Memoir

‘Portrait of a Marriage’ – A Semi-Autobiographical Glimpse of the Life and Loves of Vita Sackville-West

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Published: 1973

Author: Nigel Nicolson

Publisher: Slightly Foxed Ltd

Genre: Memoir/Biography

Subjects: Vita Sackville-West (V S-W), Harold Nicolson (writer and diplomat), Violet Keppel, Rosamund Grosvener

Setting: Knole (large country house with 52 staircases, spread over 1000 acres)

Format: confessions of Vita about her love affair with Violet Keppel. Vita’s diaries are interspersed with notes and commentary from her son, Nigel Nicolson

Summary: ‘Portrait of a Marriage’ is a description of several years in the married life of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, part autobiography by Vita, part biography by the couple’s younger son Nigel Nicolson. In particular the book describes those critical years when the couple’s marriage teetered on a dangerous precipice. It was threatened by Vita’s affair with Violet Keppel, climaxing when Vita and Violet eloped to France, only to be retrieved by their respective spouses. What shines through in the book is the extraordinary bond that Vita and Harold shared with one another. Their marriage is an example of a relationship that didn’t follow conventional norms, but still worked for them in private, defying societal judgement, gossip and speculation.

On reading the memoir in its entirety, a few lines from the foreword have struck me the most and stayed with me. Penned by Nigel Nicolson, they read thus:

“It is the story of two people who married for love and whose love deepened with every passing year, although each was constantly and by mutual consent unfaithful to the other. Both loved people of their own sex, but not exclusively. Their marriage not only survived infidelity, sexual incompatibility and long absences, but became stronger and finer as a result. Each came to give the other full liberty without enquiry or reproach. Honour was rooted in dishonour. Their marriage succeeded because each found permanent and undiluted happiness only in the company of the other.”

Part One of the book is Vita Sackville-West’s personal diary from 1920, which attempts to recount details of her affair with Violet Keppel and purge her mind of the love she had for this woman. One can gauge a certain level of frustration that the author had, how she could not reconcile herself to loving someone of her own sex. She speaks of a ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde personality’.

“That is the whole crux of the matter, and I see now that my whole curse has been a duality with which I was too weak and too self-indulgent to struggle.”

This personal narrative of Vita’s is interspersed with notes from her son, Nigel Nicolson. Though the later pages of the book do mention Vita’s relationship with Virginia Woolf, this book does focus more wholly on Vita’s relationship with Violet Keppel, the single incident, which threatened to break Vita’s marriage with Harold. After this, the couple developed an understanding that remained unbroken, despite their subsequent infidelities.

Part One and Part Two have a number of streams of narrative : Vita’s parental family history and her childhood at Knole and the inheritance dispute of the family estate of Knole. Vita first met Violet at the age of 12. They went to school together in London but their relationship didn’t develop romantically till much later, when Harold and Vita were married for five years in 1918.

Part One and Part Two of Vita’s narrative serve as the prelude to the development of the affair. It details Vita’s family history, her Gramdfather’s love and special attention to her at Knole, the 1000 acre family estate, over which there was a very public legal battle upon Vita’s grandfather’s death. Vita’s parents won the estate and it was Vita’s home till she married the diplomat, Harold Nicolson in 1913. The couple set up their own home at Long Barn in a tumbledown cottage, two miles from Knole, which was extensively restored and extended by Sir Edward Lutyens, companion to Vita’s mother.

It was in the Spring of 1918, that Vita and Violet’s affair started at Long Barn. Harold was away on foreign diplomatic work. Vita and Harold were separated a lot due to Harold’s work and they missed each other tremendously, writing to one another frequently to fill the void between them. Violet was to be engaged to Denys Trefusis the following year – a relationship that was one-sided, in that Violet was obsessed, devoted to Vita and wanted to leave everything and live with her.

The climax was reached in 1920, when Vita and Violet planned to elope together to Amien in France. Rather ironically, on Valentine’s Day of 1920, Harold and Denys both flew to Amiens in a two seater aeroplane, piloted by Denys Trefusis. They then retrieved their respective spouses and took them back separately to Paris.

In the next year or so, although Vita and Violet met and went away together, their relationship dwindled. Violet returned to Denys. Vita went on to have relationships with different people but she always came back to her anchor and support, her constant companion to the end – Harold Nicolson. I feel their son, Nigel summarises the pattern of their relationship perfectly in the lines –

If their marriage is seen as a harbour, their love affairs were mere ports of call. It was to the harbour that each returned; it was there that both were based.

If one steps back from all the dates, the isolated events, the places, the people, the history that reside in the book, one person in particular shines through the narrative – Vita Sackville-West. One can’t help but believe that she must have been a tremendous personality. To have the capacity to love so many people, to have so many people love her so fervently, to have a constant, steadfast companion like Harold Nicolson to the last – now that highlights no ordinary individual.

Many Thanks to the Folks at Slightly Foxed for sending me a review copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Still Life by Richard Cobb

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Still Life by Richard Cobb

*My experience of reading Richard Cobb’s ‘Still Life’ published by @foxedquarterly *

Historian Richard Cobb’s memoir about growing up in Tunbridge Wells in the 1920’s and ‘30’s and thereafter feels very much like a miniaturist painting – only transmuted to book form. 

For as the dextrous miniaturist painter adds infinitesmal detail to his work of art, so too has the author added layer upon layer of minute detail of his retelling of childhood.

