Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO FRANCE WITH VIRGINIA WOOLF IN 1928

  September 24. I went by train to Lewes where Virginia and Leonard met me. We drove to Rodmell where I saw Pinker’s puppies. Leonard then motored us to Newhaven where we caught the 11:30 boat. We took our lunch with us and ate it on board. It was very calm. We arrived at Dieppe at 3, and took the train to Paris. In Paris we went to the Hotel de Londres, rue Bonaparte. We left our luggage & walked out to have dinner in a small restaurant in Bd. Raspail. Walking out we got into a bookshop where V. [Virginia] bought J’Adore by Jean Desbordes, & I bought L’Immoraliste. There was an old man sitting in the bookshop, & he & the proprietor (a woman) fired off a rhapsody about Proust. We observed how this could never happen in England—it was about 8 o’clock. Yet there was the old customer sitting & discussing Proust, also Desbordes of whose literary success he said Cocteau would soon be jealous, “even if he had no other cause for jealousy.”

  Walking home from the restaurant we missed our way, so sat down to drink coffee at the Brasserie Lutetia in rue de Sèvres & V. & I wrote to Leonard and Harold respectively on the torn-out fly-leaves of our books. She told me how she & Leonard had had a small & sudden row that morning about her going abroad with me.

  A rather disturbed night, as fire-engines tore down the street beneath my window.

  September 25. Called at 6 & drove to the Gare de Lyons [sic] through a deserted Paris. Caught the 7 o’clock train to Saulieu where we arrived at 12.40. I read L’Immoraliste. V. read J’adore, & remarked that there was a tendency in our Frenchmen of today towards religion and simplicity. Hotel de la Poste at Saulieu, with excellent cooking. After lunch we went out; a fair in progress; Virginia bought a green corduroy coat for Leonard. We then went & sat in a field till it got too cold, & wrote letters. After dinner we went to the fair. There was a zoo with lion-cubs, a merry-go-round, & a Bal Tabarin which we watched for some time. A very lovely gipsy woman there. Virginia very much delighted with all these sights. People threw confetti over us.

  September 26. We had breakfast in my room, and entered on a heated argument about men & women. V. is curiously feminist. She dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in men. In fact she dislikes the quality of masculinity; says that women stimulate her imagination, by their grace & their art of life. We then went out & I bought myself a corduroy coat. After lunch we went for quite a long walk, past the station & drove down the lanes between the woods. Nice, but not warm enough. After dinner V. read me her memoir of “Old Bloomsbury,” and talked a lot about her brother.

  September 27. We left Saulieu at 8 and got to Avallon at 9:30. Here we walked about looking at the town; church of St. Lazare, old houses, ramparts etc.—with a fine view over a valley. I got letters from H. at the poste restante. V. was very much upset because she heard nothing from Leonard. We lunched at Hotel de la Poste where we fell in with Valerie motoring to Avignon with the John Balderstions. We went again to the post; still nothing from Leonard; so I made V. send a telegram. We hired a motor & drove to Vézelay which enchanted us. Went out to look at the cathedral, and view from the terrace; then lay in a field not talking much, but just listening to the crickets. V. seemed tired, & I made her go to bed at quarter to 10. In the middle of the night I was woken up by a thunderstorm. Went along to V.’s room thinking she might be frightened. We talked about science & religion for an hour—and the ultimate principle—and then as the storm had gone over I left her to go to sleep again.

  September 28. A rainy morning. We sat in my room & wrote letters. At 11 it cleared up & we went out, to the antiquaire where we bought nothing. Fitful sunshine, & I took some photographs. After lunch we walked down to Asquins, & sat for some time in a vineyard & again on the banks of the Cure—where we watched the old village women doing the washing. Then up the hill, with lovely views down over the valley of the Cure. I made V. go in and rest, and walked right round the ramparts myself looking at the sunset.

