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Big Bill's Vita Sackville-West Stuff!
She created the gardens at Sissinghurst, and was best chums with Violet Trefusis, don't you know!
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Victoria Mary Sackville-West aroused strong feelings in those who knew her: either for or against. Although her ardent Latin temperament attracted lifelong admirers, both male and female, her unusual lifestyle and aristocratic manner were the source of some hostility — and even amusement. The vicissitudes of her private life — the bizarre flights to ‘freedom’ with the notorious Violet Trefusis; the consuming relationship with Virginia Woolf which produced Woolf’s masterpiece “Orlando”; the unconventional yet enduring relationship with her husband. Harold Nicolson — all these have been chronicled many times. Perhaps no private life this past century has been so well documented as that of Vita — the name by which she is best known.
Amidst the turmoil of her personal life, she produced a prodigiously rich and varied body of work. She was, she always stated, a poet first and foremost. And indeed her dozen or so volumes of poetry (some of which also appeared in limited editions) are highly collectable today, such as ‘Chatterton', her first published work printed privately in 1909.
Besides the volumes of poetry, Vita Sackville-West wrote thirteen full-length novels (including a detective story), the most celebrated of which are probably “The Edwardians” (1930) and “All Passion Spent” (1931); and three volumes of short stories. As much of this work was published by the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press, it is particularly sought after by collectors who seek everything published by Hogarth, or anything with a Bloomsbury connection.
Vita Sackville-West also wrote many historical and biographical works which are now equally collectable. Of her historical works, “Knole and the Sackvilles” is particularly interesting and attractive.
GARDENING
But the name of Vita Sackville-West became known to a whole new generation for the first time when she began writing a gardening column for the ‘Observer’ in 1946. In Victoria Glendinning’s biography, “Vita, The Life of V. Sackville-West” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), Miss Glendinning states that, “whether she liked it or not”, these articles were to make Vita Sackville-West more widely known and more eagerly read than anything else she ever wrote. She goes on to quote Anne Scott-James as saying that Vita Sackville-West “did more to change the face of English gardening than any other writing since Robinson’s ‘The English Flower Garden’.
These articles were eventually gathered together and published in book form by Michael Joseph. Beginning with “In Your Garden” in 1951, and culminating with “Even More For Your Garden” in 1958, by way of “In Your Garden Again” (1953) and “More For Your Garden” (1955). This series, which boasts especially attractive dust-wrappers, is immensely popular still, although the two last-mentioned are surprisingly scarce. There was also a posthumous gardening collection, “V. Sackville-West’s Garden Book” edited by Philippa Nicolson, and published in 1968. And earlier this year, Michael Joseph brought out “The Illustrated Garden Book”, with an introduction by Robin Lane Fox.
The core and kernel of all this horticultural enthusiasm was Vita and Harold’s first country home, Long Barn, and then their beautiful garden at Sissinghurst, Kent, designed from scratch and copiously stocked with plants by Vita and Harold themselves. Sissinghurst, of course, is now a national attraction, having been transferred to the National Trust in 1967, five years after Vita’s death.
KNOLE
Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent, another major National Trust attraction, was Vita’s birthplace. This vast, magnificent edifice, which now has an air of slightly decaying splendour, had been owned by the Sackvilles for over 300 years when Vita was born there in 1892. Her immediate forebears added a risqué, exotic tang to the line of English aristocrats who preceded them. Vita Sackville-West’s grandmother was the famous Pepita, a Spanish dancer of humble descent who had formed an ‘illicit union’ with Lionel Sackville-West, the 2nd Lord Sackville. The union may have been unorthodox, but it was not unblessed: the couple produced five children of whom Victoria, Vita’s mother, was the youngest. She eventually married her father's nephew (her own first cousin), also called Lionel, and Vita Sackville-West was their only child.
Victoria Senior was a beautiful, spirited woman, and a force to be reckoned with. She had an enormous effect on Vita’s life, not all of it positive; and Vita Sackville-West never entirely escaped from her petticoat tails (we can hardly call them apron strings in the case of this ‘grande dame’). But Vita Sackville-West’s upbringing at Knole, although solitary, was a child’s dream of romance. It was the direct inspiration for her best-selling novel. “The Edwardians", written many years afterwards in a spirit of not uncritical nostalgia for those days of conspicuous affluence.
