The Disinherited

by Robert Sackville-West

  It was not long before chinks developed in Victoria’s relationship with her sisters. Their initial enthusiasm at the news of the engagement was tempered by their resentment of Victoria’s dominance. Victoria ran the household at Knole, as she had in Washington, and was consulted by her father on most money matters. On the way to Paris in April to buy a wedding trousseau, Bonny, the lady’s companion who had been with Victoria in Washington, warned her that her sisters were terribly jealous. Victoria went to see Flora and Flora’s month-old son, another, third-generation, Lionel. The baby was sweet with deep blue eyes, just like her own, wrote Victoria, claiming as ever some of the credit; but Flora and Amalia, who was there too, seemed aggressive and took her to task for marrying a Protestant. The following day Victoria had another ‘stormy interview’ with Flora, who did not want to put Amalia up any longer. Amalia was far too extravagant, Flora said, and, in any case, everybody thought her proper place was with Papa. Victoria, on the other hand, argued that Amalia would be bored to death at Knole and would feel constantly left out by the newlywed couple. ‘Gab. & Flora are very ungrateful and don’t appreciate all the trouble I go to on their behalf. They cause me a lot of pain; l’inquiétude me va droit au coeur.’ Less than a week later, the Salansons had changed their minds and said they were prepared to look after Amalia so long as the payment for her maintenance was raised. Nevertheless, wrote Victoria, ‘they were still choked with jealousy, and Gab is really very malicious’. Throughout Victoria’s visit to Paris – and on trips to buy a bridesmaid’s outfit – Amalia was grumpy, and refused to come to Knole until just a week before the wedding; even then she would not conceal how bored she was from the moment she arrived.

  Neighbours such as Miss Boscawen thought the engagement ‘the neatest thing that could ever happen’, and ‘such a blessing for Knole’ to have Victoria for ever as its mistress. As congratulations arrived from France, from former friends in Washington, from the Prince of Wales himself, Victoria relaxed into her new relationship, enjoying the attentions of her ardent cousin and allowing him ever greater intimacies: not just the ‘conversations interminables’ that seemed to pass in no time, the first glimpse of Victoria’s naked foot one evening, the kiss that Lionel stole as the train from Sevenoaks to London passed through a tunnel, but also others, more private, that could be referred to only in a code – ‘1st n sans n.f & p.m.’, for example – that has defied all my attempts to crack it.

  The marriage took place by special licence in the private chapel at Knole on 17 June 1890. The day before, the Knole estate had been resettled, so that in the event of Lord Sackville dying without legitimate male heirs, it should pass directly to his nephew Lionel. Victoria’s position as mistress of Knole was now more than a temporary one.

  The bride was led from the sitting room on the arm of her father, along a red carpet that had been specially laid for the occasion, through halls and galleries lined with white lilies, and up the stairs into the chapel. She was wearing a white satin bodice and skirt covered with fine old Brussels lace given her by the groom’s sisters, and a wreath of orange blossoms was pinned to her right shoulder.

  Victoria was attended by two bridesmaids, Cecilie and Amalia, who, however reluctant, looked ‘most handsome’ in a dress of pale grey silk, with white silk lace, and a large straw hat trimmed with wild roses and velvet bows. Both bridesmaids carried bouquets composed of stephanotis and lilies of the valley. After the ceremony, the newly married couple retired to the vestry with senior members of the family to sign the register, although, as usual, Victoria’s father had no recollection later as to whether Victoria was described as his daughter in the record.

  All the finest family silver was laid out in the dining room, and the wedding presents, which numbered some 250, including a lucky horseshoe set in diamonds and pearls from the Prince of Wales, were displayed in the Colonnade. There were presents from Victoria’s sisters: a silver peppercorn grinder from Amalia, and a gold quill pen with diamonds from Flora (not to mention ‘des bons conseils’ on marriage that Flora gave Victoria in her bedroom a couple of days before the wedding). The Salansons had been staying at Knole the whole of that week, and appeared in particularly good spirits – perhaps because Victoria had recently sent them a cheque for the glassware in their smart new Parisian apartment. But there are no records of presents from Max or Henry.

