For Argentina in the 1870s, see Mulhall. For the Rue de Monceau, see De Waal; and for information on the convent itself, I am grateful to the Sisters of St Joseph for opening their archive. For South Africa during the Zulu War, see O’Connor and Williams. For Knole and the extended Sackville family at this time, see Robert Sackville-West (Inheritance) and Vita Sackville-West (Pepita and Knole and the Sackvilles); also, Bentley, Blakiston and Cecil. For Stonyhurst, see Gerard, Henderson, Hetherington and Hewitson. For the correspondence between the Sackville West siblings, see TS18/247.
Chapter 3: Continental Drift
For a rich evocation of diplomatic Washington in the 1880s, see Alsop (Susan Mary Alsop was a political hostess as well as a writer, and as a result gives a particularly sympathetic account of Victoria’s years in the capital in Lady Sackville); see also Adams, James, Sackville-West (Pepita) and reports in the New York Times. For an assessment of Lionel Sackville-West’s skills as British Minister, see Spring-Rice, and for his own account, see Sackville. Victoria’s ‘Book of Reminiscences’ is in the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana. I am grateful to the Mooi River Farmers’ Association for information on farming in South Africa in the 1880s. For all family correspondence, see Heard and TS18/247.
Chapter 4: The Surprise Inheritance
Victoria began her diaries in 1888. These can be found in the Lilly Library and are a major source of reference for this, and all subsequent chapters. For relative wealth of landed estates, see Bateman. For general information on Knole and the Sackvilles in the 1880s and 1890s, see Robert Sackville-West (Inheritance) and Vita Sackville-West (Pepita and Knole and the Sackvilles); for the fire, see Sackville Mss U269. For cousin marriage, see Anderson and Kuper. For Victorian views on illegitimacy, see Collins, and Legitimacy and Illegitimacy. For family correspondence, see TS18/247. For Victoria’s wedding, see Sevenoaks Chronicle.
Chapter 5: Sibling Rivalry
Principal sources for this chapter are Victoria’s diaries, and family letters to be found at TS18/247 and among private papers.
Chapter 6: Laying Claim to Knole
For Elveden, see Aslet and Hare, and for Edwardian country houses, Gardiner and Girouard. For the twists and turns of the Sackville inheritance, see Robert Sackville-West (Inheritance); and for the broader tradition of pretenders and succession claims, including the Tichborne Claimant, see McWilliam. For the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball, see Murphy. For Gabriel Salanson’s career, see the Archives des Affaires étrangères et européennes at the Centre de la Courneuve, Paris. For family correspondence and for all proceedings relating to the ‘action for the perpetuation of testimony’, see TS18/247; also Victoria’s diaries.
Chapter 7: Parallel Lives
For details of Max’s bankruptcy, see papers in the Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, and also TS18/247. For Flora’s divorce, see ‘Le jugement de divorce Salanson/Sackville en date du 8 mars 1900’ at the Archives de Paris, Boulevard Sérurier. For the representation of Knole at the Paris Exhibition of 1899, see Leathes. For Victoria’s friendship with Sir John Murray Scott, see Alsop. For all other quotations, see Victoria’s diaries.
Chapter 8: Skulduggery in Spain
For the proceedings in Spain, see TS18/247, Vita Sackville-West (Pepita) and the Spanish and British newspapers. For events at Knole, see De-la-Noy, Edward Sackville-West, Robert Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (Pepita). For Sir John Murray Scott, see Alsop and Vita Sackville-West (Pepita). For other quotations, see Victoria’s diaries.
Chapter 9: A Death in the Family
For Vita’s early writings, see Glendinning. For the flurry of letters after Lord Sackville’s death, see TS18/247. For other quotations, see Victoria’s diaries.
Chapter 10: In the High Court
For ‘the case’, see the transcripts at TS18/247 and Victoria’s diary for 1910 (the only year not at the Lilly Library, but in the care of the National Trust at Sissinghurst). For the mythical implications of the case, see Woolf (Orlando); and for Vita’s reaction to the case and its aftermath, see Pepita. For the Sackvilles’ triumphal return to Sevenoaks, see Sevenoaks Chronicle. The letters between Max and Victoria are to be found in private Nicolson and Sackville papers.
Chapter 11: ‘Sackville Tragedy in Paris Flat’
For reports of Henry’s death, see British and US newspapers. For Sir John Murray Scott and the Scott case, see Alsop, Vita Sackville-West (Pepita) and Seligman. For Victoria’s friendship with Rodin, see Ben Nicolson, and Victoria’s letters to Rodin at the Musée Rodin, Paris. For all other quotations, see Victoria’s diaries.
Chapter 12: Victims of Circumstance
For Harold Nicolson at Versailles, see Rose. For William Martin’s diplomatic career, see the Archives des Affaires étrangères et européennes at the Centre de la Courneuve, Paris. For Vita’s memories of Amalia, see Pepita. For Flora’s theatrical career, see British and US newspapers; and for the London Palladium, see Woodward. For Lionel Salanson’s military career, see the Archives de l’Armée de l’Air, Service Historique de la Défense, Chateau de Vincennes, Paris. For court records relating to the lives of Max and his children, see Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository. Other quotations were taken from Victoria’s diaries and private family papers.
