Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  Vita’s stories have the immense and instantly sensed advantage over her novels of concise and unflowery clarity. Some, like “The Engagement,” have a fierce lucidity about them, giving no quarter to digression or to description that does not move the plot along. Some, like “The Poetry Reading,” show Vita from her own point-of-view, but, if it were possible, from the outside. They are frequently angled in a way that lends them a particular relevance to the picture of Vita Sackville-West as a fiction writer.

  They seem to fit more closely to the interest of a present-day reader, perhaps impatient with the details of large houses, Edwardian families, and plot complications often found in Vita’s novels. Her stories are generally terse and to the point, and often distressing.

  “THE ENGAGEMENT” (1930)

  This is a terrible and quiet story, never published. From the beginning, with the perfect order of the tea table, cloth, and mind of the waiting woman, so sure that all will be as it was, to the distressing end, it is as ordered as the tea table. Any reader is of course bound to be far less sure that the hostess of the outcome, sensing the desperately neatness of the waiting woman’s life, her plans, and her surroundings, fearing the tragedy invited by the very Jamesian postponement she has engineered in her romance. In the focus upon the arrangement—which is then capsized by the exterior intrusion of the unexpected—it is the diametrical opposite of Edith Wharton’s teatime story of an arrangement, “The Other Two,” with which it makes a brilliant contrast.1 In the Wharton story, three gentlemen who have shared the tea-serving lady’s favors are invited to sit down around the perfectly laid-out table, too easy by far.

  In the Sackville-West story, the upset of the teatime is all the more drastic in being unpictured.

  “THE ENGAGEMENT”

  She sat alone in her little room that was so pretty in the evening, when the curtains were drawn and the skillfully disposed lamps were lit in their different corners, touching up both the real flowers in the vases and the printed flowers on the chintz, and suggesting by the background they left unlighted a warm enveloping intimacy which, again, was furthered by the purring kettle on the tea-table and by the fire glowing comfortably in the low grate.

  She sat on the sofa before the tea-table, very acutely aware of this brooding intimacy, her hands lying loosely joined in her lap and a vague smile full of a pleasurable expectation on her lips. Her eyes, though they took in nothing consciously of what they saw, rested on the bright order of her tea-table, the white cloth edged with lace, the tiny flame under the kettle, and the thread of steam that came from the spout. These things pleased and satisfied and caressed her; altogether, the trend of her mind that evening was full of harmony and repose; she was not even excited, as many people in her circumstances might have been; no, it was rather a sense of arrival that she experienced, with its accompanying relief, arrival after a long, unsatisfactory, desultory period of existence, arrival at a home, where she might be sure of welcome, of safety, of protection, with no further necessity for departure. She had always tried to stave off the burden of her loneliness by surrounding herself with all the appearances of comfort, witness the pretty room, the lamps, and the speckless tea-table; knowing all the while without admitting the knowledge, that such parade was fictitious, and fulfilled most inadequately its purpose of lessening the void within. But now—now she was glad that her room should be so pretty, and her silver kept so bright, since such grace could not fail to please, but must surely steal seductively upon the senses, especially upon the senses of one who after months of exile had grown unaccustomed to these gentle refinements, and to whom they must surely represent all that she herself represented—femininity, domesticity, home.

