In a photograph taken in 1948 by John Gay (above), Vita, on the steps of the tower at Sissinghurst, wears the uniform of breeches and gaiters she had first adopted thirty years earlier. The cigarette, in its holder, is also a feature of an equally theatrical image taken by John Hedgecoe four years before Vita’s death (below).
Vita’s desk on the day she died, 2 June 1962, with her preferred collection of small-scale flower arrangements, a photograph of Harold and sheets of stamps.
NOTES
GIVEN VITA WAS christened Victoria Sackville-West, a name she shared with her mother until the latter became Victoria Sackville when Lionel Sackville-West succeeded his uncle as 3rd Baron Sackville in 1908, I have referred to Vita throughout these notes simply as ‘Vita’ or, in her role as author, ‘V. Sackville-West’, as she preferred; for these purposes her mother is ‘Victoria Sackville’. In instances where annotation would simply reiterate information contained within the text, I have resisted annotating quotations from Vita’s diaries held in the Lilly Library of Indiana University in Bloomington. Wherever possible where primary sources have been published – and many have, beginning with Nigel Nicolson’s publication of Vita’s confessional autobiography in Portrait of a Marriage – I have directed the reader towards the published source.
PREFACE
1. Vita to Harold, 30 July 1919, quoted in Nigel Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West & Harold Nicolson 1910–1962 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1992), p. 97.
2. Vita to Harold, 13 December 1928, quoted in ibid., p. 210.
3. V. Sackville-West, The Garden (Michael Joseph, London, 1946), p. 10.
4. V. Sackville-West, In Your Garden (Michael Joseph, London, 1951), p. 49.
5. Jane Brown, Vita’s Other World: A Gardening Biography of V. Sackville-West (Viking, London, 1985), p. 87.
6. V. Sackville-West, Grand Canyon (Michael Joseph, London, 1942), p. 206.
7. Sackville-West/Evelyn Irons Archive, The Dobkin Collection of Feminism and Judaica, Dobkin Collection Item 4655540, Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, New York.
8. V. Sackville-West, All Passion Spent (The Hogarth Press, London, 1931), p. 268.
9. Victoria Glendinning, Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1983, repr. Penguin, London, 1984), p. 195.
10. Vita to Margaret Howard, undated, quoted in Observer, 13 July 2008.
11. Victoria Sackville diary, 27 June 1890, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
12. Harold to Vita, 12 May 1926 and 21 December 1944, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, pp. 139, 360.
13. V. Sackville-West, The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford (William Heinemann, London, 1923), p. xxiv.
14. V. Sackville-West, The Eagle and the Dove (Michael Joseph, London, 1943), p. 22.
15. Ibid.
16. V. Sackville-West, ‘Black Tarn’, Collected Poems: Volume One (The Hogarth Press, London, 1933), p. 139.
PROLOGUE: HERITAGE
1. Calculation based on £5 in 1912 being equivalent to the purchasing power in 2014 of £330.
2. Susan Mary Alsop, Lady Sackville: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1978), p. 147.
3. Violet Trefusis, Don’t Look Round (Hutchinson, London, 1952), p. 43.
4. The New York Times, 27 June 1913.
5. Robert Sackville-West, Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles (Bloomsbury, London, 2010), p. 198.
6. Victoria Sackville, ‘The Book of Happy Reminiscences for my Old Age, Started on my 61st Birthday, 23rd Sept. 1922’, Lilly Library.
7. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 172.
8. Ibid.
9. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 212.
10. The New York Times, 27 June 1913.
11. Sue Fox and Sarah Funke, Vita Sackville-West (catalogue of manuscript material), Glenn Horowitz Bookseller (New York, 2004), p. 24.
12. Victoria Sackville diary, 17 June 1904, Lilly Library.
13. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
14. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians (The Hogarth Press, London, 1930), p. 100.
15. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 160.
16. V. Sackville-West, Pepita (The Hogarth Press, London, 1937), p. 230.
17. V. Sackville-West, The Death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (Ernest Benn, London, 1932), p. 148.
