Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  May 18. Long Barn. Hilda left. Went over the Penns to see the wild lilies of the valley and stayed to dine there. [Dorothy Wellesley had purchased Penns-in-the-Rocks, at Withyham, Sussex, in 1928; Yeats and Pound visited her there.]

  May 27. April came over and brought me some little black pansies. Nigel goes to Eton for his scholarship exams.

  July 17. Hotel des Glaciers, Pralognon, Savoie. Arrived at Moustiers at 9 A.M. Came up to Pralognon by autobus.

  June 7. Alone. Finished Marvell [Her small book on Alexander Marvell].

  July 18. Refuge Felix Fauré, Col de la Vanoise. Left Pralognon at 9:30. Dawdled up to the Alpine Club hut, lunching on the way. Very hot indeed. Lovely flowers: mauve & white violas in sheets.

  Heavenly air, 8,000 feet up. One ought to do the walk in 3 to 4 hours, but we did not arrive till 4. More thunder in the evening & some rain. Wrote letters lying out on the grass.

  July 19. Hotel Parisien, Val d’Isère. Left the hut at 8 and reached Val d’Isère at 7, a perfect day, hot & sunny. The first hour takes one across the col—grassy upland, with little lakes, and then a long stormy descent of half an hour to the valley of the Liesse, passing the chalets of Entre deux Eaux; Byronic gorge, some snow. Long but gradual climb up the valley, fewer flowers in Wilmington (because it is a north bank?), cross the river at the head of the valley, then a steep short climb, and then down to a lake, were we lunched at 12:45. Poor track to the Col de Fressa. Down across meadows (vanilla orchis) and very steep descent to Val d’Isère. Thunder threatening. Very fine view of La Grande Motte from Col de la Liesse, & of Mont Blanc from Col de Liesse.

  July 20. La Curé, Val d’Isère. Last night. Slept in hotel annex, “as there were two priests staying with the curé”… Went for a very small walk. Reading the life of Lady Byron, which thrills me.

  July 21. Val d’Isère. We took our luncheon up onto the hill & lunched on a ledge there under a little pine which smelt good. Hilda bathed in a waterfall. It became so thunderous that we had to come home after lunch.

  July 22. [first three lines scratched out] A lazy day, we took our lunch out to some trees by the Isère. I read Lady Byron and finished a poem about storm in the mountains. Lots of crickets, & peasants gathering hay.

  July 23. [first three lines scratched out] X. We walked up here in the morning and spent the afternoon lying on the hillside in the very hot sun. 9,300 feet. Excellent chalet.

  July 24. Col d’Isère. Spent a lazy day, the morning in bed, the afternoon lying on the hillside until it became stormy. Then they lit the stove for us & I wrote my novel in the dining room.

  July 26. Worked at my novel.

  July 31. Nigel comes home. Bourg St. Maurice, a steep road a lacets, through Tignes. Took the train at Bourg, changed at Chambéry & again at Culoz, to Geneva at 4. Had an ice. Found a bookstore in the Rue de Genève with “The Heir” in it [her short story of 1922, published by Heinemann that year, later reprinted with Seducers in Ecuador]. Left at 6 & got to Basel at 10:15. Lovely view of the mountains from the train. Left Hilda at Geneva, to catch the Paris train at 9:30.

  August 3. Hotel zur Post. Huge French tricolor was still floating over the Rhine.… We worked on the balcony all afternoon, Hadji at his father’s book, I at my broadcasting for next Thursday.

  August 5 [?]. Train to Ostende. I sat at the Cologne-Ostende station and wrote my novel.

  August 11. Penns. Went for a nice walk with April over the high fields. Vanessa [Bell] and Roger Fry came to lunch.

  PART II

  MEMOIRS AND DREAMS

  Vita’s Dream Book is a remarkable document of her obsessions with Knole and with her mother in particular. I have transcribed each dream exactly as it is found therein, sparing none. The vivid quality of her imagination leaps out at the reader, whatever the source of the dream material.