  Other characters, who had played a significant role in Victoria’s past, also gave presents: Mr and Mrs Mulhall a fine handkerchief of Irish lace; the nuns of the Sacred Heart a religious picture; Cecil Spring-Rice a silver tea caddy; Bonny a gold cat brooch; Miss Hillier a Spanish lace shawl; and Mr and Mrs Cheston a single diamond pin. The Marquis de Löys Chandieu gave a small watch with rubies and diamonds (he had not wasted any time, and was already married to the equally wealthy Agnès de Pourtalès). The Comte de Béon gave Victoria a single diamond pin. ‘You will have to come to my marriage, dear Béon,’ Victoria had written to him on her engagement. ‘You see that your Victoria has made a good choice. The fortune of Knole keeps on increasing so that our Agent assures me that when my cousin becomes Lord Sackville, he will have between 400,000 and 500,000 francs of rent. It is nice. I will always be able to help my brothers.’

  The wedding cake was, according to the Sevenoaks Chronicle, ‘a rare and unique specimen of taste, elegance and skill’, supplied by Mr Henry Ellman, confectioner, of 12 London Road, Sevenoaks, and was ‘entirely the work of his manager, Mr F. Fuggle, who deserves the highest praise for this clever and really magnificent specimen of confectionery’. Compressed into a sugar-coated two-foot square was the sprawling four-acre magnificence of Knole. In the centre of this two-tiered marzipanned model rose the Clock Tower capped with a weathervane dated 1743. The initials of the bride and groom, V.L.S.W., were worked onto three sides of the tower, while above the whole floated a flag, bearing the Sackville motto ‘Jour de ma vie’. At each of the four corners of the base was a stag’s head, and on two of the sides were pairs of clasped hands sculpted in icing. The whole was garlanded with tastefully arranged trails of orange blossom, clematis, lilies of the valley, jasmine and stephanotis.

  Just before five o’clock, Victoria changed into a smart light-grey travelling dress and donned a straw toque hat trimmed with pale green velvet – part of the trousseau, made at Reuff’s in Paris, that Aunt Mary had given her as a wedding present. At five, she and Lionel left Knole for the Earl and Countess of Derby’s seat at Keston, near Bromley, where they spent the first night of their honeymoon. ‘Jour de Ma Vie,’ Victoria wrote once again in her diary that day.

  The wedding was considered a great success by the family, Aunt Mary writing to congratulate Victoria afterwards: ‘I cannot say how thoroughly satisfied & pleased I was with the ceremony at Knole. I never saw a Wedding which pleased me so much or gave me such an idea of what a wedding ought to be. And how perfectly you had arranged everything for I know you did it all. Every one of the family shared my view. Your Papa too seemed so happy. Uncle Gummer & Mary stayed at Derby House afterwards & we did nothing but talk of the way it all went off . . .’

  The couple then left for France, embarking on the sexual idyll that was to characterise the first year of their marriage. On 2 July they visited Arcachon. It was almost twenty years since Pepita’s death, but Victoria remembered it all perfectly: the Chateau Deganne, the Casino, the chapel at Moulleau, the church of Notre Dame where Pepita’s funeral had taken place, and most poignantly of all the Villa Pepa itself. Her heart was beating terribly on entering the house, she wrote to Max: ‘I was overcome by emotion as I wandered through those rooms; Maman’s portrait is still hanging there, and so is the one of baby Amalia. Rien n’est changé . . .’

  See Notes on Chapter 4

  5

  Sibling Rivalry

  On their return from honeymoon, Victoria was forced into daily contact with Amalia, and so began a long chapter of rows and reconciliations. The relationship between these two siblings was always full of conflict. The bro
thers had been sent away at an early age, first to school and then to the other side of the world, and Flora who, at twenty-one, had been the first of the girls to marry, was now living in France. But Victoria and Amalia were thrown together at home, to endure what for many of us is the longest relationship of our lives: a sibling relationship. They were without a mother and had been, effectively, without a father for the first fifteen years of their lives. From the time their father was posted to Washington in 1881, Victoria had acted as the mistress of his household – a role that she would fulfil at Knole until his death in 1908. Despite giving her occasional cause for complaint, it was a role that Victoria made her own, much to the resentment of Amalia.

  Life at Knole was claustrophobic. Lionel and Victoria were quite unrestrained in their newly awakened wedded passion, the details of their sex life minutely recorded by Victoria in her diary. By her own account, they were a ‘spoony’ couple, kissing and canoodling in front of Amalia and Lionel’s younger brother, Bertie, my grandfather. Victoria claimed that they did their best to be kind to Amalia, and not to make her feel too much of a gooseberry, ‘but it’s very trying for us who just love being alone together’. Victoria could barely contain her irritation: ‘We are most unhappy with Amalia who didn’t utter a word during or after dinner yesterday and today; Tio [Victoria’s pet-name for her husband] told me: “I felt like shaking her.” She doesn’t try to make herself pleasant when there are guests around, and the only reason we invite young people over anyway is for her. She has terrible bad moods, and I am so patient with her.’ Another day, Victoria went to the Library to cry, so disheartened was she that all her efforts on Amalia’s behalf and all her attempts to live in harmony with her were rewarded by ingratitude.