18. Mary Ann Caws, ed., Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings (Palgrave, New York, 2002), p. 59.
19. Vita’s diary, 7 July 1913, Lilly Library.
20. Glendinning, Vita, p. 124.
I THE EDWARDIANS
1. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 9.
2. Ibid., pp. 9–10.
3. V. Sackville-West, English Country Houses (William Collins, London, 1941), p. 42.
4. V. Sackville-West, The Heir: A Love Story (William Heinemann, London, 1922; Virago repr. 1987), p. 52.
5. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
6. Ibid.
7. V. Sackville-West, ‘Night’, Collected Poems, p. 144.
8. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 51.
9. V. Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles (William Heinemann, London, 1922), p. 2.
10. Ibid., p. 20.
11. V. Sackville-West, ‘April’, Collected Poems, p. 150.
12. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
13. V. Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles, p. 12.
14. Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973, repr. 1990), p. 20.
15. V. Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles, p. 11.
16. Victoria Sackville diary, 17 September 1894, Lilly Library.
17. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 17.
18. V. Sackville-West, Pepita, p. 181.
19. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 117.
20. V. Sackville-West, The Easter Party (Michael Joseph, London, 1953), p. 189.
21. Victoria Sackville diary, 9 March 1897, Lilly Library.
22. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
23. Trefusis, Violet, Broderie Anglaise (English trans., Methuen, London, 1986, repr. Minerva, London, 1992), p. 61.
24. Victoria Sackville diary, 9 March 1898, Lilly Library.
25. V. Sackville-West, Pepita, p. 210.
26. Victoria Sackville diary, 6 May 1903, Lilly Library.
27. V. Sackville-West, ‘Beechwoods at Knole’, Collected Poems, p. 142.
28. V. Sackville-West, Pepita, p. 201.
29. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 10.
30. Victoria Sackville diary, 20 February 1903, Lilly Library.
31. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 19.
32. Victoria Sackville diary, 1 August 1897, Lilly Library.
33. Diana Souhami, Mrs Keppel and her Daughter (HarperCollins, London, 1996, repr. Flamingo, London, 1997), p. 82.
34. Fox and Funke, Vita Sackville-West, p. 14.
35. Vita to Victoria Sackville, undated, Berg Collection (Album 1), New York Public Library.
36. V. Sackville-West, The Dark Island (The Hogarth Press, London, 1934), p. 42.
37. Victoria Sackville diary, 27 October 1897, Lilly Library.
38. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 139.
39. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 16.
40. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 184.
41. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 11.
42. Trefusis, Don’t Look Round, p. 42.
43. Michael Stevens, V. Sackville-West (Michael Joseph, London, 1973), p. 116.
44. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 120.
45. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 191.
46. V. Sackville-West, ‘The Edwardians Below Stairs’, Vogue, 25 November 1931, p. 55.
47. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 24.
48. Ibid.
49. V. Sackville-West, ‘To Knole’.
50. V. Sackville-West,
All Passion Spent, p. 90.
51. V. Sackville-West, The Heir, p. 75.
52. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 14.
53. V. Sackville-West, ‘To Knole’.
54. See Stevens, V. Sackville-West, p. 115.
55. V. Sackville-West, ‘To Knole’.
56. Ibid.
57. V. Sackville-West, ‘The Edwardians Below Stairs’.
58. V. Sackville-West, Tale of a Cavalier, quoted in Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 63.
59. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 189.
60. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 142.
61. Trefusis, Don’t Look Round, p. 70; Vita to Harold, 27 February 1912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 23.
62. Brown, Vita’s Other World, p. 26.
63. Vita’s diary, 13 August 1907, Lilly Library.
64. Norman Rose, Harold Nicolson (Jonathan Cape, London, 2005), p. 42.
65. Trefusis, Don’t Look Round, p. 42.
66. Alsop, Lady Sackville, p. 142.
67. Victoria Sackville diary, 21 August 1898, Lilly Library.
68. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
69. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 11.