  Saturday, September 29. Left Vézelay with great regret at 10. A lovely warm morning. I watched the builders on their ladder handing up the stones. Motored to Sermizelles, & there caught a train at 10: 49 which got us to Auxerre for lunch. Hotel Houring. A thunderstorm burst, so we waited; then went out & found lovely stained glass in St. Etienne. Went to St. Gervain where there is an old crypt—not very interesting. Nice bridges over the river. Had chocolate in a tea-shop & found a good antiquaire where V. bought a looking-glass. Discussed Edith Sitwell. V. told me the history of her early loves—Madge Symons, who is Sally in Mrs. Dalloway.

  September 30. Got up at 6 & left for Paris at 7. Drove from Gare de Lyons [sic] to St. Lazare, where we lunched & then went on to Rouen.

  LECTURE TRAVEL DIARY (JANUARY TO MARCH 1933)

  One of the most valuable unpublished documents included in this anthology is Vita’s travel diary from her lecture tour in the United States and a brief time in Canada. She was progressively more at ease, even “glib” as she puts it, with the lectures she was invited to give on literature, English life, and the changes in English society over the years.

  The titles for her lecture of 22 cities, during which she was treated as a well-known scholar and writer, are indicative of the range of literary topics she could handle with ease. She spoke on “Novels and Novelists,” “Changes in English Social Life,” “The Modern Spirit in Literature,” “Travels through Persia,” and “D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.” Most of the lectures seem to have been a great success, according to all accounts.

  Her diary tour, from middle of January through March 1933, also gives a representative picture of the kind of reception visiting Britons must have found in Canada and the United States at that time. If she is highly derogatory about certain of her hosts, we can be all the more certain that those who incur her praise in any way are all the more remarkable. It is, to say the least, more than unfortunate that she seems particularly sensitive to the looks, the background, the lack of conversational ability, and the mental and aesthetic shortcomings of certain new acquaintances. Her relief at encountering fellow English-speakers with the correct accent and views is palpable.

  Some of the anecdotes are especially fascinating. The person who cannot believe the redness of her cheeks is real, so she suggests he try to rub it off on his handkerchief. The high amusement of her hosts when, at a country club, they must dine in the gun room; Americans are easily and unexpectedly amused, she says. The exchange with Miss Ely at Bryn Mawr about their mutual admiration of each other’s clothing. The fall of the screen in the middle of a lecture that no one appears to notice. The way Vita, who had no love for reporters—and seems to have spent a good deal of time trying to get rid of them—gets her revenge by leaving the window open for an icy blast to chill them.

  The reaction of an English person to the American accent is unavoidable—we are familiar with it from Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf and others. In the midst of a crowd—generally heard as noisy—Vita expresses her great relief at hearing an English pronunciation: someone from Sevenoaks! Her wit and scorn are visible in all their full array here, particularly directed at Midwesterners, many of them seen as large and not very bright. But everywhere, there is something to mock, heavily or slightly, in the “Amurricans,” with their admiration for the “vury vury” beautiful countryside, the pseudo-Tudor style manors of the magnates, the suburban sprawl, the factories of Pittsburgh, the highways with the heaps of scrapped cars. It is with astonishment that she finds, repeatedly, some grassy slope with trees, a lovely situation for a building, the clapboard houses in New England, where her experiences are clearly more agreeable. Her repeated irritation with vapid conversation, with the noise level of dining rooms, with the way she is expected to respond to everything when her constant desire is to escape and to go to bed, as well as her often negative judgments, render her far more clearly than the one-dimensional aristocrat we may have formally perceived.

  The college scenes are unforgettable: the lovely young ladies with too much makeup and the
ir eternal discussion of their dates and their beaus, the bibliophiles and professors with their culture, such as William Lyon Phelps and Chauncey Tinker of Yale and Mrs. Helen Taft Manning of Bryn Mawr. No less so, the scenes of her encounters with poets such as Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers in California, and with philosophers such as R. B. Braithwaite, as well as painters such as Dorothy Brett and cultural icon Mabel Dodge Luhan. Her lectures, on subjects from D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, to social changes in England, and novels and novelists, we might like to have heard. (The lecture on poetry, prepared for the BBC and included elsewhere in this volume, is an indication of the kind of talk for which Vita was known.)