Chapter 13: Slaving Away at Knole for Nothing
For Victoria’s old age, see Alsop, Sackville-West (Pepita) and – particularly for her relationship with her daughter, Vita – Glendinning. For Victoria’s friendship with Sir Edwin Lutyens, see Lutyens and Ridley. For Violet Keppel’s memories, see Trefusis. For Virginia Woolf’s memories, see Virginia Woolf’s diary. For Eddy Sackville-West, see De-la-Noy and for Vita’s letters to him, the Berg Collection. For Lady Sackville’s death, see Harold Nicolson (Diaries and Letters). Other quotations were taken from Victoria’s diaries (and the ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences for My Old Age’) and from letters in private family papers.
Select Bibliography
Archives
Archives de l’Armée de l’Air, Service Historique de la Défense, Chateau de Vincennes, Paris
Archives des Affaires étrangères et européennes, Centre de la Courneuve, Paris
Berg Collection, New York
Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, Sackville Mss, U269
Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, Diaries of Victoria, Lady Sackville
National Archives, Kew, TS18/247
Nicolson papers, Sissinghurst
Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, South Africa
Sackville papers, Knole
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Adams, Marian, The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, 1865–1883, ed. Ward Thoron (Longmans, Green, 1937)
Alsop, Susan Mary, Lady Sackville (Doubleday, 1978)
Anderson, Nancy Fix, ‘Cousin Marriage in Victorian England’, Journal of Family History, xi (1986), p. 290
Armstrong, Lucile, Dances of Spain I: South, Centre and North-West (Max Parrish & Co., 1950)
Aslet, Clive, Elveden Hall: the Property of the Earl of Iveagh (Christie’s, 1984)
Bateman, John, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (Leicester
University Press, 1971)
Bentley, Michael, Lord Salisbury’s World (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Blakiston, Georgiana, Woburn and the Russells (Constable, 1980)
Bourne Taylor, Jenny, ‘Representing Illegitimacy in Victorian Culture’, in Victorian Identities, ed. Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys (Macmillan, 1996)
Cecil, David, The Cecils of Hatfield House (Constable, 1973)
Cicirelli, Victor, Sibling Relationships across the Life Span (Plenum Press, 1995)
Clifford, Lady Anne, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D. J. H. Clifford (Alan Sutton, 1990)
Collins, Wilkie, No Name (Penguin, 1995)
Cottin, François et Françoise, Le Bassin d’Arcachon: à l’Age d’Or des Villas et des Voiliers (L’Horizon chimérique, 2003)
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Bassin D’Arcachon à L’Epoque de Napoléon III (Cairn, 2008)
Dejean, Oscar, Arcachon et ses Environs (Bordeax, 1858)
De-la-Noy, Michael, Eddy: The Life of Edward Sackville-West (Arcadia, 1999)
Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, Earl of, A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–93) between September 1869 and March 1878, ed. John Vincent (Royal Historical Society, 1994)
———The Later Derby Diaries, ed. John Vincent (University of Bristol, 1981)
De Waal, Edmund, The Hare with Amber Eyes (Chatto & Windus, 2010)
Faduilhe, Charles-N., Du climat d’Arcachon au point de vue de quelques maladies de poitrine (1866)
Ford, Richard, Handbook for Travellers in Spain (John Murray, 1845)
Gardiner, Juliet, The Edwardian Country House (Channel 4, 2002)
Garner, Alice, A Shifting Shore: Locals, Outsiders and the Transformation of a French Fishing Town, 1823–2000 (Cornell University Press, 2005)
Gerard, John, Souvenir of the Centenary Celebration, Stonyhurst College, July 1894 (Marcus Ward & Co., 1894)
Girouard, Mark, Enthusiasms (Frances Lincoln, 2011)
———The Victorian Country House (Yale University Press, 1979)
Glendinning, Victoria, Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983)
Hameau, Gustave, The Climate of Arcachon, A Treatise on its Influence on Certain Diseases of the Chest, trans. Samuel Radcliff (London, 1874)
Hare, Augustus J.C., The Story of My Life (George Allen, 1896–1900)
Heard, Amy, Amy Heard: Letters from the Gilded Age, ed. Robert Gray (2005) at ee.stanford.edu/gray/amy
Henderson, Andrew, The Stone Phoenix: Stonyhurst College 1794–1894 (Churchman, 1986)
Hetherington, Percy Fitzgerald, Stonyhurst Memories; or, Six Years at School (R. Bentley & Son, 1895)
Hewitson, A., Stonyhurst College, Present and Past (Preston, 1878)
James, Henry, Letters, ed. Leon Edel (Harvard University Press, 1974–84)
Kuper, Adam, ‘Incest, Cousin Marriage, and the Origin of the Human Sciences in Nineteenth-Century England’, Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 174 (February 2002)
Lalesque, Fernand, Ville d’Été, Ville d’Hiver (Paris, 1886)
Lee, Edwin, The Health Resorts of the South of France (London, 1865)
Lees-Milne, James, Harold Nicolson (Chatto & Windus, 1980–1)
Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in 19th-century Law, Literature and History, ed. Margot Finn, Michael Lobban and Jenny Bourne Taylor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Lutyens, Mary, Edwin Lutyens (John Murray, 1980)
Massicault, H., Guide illustré d’Arcachon et du littoral avec notice anglaise by S. Radcliff (Bordeaux, 1872)