70. V. Sackville-West, Chatterton (repr. The Through Leaves Press, 2002), p. 10.
71. Alan Pryce-Jones, Preface to Little Innocents: Childhood Reminiscences (Cobden-Sanderson Limited, London, 1932, repr. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986), p. 98.
72. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 11.
73. Vita’s diary, 2 June 1909, Lilly Library.
74. Saint Joan of Arc (Cobden-Sanderson, London, 1936; Folio Society repr. 1995), p. 7.
75. V. Sackville-West, Solitude (The Hogarth Press, London, 1938), p. 24.
76. V. Sackville-West, ‘The Owl’, Collected Poems, p. 125.
77. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 17.
78. V. Sackville-West, The Eagle and the Dove, p. 112.
79. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 17.
80. Sackville-West/Evelyn Irons Archive, The Dobkin Collection of Feminism and Judaica, Dobkin Collection Item 4655540, Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, New York.
81. V. Sackville-West, The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford, p. xxxix.
82. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, pp. 14, 13; Souhami, Mrs Keppel and her Daughter, p. 84.
83. Glendinning, Vita, p. 22.
84. Virginia Woolf’s diary, 23 January 1927.
85. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 82.
86. V. Sackville-West, The Eagle and the Dove, p. 16.
87. See Stevens, V. Sackville-West, p. 107.
88. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 24.
89. Ibid.
90. V. Sackville-West, Aphra Behn (Gerald Howe, London, 1927), p. 60.
91. Fox and Funke, Vita Sackville-West, p. 13.
92. See Stevens, V. Sackville-West, p. 26.
93. V. Sackville-West, Aphra Behn, p. 74.
94. V. Sackville-West, ‘Turning Over New Leaves’, Vogue, 10 July 1929, p. 43.
95. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 24.
96. Fox and Funke, Vita Sackville-West, p. 14.
97. Quoted in Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 62.
98. Ibid.
99. See Glendinning, Vita, p. 25.
100. V. Sackville-West, ‘Sissinghurst’, Collected Poems, p. 113.
101. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 202.
102. Vita’s diary, 18 July 1907, Lilly Library.
103. Ibid., 12 July 1907.
104. V. Sackville-West, Pepita, p. 230.
105. Glendinning, Vita, p. 41.
106. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
107. Victoria Sackville diary, 9 March 1905, Lilly Library.
108. Ibid.
109. Vita’s diary, 24 July 1907, Lilly Library.
110. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 24.
111. Virginia Woolf, Orlando (The Hogarth Press, London, 1928, repr. Grafton Books, 1987), p. 52.
112. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 24.
113. Ibid., p. 180.
114. V. Sackville-West, The Dark Island, p. 14.
115. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 89.
116. Stevens, V. Sackville-West, p. 117.
117. Trefusis, Don’t Look Round, p. 43.
118. Trefusis, Broderie Anglaise, p. 26.
119. Ibid., p. 27
120. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 27.
121. Souhami, Mrs Keppel and her Daughter, p. 13.
122. V. Sackville-West, Pepita, p. 181.
123. V. Sackville-West, Challenge (William Collins, London, 1974), p. 129.
124. Trefusis, Broderie Anglaise, pp. 16, 99.
125. Souhami, Mrs Keppel and her Daughter, p. 74.
126. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 26.
127. Ibid., p. 25.
128. V. Sackville-West, The Edwardians, p. 246.
129. V. Sackville-West, The Dragon in Shallow Waters (William Collins, London, 1921), p. 231.
130. V. Sackville-West, Passenger to Teheran (The Hogarth Press, London, 1926, repr. Cockbird Press, Heathfield, 1990), p. 148.
131. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 29.
132. Glendinning, Vita, p. 37.
133. Victoria Sackville diary, 5 March 1897, Lilly Library.
134. Ibid., 5 October 1905.
135. Sackville-West, Inheritance, p. 182.
136. Ibid., p. 185.
137. V. Sackville-West, Family History (The Hogarth Press, London, 1932), p. 147.
138. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 64.