  After her first married Christmas at Knole in 1890, Victoria wrote in her diary that Amalia was ‘la grande ombre dans le ciel de mon bonheur’, a lowering presence, who would go for days without speaking to Victoria, even when there was company in the house. Amalia would come and go as she pleased, treating Victoria as a complete stranger and rarely informing her of her plans. When Victoria held a party at Knole in honour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (who was proposing to abolish death duties on heirlooms), Amalia did not even have the good grace to appear – and yet, as Victoria complained, she could so easily have invited someone else in her place.

  Lionel, too, did his best to entertain Amalia, playing the odd round of golf with her or taking her to Lord’s to watch the cricket. But there was little else to do, except visit neighbours for lunches and dinners: the Wardes at Squerryes, Lord Hillingdon at Wildernesse, the Baillets as Combe Bank, Miss Herries at St Julians. Victoria’s father was by now a very gloomy and reserved man in his early sixties, although he appeared much older than his years. When Victoria tried to make conversation at mealtimes – ‘Je trouve qu’on a si peu de “small talk” en Angleterre’ – her husband accused her of talking too much. Victoria was occasionally reduced to tears by her father’s grumbling about the expense of housekeeping at Knole. Like other Sackvilles in later life, he had become preoccupied with money, worrying about the cost of keeping up stables for hunting and for carriages, and even considered shutting Knole for the winter and living abroad instead.

  One of the causes of resentment between the sisters was Amalia’s alleged extravagance. Victoria complained when Amalia was driven in a carriage with four horses to the Baillets, just as she was later to complain about her use of the car to take her hither and thither. Amalia was always asking her father and sister for money, and then irritating them by the ungrateful fashion with which she accepted it. ‘It’s frightful to have a sister as ill-natured as that,’ wrote Victoria. Every now and then Victoria would give Amalia some advice, such as the idea of setting aside £40 a year from her allowance of £140 as a reserve – an idea which Amalia rejected outright. She was not going to save a penny, since having nice clothes was, she claimed, her sole pleasure in life. Victoria found it particularly galling that Amalia owed money to Mrs Knox, the Knole housekeeper, which prompted a testy correspondence between the sisters.

  Another cause of resentment was their competition for the affection of shared friends, for Victoria and Amalia moved in similar circles, often attending the same gatherings: a ball of Prince Duleep Singh’s, for example, or a garden party at Holland House. On one occasion, Victoria heard from four separate people that Amalia had spoken unkindly of her, and wrote to Amalia to complain. Amalia immediately wanted to know who these people were. On another occasion, the sisters had ‘un grand row’ when Victoria asked Amalia not to hang around the guests’ rooms at Knole so late into the evening; Amalia threatened, in retaliation, to tell all her friends that Victoria had prevented her from even talking to them.

  It is hardly surprising that Amalia often felt like a prisoner – a feeling to which she contributed by shutting herself in her room for days on end. She longed to be anywhere else – London, Paris, or the South of France – although even then, Victoria insisted that she be chaperoned. By the end of 1891, Amalia was obviously miserable in England, and equally unhappy staying with Flora and Gabriel in Paris. It was agreed that she should leave for Cannes early in the New Year, with Bonny, a woman ‘of forbidding appearance and impeccable integrity’, as Vita later described her, acting as chaperone. In her first letter from Cannes, Amalia admitted that she was a little homesick for Knole, and thanked Victoria – to her surprise – for all she had done to try and make her happy there the previous month. ‘Enfin!’ exclaimed Victoria in her diary. Amalia was to stay there until the summer when she returned to Knole.

  When Lionel and Victoria started staying in London for the season, they also found lodgings for Papa and Amalia. There was still the problem of Amalia’s independence: for example, when Victoria and Lionel took a small rented house in Berkeley Square, Amalia came too, but Victoria would not allow her younger sister to stay there on her own while Victoria was at Knole: ‘That I cannot permit. She simply does not conduct herself well enough.’

