Lighting the Cave: The Relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf Author(s): Louise A. DeSalvo Source: Signs, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 195-214 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173896 . Accessed: 09/09/2013 11:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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Lighting the Cave: The Relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Louise A. DeSalvo
On January 16, 1923, a week after the death of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf wrotean entryin her diary,attestingto Mansfield'simportance to her work: Katherine has been dead a week, & how far am I obeying her "do not quite forgetKatherine"which I read in one of her old letters? Am I already forgettingher? It is strange to trace the progress of one's feelings. Nelly said in her sensational way at breakfaston Friday "Mrs Murray's dead! It says so in the paper!" At that one feels-what? A shock of relief?-a rival the less? Then confusionat feelingso little-then, gradually,blankness& disappointment;then a depression whichI could not rouse myselffromall thatday. When I began to write,it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine wont read it. Katherine'smy rival no longer.1 I wsouldliketo thankBlanche Wiesen Cook, ErnestJ. DeSalvo, MitchellA. Leaska, Jane Lilienfeld,Jane Marcus, and Sara Ruddick fordiscussionswhich led to manyof the ideas expressed in thisarticle.Nigel Nicolson generouslyread and responded to an earlierdraft and provided much valuable information.I would also like to thank two unnamed Signs readers for their carefulcommentson an earlier version of this article,wvhich prompted Sackville-Westand many revisions.My studentsin a seminaron the relationshipbetxween Woolf provided many valuable insights: Mary Lou Conway, June Doyle, Billie Huber, Bernice Mitchell,and MarilynSchuffler. 1. Virgiia T Di Diar of oo 1920-1924, ed. Anne Olivier Bell, loolfIThe irginiaWoof, gn assisted by Andrew McNeillie (New York: Harcou-t Brace Jovanovich,1978), 2:225-26 (hereaftercited as Diary,1920-1924). The followingworks have been importantto the genesis of this article: Blanche Wiesen Cook, " 'Women Alone Stir My Imagination': Lesbianismand the Cultural Tradition,"Signs:Journalof WIomen in Cultureand Society4, no. 4 (Summer 1979): 718-39, and ll'omenand SupportNetworks (New York: Out & Out Books, 1979); Barbara Fassler, "Theories of Homosexuality as Sources of Bloomsbury's Anin Cultureand Society5, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 237-51; clrogyny,"Signs:Journalof WIomen Nigel Nicolson,Portraitofa Marriage(New York: Bantam Books, 1974); Sonya Rudikoff, i lan Society1982. vol. 8, no. 2] l of W'omenin Culture [Sigs: Jourlna
1? 1982byThe University ofChicago.Allrights reserved. 0097-9740/83/0802-0003$01.00
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"Katherine wont read it. Katherine's my rival no longer." In this diary entry,Woolf revealed that a part of her motivein writingwas both to connectand to compete withanotherwoman writerwhom she perceived to be her coequal and rival-one whose high standardsurged Woolf to set equivalentlyhigh ones for herself.Thus, as she wrote,she posited Mansfieldas her ideal reader; Mansfield'simagined reactionserved as a check against Woolf's impressions.When Katherine Mansfield was in actual factcritical,as she was of Nightand Day-suggesting that it was a safer novel than Woolf's firstwork, The VoyageOut-Woolf suffered agonies.2 At the time of Katherine Mansfield's death, there was no other woman whom Woolf respected in quite the same way. But there was a woman on the peripheryof her lifewho would come, in time,to fitinto the gap created by Mansfield'sdeath: Vita Sackville-West,"the new apparition,"3whom Woolf had met earlier in 1922 at a dinner partygiven by Clive Bell.4 Sackville-Westwould be, in many ways,much more importantto Woolf than Mansfieldever was. It is unlikelythatWoolf ever gave her the same criticalrespectthatshe accorded Mansfield;nonetheless, when Woolf described Seducersin Ecuador to Sackville-Westas "the sort of thing I should like to write myself,"she wrote perhaps with truth-as well as witha desire to flatter.5 In a letter to Woolf about the sources of her own inspiration, Sackville-Westwrote,"I knowjust what to pick out of the shelfin order in one? to strikesparksoffmyself,don't you? Or are you tinder-and-flint