139. V. Sackville-West, The Dark Island, p. 45.
140. Glendinning, Vita, p. 55.
141. Fox and Funke, Vita Sackville-West, p. 27.
142. V. Sackville-West, Grand Canyon, p. 167.
143. Vita to Hon. Irene Lawley, 22 March 1913, Hull History Centre (Hull University Archives U DDFA3/6/75).
144. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 36.
145. Glendinning, Vita, p. 37.
146. V. Sackville-West, Grand Canyon, p. 163.
147. V. Sackville-West, Heritage (William Collins, London, 1919, repr. Futura, 1975), p. 124.
148. Vita’s diary, 22 March 1910, Lilly Library.
149. V. Sackville-West, Heritage, p. 8.
II CHALLENGE
1. Trefusis, Don’t Look Round, p. 70.
2. Victoria Sackville, ‘Book of Happy Reminiscences’, Lilly Library.
3. V. Sackville-West, Heritage, p. 32.
4. V. Sackville-West, The Dark Island, p. 215.
5. Vita to Harold, 15 February 1913, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 34.
6. V. Sackville-West, Chatterton, p. 59.
7. Caws, ed., Selected Writings, p. 55.
8. V. Sackville-West, Knole and the Sackvilles, p. 28.
9. V. Sackville-West, ‘The Bull’, Collected Poems, p. 116.
10. Caws, ed., Selected Writings, p. 225.
11. V. Sackville-West, Family History, p. 274.
12. V. Sackville-West, Challenge, p. 46.
13. V. Sackville-West, Seducers in Ecuador (The Hogarth Press, London, 1924, repr. Virago, London, 1987), p. 6.
14. Vita’s diary, 1 July 1910, Lilly Library.
15. Glendinning, Vita, p. 41.
16. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 82.
17. Mitchell A. Leaska, and John Phillips, eds, Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1910–1921 (Methuen, London, 1989), p. 61.
18. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 30.
19. V. Sackville-West, Family History, p. 159.
20. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 37.
21. Vita’s diary, 15 May 1910, Lilly Library.
22. Vita to Harold, 29 May 1913, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 45.
23. V. Sackville-West, Family History, p. 40.
24. Vita to Harold, 10 April 1
912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 25.
25. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 77.
26. Richard Davenport-Hines, Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2008), p. 175.
27. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 31.
28. Vita to Harold, 21 February 1912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 21.
29. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 32.
30. Ibid., p. 72.
31. Ibid., p. 35.
32. Leaska and Phillips, eds, Violet to Vita, p. 71.
33. Vita to Harold, (undated) March 1912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 24.
34. Rose, Harold Nicolson, p. 45.
35. Glendinning, Vita, p. 68.
36. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 32.
37. Ibid., p. 23.
38. Ibid., p. 129.
39. Ibid.
40. V. Sackville-West, The Death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler, p. 124.
41. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 32.
42. Ibid.
43. Vita to Harold, 10 May 1912, Lilly Library.
44. Glendinning, Vita, p. 55.
45. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 32.
46. Quoted in David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1994), p. 214.
47. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 83.
48. Harold Nicolson, ‘The Desire to Please’, 1943.
49. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, p. 256.
50. Glendinning, Vita, p. 49.
51. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 82.
52. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, p. 218; Rose, Harold Nicolson, p. 24.
53. Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage, p. 84.
54. Vita to Harold, 23 July 1912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 29.
55. Vita to Harold, 29 May 1913, quoted in ibid., p. 45.
56. Vita to Harold, 29 May 1912, Lilly Library.
57. Vita to Harold, 6 June 1912, quoted in Nicolson, ed., Vita & Harold, p. 26.
58. Michael Holroyd, A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers (Chatto & Windus, London, 2010), p. 179.
59. V. Sackville-West, ‘Early Love’, 1913, Collected Poems, p. 283.
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