Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  18th February. I have been 4 times this week to Sargent. Lady Lester-Kaye called to see the flat. We are thinking of leaving the dear little flat on account of the terrible noise the new tenants (Mrs. Willie Portal) make upstairs. It drives me crazy as I can’t have a minute sleep after 6 o’clock in the morning. And I feel so tired, to go to Sargent at 10:30, when I have not slept. Vita has been laid up this week with a very bad cold, caught at Knole when she went for L. I keep her in bed.

  20th February. Lots of hunting talk here. Poor Lio came back with a chill, as he had to drive on the box of the brougham this morning when it was bitterly cold. I made Lio stay at home & nursed him.

  21st February. Sargent did a charming drawing of me, which I will give Vita for her Birthday. It took him an hour to do it, and played the piano beautifully for me, while resting.

  24th February. London. I have met the great Rodin twice at dinner, yesterday and today. Burne-Jones’s model (so ugly now) also a daughter of Mrs. Hunter’s, Lady Cynthia Graham who was not en beauté, & the lovely lovely Lady Helen Vincent, who was radiantly beautiful that night.

  Old Mrs. Cornwallis West was there too; she said it was a pity her face was wrinkled and that she could not show the best part of herself that was not wrinkled as she was sitting on it! She was most gushing to me. We all adjourned to Mrs. Hunter’s house and very good music. We dined with the Becketts also to meet Rodin. I sat on his right and found him so much less shy than last year when I met him at Seery’s for the first time. I suggested that he should go & see Sophie Arnould at Seery’s who has invited Rodin & Sargent at once. My other partner was Mr. Ernest Beckett, doing up his new house in the Renaissance style, the mania that everybody has got in Paris now! Lady Londonderry was there, très aimable et en beauté.

  I wore yesterday my Lucile Coronation dress & rubies. Tonight, Hayward’s dress & emeralds. Lio said I looked very well.

  25th February. London. I could not go to my sitting as it was so foggy yesterday. It would have amused me to hear Sargent’s impressions on the ladies at the big dinner of Mrs. Hunter. I called on Mrs. Hunter where I met Lady Colin Campbell! Seery took me to see the Whistlers at the New Gallery. I think his “famous portraits” except his Mother from the Luxembourg & his Carlyle, are abominable. I like some of his watercolours and most of his etchings.

  MALADE. We gave up going to the Beauforts, as I felt getting bad.

  26th February. London. Lio has been looking at many houses, but none seems to suit us, or they are too expensive. Sargent has sent me the drawing, framed, and has written on it: to my friend, Mrs. S.West. for Vita’s Birthday 1905. & signed it. Lio likes it very much and so does Vita.

  1st March. London. I went to Sargent’s again this morning. I went down to the studio, thinking Sargent would be away & took Lio, Vita, & Seery. But Sargent was waiting for me and begged me to take off my hat—redid my face; he made me look away & I much preferred when he made me look straight at one. Lio said I was not very vain not to mind taking off my hat & sitting in a dishevelled manner! I was much surprised to receive a white dress from Lucile, which I had tried on only once & did not fit me at all, such a failure. Miss Wolff writes in the most laudatory way about Vita & her classes.

  4th March. I have told Mrs. Brown that I should like her to become housekeeper in the flat & Nellie would take her place at Knole. She has accepted. The poor woman has been such a worry to me! Let us hope Nellie will be a treasure, as she has been in the flat.

  8th March. London. I have been with Lio to look at a nice little house in Grosvenor Street, no. 61, which we might get for £9000. Seery likes the idea as he knows how badly I sleep in the flat with Mrs. Portal on the top floor. Oh! That maddening noise in the early morning!!

  Went to Sargent’s again & Lio liked it again, although he redid my fan for a ninth time. Dress is not finished.

  9th March. London & Paris. We celebrated Vita’s thirteenth birthday last night. We all had a great discussion after dinner over the Lucile dress which does not fit & which is sent back, backwards & forwards. Vita got a lot of books & we gave her some petit-gris furs. Seery dined at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday & felt very tired last night at dinner, after having been 3 hours with the King & Prince of Bulgaria. He has been so kind & nice & not at all cross lately, the dear old friend. We crossed to Paris today.

  10th March. Paris. We slept last night at Rue Lafitte. [Seery’s apartment]. Did some hat-shopping (some chocolates for M.) and started for Monte Carlo at 8:00 A.M. in a lit salon.

