant in enlightening me about wartime Norfolk and my mother’s schooldays in that county. Through them it has been a real pleasure to talk to my mother’s old school friends Margaret North and Katherine Powys, their brother John Walsingham and their niece Katherine Wolstenholme.
Although this is a deeply personal book, I have depended enormously during the writing of it on the encouragement of a group of emotionally generous-spirited people. Among those I would like to thank for their invaluable help, encouragement, thoughts and memories are Catherine Allison, Patricia Anker, Tersh Boasberg, Kildare and Sarah Bourke Borrowes, Annabel Bryant, Caroline Bryant, Jilly Byford, Paul Calkin, Julie Campbell, Jennifer Combe, Margaret Engebretson, Anita Fischel, Alyson Flower, Sophie Ford, Antonia Fraser, David Fyfe-Jameson, Tom Grant, Kathy Hill-Miller, Victoria Hislop, Sam Macambulance, Fiona MacNeil Moss, Virginia Nicholson, William Nicholson, Jennifer Plunket, Shirley Punnett, Gail Rebuck, Diana Reich, Claire Skinner, Nicholas Stafford- Deitsche, Tom Stoppard, Monique Wolak and Timothy Young. I am also particularly grateful to Liz Bussey, whose amazing wisdom has strengthened me on innumerable occasions. And without the initial and then sustained encouragement by my brother, Adam, and then by Joanna Trollope, I am not sure the book would have been written at all.
The insights of my dearest friends, all but one of them (though he is equally important too) daughters, have been invaluable, especially those of Belinda Giles, Anne Goldrach, Belinda Harley, Jeremy Hutchinson, Katie Law, Imogen Lycett Green, Julia Samuel, Aly Van Den Berg and Rachel Wyndham.
Nuria Goytre guided me linguistically and expertly through the unravelling of the mysteries of Spanish flamenco. James Macmillan-Scott has been wonderful about the book from start to finish. Several of my cousins have helped me enormously with facts, photographs, memories and insights, among them Joanna Freeman, Mary Philipson, Jo Lascelles and Jeremy Till. Vanessa Nicolson has been unfailingly supportive. It has been a delight to reminisce with Mark Tennyson-d’Eyncourt and my aunt Juanita Tennyson-d’Eyncourt, whose knowledge of my mother’s family has filled in so many missing gaps. Bridget and Robert Sackville-West have been inexhaustibly hospitable, allowing me to spend fascinating and uninterrupted hours with family albums, papers, stories and treasures contained in the drawers, attics and rooms at Knole.
My agent, Ed Victor, has, as always, been the greatest enthusiast and confidence-booster that any writer could ever wish for. I would like to thank him for his long and loving friendship and also his terrific colleagues Edina Imrik, Hitesh Shah, Maggie Phillips and Linda Vann in London and William Clark in New York for their support.
At Chatto I have been immensely fortunate to find myself published by Clara Farmer and Becky Hardie. I am also grateful to Louise Court, Charlotte Humphery, Penelope Lietchti and Kris Potter for their enthusiastic work on this book’s behalf. And any author who finds themselves guided by the exemplary skill of my friend Becky Hardie should consider themselves more than blessed.
I am truly honoured to be included on Jonathan Galassi’s distinguished list at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He and his colleagues John Knight, Jeff Seroy and Ileene Smith have all been wonderful.
The patience and encouragement of my family have sustained me throughout, especially that of Bean and of Sarah and Adam. Beloved Charlie has shown more tolerance and compassion than should be asked of any husband.
Clemmie and Flora have been unwavering in their trust and love. In dedicating this book to them and to miraculous Imo, I thank them for … well … for everything really.
