Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  I also meet Mrs. Hotson, wife of the professor who does research on Marlowe and Shakespeare.

  February 24. Miss Lord motored me to the Widener house. We dropped Alice Virgin[ia] at her own house on the way, and collected Miss MacGeorge at the station, she being the person who had suggested the expedition. The Widener house is a large, white classical building surrounded by formal gardens of yew and box and shingle paths, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The interior is far too rich and Ritzy; it is, in fact, very like a grand hotel, only the petit-point furniture is real, the black hawthorn vases are real, and the tapestry panels are real. Mr. W. [Widener] is away in Florida & we were taken over by his “art secretary,” Miss Standen, an English girl,—the comfort of hearing an English voice! Her mother lives at Sevenoaks. There are not too many things, but all of the first quality. Rembrandt’s Mill is there, and Sir Joshua’s Mrs. Graham, & Hoffner’s own children; two Ver Meers [sic], two Bellinis, a Donatello David in marble, Chinese porcelain, Cellini jewels, Isfahan rugs, and the finest Limoges plate I ever saw. Also Manet’s dead matador, a curious, black & white, foreshortened picture.

  Miss Lord drops me & Miss MacGeorge at the station. Miss MacGeorge from having been a rather dry, shy spinster, melts suddenly & becomes human. We eat chicken salad sitting up at a counter in a drug store, and do cryptograms meanwhile. I catch a train at 1:57 for Wilmington, which I reach in half an hour. I proceed to the Dupont Biltmore Hotel where I remain in blissful and unusual solitude till 7. Employ the time profitably in writing letters and washing some of my clothes; also myself. A motor comes at 7 to take me to Newark where I am greeted by Mr. Kase, a dear little man. I expect to be given dinner, but nothing is said about it, so I go empty onto the platform. “Novels and Novelists”; a rather heavy audience, and I have to put a lot into galvanizing them. They do end by waking up a bit. I am then taken to Mr. Kase’s house, where I meet the faculty; also Mrs. Kase, an anemic little woman with a bad stye in one eye. Not much fun, in fact no fun at all, but there are some biscuits which I eat gratefully. Escape early and am motored back, passing an enormous poster on a boarding on the way: “They hired the money, didn’t they?”

  February 27. Arrive in Pittsburgh from Washington at 8 A.M. and drive to Hotel Schenley [?] where I engage a room for the day. Change, and lecture at 11:00, “English Social Life” at the XXth Century Club. Lunch with the Club. A large, elderly, Edwardian looking lady called Mrs. Thompson then drives me off to “see Pittsburgh, such a beautiful city.” It reminds me of Sheffield. The actual situation is a good one, on hills rising steeply from the banks of two confluent rivers. When I have admired the factory chimneys and coal dumps sufficiently, Mrs. Thompson & Mrs. Kuhn say they will drive me out into the country. So we drive along an asphalt boulevard to a suburb called Sewickley, and am shown a number of vurry vurry beautiful country houses all rather like Park Grange, but fully exposed as usual to the road and to the windows of their neighbours. We then return to Pittsburgh & drive out to the Country Club for tea. The Country Club is really rather nice, with a large glassed-in patio and a pleasant view over grassy slopes and trees. It is being repaired, so we have to have tea in the gun-room which produces screams of amusement from the ladies. It is a perfect ordinary room, with sporting prints and a few guns on a rack, but Americans are easily and unexpectedly amused. I am shown a school, consisting of two or three red brick buildings of which they are immensely proud. On the way back to Pittsburgh I am promised a treat: I shall see Mr. Mellon’s house. (Mr. Mellon & Mr. Carnegie are both natives of Pittsburgh.) Mr. Mellon’s house is a pseudo-Tudor building of dirty brick, in the heart of the city. We also see a fine municipal building rather like the Strozzi palace in Florence. We drop Mrs. Kuhn, and Mrs. Thompson takes me to her own house where she wishes me to see the portrait of her husband. A gentleman with whiskers. I am more amused by the lift, which is a kind of bird-cage in the hall, running on two thin steel rods, the most fragile-looking object for the conveyance of Mrs. Thompson who suffers from heart disease and is exceedingly stout, crowned by an enormous coiffure and a plumed hat perched on the top of it. She produces, with evident pride, a particularly plain daughter called Doris. She gives me a book by Mark Sullivan, and her motor conveys me back to the hotel. I change, dine, and leave at 11:30 for Dayton.