As a reader, this has a few challenges. Some of the details might seem excessive at first or unnecessary, but in retrospect it is those details that render the painting or work so full of depth and it can ultimately feel quite rewarding. Cobb doesn’t write solely about important noteworthy people and events. His pen sweeps in every aspect of every person and place that his young person encountered, in the most quotidian detail. Mostly, as a young and sensitive boy he seeks reassurance in the continuity of things. Be that the presence of a town person walking on the common, or of the presence and unchanging aspect of Tunbridge Wells itself. 

Cobb’s family moved to Tunbridge Wells when he was four i.e in 1921. His family consisted of his father an ex serviceman in the Sudan Civil Service, his mother, with a penchant for playing bridge at the Ladies’ Bridge Club and his elder sister. 

Though Cobb’s mother seems to have a slightly snobbish character, enjoying her Club activities and being sensible of her middle class friends there, there was an absence of such class related sensibilities in Cobb’s personal narrative. This is why, we learn about all types of people who lived in Tunbridge Wells. Cobb leaves no-one out. No person is too lowly, no incident is too ordinary to prevent it being mentioned. 

In the early chapters, Cobb with the thoroughness of the historian goes into great depth regarding the geographical approach to Tunbridge Wells. Don’t be deterred by the minute details however, the later chapters relate incidents related to his mother and father, his assortment of relatives, some of them quite unusual – residing in Tunbridge Wells, how the Second World War affected (it didn’t affect) the towns people and more. 

An interesting chapter was that describing the Limbury-Buses – relations of the Cobb’s – who lead an extraordinarily insulated life, even during the war, not allowing any of their daily routines to be upset or any outside news to penetrate to the interior of the house.

I came away knowing about a place that I had never known before. I felt that perhaps I knew Royal Tunbridge Wells better than many places I had actually been before. Now that’s quite a feat of writing for you. 

I’d however, recommend this book for the reader who has an interest in small, exacting details. If you delight in the minutiae of a place and it’s people – then this memoir is for you. 

I was sent this book as a press copy from the folks at Slightly Foxed but all impressions are entirely my own.

‘Cider With Rosie’ by Laurie Lee

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Laurie Lee’s wonderful evocation of his childhood, in a small Cotswold village in ‘Cider With Rosie’ was a memorable recent read. 

The book starts in the wake of the First World War. Lee was at the time just a small boy of three. There is a quite mesmerising description of Lee being handed down from the cart that brought them to their crumbling Cotswold cottage, and him standing in the grass in a field in front of his house – grass so tall in the month of June that it towered over his head – ‘each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight’. 

Each recapitulation is so vivid that it really set’s the reader’s imagination ablaze with heady imagery. The prose is packed with descriptors that really bring to life every sensory detail. Laurie Lee takes us down memory lane. One by one the people, places and incidents of his childhood are recounted but in a way, that immerses us in the landscape- to witness the peculiar activities of the elderly old ladies who are their close neighbours (Granny Trill and Granny Wallon), to hear and feel the rush of rain, clap of thunder of a great storm that practically submerges their low lying cottage, and to breathe in and taste the heady flavour of cider from the bounty of apples from the valley. 

It is not an entirely bucolic evocation of a perfect childhood. There are plenty of disturbing stories of village incidents, criminal activities, death, poverty and decay. Some of them are harrowing to say the least. But I would say, that one takes away a rather sunny, if realistic, snapshot on the whole, of childhood in the Cotswold village. 

Some of the people we meet in ‘Cider With Rosie’ seem larger than life. Granny Trill and Granny Wallon are the family’s neighbours – and Laurie Lee certainly conjures them up as having slightly spooky, witch-like characteristics – Granny Wallon distilling fine wines from the wild growth of the surrounding fields and hedges – cowslips, dandelions, elderflower and more. Granny Trill on the other hand followed a weird and wonderful primitive schedule – breakfasting at the crack of dawn and going to bed at 5 pm. Granny Trill also told weird and wonderful stories and took snuff out of a snuff box that the boys surreptitiously stole. 

Lee’s Mother was an extraordinary, slightly eccentric woman who took care of her husband’s children from her first marriage and those of her own marriage, singlehandedly. It is true that there were a number of older step sisters who took care of the young brood- of which Laurie Lee or ‘Loll’ as he was affectionately called was one. Their Father left the family and never came back. Their Mother, started life as a housemaid and served the gentry for several years in various country houses before accepting a position as a housekeeper to their Father’s household. She frequently recalled the fine details of the serving dishes, silverware, food and customs of the gentry. She later retained this affection for beautiful things and would often haunt auctions and sales for bargain treasures, which would grace their ramshackle Cotswold cottage – strewn with arts and artefacts, plants and flowers . Always short of money, the children would be sent to their neighbours for a bit of salt or some spare change to make ends meet. 

Lee’s Mother had a keen eye for beauty, a love for poetry, music and nature. She was a true romantic and spent her entire life waiting for her husband to come back to her. 

The chapter describing the tradition of carol singing by the young boys of the village is a classic extract, gracing many of the best Christmas anthologies. I was delighted to read it within the context of Lee’s memoir. Just as memorable, is the description of summer, the harvesting of apples, the making of cider, the long walks and picnics through the valley. The change of seasons and the beauty that accompanies them are described evocatively in the book. 

There are many other intimate moments, too numerous to describe in this review that make this book very special. The people, sense of place and incidents are remarkable but the whole is lifted to another plane of excellence by Laurie Lee’s exceptional gift for prose – poetic and uplifting. ‘Cider With Rosie’ is a little gem of a book – to be re read ever so often – to glean new and wondrous details. 

My edition of ‘Cider With Rosie’ was a press copy from Slightly Foxed but all opinions are my own.