HISTORY
Knole was also the inspiration for “Knole and the Sackvilles”, a history of her family. Whilst she was writing this book, she remarked of her ancestors in a letter to her cousin Eddy (quoted from V. Glendinning’s biography): “They were a rotten lot, and nearly all stark, staring mad. You and I have a jolly sort of heredity to fight against.” The first edition of this book is quite difficult to find complete with the attractive dust-wrapper today.
Vita Sackville-West’s first publication, “Chatterton”, was a verse drama published privately at Sevenoaks in 1909, when she was seventeen. The romantic life and early death of the young poet touched Vita Sackville-West’s highly coloured imagination, and it seems she spent hours in front of mirrors at Knole acting out the Chatterton drama. “Chatter-ton” is extremely rare now and not often seen on the market.
She followed this first poetic offering six years later with “Constantinople, Eight Poems”, again privately printed, this time in London by the Complete Press. A very slim volume in blue-grey stiff paper cover, it is quite a scarce item.
MARRIED
By the time she came to write “Constantinople”, Vita Sackville-West had met and married Harold Nicolson, then a budding diplomat (and later to make his mark as politician, critic and biographer). Shortly after their marriage the young couple set out for Constantinople, where Harold took up his appointment as third secretary at the Embassy.
It was well known among Vita Sackville-West’s friends that she was not enamoured of life as a diplomat’s wife, and she did not relish the Turkish posting. But as it turned out, she loved the place — as is evident in this volume of verse. The couple had a wooden house with a pretty garden, and a view over the Golden Horn. “Dhji-Han-Ghir”, one of the poems, describes this garden, which had been long neglected before their arrival. It was quite possibly here, halfway across the world, that the seeds were sown which were to bear such abundant fruit at Long Barn and Sissinghurst years later.
“Poems of West and East” (1917), which includes the Constantinople poems, a few earlier ones, and several new ones; and “Orchard and Vineyard” (1921), followed from the Bodley Head. Both received favourable reviews. Some of the poems from “Orchard and Vineyard” were incorporated into Vita Sackville-West’s celebrated pastoral poem, “The Land” (1926) — but more of that later.
Meanwhile Vita Sackville-West had completed her first two novels, "Heritage” (Collins, 1919), and “The Dragon in Shallow Waters” (Collins. 1921). The latter, described by Victoria Glendinning as “a bizarre, violent story about bizarre, violent people” was something of a minor best-seller at the time. Dedicated to ‘L’ (Lushka), Vita’s pet name for Violet Trefusis, it was written during that stormy period of Vita Sackville-West’s life when she was totally involved with this compelling (Harold thought 'evil’) personality.
The true story of their passionate involvement was transmuted into Vita Sackville-West’s third novel. “Challenge” — a book thought at the time to be so sensational and provocative that it was suppressed in this country by both Vita’s and Violet’s parents, who feared an explosive scandal. It was, however, accepted in America, and published there by Doran in 1923. This book, too, is very difficult to find with a dust-wrapper. It is even scarce in the green cloth first impression, but the second issue, in red cloth is easier to find. The book was not published in England until 1974, when it was brought out by Collins.
The Vita/Violet situation lasted for a number of years and caused a great deal of scandal in some quarters — and perhaps a little amusement. After all, it has to be admitted that the idea of two respectable upper middle class husbands chasing their runaway wives halfway across Europe, and pleading with them to return to hearth and home, does have its funny side! Vita Sackville-West had two sons, Ben and Nigel, by this time who, of course, had no inkling of what was going on. Ben eventually found out about his mother’s (and his father’s) dual sexual nature when he was informed of it bluntly by his grandmother when he was eighteen. “Portrait of a Marriage” by Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973) gives the full story of this period of the Nicolsons’ lives, taken from an autobiographical manuscript found after Vita Sackville-West’s death.
Of her other novels, “The Edwardians” which we have already mentioned, is perhaps her best known and certainly her most commercially successful book. It came out on 29th May 1930, and by 30th July sales had topped 20,000. The book was chosen by the Literary Guild of America, and received glowing reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. It is still extremely readable today. “No character in this book is wholly fictitious” was the Author’s Note, and indeed the great house, Chevron, in many ways the principal character in this drama, is Knole down to the last detail.
“All Passion Spent” (1931) proved a further triumph for Vita Sackville-West. Leonard Woolf, her publisher for this book, thought that it was her best novel, but Vita Sackville-West herself was not so sure. In fact she is said to have disliked all of her novels except “Seducers in Ecuador” (1924), calling it “the only one I might save from the rubbish heap”. A short, ironic fantasy, written round a group of people on an Egyptian cruise, it was an experimental work, heavily influenced in style by Virginia Woolf.
