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Vita (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West (1892-1962) | |
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English poet and novelist, born into an old aristocratic family, proprietors of Knole House in Kent. Vita Sackville-West wrote about the Kentish countryside and she was the chief model for Orlando in Virginia Woolf's novel of that same title from 1928. Sackville-West's best known poem, THE LAND, was awarded the Hawthorne Prize in 1927. The country habit has me by the heart, Victoria Mary Sackville-West was the only child of Lionel Edward, third Baron of Sackville, and Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West, his first cousin and the illegitimate daughter of the diplomat Sir Lionel Sackville-West. She was educated privately. As a child became interested in poetry, and penned her first ballads at the age of 11. "I don't remember either my father or my mother very vividly at that time, except that Dada used to take me for terribly long walks and talk to me about science, principally Darwin, and I liked him a great deal better than mother, of whose quick temper I was frightened." (from Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson, 1973) Vita's mother considered her ugly - she was bony, she had long legs, straight hair, and she wanted to be as boyish as possible. Her social life was active, she wore Cartier jewelry, danced at Buckingham Palace, and talked with the Prince of Wales. Between 1906 and 1910 Sackville-West produced eight novels and five plays. CHATTERTON, A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS (1909), was privately printed. In 1913 she married the diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson, with whom she lived a long time in Persia and then at the Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. At first she played her role as a dutiful wife, but then her husband admitted that he had a male lover. The marriage endured despite their homosexual affairs, but Harold's affairs were less passionate than Vita's. They had two children, the art critic Benedict Nicholson and the publisher Nigel Nicolson. In 1923 the art critic Clive Bell introduced Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf; the two became lovers. According to an anecdote, when Nigel was a child and an adult person told him, that "Virginia loves your mother," he had replied, "Yes, of course she does: we all do." Her intimate encounters with Virginia Woolf she marked as "X" or "!" in her diaries. In spite of their relationship Sackville-West never became a part of Bloomsbury group of artists and scholars. She had also affairs with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department, Mary Campbell, married to the poet Roy Campbell, but her life long companion was Violet (Keppel) Trefusis, the daughter of Alice Keppel, Edward VII's mistress. The greater cats with golden eyes Violet ja Vita had met in childhood in 1904. Violet, who was two years younger, gave Vita a ring in 1908 when they both were teen-agers - it was her first gesture of affection and tenderness. "She is mine," Sackville-West recalled in her diary, but they did not meet much before the late 1910s. Vita fell also in love with another girl, Rosamund Grosvenor, who was four years older than Vita. Violet's and Vita's relationship continued until after their respective marriages. At one point they 'eloped' to France but in 1921 Violet returned to her husband Denys Trefusis. This long relationship was the subject of Sackville-West's secret diary and gave material for her third novel, CHALLENGE. It depicted a Greek vineyard owner who was torn between his love for a woman and for his island home. Sackville-West's father died in 1928 and his brother became the fourth Baron Sackville, inheriting Knole. Her husband decided in 1929 to resign from the foreign service and devote himself to literature. They purchased Sissinghurst Castle, a near-derelict house, and started to restore it. In the 1930s Sackville-West published THE EDWARDIANS (1930), ALL PASSION SPENT (1931), and FAMILY HISTORY (1932) which were bestsellers and portrayed English upper-class manners and life. PEPITA (1937) depicted the story of her grandmother, who was a Spanish dancer. Her passionate gardening was rewarded in 1955 by the Royal Horticultural Society. Sackville-West also published several books about gardening and kept a regular column at the Observer from 1946. In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She died of cancer on June 2, 1962. Harold Nicolson died six years later. Sackville-West believed in equal rights for women. She is best remembered for her novels but her most enduring work was perhaps the garden at Sissinghurst Castle, evidently the joint creation of Harold and Vita, and as Nigel Nicolson suggested the true "portrait of their marriage." Nicolson published in 1973 a book, Portrait of a Marriage, which was based on her parents' journals and notes, and described their private life and marriage. Later it was made into a television mini-series in 1990, starring Cathryn Harrison, Janet McTeer and David Haigh. For further reading: Vita Sackville-West by S.R. West (1972); Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson (1973 - suom. Erään avioliiton muotokuva); Sackville-West: A Critical Biography by M.V. Stevens (1974); The Jessamy Brides by J. Trautman (1973); Vita's Other World: A Gardening Biography of Vita Sackville-West by J. Brown (1985); The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, ed by L.A. DeSalvo and M.A. Leaska (1985) Violet to Vita, ed. by M.A. Leaska and J. Phillips (1989); Vita and Harold, ed, by N. Nicholson (1992) Vita and Virginia by S. Raitt (1993) Vita by Victoria Glendinning (2005) - Note: The Hogarth Press (see Virginia Woolf) used to print books in Sissinghurst Castle's tower, including 13 titles by Sackville-West. The most important work was T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land Selected works:
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