  With the smile still upon her lips and her hands still lying loosely joined in idleness she sat waiting for the brisk ring at the door-bell which would vibrate through the little house. It would come punctually at five; she had never known him to be either a minute in advance or a minute behind the appointed hour. She had still five minutes to wait. She liked his punctuality, it was so well in keeping with her idea of him: calm, reliable, unperturbed. As she thought of him thus the smile softened on her lips, and even a little tenderness crept into her eyes, a little tender amusement, the proprietary indulgence of one who knew him so well, that he could have no surprises up his sleeve for her. That was exactly what she liked about him: his rock-like reliability. Not a very romantic feature, perhaps. But so comforting. She must not expect romance from him—and yet, wasn’t it rather romantic after all, his devotion to her throughout all those years? his fidelity to her even though she gave him no hope, and his quiet persistence that had at last bored its way through her indifference, culminating in this day when after eight years she was really going to put both her hands into his and tell him he was to attain the wish of his heart? Wasn’t it perhaps after all rather romantic? How faithful he had been! She looked back upon the eight years, and upon his programme that had been so regular, so unvarying; it had grown to be like some natural law, like the return of the seasons, for instance, or the cycle of night and day, something that one depended upon and took for granted, and whose disarrangement would utterly astonish. A sailor, he had always been absent for eleven months out of the year, and at a given moment his letter had always come, announcing his return when she was’nt in the least thinking about him. “My leave is due, dear, and I reach London on the fifth of July,” or whatever the date might be, “so if convenient to you I will call on you at five o’clock on the sixth, and I hope you will keep some days free for me during the month I am on leave.” She had always experienced a slight droop of boredom when this letter arrived. Then it would be followed by its writer, and she would be surprised to find him, on the whole, rather more attractive than her recollection of him, and they would spend good companionable days together; and although she never felt herself tempted to yield to his pleading she was always quite sorry when the time came for him to go away.

  He was a sort of joke to her friends. “How’s old James?” they would ask her, “Are you going to tell him you’ll marry him next time he comes on leave?” and she would laugh constrainedly, because although her friends all liked him she knew they couldn’t fail to think him dull. She used to wonder whether she would be ashamed of him if he were her husband. She knew that she ought to be proud; he was such a good fellow, such a splendid fellow; it was only the silly part of her that was conscious of a sneaking shame. His hands were too large, his manner too bluff, his clothes too stiff and ill-fitting, his hair too scanty … Thus she had thought; for she had had plenty of time for thinking. But now she thought thus no longer; for she had transformed her ideas so well that she had effectually stamped on that sneaking shame. She dwelt only on the excellent side of him, the firm steadfastness of him, that ever since she had reached her final decision had given her that reassuring sense of arrival. She might feel, perhaps, a little defiant about him; might be a little on the defensive when she took him amongst her friends; but she informed herself stoutly that it was because they couldn’t appreciate his good qualities; he didn’t betray his real self to most people; she alone had had the perception to appraise his worth. And she went a little further now: she looked forward to seeing his kind eyes bent upon her, and to hearing his big laugh, and above all she looked forward to his assumning complete control over her and her existence, as she knew he would do in his large, calm, competent way, directly she had told him he might have the right. How gladly she would hand everything over to him! no more loneliness, no more battle; yes, she was happy to have reached this decision, and only regretted that she had been so curiously obstinate in not reaching it years before.

  The clock on the mantelpiece began to wheeze, and then struck five on a clear little bell, and almost immediately afterwards came the ring at the door, as she had known it would come.

  Very tall and powerfully built, he looked enormous in the small room, among her little tables and ornaments, and she herself felt dwarfed by his statu
re, but it was a pleasant sensation, and she was conscious, with an instinct suddenly disturbed, of wishing very much to be gathered up and shielded within his arms, once for all, and to have her mind made up for her, quite firmly, upon all matters. Well, no doubt, before many minutes had elapsed, that would happen; and she began to tremble a little, and to talk without permitting any pauses, asking him whether he had had a good journey, and whether he did not notice the cold in England after coming from the tropics. The tea-things came to her assistance, too, enabling her to keep her eyes away from his, for she felt that as he stood there he was watching her, and it was a relief to keep her head bent while she picked up and set down busily the utensils for making tea, maintaining meanwhile the chatter at which she was an adept.

  At last she looked up, and saw that his eyes were particularly bright, and that although silent he seemed to be animated right through his being by a suppressed excitement. She turned suddenly faint with the delicious apprehension. “Come and sit here,” she said, patting the sofa, “I’ve got such heaps of things to talk to you about.”