SHORT STORIES
Vita Sackville-West’s three volumes of short stories are also highly desirable items for the collector. “The Heir” (Heinemann, 1922) contains five stories, of which the title tale was also printed on its own in an edition of only fifty copies for sale, and fifty for private circulation. “Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour”, published in New York by Doubleday Doran in 1932, is another choice collector’s item. Two stories from this volume were printed together by Benn in England in the same year as ‘The Death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Kunstler’ (in paperback only).
If “The Edwardians” was Vita Sackville-West’s most commercially successful book, her long pastoral poem, “The Land” (1926), brought her the literary prestige she yearned for, although even this work was not universally praised at the time. The completed poem, whose opening line — “I sing the cycle of my country’s year“— concisely describes its contents, eventually ran to 2,500 lines. It was an immediate success, going through fourteen impressions in its first year. It was awarded the Hawthornden prize, became quoted at all levels of society, and Vita Sackville-Westread it aloud from the pulpit of the Savoy chapel. Verses from it were even used by a bus company as a caption for a poster advertising the countryside in Spring. The limited edition of this work, illustrated by George Plank, is especially sought after today. Incidentally, “The Land” enjoyed a prolonged revival during the war, when many things precious to the British were feared to be in jeopardy.
Vita Sackville-West, always at heart a poet, was so elated by the success of “The Land”, that she immediately started writing a companion piece, “The Garden”. But this project was dropped almost straight away, only to be taken up again twelve years later. By this time Vita Sackville-West and Harold, having transformed the garden of their first country home, Long Barn, were firmly ensconced at Sissinghurst, a few miles away. Sissinghurst Castle was a complete ruin when the Nicolsons fell in love with it at first sight in 1930. But the couple transformed this ruin “in seven acres of muddy wilderness” into a veritable paradise.
Vita Sackville-West had never been a great socialite; even as a mature adult she has been described as being shy and diffident “except in safe company”, and many people were intimidated by her apparent aloofness. Now she became more and more reclusive, preferring the company of a few friends and the solitude of the garden, where she became a familiar figure in her adopted uniform of jodhpurs and knee gaiters — a trowel in one hand, and the ubiquitous cigarette in the other.
Her much shorter poem, “Sissinghurst” (Hogarth. 1 93 1) written as a tribute to her new home, was dedicated to Virginia Woolf and hand printed by Leonard and Virginia in 500 signed, numbered copies.
Vita Sackville-West began “The Garden” again in 1939, but it was not completed and published until after the war, in 1946. She thought the poem “not a patch on ‘The Land’ “, but many people now see it as a finer work altogether. It won the Heinemann prize, and Vita Sackville-West spent the whole £100 prize money on azaleas for the garden. Besides the trade edition, there is a limited, signed edition of this work.
As we have already stated, Vita Sackville-West’s gardening activities, influenced to a degree by the great Gertrude Jekyll, revealed a new facet to her creativity. Indeed, Rebecca West, often a fierce critic of Vita Sackville-West’s writing, thought the garden at Sissinghurst her “one magnificent act of creation”. Vita Sackville-West’s gardening books — all listed in the bibliography have proved tremendously popular to this day, although the titles “More for Your Garden” and “Even More for Your Garden” can be pretty elusive.
Vita Sackville-West produced such a number of books, in many and various categories — poetry, fiction, historical, biographical, travel, etc. — that it is more than usually difficult to cover each category adequately in the space available. But another volume of poetry worth a mention is “King’s Daughter”, No. 11 of the ‘Hogarth Living Poets’ series (1929). This book, another slim volume, containing nineteen short romantic poems with a chivalric theme, was greatly admired by Yeats. He was especially enthusiastic about “The Greater Cats with Golden Eyes”, a fine poem with a distinctly Yeatsian touch!
As well as “Knole and the Sackvilles” and “Andrew Marvell”, her historical/biographical works include a very lively and personal biography of her grandmother, “Pepita” (Hogarth, 1937); and a study of Joan of Arc, titled “Saint Joan of Arc” (Cobden-Sanderson, 1936). This book appeared in several guises. The original trade edition was supplemented by a limited edition of 120 copies, and Michael Joseph brought out a revised version of the trade edition in 1948. Meanwhile in 1937, the Hogarth Press included the book in their ‘World Makers and World Shakers’ series under the shorter title, “Joan of Arc”.