  February 28 Arrive at Dayton at 9:40 A.M. and am met by Mr. Frizell, Miss Margaret Smith, and reporters. They take me to an hotel. I create some confusion by assuming that Miss Smith is Mrs. Frizell. She takes me to see Orville Wright, an uncommunicative but agreeably modest little grey man who shows us some photographs of his brother and of their early flights. A photograph of Wilbur flying at Biarritz over the head of a very startled horse trying to trot with a landau. For the rest, the walls of his incredibly bleak little room are hung with bronze plaques from various societies, commemorating the achievements of the Wright brothers. I am then taken to luncheon with Mrs. Patterson, where I find about eight other women. The Pattersons are the manufacturers of National Cash Registers. A rich looking house, which they fear they may have to leave as half their factories are closed down. Mrs. Patterson is a dark, rather pretty woman in the thirties. We have cocktails. There is an intelligent woman called MacMurray who is a correspondent of the New York Times. After lunch we go over to see the Patterson factories, and are shown a movie describing chiefly how old Mr. P. provided cocoa at eleven for his workers and transformed the slums of Dayton into a garden city. The movie is designed on the Mickey Mouse system, showing how ivy and Virginia creeper covered the wooden fences and the brick frontages; the vegetation rushes up in a way to fill the heart of any gardener with envy.

  Return to the hotel and watch a very fine conflagration from my window. Hadji arrives when I am already at dinner with the Nomad Club, & we lecture jointly about the modern spirit in literature. He feels ill & I am terrified that he may have flu.

  March 2. Hadji & I go to cash a cheque in Cleveland, and to the bookshop in Hulle’s store at 11 in the morning. Autograph books there, and meet a few people, including the Hulle son. I leave for Indianapolis at 12:50 & Hadji leaves for Buffalo at the same time. Read Faulkner’s Light in August in the train, a very strange and unpleasant but striking book. Arrive at Indianapolis at 6:10 where I am met by Mrs. Bingham & another woman. They break it to me gently that Mrs. Bingham’s cook is ill, so that they cannot have the dinner they had planned for me. I bear the news well. They take me to the Columbia Club, where I dine alone, and write letters after dinner. There is a rather fine circular piazza, with a flood-lit war memorial in the middle—Civil War, not European—and many twinkling sky-signs. I go to bed early and have the most appalling nightmares; also there is a fire somewhere & sirens all night, so I don’t sleep much.

  March 3. Mrs. Bingham, her sister, and a reporter arrive together shortly after 10, and remove me to the lecture hall. A confusion arises, as I had expected “Novels and Novelists” and they have billed me for “English Social Life.” It is put to the vote of the audience, who plump for the latter. But when I have finished, the minority which had asked for novels start asking me questions about that, so that I practically give the second lecture too. Lunch with the Club at the Columbia Club; am very tired, and the woman with the strident voice who sits next to me and tells me all about Progressive Education does not know how near to murder I feel. I discover to my dismay that after-luncheon questions are customary here. They keep me on my feet for nearly another hour. One woman asks me what I think of The Well of Loneliness. I am so cross by this time that I have a good mind to tell them exactly what I do think.

  I then go to three bookshops to sign books. One shop is kept by Mrs. Nicholson, who was a Miss West; great jokes about this. Another bookseller keeps a picture gallery & shows us some rather nice Lawrences. I then return to the Club to pack, accompanied by Mrs. Bingham’s sister who keeps up an incessant flow of conversation. An old school friend of Anne rings me up and talks for hours; she is ill, so cannot get to see me; thank God for that.
Will I write to Anne, she says, giving her this that and the other message? I say I am very sorry, I have no time for letters & she had better write herself. Having packed, I rejoin Mrs. Bingham downstairs & she takes me to tea with Mrs. MacCarthy, where there are cocktails. Grateful for this, but am cautious not to drink too many. Half a dozen young women there are less cautious. They sit on the floor round me and explain how they buy alcohol for 4 dollars a gallon and make gin with it. They say the young people think and talk of very little but drink, and that no party is regarded as a success unless everybody gets tight. If that is the case, then Mrs. MacCarthy’s party is a howling success. The young women and two young men carry me off, luggage and all, to the house of one of them, by name Mrs. Eno, a dark untidy creature, who much to my delight says she didn’t like Family History. I change for dinner in Mrs. Eno’s bathroom, while the rest of them sit in the bedroom next door shouting conversation at me all the while. One of the young men then drives me to dinner with Mrs. Woollen, who is cross (but pretends not to be) because she had expected me to change in her house. A ghastly woman who goes in for graphology, astrology, palmistry, and a belief that Egyptian mummies pursue people with vengeance. An Italianate house and a very good dinner, but Mr. Woollen has unfortunately gone off to New York with the key to the cellar in his pocket. I sit next to an old Dr. McCulloch who is a friend of Hugh; he is also deaf, so I have to shout. The conversation revolves mostly round the bank crisis. After dinner Mrs. Woollen tells my character from my hand-writing. In the middle, my young friends arrive to fetch me, at which Mrs. Woollen becomes more vinegary than ever. I return to the Enos’ to change into travelling clothes. They all accompany me to the station, & I leave for Toledo more dead than alive at eleven.