  “So have I,” he said, and sitting down beside her he laid his large hand over hers; it was strong and heavy, and at his touch her heart turned slowly over. “My dear,” he said, “you’re the very best friend I’ve got, although you could never care for me in any other way, so I wanted you to be the first person to know of my happiness. Yes; I see you’ve guessed. I met her out there, and I used to talk to her about you, and about my hopelessness—you know the sort of thing. That’s how it began. And although of course no one can ever quite take your place … but I needn’t tell you that. We hope to be married quite soon: while I’m on leave this time, in fact. She arrives in England next week, and I want you to meet her; I know you’ll love her; everybody does: she’s that kind of person.”

  “Oh, how splendid!” she replied, “how perfectly splendid, and how nice of you to tell me at once, and you must bring her to see me the moment she arrives, won’t you?”

  “THE POET” (1930)

  The story “The Poet”2 is of particular interest because of our contemporary fascination with appropriations. In addition, it reads like a prefiguration of an incident in Vita’s own life.

  In February of 1949, just before leaving for Spain, Vita sent to the Poetry Review a poem called “The Novice to her Lover”; the poem was published in the June/July issue. Then in November, she recommended Poems 1935–48, by Clifford Dyment, for the King’s Medal for Poetry, and therein she found a poem very like her own. It may be that she had read his poem, “St. Augustine at 32,” previously in 1934, in St. Martin’s magazine, and she certainly had read it later, in 1944, when he had included it in his book The Axe in the Wood, for she commented on it then approvingly. John Gawsworth, the editor of the Poetry Review, mentioned this to the New Statesman. They followed up on the peculiar incident, much to Vita’s distress: this “odd story,” she called it. Clifford Dyment’s poem and hers appear almost identical except that, in Vita’s poem, a nun is writing rather than a monk. There was consternation on both sides, quite understandably, and the story becomes all the more interesting in considering the gender shift within “The Poet.” In any case, it reads like a forewarning of how she was likely to absorb the words of another poet unconsciously.3

  The Dyment affair seemed very mysterious to Vita, who wanted to give it a romantic twist, and it is of no less interest to the contemporary reader, whatever explanation can be given.

  “THE POET”

  I first saw him sitting at a little table outside a cafe in Italy. He was alone, and I knew him instantly for a poet by his wild eyes, his tumbled hair, his sensitive nostrils, and his weak but beautiful mouth. He wore a faded blue shirt and a pair of blue linen trousers, with his bare feet thrust into heelless espadrilles. At the moment when my eyes first fell upon him he was gazing sorrowfully into a glass of beer. I imagined that in those translucent amber depths he sought, perhaps, some simile for a mermaid’s hair—the cafe was situated on the shores of the Mediterranean—but after a prolonged contemplation he beckoned to the waiter and said in Italian: “There’s a fly in this beer. Take it away.”

  I was disappointed. I had been so certain he was a poet and that he was English. His appearance was so romantic, the lonely fishing village was so romantic, too: just the place for a poet, with its little harbour and the painted boats swaying softly on the dark green water, and the Mediterranean beyond, and the fishermen’s houses in a semicircle, the colour of tea roses and tulips, and the nets hung out to dry, and the lovely hills rising behind, silvery with the olive trees. Now it seemed that he was a native, a native, a peasant perhaps, come down from the hills to catch the evening coolness of the port and to drink his glass before climbing back to bed: a native, a peasant, unlettered, and a materialist into the bargain. As I watched him, he rose, and slouching away he vanished through a little green door into a neighbouring house. I heard him coughing as he went.

  On the following evening I saw him again in the same place. His glass of beer stood beside him, his elbow was propped on the table, his cheek was propped on his hand, and he was reading in a small book bound in calf, the pages slightly foxed. I passed behind him and looked over his shoulder. He was reading Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, in a seventeenth-century edition. My spirits revived. I felt that my assumption had been justified.