  The contrast between Vita’s early memories of her grandmother’s house and her observations about her retention of the work of these early years, with its description of the ledgers in which she kept her manuscripts and her notebook of dreams over a period of time, is startling. In each she pays attention to the smallest elements as well as to the large, so that the reader has the distinct feeling of her fidelity to both sides of the record. In both the conscious remembering and the unconscious dream state, places and figures are given in their specific and haunting detail: each contour is clear, each color and shape is definite.

  BEGINNINGS

  This essay by Vita, published only in a collection of essays entitled Beginnings, edited by a friend of hers, is of interest as it describes quite exactly the state in which Vita’s manuscripts have been left and her own view of her beginnings as a writer. It is reprinted here in its entirety.

  This essay owes its existence to two facts. First, to the suggestion of my friend L. A. G. Strong, and second, to my instinct. By my own hoarding instinct I mean my reluctance to throw certain things away. In most people this instinct proceeds from the vague idea that the object in question “may come in useful some day” (which it never does); in my case it proceeds from a disinclination to destroy the written page. Thus it comes about that I have quite unnecessarily and rather sentimentally preserved an alarming number of foolscap ledgers representing the literary activities of my early years.

  They stand in a row at the bottom of my bookshelves, getting dusty and more dusty as time goes on. I never look into them. A mere glance at their backs is enough to make me blush with shame. Whenever I catch sight of them, I know that I ought to take them out into the garden and make a bonfire. But, as Mr. Max Beerbohm has pointed out, it is extremely difficult to burn a book. And here are many books. They are all in fat ledgers, stiffly bound in cardboard—the sort of ledgers which one sees piled in such alluring stacks in stationers’ shops—solid ledgers such as would defeat even the holocaust of a modern Savonarola. I could not face the practical difficulty of setting them on fire. Besides, there is that hoarding instinct which makes me shrink from the final destruction of all that early energy. So they remain in their harmless, unexamined row at the bottom of my shelves. I was content to preserve them and never to look into them, until Mr. Strong’s letter arrived, forcing me to the embarrassing task of exploring my literary past.

  Then I blushed indeed. I blushed, but at the same time I couldn’t help being slightly impressed by my own industry and neatness. I had quite forgotten the neat, industrious, and priggish child I once had been. All those conscientious historical notes; all those insertions in red ink, done with a mapping pen.… Looking into my first big ledger, I realized that I had worked out my first plays and my first poems much as I drew maps of the river system of France for the classes I attended in London. The mapping pen and the red ink had come into use for both my official lessons and my private poetry. The only difference was that my lessons were merely lessons, and that my plays, my poetry, and my novels really mattered to me; they constituted the whole of my secret life. Still, the neatness, the priggishness, and the red ink which permeated my lessons were present also in the writings of my private life.

  I must have been an insufferable child: an impression which has subsequently been richly confirmed by my then contemporaries.

  My parents treated me with creditable intelligence. In fact, my only grievance against them is that they taught me neither Latin nor Greek, and never thought of sending me either to school or to a university. Apart from this sad omission, they behaved with exemplary good sense towards the odd duckling they had hatched out. They neither injudiciously encouraged nor unkindly snubbed. Thus, I remember that my earliest ambition was to appear at a dinner party of thirty people in the banqueting hall at home, dressed in a sheet representing a ghost, in order to recite an epic poem composed by myself on the various exploits of my ancestors. This proposal, which must have proved very embarrassing to my parents, was wisely but amiably suppressed. A ghost aged twelve, complete with epic poem, was scarcely a guest to be welcomed at a dinner party of thirty grownups.