  March 7. Get to Greencastle at 9:20, having left Detroit at 11 last night. The express stops on purpose to let me off, and then rumbles away towards St. Louis. I am left standing on the wrong side of the line, opposite a station half the size of Staplehurst. It pours with rain. There are no redcaps, but a kind gentleman appears from nowhere and helps me with my luggage. I establish myself on a wooden bench in the station and prepare to wait there for five hours. I finish an article and write some letters, and every hour or so an express crashes through. At 1:30 the local taxi arrives to take me to the other station, about a quarter of a mile away. I find a minute cafe there, and have something to eat; very nasty. At 4:30 I arrive at Bloomington, very dirty, very cross, and rather tired. I am met by three girl students who insist on taking me to the local photographer, a most tiresome and dilatory man who says “Miss Sackville-West” three times in every sentence. I am then driven round the University buildings, one of which bears a suspicious resemblance to the front of Knole. My three little chattering guides are pleased when I tell them this. It is the tenth anniversary of their society, and they have never had an English speaker here before, so it is evidently an occasion. They are very sweet, very proud of their university (which is co-ed), and very full of questions. They escort me to my room in the Union Building which is really rather fine—Collegiate Tudor in grey stone—and I have some difficulty in getting rid of them. I achieve this at last by saying that I must have a bath. At six they return to fetch me for the banquet, bringing gardenias with them. A vast hall with about 400 students of both sexes already seated at tables, and some faculty sprinkled about. Everybody rises as we come in, which is embarrassing. I sit at a long table with the Society, which is very select (so they explain) consisting of only ten members. They are all extremely pretty, exquisitely dressed, and more made-up than any tart. Before dinner begins they all sing a song in praise of their university, and the Chairman Noemi Osborne reads an ode in my honour. At dinner we talk about American college life, “beaux,” “dates,” and what they intend to do when they have graduated. Most of them want professions, but then what about the beaux? They ask me if English girls make-up as much as they do, and I truthfully reply No. I say that they will spoil their complexions, and they look grave. One of them is quite lovely, one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen. They talk very freely, because there is no faculty at the table. I lecture after dinner from a high platform: “Novels & Novelists.” I enjoy it. They ask hundreds of questions afterwards. Then there is a reception, with the usual autographing, and some of my Indianapolis friends turn up, having come down here on purpose. Flattered by this, but hope that they also have not had to wait 5 hours at Greencastle. After the reception I hope to escape, not a bit of it: they take me down to the cafeteria and we eat chocolate sundaes. Then we cross the campus to the Daily Student office—for they edit and print the local paper. I am introduced to a young man who has invented a machine which is to revolutionise photographic reproduction. He explains it to me at great length and I try to look as though I understood. It has stopped raining and is a bright starry night.

  March 8. I have breakfast with three men undergraduates in a huge room at the very top of the building. Some of the professors are there too. Much talk about the crisis. I am made to sign endless copies of my photograph, which has now appeared in the local paper. They then drive me to the station where I leave at 11:17 for Chicago. Pretty country, very like England. Reach Chicago at 5:20 and leave again from another station at 6. An enormous and completely empty train; there is only one other person in the dining car. The redcaps say no one is travelling at all. Get a telegram from H. at Chicago saying he has managed to raise 500 dollars.

  An American customs man comes and cross-examines me very closely, asks my business in Canada. When I say “lecturing” he asks if I lecture about religion or politics. I say neither: literature. Am I quite sure I preach neither atheism nor Communism? And who finances me? I reassure him by showing him my contracts.