  As I sat down at another table and ordered my vermouth and seltz[er], unfolding my Daily Mail meanwhile rather ostentatiously, I felt rather than saw that he had raised his head and was glancing in my direction. I bided my time, paying no attention. Presently I heard, as I had known I would hear, the scraping of his chair on the tiled floor. He was edging himself towards me. He wanted to enter into conversation. I cursed myself for a brute as I heard his first apologetic cough develop into a terrible, a heartrending attack of coughing. I flung my Daily Mail aside, and hastily poured him out a glass of water. “By God, you’re ill,” I said.

  He put his handkerchief to his lips and brought it away stained with red. “Ill?” he said, and stretched out a shaking hand. “There’s death in that hand,” he said with a twisted smile.

  That jarred me. I had dramatized him to myself, heaven knows, but that he should dramatize himself was more than I could bear. I was divided between distress at his ill-health and disgust at his exploitation of it. In consequence I spoke rather briskly, asking him what ailed him—though it was clear enough.

  He was ready to talk. He hadn’t spoken his own language for three months, he told me. He had come to Santa Caterina to die. He thought it couldn’t be long now, but he didn’t mind: he didn’t care for life, so long as it gave him time to accomplish that which he must accomplish. He thought he had done his best by now and was quite ready to go.

  And what, I asked, was he so anxious to accomplish?

  “I write poetry,” he said, quite simply this time.

  He was twenty-five years of age, he told me, and his name was Nicholas Lambarde. That seemed to me a good name for an English poet, in the tradition of Kit Marlowe, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and the rest. English poets had nearly always been endowed with good names, and Nicholas Lambarde might figure as honestly in an alphabetical index as the others. But, although I keep an eye on poetry, I had never heard of him. A mere name was not enough to make me take him on trust. What poetry, I asked, had he written? Had any of it been published?

  No, he said, he had never bothered about publication. He cared nothing about contemporary fame. Posterity was the only thing that counted, and about posterity he had no doubt at all. He began then to talk of his poetry, dashing his hands through his hair; he talked extravagantly, lyrically; but somehow—although I am skeptical, I think, by nature, and not readily impressed—I couldn’t feel that he was boasting in a void, or that the claims he made were in any way in excess of their justification. I couldn’t explain to myself why he thus immediately convinced me. Perhaps his very scorn for present fame did its part, a scorn so rar
e and so manifestly genuine. At any rate, when he told me that he had that morning written a real poem, a true contribution to English literature, I believed him. And, in a way, as my story will show, I was right. He had.

  He held very definite and vigorous views about poetry. He couldn’t abide the modem school of défaitisme and despair. He couldn’t feel—dying man though he was—that life was little more than the sloughed skin of a snake, or a rustle of dry leaves, or a parched land without water, or whatever the metaphor might be. Nor did he feel that poetry was the proper vehicle for metaphysics, any more than fiction was the proper vehicle for propaganda, sexual or sociological. He held that poetry ought to spring from its own soil and break freely into leaves, like a tree, with a suggestion of sky above and of roots beneath, drinking deeply in the earth. He believed profoundly in the technique of the craft, and held that the first use of technique was to suggest, by association, far greater riches than were actually stated by the words. In fact, rapturously though he expressed himself, he displayed a considered judgment and talked a great deal of sense.

  He never read poetry nowadays, he said, for fear of being influenced, though, of course, he added, he had read through the whole of English literature in his early youth.

  Every now and then he broke off to cough and to dab his handkerchief against his mouth.

  Well, I stayed on at Santa Caterina. Nicholas Lambarde, invisible in the daytime, appeared regularly every evening at the café, ordered his glass of beer, joined me at my table, and talked poetry to me, while the stars came out, and the lights of the harbour dropped their plummets into the water. I watched him growing a little paler, a little thinner every day. His fits of coughing became more frequent and more violent. Still, when I exhorted him, he impatiently brushed aside my importunity and went on with what he was saying. The only important thing in the world to him was poetry. Death did not matter, health did not matter, nor time, nor fame, nor money: I never met anyone who lived so intensely or so continuously the life of the spirit. I can see him now, with his burning eyes, his unshaven chin cupped in his hands, and the stained handkerchief crumpled between his fingers, as he leant across the table, talking, talking.