  Vita’s profile comes out sharply here, in her perceptions of character as of landscape and culture, and in the details. All the telling repetitions—“I couldn’t escape,” “more dead than alive,” “I could not get rid of them”—speak loudly of her exasperation at the trip. Frazzled, carrying too much luggage, always having to change for dinner or traveling, waiting at small stations for five hours, this visitor to the shores of America left a vivid picture of herself. It is that picture I have wanted to convey in as much color as possible. She is particularly sensitive to appearances—to this one’s girth and that one’s intelligent face—and to the quality of conversation. Repeatedly, she suffers from the noise of the gathering, in the clubs, at dinners, or from the lack of any provision for her dinner, or from exhaustion. Her relief at meeting Harold and her sadness at their separation for their individual lecture appearances is palpable. Vita was never to return to America.

  I have transcribed this travel diary in full, with a very few omissions of brief sentences with undecipherable names. Nevertheless, some of the names included are nearly illegible in the original and I hope the reader will pardon any misspellings in what I have had to approximate.

  January 28. Left Washington at 12:25 A.M. last night and arrived at New York 5:50 this morning, but was allowed to sleep till 7, when a buzzer woke me up. Very comfortable compartment, like a European wagon-lit but better: e.g., the chair was really a chaise percée, and one has a washing basin ingeniously fitted in, so that one need never go out of one’s compartment at all.

  Went straight to Hotel New Weston where I was put into the room Hadji is to have tomorrow. Washed & had some breakfast & read my letters; all American post. Walked down Madison Avenue and bought a suitcase on the way. Went to the bank to get traveller’s cheque book, and then to Colston Leigh to collect my own tickets and settle about western journey. Enraged by a newspaper article saying we had been rude about America.

  Return to hotel at 11, and re-pack my things in new suitcase which has now arrived. Write Hadji a note, and sign a book for some stranger who waylays me in the passage. Leave New York 12:30 for Albany, which I reach at 3:22. The train runs beside the Hudson as far as Albany. Looking out of the window I could not believe it was a river, but thought at first that it must be an immensely long lake.

  There must be floods out, as I saw a sham medieval castle standing in the water, with the walls of its forecourt entirely submerged but for the battlements and the tops of two pepper-port turrets—a very odd effect. There are fine cliffs on the opposite side of the river, rising vertically to a couple of hundred feet—I should think, and a number of little houses perched on the top.

  I had 40 minutes to wait at Albany, so I had some coffee in the restaurant. Left at 4:20 for Colliers. Pretty, hilly, wooded country, very like England, but it soon got dark. I was rather tired but I couldn’t go to sleep because of an American young man who talked for two hours without stopping in an incessant and insistent voice about American railways. It is awful how these people talk in trains. I glared at him, but it did no good. Read the Epic of America, which I enjoyed.

  Met at Colliers by Miss Kidd and another woman—Case? Chase? [sic]—and motor 16 miles in a large noisy car. Find that I have tumbled into another girls’ school, which has its quarters in Hotel Otsego which becomes a hotel again during the summer holidays. The principal is a stout lady in pink chiffon called Mrs. Russell Houghton. I am put into a bedroom where I am mercifully allowed my dinner on a tray. Have a bath and dress. Get numerous small electric shocks every time I touch silk, metal, or water. Miss Kidd who fetches me at 8, explains that this place is mysteriously full of electricity, also that it is the hometown of Fenimore Cooper, whose granddaughter I subsequently meet. Lecture on “Novels and Novelists” to about 100 girls and a number of local grown-ups, including “the faculty” and Mrs. Hoyt, who is Elizabeth Lindsay’s sister-in-law and who asks me to luncheon next day. A tall, sympatique [sic], grey-haired, slender woman with a sad face. Reason for sadness is explained later by Mrs. Houghton, who says Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt were blissfully happy in their marriage, until they went to a Swami fortune-teller, who told them (separately) that Mr. Hoyt was about to meet his fate. He met her soon afterwards at a dinner party and they fell in love at first sight across the dinner table. Mrs. Hoyt watched it happening. Result: divorce and Mrs. Hoyt’s sad eyes.