  March 11. Have to get up at 6:30 at Springfield and am confronted by a cold snowy morning and a Mrs. Cooley. I am taken in a large car to the house of Mrs. Dutton, through miles of residential suburb. There I have a bath and breakfast, and at 10 I am conducted (after seeing reporters) to the Women’s Club where I lecture on English social life. Having no manuscript, I have to fall back on some very inadequate notes. I lunch afterwards with the Club Committee at the club house, an ugly yellow building in Sham Gothic. I then leave for New Haven, where I am met by Prof. William Lyon Phelps and Prof. Tinker, who discovered the Boswell papers at Lord Talbot’s. We go to Phelps’ house where I meet Mrs. Phelps. Phelps then takes me out on a tour of inspection, and it dawns on me that New Haven is really Yale. That idiot Leigh had never told me. Fine grey stone buildings in Collegiate Tudor, all very reminiscent of any large Wiltshire manor-house. A magnificent library with windows like a cathedral, all done in grey and silver. I then deliver the Bergen Lecture, “On Writing a Novel.” Nice young undergraduates. Miss McAffee who edits the Yale Review takes me off to her rooms in the building, where I meet Pottle, who is carrying on with the Boswell papers in succession to Geoffrey. He describes Geoffrey’s methods of work to me—all done on the backs of old envelopes. I dine with Phelps and others at an old clubhouse, nice, eighteenth century, and leave for New York after dinner.

  March 12. Arrive at New York at 7:30 and go to the New Weston. Find letters there, and at 9:30 Hilda [Matheson] rings me up from Penn. Audibility about the same as from London to Sissinghurst. First the telephone rings and an American voice says “Is that Miss Sackville-West?” Miss Matheson would like to speak to you.” An English voice says “You’re th-r-r-r-ough.’” Then I hear Hilda. The American voice says “O.K.?” and I reply “O.K.” We talk about Nigg’s [son Nigel’s] plans and about Sissinghurst. Very odd. Dottie [Dorothy Wellesley] speaks. Then Hilda again. Then we get cut off, and the Atlantic resumes its normal place.

  Retrieve our luggage from the checkroom and re-organise our packing. The papers are full of the California earthquake. Go out to lunch with Mrs. Dana Gibson, who is a little less noisy than Lady Astor and much better-looking. She announces with pride that she is just on 60. She looks about 45. Dana Gibson is there, & Walter Lippman with a t
aciturn wife, Kermit Roosevelt who tells us about the shooting at Miami and two other men whose names I don’t catch. One a doctor, Xian [Christian] name Dan. They all say the American banking system is crazy. One cocktail apiece, and then iced water. The men have whiskey & soda. Walter Lippman is going to California this week to lecture, & says he would rather see the moon through the Mount Wilson telescope than any sight in America. Kermit speaks with a new respect of the President, & they all praise his idea of broadcasting a simple explanation of the situation tonight.

  I walk home. A lovely sunny day. Mrs. Springarn [?] & a Mr. Wright fetch me at 4 and take me to a music-hall in Harlem. Jules Bledsoe sings “Ol’ Man River” among other things. Lovely dancing, & good knockabout fun. The audience is all black except ourselves. Ruth Reeves or Read who decorated the Roxy Theatre meet us there; a nice woman. They bring me home & I dress. Edward Tinker fetches me & we go to the Cosmopolitan Club for dinner. Sit between Tinker & a man (name unknown) who discusses Proust’s homosexuality at great length and in much detail. We dine in a private room, about 20 or 30 people making more noise than the 800 in Montreal. Mrs. Frank Doubleday there, very friendly and proprietary & tiresome. Will we come & stay at Oyster Bay on our last night in the States? Effendi is so longing to see us. I say firmly that we have other plans.

  March 17. Harold leaves early for New York. Mina Curtis takes me up to her farm in the Berkshire hills. On the way we pass through Old Deerfield, a rather self-conscious but very pretty New England village; elm avenues and white boarded houses. Clappered [sic], they are called, from clap-board. We disembark from the car at another village up in the hills, and change over into a Ford lorry, as the road is so bad. It is indeed. Snow and mud and ruts and bumps. Lovely wild woods though. I am delighted to be in the real country again. A nice, low, rambling wooden house with pigeons on the roofs, Jersey cows and hotses in the stable. The house is shut up, and we sit over the fire in the little guesthouse and Mina tells me about Bunny [David] Garnett with whom she was in love and who spent a month there with her writing Pocahontas. She had motored him all over Virginia collecting material. I stroll down the lane with her dogs while she gives orders to her men. Pines and white birches and a rushing stream. I like it & am happy.