  11th to 30th March. Monte Carlo. We could not get our usual rooms at the Victoria & got a fairly nice little suite at the Prince de Galles: Double bedroom & sitting room with balcony. Single room & bathroom & elec. light. All 1st floor. The Arthur Wilsons are building a fine villa at St. Jean. We lunched with them to meet the Duke & Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein; she was a Coburg & seems half-witted. We went over to see the Ralph Curtis[es] in their lovely villa Sylvia; they are great friends of Sargent’s & cannot understand why he has written that he cannot let me have the picture, as he is so dissatisfied with it & it is so bad, that he has destroyed it & feels he never can do me well. It is a great disappointment, after all this trouble.

  1922

  “Book of Reminiscences” [inscribed on the flyleaf: “The book of Happy Reminiscences for My Old Age. Started on my 61st Birthday.”] This diary included a list of her suitors.

  23rd September 1922. Brighton. I am 60 today. I feel as if I was 30 and even younger.

  But … I am entering old age for all that … and I want to have a golden old age.…

  [.…] She [Vita] hated rice pudding.

  She is a very difficult person to know … She is or seems absolutely devoted to Harold, but there is nothing whatever sexual between them which is strange in such a young and good-looking couple. She is not in the least jealous of H. and willingly allows him to relieve himself with anyone, if such is his wont or his fancy. They both openly said so one evening when I was staying at L. [Long Barn, Vita’s and Harold’s home from 1915–1932].… It shocked me extremely. People may do what they like, but it ought to be either sacred or absolutely private.… I am glad they [Vita and Harold] will be interested when Granmama is not there any more and it will show them how lovingly she thought of them.…

  Her calm descriptions fill me with admiration. She carries into her writings the quiet and tranquility of manner which is so characteristic of her. I only wish she did not choose the kind of subject she seems to be partial to.

  SELECTIONS FROM VITA SACKVILLE-WEST DIARIES, 1907–1929

  Vita’s diary entries between 1907 and 1933, from which this selection has been made, offer the fullest picture of her interior and exterior landscapes. The identifications in brackets are of people and places important in Vita’s personal life.

  Vita’s diaries compose a startling contrast to those of her mother: They are terse, rapid, and concern themselves more with other people and the outside world than with formal society, its procedures, and her place in it. Quite the opposite of her mother, Vita never comments on what she is wearing and is far more interested in the monuments she sees on her travels, the people with whom she travels, and—at times—in their relations with others and herself. As for her relationship with her mother, it had much secrecy in it: Suspecting that her mother would read her diary, the young Vita kept it in Italian for four years, partly for privacy, but mostly for enjoyment of the language. (Vita was fluent in both Italian and French.)

  What she notices and notes defines her point of view: Her acute perception is trained above all on the necessity of feeling alive to her experiences and to those events that matter to her and her companions, rather than to a preordained social set. The role of diary-writing was crucial in sustaining her personal intensity, whether she was traveling or simply writing, gardening, reading, and lecturing. In contradistinction to the way in which she felt herself so inarticulate and so slow with the members of the Bloomsbury group in their witty and rapid exchanges,
(“I am distinctly not clever,” she says in her memoir)1, her diaries show her as determined, acute, sensitive, and perceptive to a fault. This is the compensation for the way she had so often perceived herself: “I see myself … plain, lean, dark, unsociable, unattractive—horribly unattractive!—rough, and secret. Secrecy was my passion; I dare say that was why I hated companions.”2 Her diary was, from the beginning, her companion, but a companion to whom she never talked excessively. Vita, for all her passionate living, was almost a classicist in her words.

  The first diary entries here record her third trip to Italy, where she had two years before been sightseeing with Violet Keppel; they had had private Italian lessons together, and Violet had already announced her affection for Vita—whose own affection for Rosamund Grosvenor had been her own first lesbian attachment. The intense and long-lasting affair with Violet, which nearly destroyed both their marriages, was to take on its full flavor later.

  Vita, always an enthusiastic traveler, comments succinctly on the details that most impress her: people, landscapes, monuments. Like a Jamesian heroine, she could be counted as one on whom nothing is lost. Nor does anything take up too much space.