McWilliam, Rohan, The Tichborne Claimant (Hambledon Continuum, 2007)
Mulhall, Marion, Between the Amazon and the Andes, or Ten Years of a Lady’s Travels (E. Stanford, 1881)
Murphy, Sophia, The Duchess of Devonshire’s Ball (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984)
Nicolson, Ben, ‘Rodin and Lady Sackville’, Burlington Magazine, January 1970
Nicolson, Harold, Diaries and Letters, 3 vols, 1930–62, ed. Nigel Nicolson (Collins, 1966–8)
Nicolson, Nigel, Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973)
O’Connor, Damian P., The Zulu and the Raj: the Life of Sir Bartle Frere (Able Publishing, 2002)
Ridley, Jane, The Architect and His Wife: A Life of Edwin Lutyens (Chatto & Windus, 2002)
Rochegude, Felix de, Marquis, Guide pratique à travers le vieux Paris (Paris, 1903)
Rose, Norman, Harold Nicolson (Cape, 2005)
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Sackville, Lionel, Lord, My Mission to the United States 1881–1889 (for private
circulation, 1895)
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———Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, ed. Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982)
———Pepita (Hogarth Press, 1937)
———Knole and the Sackvilles (William Heinemann, 1934)
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Acknowledgements
Just as I was beginning to research this book, in March 2011, I received a letter from Vayle Wolstenholme, a South African now living in Australia. She was hoping to carry out a promise made to her late mother: to hand back to Knole, and a member of the Sackville family, a couple of letters written to her mother’s grandfather, Max, in South Africa a century before. As a young woman, her mother had noticed an important-looking envelope, with a red wax seal, amongst the pile of papers being consigned to a bonfire during a clear-out of the family home. She had no idea how much was incinerated that day – furniture, as well as old papers – but she suspected that these two letters would mean a lot to an historian of Knole and the Sackvilles in the future.
Her suspicions were correct. The letters she had plucked from the fire (and goodness knows how much else went up in flames) referred to a series of events that took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and were the subject of the book I was writing. They were both addressed to Max Sackville West: one was from his brother-in-law, my great-uncle Lionel, and the other was from his sister, Amalia.
I entered into a correspondence with Vayle, which resulted in her coming to Knole with the letters, to fulfil the promise she had made to her mother. Throughout her life, Vayle had heard stories about her great-grandfather, Max, and the disputed succession to a stately home in Kent. In the 1930s, Vayle’s mother, Daphne, and grandmother, Vivian, had visited England and had had lunch at Sissinghurst with Vivian’s first cousin, Vita Sackville-West, and her husband Harol
d Nicolson. Vita had been shocked when she was shown a photograph of her uncle Max in South Africa – not simply because he was by now an old man, but because he was the spitting image, or so she claimed, of her grandfather, Lionel, the 2nd Lord Sackville.
As an illegitimate child, and a potential source of embarrassment to the family, Max had been packed off to South Africa by his father, Lionel, in the 1870s. Vayle was as intrigued as I was by his story. She quizzed members of her family, and spent hours in the afternoon heat of Pietermaritzburg, scrabbling about on her hands and knees, searching for the grave of Max (who died in 1936). She located the last remaining person in South Africa to bear the surname Sackville West: an elderly woman, Lea, living in a nursing home in Johannesburg.
Vayle was occasionally dismayed by the behaviour of her antecedents, and fearful of re-opening old family wounds – or causing new ones. For the fault-lines ran not just between the ‘legitimate’ and the ‘illegitimate’ branches of the family, but also within those branches themselves. Why had no family member, Lea wondered, attempted to track down her late husband, Cecil, one of Max’s grandsons, during his lifetime? Why had he been disowned and abandoned by his uncles, aunts and cousins? Why was it that, among Max’s descendants, Vayle’s side of the family had had so little to do with Cecil’s? These were just some of the questions Vayle wished she had asked her parents.
I am, as a result, indebted to Vayle, Lionel and Pepita’s great-great-granddaughter on the ‘illegitimate’ side, for all her researches; just as I am to Adam Nicolson and his sister, Juliet, Lionel and Pepita’s great-great-grandchildren on the ‘legitimate’ side, for all their help and friendship. They gave me complete access to the family papers at Sissinghurst, and to the trunks of letters, which their grandmother Vita had used to write Pepita, the starting point for this book. I thank them, too, for giving me permission to quote from the published works of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. I am also grateful to the National Trust staff at Knole and Sissinghurst for their expertise and willingness always to answer a question or supply a photograph.
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