  My seco
nd venture met with a more sympathetic response. By that time I was fourteen (for these statistics I am indebted to one of the ledgers I found myself so reluctant to destroy). Having, at that age, fallen strongly under the influence of Cyrano de Bergerac and also of The Three Musketeers, I had composed a tragedy which aspired to combine both the poetical romanticism of Rostand and the historical romanticism of Dumas. The result—strange bastard as it was—took the form of a five-act play on the “Man in the Iron Mask,” in French Alexandrines. Of French Alexandrines I had but little experience, and still less technical knowledge. I knew only that an Alexandrine consisted of twelve syllables to the line, but knew nothing of the necessary caesura, and even less of the mute e. The twelve syllables, however, which I did know about, became an obsession. Every sentence which I uttered in ordinary speech, whether in English or in French, must be shaped into twelve syllables or their multiple. At first I counted on my fingers under the table, or behind my back; or, when I couldn’t conceal my fingers, I wriggled my toes inside their shoes. It was very difficult to wriggle one’s toes separately, so I thought of them one after the other instead. But soon my ear grew so well accustomed to the scansion that there was no longer any need for my fingers or toes to come into play. This trick was, I suppose, analogous to the superstitious trick some children have of stepping on the cracks in pavement stones. “If you miss a crack you will meet a bear,” or “your sums will not come right.” Eleven syllables, or twenty-three, or forty-seven, were to me a portent of disaster. I still catch myself playing this game sometimes.

  My five-act tragedy, I fear, was a ludicrous though ambitious attempt. My parents nevertheless, not having been allowed to read it, consented to let me act part of it, supported by a friend to whom was allotted the secondary role. I myself played the part of the Man in the Iron Mask, dressed in cheap black sateen and a Vandyke collar of imitation lace. The audience consisted of my parents and the French servants. My parents listened patiently; the French cook, to my extreme gratification, burst into tears. I felt that I had at last scored a triumph.

  My third venture was equally ambitious, but, luckily for my family, was conducted in greater privacy. This was a play in blank verse on the life and death of Thomas Chatterton. I had the play printed by the local stationer at my own expense; it cost me £5 for a hundred copies—£5 which I saved out of my tips and pocket money for the year.

  The sentiments expressed in this play were excessively noble. So noble were they, that I felt impelled to keep them to myself, and therefore made no attempt to inflict them upon my family as an audience, but performed them secretly, and for my single benefit, in an attic at the top of the house. The attic was a strangely suitable setting: I realize now that with its bare boards and latticed window it must closely have resembled the attic in which poor Chatterton spent his last tragic days. Of course I did not realize this at the time. I realized only that as there was no cook to weep, I must weep myself, and consequently was moved to tears every time by my own performance. Each time I burnt Chatterton’s manuscripts in the candle I felt I was burning my own; each time I died most uncomfortably on the oak settle, it was not only Chatterton but I myself who died. It was a case of “mighty poets in their misery dead.” I especially fancied myself in the costume I had devised for this role: black breeches, white stockings, buckled shoes, and a white shirt. Luckily, nobody ever caught me at the game, otherwise I should certainly have been sent straight to bed for having run the risk of setting the whole house on fire.

  What next? I remember a whole succession of historical novels, running into at least three hundred pages of foolscap each, all very neat, with dates in the margin, and sometimes the marginal comment V.E.—my private sign, meaning Very Easy; in other words, “It has gone well today.” These historical novels covered quite a wide range. There was one about Alcibiades; one about the French Revolution; one about Louis XIII (this one, very Dumas-esque, was written in French, for between the ages of two and eighteen I was what, thank God, I no longer am, bilingual); one about Florence in the fifteenth century, inspired by George Eliot’s Romola; and at least three others about my own home and my own ancestors. All these I wrote at great speed and with extreme gusto. I kept them very private; and no sooner had I finished one than I started another; sometimes, as their dates inform me, on the very same day.

  A little later came a history of the Italian city-states from 1300 to 1500, full of murderous and probably inaccurate detail. I enjoyed this enormously, partly owing to the amount of research it involved, for I had not yet shed the priggishness and pedantry of my schooldays. Visconti and Sforza, Scaligeri and Baglione, Sismondi and John Addington Symonds, became my constant companions for two happy years.