Then there are her two distinguished travel books, “Passenger to Teheran” (1926) and “Twelve Days” (1928), both very collectable. The books recount her experiences travelling both to and inside Persia in 1926/27. “Twelve Days”, illustrated with Vita Sackville-West’s own photographs, is a particularly fine book and, in its description of and evident love for wild places, contains some of Vita Sackville-West’s very best writing.
Other sought after Vita Sackville-West works include “Nursery Rhymes” (Dropmore Press, 1947), illustrated by Phillipe Jullian. An unusual 1961 production, “Faces, Profiles of Dogs”, published by the Harvili Press, contains photographs of famous canine companions by Laelia Goehr.
And Vita Sackville-West’s only work of translation, “Rilke”, is especially collectable in the prestigious Cranach Press limited edition (238 copies), illustrated by Eric Gill.
Signed or inscribed copies of any of these works would, of course, be worth considerably more. There are a number of copies of Vita Sackville-West’s works inscribed to friends, but she was not one to flourish her signature indiscriminately. I have, though, come across copies of Vita Sackville-West’s work autographed by her mother in large, flamboyant script (Lady Sackville was the author of a number of books, too). Such books might possibly fetch a few pounds more but not, of course as much as those in Vita’s own hand.
Such egocentric behaviour on the part of “Bonne Mama” or “B.M.” — Vita Sackville-West’s nickname for her mother — perhaps illustrates their relationship better than a thousand words. In later years, Victoria suffered increasing spells of mental ill-health, accusing Vita Sackville-West of all kinds of disloyalties and treacheries. It was possibly this, coupled with the deaths of Virginia Woolf and a number of close friends, that led to Vita Sackville-West’s reclusiveness as time went by; and the fact that she was convinced that she looked ‘odd’ and was being stared at. Age did indeed accentuate the androgynous aspects of this tall (over 6ft), arresting woman. But in her youth and middle years she captivated many hearts with her beautiful speaking voice, her compelling dark looks, but most of all her endless curiosity about life — in a phrase, her sheer joie de vivre.
It is obvious that she took her craft very seriously, but the critical approbation of her peers was not always forthcoming — even (or especially) from Virginia Woolf, although her books were much more popular than Virginia’s during the latter’s lifetime. Vita Sackville-West died at Sissinghurst on 2nd June 1962. A heartbroken Harold died six years later, having never really recovered from her death. In the tower room at Sissinghurst, which Vita Sackville-West used as her writing room, nothing has been changed. Visitors today can see everything just as it was in her lifetime, down to the same blotter on the same old oak writing desk.
With perseverance, time and, it has to be said, a certain amount of money in one’s pocket, it is still just possible to amass a near-complete set of the works of Vita Sackville-West; we emphasise “near-complete” because her first work, “Chatterton” could prove one of the stumbling blocks, as could the gardening books mentioned already, and “Challenge”, the early suppressed novel. But all of her works are becoming increasingly collectable and scarce apart maybe from the ordinary edition of “English Country Houses” (part of the B.I.P. series), and the biography “The Eagle and the Dove”, both of which still appear to be quite plentiful.
Many collectors, of course, may prefer to stick to one category. In this case, her gardening books, perhaps, are the most rewarding of all, and a monument to the tremendous amount of work that went into the creation of her beautiful gardens. As Faith Compton Mackenzie said of these books in a contemporary review: “Seldom have poetry and commonsense gone so delightfully hand in hand.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fiction
Poetry
Travel
Gardening Books
Historical and Biographical
Miscellaneous
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U.K. Talking Books
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http://www.sappho.com/letters/vitas-w.html
http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/vitasackvillewest.html
http://www.annabelle.net/topics/author.php?firstname=Vita&lastname=Sackville-West
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/robarts/microtext/collection/pages/sackvill.html
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The above article was adapted from one authored by Helen Macleod taken from the December 1986 edition of Book and Magazine Collector magazine.
Philip K Dick Isaac Asimov Edith Wharton Angela Brazil John Fowles Robert Heinlein Raymond Chandler John D MacDonald Wilfred Thesiger Sylvia Townsend Warner Elizabeth Jane Howard Hugh Walpole Nevil Shute Vita Sackville-West Extreme-Positioning