  July 1907-July 1910

  May 8, 1910. Hotel Royal Daniele, Venice. We [Vita and Rosamund Grosvenor] went to San Marco and through the Doge’s palace: both are fine in their way, but nothing seems to stand out here above anything else; all the buildings are so crowded one on the top of the other. But I like some of the old palaces, especially in the small canals.…

  May 9. We went to the Belle Arti; fascinating Carpaccios! And right down the Canal Grande in the afternoon, after which we wandered into a few churches where there was nothing very remarkable. Orazio Pucci [her suitor] turned up in the evening! We packed him off to another hotel, as he proposed to stay here.

  May 14. Chiasso, over Swiss frontier … Weather ascribed to Halley’s comet, through the tail of which I believe we are passing now.

  May 15. I suppose the scenery is magnificent, but it is rather like a colour picture-postcard, or a scene from a pantomime.

  May 17. All day by the St. Gotthard route, which I have gotten to know well. I remember how enthusiastic I was over it two years ago. It is horrible to feel oneself getting blasé.

  May 29. Heavenly crossing delayed by king’s [Edward VII’s] funeral. It was very magnificent but not at all like a funeral except when the guards reversed arms and everyone cried when they saw the King’s little dog following the coffin. The German Emperor talked all the time to the King [George V], which everyone thought very bad taste.

  July 2. Ellen Terry, who is quite charming. Lady Tree is appalling. The Party stayed here: Miss Campbell, Rosamund [Grosvenor], Felicia, Mrs. Godfrey Baring, Harold Nicolson [“Harold Nicolson” underlined in red].

  1913

  July 25. Friday. Knole. [The court case, brought by the family of Sir John Murray Scott (Seery) contesting his will, in which he left Vita’s mother £50,000, had taken up much of Vita’s time, but Victoria triumphed, to Vita’s admiring eyes.] Poor Harold, let’s hope he isn’t forced to return here this morning. I have been very involved … but thanks be to God, everything is all right.

  October 1. Wednesday. Coker. WEDDING DAY! Today Harold and I got married. Mother didn’t get up in the morning, just carried on with her regular schedule, then toward midday, I got dressed all in gold, which was a great success. Olive sang in the chapel. [Olive Rubens was a close friend of Lionel Sackville-West, whom he had, at one point, wanted to move into Knole with her tubercular husband.]

  October 2. Thursday. We didn’t do anything but write and sleep in the garden.… I never would have dreamt of such happiness.

  1915

  August 3. Alone, lunching with Harold, and I feel newly married. 182 Ebury Street. Get up late, lunch and dine alone with Harold. [The initial sentence is written in Italian, the following in English—this is Vita’s first entry in English since 1911!]

  1916

  May 1. Long Barn. A long day all alone with Harold, lovely weather. We do forestry. Paddle with Ben … Ben says “boat,” “ball,” and “my good tea, Amen.”

  November 29. Violet [Keppel] lunches and we go to Chu Chu Chow & to tea with Osbert [Sitwell]. Ezra Pound brings his little Jap to try on Buddha clothes.

  1918

  April 29. On. Polperro.… drive out to Polperro [Cornwall] by wagonette. Staying in a fisherman’s cottage, very primitive—rice pudding & no drains!

  Harold plants nuts. Ben goes up to a little girl in the village and says “Buckle my shoe” to her by way of opening a conversation.

  April 30. Nigel goes into short frocks. Go to Hugh Walpole’s cottage. He isn’t here but lets us use his room and his books.

  May 2. Polperro. Go to Fowey [nearby town to Polperro] in the local butcher’s pony cart. The harness comes all to pieces. Have tea, or rather cider, in a little restaurant at Fowey, V. [Violet] meets a man like Mallory. V. steals wisteria & lilac from a deserted garden by the wayside.

  May 3. Polperro. Spend the day at Hugh Walpole’s cottage again, reading his books

  May 4. Leave Polperro.

  [Vita and Violet Keppel initiated their affair with various trips to Paris in November 1918, then to Monte Carlo from December 1918 until March 1919, returning to England only after Vita’s mother and husband prevailed on her to do so. In March 1919 Violet Keppel announced her engagement to Denys Trefusis and, despite her passion for Vita, married him in June of that year, having extracted from him an agreement that she could continue her affair with Vita. In October 1919, Vita and Violet again traveled to Monte Carlo, and the intensity of their affair grew: They agreed to leave their husbands to live together. Vita intended to inform Harold of their decision when she went to see him in Paris. Finding him ill, she postponed her announcement of the intended “elopement” until mid-January 1920, after she and Harold had reunited in England and Violet and Denys Trefusis had returned from France.]