  Then, tiring of history, whether romantic or factual, I tried my hand at writing a modern novel. I was then twenty-five, and old enough to know better, but prose was still only a contemptible stopgap for the days on which I couldn’t write poetry, and of the construction of a novel I knew no more than I had known of the construction of a French Alexandrine. I had, for instance, no idea of the number of words necessary in fiction from a publisher’s point of view; ten thousand words meant no more to me than a hundred thousand. Thus it came about that my first novel, when finished, was only about forty thousand words long. Still, unconscious of the deficiency, it seemed to me very much like a novel; very much like the novels which other people wrote and which actually got printed. I was rather pleased with it; so well pleased, that in the first flush of excitement I submitted it to the only publisher I knew—the only “literary” person, in fact, with whom I then had any acquaintance at all. To my delight he consented to read it, only to return it after a week’s interval with a kindly worded letter to say that although it showed “considerable promise,” it was much too short for publication. So I put it away, disheartened, for a year.

  During that year I went to live in Ebury Street. I lived at No. 182, but at No. 121 lived a more distinguished and more experienced neighbour, who had been practising the art of fiction, both in conversation and on paper, for many years, and who fell into the habit of arriving at my house unannounced, after dinner, whenever he had nothing better to do. Conversations in Ebury Street ensued.

  They were not so much conversations as monologues; George Moore enjoyed talking about himself; but, luckily for me, his monologues in my house usually took the form of literary rather than amorous experiences. He would relate at great length the story of the book he next intended to write: thus I remember listening patiently to the whole proposed scheme of Héloise and Abélard, and A Story-Teller’s Holiday; or he would rush into the sitting room in a state of great excitement, saying “Give me your copy of The Brook Kerith at once; I sought for a phrase of Christ for years, and now at last I have found it—let me write it into your copy, before I forget it.” (Incidentally, although he called it a trouvaille, it wasn’t a particularly illuminating trouvaille at all. It was a rather trite, commonplace little phrase.)

  Humbly, I was content to listen to George Moore’s monologues by the hour, since anybody who had not only written but had actually published many books, was then almost a god to me, or, at any rate, a superior and successful being. Then there came one magical moment when he switched off from himself and condescended to remember my own existence. “Have you,” he said, “ever attempted to write yourself? A great mistake if you have; but I expect you have been guilty of that usual indiscretion of the young.” He fixed me with a threatening and critical eye. “Come, now,” he said, “confess.”

  I confessed.

  Under persuasion, I told him the whole story of my unfortunate novel. He was charming about it. Not only did he listen with flattering attention, but he even suggested a means by which I might extend it to the necessary length. The means he suggested was due to what he described as “a real-life story” he had read in some American newspaper. Practically every reviewer who subsequently condescended to notice my book observed that nothing of the sort could ever hav
e happened in real life. Thus I am wholly indebted to George Moore for the eventual publication of my first novel.

  THIRTY CLOCKS STRIKE THE HOUR

  The title story of Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour published by Doubleday, Doran & Company (Garden City, New York) in 1932, is really an autobiographical recollection and expresses “a wish to give shape to a fading impression” before it is too late to retrieve it. Like Vita’s diary and letters, these pages exude an atmosphere at once personal and impersonal. They are impregnated with an almost claustrophobic nostalgia and sense of mystery.

  Vita’s memories of her great-grandmother are painfully sharp. The small figure, alone, all in black, leaning on her stick, walking down the corridor, aware of her possessions and her great dignity, makes a vivid contrast with her great-granddaughter irreverently taking out the wheelchair and propelling herself down the parquet floors, standing with frizzed hair while the visitors ooh-and-ah over the Louis Quinze and Louis Seize furnishings, hiding behind the curtain at the end of the long hall. Vita’s own reactions: Her pity at the old lady’s frailty and realization of her despotic, unfeeling, materialistic character are clearly drawn against the background of the bustle of the Boulevard des Italiens.

  The height of the piece is the intensely portrayed scene of the strange ecstasy of her great-grandmother when the clocks chime at once. The gallant figure of the grandmother shrinks into someone much more fragile, tired, and bent, who is at the same time amused and enraptured by the sound, amidst the flame of the candles flickering like her life.

  I remember being taken to visit my great-grandmother.

  This is no story. It is a recollection—a reconstruction. A wish to give shape to a fading impression at the back of my mind before that impression should become irrecoverable. It is not only a personal impression, it is an impression in a wider sense, of an age that I saw in the act of passing.