  Marriage was one means of escape. The search for a husband was presumably one reason why Victoria was prepared to accompany Amalia to a round of balls that she found excruciatingly boring herself: ‘Amalia has simply no idea what an effort it is for me; j’abomine aller au bal’. There was a succession of suitors, or Amalia’s young ‘sparks’, as they were described: a Mr Craven with whom Amalia was sent outside to walk in the garden, but whom she found a little shy; then, a Mr Hugh Walker: ‘pauvre garçon, très intimidé, très très bedint, counter-jumper’,* Victoria recorded dismissively in her diary.

  Flora and Victoria often discussed whether Amalia stood a better chance of finding a husband in England or France. Squabbling over who was to have Amalia to stay was to be a recurring theme of their relationship. In their attempts to offload Amalia, each of them claimed that her marriage prospects were better in the other country. It is no wonder that Amalia felt ‘so unhappy and so unloved by anyone’. Victoria did her best to console her, ‘but she simply doesn’t understand how unsympathetic she is and doesn’t know how to make herself liked’.

  A Monsieur Martin, from Paris, could not marry Amalia because he was a Protestant, and this reduced her to tears. Next, there was a Mr Eliot who came for a weekend in October 1893. Lionel, Victoria and Papa did not care for him that much, for whereas some of the other young sparks had seemed too shy, Mr Eliot was too sure of himself, ‘un grand blagueur’, or joker. A couple of months later, her attention turned to a Mr Stanley Jackson, who asked her to marry him. But the proposed marriage did not meet with the approval of either father – Mr Jackson senior objecting on religious grounds – and, in any case, Victoria did not think he had enough money to accommodate Amalia’s extravagance. Throughout these courtships, Aunt Mary was worried by my grandfather Bertie’s frequent visits to Knole, fearful that he would fall in love with Amalia, an idea Victoria found too ‘drôle’ for words.

  On 17 June 1895, the fifth anniversary of Victori
a’s wedding, ‘nous avons eu une grande emotion’, Victoria wrote in her diary. For that day, Lionel’s younger brother, my great-uncle Charlie, asked Maud Bell to marry him, and a Mr Tobin asked Amalia to marry him. ‘Suis si excité ce soir!’ Victoria continued. As before, her sister’s romance came to nothing: on the eighteenth, Tobin told Amalia that he could not marry her after all, for he was ruined. A fortnight later, Tobin told Lionel and Victoria at dinner that he was going to give up his mining ventures and settle instead on a job as managing director of a bank in San Francisco on £3,000 a year. Tobin spent several more days at Knole, and Amalia continued to appear very taken with him. In the end, however, matters were decided by the fact that Tobin’s mother and uncle (from whom he was due to inherit) were not prepared to give him any money unless he married an American. ‘She is so upset,’ Victoria wrote about Amalia. ‘Poor girl, she really doesn’t have any luck.’ There was no alternative but for her to return to Paris in December, to care for Flora who had a blood clot in her leg, and who was suffering from some sort of nervous ailment. Amalia, too, was unwell, with anaemia.

  At first the Sackville-Wests and the Salansons got on quite well together, with Lionel arranging for Mr Findlay, the gamekeeper at Knole, to find a dog – named Bruce – for Gabriel. But, despite the reciprocated kindnesses, there were also tensions, and these occasionally flared up over the most unlikely pretexts. Quite soon after Victoria’s marriage, Flora wrote to her sister to say that she did not consider her married (since her wedding had been an Anglican one). ‘What bigots they all are!’ Victoria wrote in her diary; to Flora she replied that it would have been better, perhaps, if she had not come to the wedding since she felt that way. Just before Christmas 1890, Flora wrote back, saying that she wanted to stop all communication with Victoria. ‘Comme elle est bête!’ she noted in her diary. ‘She will regret being the one to start this quarrel.’ It was not long before Gabriel joined the fray, writing ‘une bête de lettre’, in which he laid all the blame for the quarrel on Victoria. Flora, according to Bonny, was too proud throughout to seek a reconciliation, but broadcast her own version of events instead. Some of Victoria’s sensitivity on the subject was assuaged when she received a dispensation from Pope Leo XIII, allowing her to have her marriage blessed in a Catholic church without the requirement that any children should be raised as Catholic. On Sunday 10 May 1891, her marriage was blessed by Father Lazzari in the small Catholic church in Sevenoaks. ‘At least the Catholics [she was referring to Flora] can no longer reproach me for having got married only in the Chapel at Knole. I am very happy with the way everything has turned out.’ The following March, Victoria gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Victoria Mary (but always known as Vita) in the Chapel and brought up in the Church of England.