  1920

  January 1. Hotel Matignon, Paris. H. [Harold] has his knee finally stitched up.

  January 2. Hill Street [Victoria’s house, acquired in 1907]. Come over from Paris. A jolly crossing by moonlight. Sit up on deck almost alone; cold, but love it. Read life of Rimbaud which thrills me; also Claudel.

  London beastly, fog.

  January 3. Knole. Spend the morning in London looking for a governess—object of value and rarity. Lunch with Rose, & come down here afterwards, where I am alone with Dada [her father, Lionel Sackville-West]. Ben and Nigel are here, very well; and the former immensely grown. Bitterly cold.

  January 4. Take Ben & Nigel out for a walk in the morning, and go to see B.M. [Bonne Maman, Victoria] who is very seedy.

  January 6. Spend the day in bed, very cold and bored and stupid; read Hippolytus and try quite vainly to write.

  January 8. Hill Street. Go with Dada to see movies of Allenby’s campaign and pictures of Pepita [her Spanish grandmother, about whom Vita wrote a biography] which simply enchant me.

  January 9. Knole. Spend the day in London with L. [Lushka, Vita’s name for Violet Trefusis] Take “Rebellion” to Collins who think they can get it out by May next [one of the early titles of the novel Challenge, written in collaboration with Violet. It was not published in the United Kingdom until 1974 because of Vita’s mother’s strong objection.] Go to see the pictures of Petra again, with L.

  January 10. It pours. Go over to Long Barn to get a few things. The place is just one large puddle.

  January 11. It pours and blows a gale. Resume the soap book. Kenneth renews his usual ludicrous proposals to me. [Her godfather, Kenneth (Kenito) Hallyburton Campbell, a friend of Seery’s, the age of her mother, who tried to rape her when she was 16.]

  January 12. Go to London for the day & see L., also D. T. [Denys Trefusis]—an unpleasant interview. [Violet remained in love with Vita, who reciprocated her affection: Violet’s husband, Denys, was understandably upset.]

  January 13. Walk Ben, Nigel, and
two dogs to Sevenoaks, a strenuous undertaking. Walk over to Long Barn in the afternoon & get things there, & retrieve the beginning of the soap book which I thought was lost.

  January 14. 34 Hill Street. Spend the day with L. Dine with Kenneth and Dada at Jules and go to “Home and Beauty.” Kenneth comes back with me afterwards here.

  See Ozzie [Oswald Dickinson, Harold’s friend], a gossip, as befits his post of Secretary to the Home Office Board of Control in Lunacy! In the evening, about B.M. & Knole, etc. Kenneth rather a dear; tell him I am in trouble, to stop him making love to me, and he instantly becomes the most concerned of friends, & puts himself wholly at my disposal. Poor thing: if he only knew!…

  January 16. Basil Hotel. Clear out of Hill St. under the impression that H. and B.M. have had row & come to this hotel with L. Harold arrives in evening and we both dine at Cadogan Gardens [Harold’s mother’s house in London]; his father is very old and can barely lift his right arm. Go to H.’s room afterwards and tell him about things [her planned elopement to France with Violet and the unpleasant interview with Denys].

  B.M. arrives from Paris.

  Spend half the night writing letters.

  Met H.’s mother on the stairs as I was leaving C. Gardens, and told her everything.

  January 17. Knole. A perfectly awful day. Come round early to C. Gardens & stay until midday talking to H. who refuses to agree to my going today. Go round to see L. Lunch with Harold and take him to Grosvenor Street afterwards. L. agrees to wait a fortnight [before eloping with Vita to France], then when H. has gone she says she won’t come back to Knole in a state of collapse.

  January 19. Nigel’s birthday.

  January 22. 34 Hill Street. Come up with H. Lunch with L. Don’t see B.M. until the evening, when we have a strained and impersonal conversation. Dine at the Ritz with H. and go with him to Home and Beauty. On my return I again talk to B.M., who tries to get me to agree with all she says about Dada [Lionel, whom she is about to leave]; when she finds I won’t she goes off very angry. An impossible situation.