  The usual supper-party after my lecture, and the usual eager girls. The girls are nice, but the general atmosphere is not as pleasant as Dana Hall or Wellesley. There seems to be greater severity and discipline. My lecture went well though, and I met a lot of budding novelists afterwards, but they kept a cautious eye open to see if any of the faculty were about.

  All the ceilings are fitted with a grid of water-pipes—sprinklers in case of fire. This reduces the fire insurance but entails insurance against floods.

  To bed rather exhausted at 11.30.

  January 29. Woke to find Cooperstown under snow and snow still falling. Mrs. Hoyt, Elizabeth Lindsay’s sister-in-law, fetched me at the Knox School at 11:30 and we walked to her house, about 1/2 a mile away. Cooperstown is a regular backwater; it has a railway station, but nobody uses it as there are practically no trains. A pretty village, with green and white New England houses, hilly, on the edge of Lake Otsego, which is 10 miles long and the source of the Susquehanna. The whole place is run and financed by four brothers called Clark, who have built a hospital, a library, and a club, all in nice grey stone with green shutters. Wooded hills all round the lake. Mrs. Hoyt has a house paneled in pine; she also has twin daughters aged fourteen. After lunch Mrs. Houghton fetched me and we motored 20 miles in a blizzard to Herkimer. Very pretty rolling country, with few houses, mostly farms. Left Herkimer at 2:30 and got to Buffalo at 7:50 where I was met by Miss O’Reilly and a friend. Arrived at the house, I found two more Misses O’Reilly, also a dog called Reilly. Had expected dinner, so hadn’t had it in the train, but there wasn’t any and when they asked as an afterthought if I had had it on the train I said yes. So I was rather hungry. Had to dress, as there was a party—the intelligentsia of Buffalo. This produced biscuits, for which I was thankful.

  January 30. Reporters arrived en masse at 10 to ask questions and take photographs. (The papers subsequently came out with accounts of my view on divorce, a subject which had never been mentioned at all, and which my hostess had specially cautioned me to avoid, since D’Youville College is run by nuns.) Then I write some letters, and am taken out to lunch “quietly” with a Mrs. Pomeroy; the “quietness” is provided by about 30 women all talking at the tops of their voices in a small room. A regular parrot-house. Then I am photographed by one Otto Gaul, who asks me to take off my rouge and refuses to believe that that is my natural complexion until I offer to let him rub my cheek with a handkerchief. Then I go to see a Mrs. Stoppes, not Marie, who is bedridden with arthritis and who likes seeing “distinguished strangers” who come to Buffalo. She is a pitiable sight, propped up on a mechanical bed worked by pulleys in a half-darkened room. She cannot move her legs or arms at all; cannot even hold anything in her hands. She has had two children, a boy who died at the age of nine and a girl who died at the age of twenty. Her husband to whom she is devoted and who is devoted to her, has got angina pectoris and is liable to die suddenly at any moment. They were rich once, but have r
ecently lost all their money. In spite of these calamities she does not seem in the least embittered, but talks with zest about books and the people who have come to see her, especially Hugh Walpole. My hostess then brings me home—I have become “darling” to her by now—and we find the D’Youville College committee awaiting us. At 6 I am allowed to vanish, which I do gratefully.

  Mr. and Mrs. Swift, Mrs. Carpenter’s friends, come to dinner; Mrs. Swift a nice, good-looking woman with white hair and bright blue eyes, Mr. Swift a dryly humourous man. The lecture is at D’Youville College at 8:30—on writing a novel. A particularly nice auditorium, like a tiny theatre. It is crowded. A mixed audience with a scattering of the college girls and the grey nuns who run the college. Nan O’Reilly introduces me in a little speech. After the lecture there is a party at Mrs. Swift’s house; particularly nice and intelligent people. Dr. Lap-pin seems a definite personality.

  People in Buffalo are very extravagant about their electric light, because Niagara does it all for them!