The ‘Star of Andalusia’: Pepita in 1853
The Villa Pepa, Arcachon, 1870
Pepita and Victoria, 1867
Victoria brushing her amazing hair, Washington, D.C., 1880
Formally engaged, Victoria and Lionel, Knole, 1890
Informally smitten, Victoria and Lionel, Knole, 1890
Victoria with Vita, 1892
Vita with ‘Boysy’, ‘Dorothy’, and ‘Mary of New York’, 1897
Vita as a basket of wisteria, 1900
Vita and Victoria out for a drive, 1899
Vita and Lionel, Knole, 1903
Vita as a bride with her bridesmaid Rosamond Grosvenor, the photo angrily censored by Victoria, 1913
Vita with her boys, Ben and Nigel, Long Barn, 1923
Vita and Hadji at the South Cottage, Sissinghurst, 1960
Ice-skating at Lady Walsingham’s, Norfolk, 1940
A happy Philippa (middle) leap-frogging with friends, 1946
Nigel signalling his approval of his young fiancée, 1953
Pamela and Gervaise, St Margaret’s, Westminster, 1926
Philippa and Nigel, St Margaret’s, Westminster, 1953
A wary quartet of in-laws leaves St Margaret’s: Vita, Pamela, Harold, Gervaise, 1953
Philippa in tubercular isolation, Woods Corner, 1955
Philippa, an apprehensive new mother, with Juliet, Shirley House, 1954
Juliet and Romeo with Philippa and Nigel, Shirley House, 1956
My favourite photograph: holding hands with my mother, the London docks, 1960
Philippa, me, and my day-old brother, Adam, 1957
A posed portrait of motherhood, London, 1962
Philippa on the brink of departure, London, 1968
Nigel’s favourite photograph of me, hole-punched for his diary, 1959
Nigel at work in the gazebo at Sissinghurst, 1972
Me and Nigel in the Lime Walk at Sissinghurst, 2003
Three generations of daughters: Philippa, Vita, and me, Sissinghurst, 1959
Feeding the ducks with Hadji at Sissinghurst, 1959
Adam and me with Hadji, a week after Vita’s death, June 1962
Me and James at Oxford, 1973
Flora’s first visit to Sissinghurst, 1985
Clemmie, Nigel, and Flora during a long Sissinghurst summer, 1989
Clemmie and Flora, Brick House, upstate New York, 1991
A house full of daughters, 1999
Clemmie with her daughter Imogen Flora, 2013
The streets where Pepita learned to dance: me in Malaga, 2014
<
br /> Me and Charlie, Greece, 2015
The gates of the Villa Pepa: all that remains of Pepita’s house at Arcachon, 2014
Me and Imo, 2015
Imo playing in the sand, Arcachon, 2014
Also by Juliet Nicolson
The Perfect Summer
The Great Silence
Abdication
A Note About the Author
Juliet Nicolson is the author of two works of history, The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age and The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, and a novel, Abdication. As the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the daughter of Nigel Nicolson, she is part of a renowned and much-scrutinized family, and the latest in the family line of record-keepers of the past. She lives with her husband in East Sussex, not far from Sissinghurst, where she spent her childhood. She has two daughters, Clemmie and Flora, and one granddaughter, Imogen. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Family Tree
Introduction
1. Pepita: Dependence
2. Pepita: Independence
3. Victoria: Bargaining
4. Victoria: Loyalty
5. Vita: Ambivalence
6. Philippa: Loneliness
7. Philippa: Trapped
8. Juliet: Confusion
9. Juliet: Escape
10. Juliet: Guilt
11. Clemmie and Flora: Forgiveness
12. Imogen: Love
Note
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photographs
Also by Juliet Nicolson
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2016 by Juliet Nicolson
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2016 by Chatto & Windus, Great Britain
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nicolson, Juliet.
Title: A house full of daughters / Juliet Nicolson.
Description: First American edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. | “Originally published in 2016 by Chatto & Windus, Great Britain” — Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015042556 | ISBN 9780374172459 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374715328 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Nicolson, Juliet. | Nicolson, Juliet—Family. | Women authors, English—Biography. | Women historians—England—Biography. | Women—Biography. | Women—Family relationships. | Mothers and daughters. | Generations. | Intergenerational relations. | Family secrets. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary.
Classification: LCC CT788.N52 A3 2016 | DDC 306.874/3—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042556
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected]
www.fsgbooks.com
www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks
A House Full of Daughters Page 28