"How Many Lovers Had Vii-giniaWoolf?"HudsonReview32, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 540-66; Joanne Trautmann, The JessamyBrides (UniversityPark: PennsylvaniaState University and Its Genesis: Venturingand Experimentingin Art, Press, 1973); Jean 0. Love, "Or-lando ed. Ralph Freedman (Berkeley Love, and Sex," in VirginialVoolf:Revaluationand Continuity, and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1980); Michael Stevens,V. Sackville-l1'est (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1974). Ellen Hawkes, "Woolf's 'Magical Garden of Women,' " in NewFeminist Essayson Virginia11'0oolfed. Jane Marcus (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1981), pp. 31-60, is a geiminal essay, firstpresented as a lecture at the 1976 Princeton UniversityConference on Wooolfand her cultural setting,o-ganized by Joanna Lipking. 2. Ann L. McLaughlin, "The Same Job: Notes on the Relationshipbetween Virginia no. 9 (Winter 1977), p. 11, and Woolf and KatherineMansfield,"Virginia WIoolf ;liscellany, "An Uneasy Sisterhood,"New FeministEssayson Virginia WlIoof,ed. Jane Marcus (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 1983), vol. 2, in press; Louise A. DeSalvo, "Katherine no. Mansfieldand Vil-giniaWoolf's Revisionsof The VoyageOut,"VirginiaWoolf/iMiscellany, 11 (Fall 1978), pp. 5-6. 3. V. Woolf,Diary,1920-1924, January7, 1923, 2:225. 4. Virginia Woolf, The Lettersof VirginiaWIloolJ, 1912-1922, vol. 2, The Questiotof ThingsHappening,ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1976), p. 600, n. 2. 5. Virginia Woolf,The Letters ofVirginia11'oolf1923-1928, vol. 3, A ChangeofPerspective,ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1923-1928. 1978), letterno. 1497. Hereaftercited as Letters,
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I suspect so."6 VirginiaWoolf and Vita Sackville-Westwould become, in time,as tinderand flintto one another,strikingin each other and from one another the sparksof love, sexuality,support,friendship,and literary inspiration,and togethertheywould lightthe cave of darkness that each held withinherself. AlthoughWoolf and Sackville-Westwere importantto one another from 1923 until Woolf's death in 1941, theirlove affairwas at its peak between 1925 and 1928, and a strongfriendshiplasted as late as 1934.7 Their lettersto one another when theywere separated were filledwith the language of lovers,withtalkof theirworkin progress,withdescriptionsof the triviaof theirdays thatloversneed when theyare separated, withconcern for theirhusbands, withadmonishmentsfromone to the other to take verygood care of themselves,with agony at the fact that theywere apart. During the ten-yearperiod of theirfriendship,Sackville-Westpublished Seducersin Ecuador,Passengerto Teheran,The Land, AphraBehn, TwelveDays, "King's Daughter,"AndrewMarvell,TheEdwardians,All PasClocksStriketheHour, ColsionSpent,FamilyHistory,"Sissinghurst,"Thirty lectedPoems,and TheDark Island.8Woolf in thattimewrote"Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown," Mrs. Dalloway,To theLighthouse, Orlando,A Room of One's Own, The Waves,Flush,and A Letterto a YoungPoet; published The CommonReader and The CommonReader: SecondSeries; and began The Years,while workingas usual on scoresof reviewsand essays.9It was the most productive period of each of their lives; neitherhad ever before writtenso much so well,and neitherwould ever again reach thispeak of
accomplishment. The beginningof theirrelationshipwas filledwithmutual curiosity about each other'spast history.Soon afterWoolf metSackville-West,she wroteto ask her fora copy of the recentlypublished book entitledKnole and theSackvillesthat traced the historyfromthe thirteenthto the twentiethcenturyof Vita's ancestralhome in Kent: "There is nothingI enjoy more than familyhistories,so I am fallingupon Knole the firstmomentI get."'0 In their conversations,in their letters,and ultimatelyin their 6. Vita Sackville-Westto Virginia Woolf [August/September1925], Berg Collection, NexwYork Public Library,New York, folder 2. Sackville-West'slettersto Woolf and her diary (cited in n. 15 below) are quoted withthe kind permissionof Nigel Nicolson and the Henry W. and AlbertA. Berg Collection of English and American Literatureof the New York Public Library,Astor,Lenox and Tilden Foundations. I xvouldlike to thank Lola L. Szladits, curator, for her continuing interestin this project. Mitchell Leaska and I are preparing an edition of Vita Sackville-West'slettersto Virginia Woolf,to be published by William Morrow in 1984. 7. Love, "Orlanldo... " (n. 1 above), pp. 189-218. 8. The listis draw-nfromStevens,pp. 154-57. 2 vols. (New York: 9. The listis drawn fromQuentin Bell, VirginiaWoolf.A Biography, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1972), 2:236-52. For a listingof the essays that Woolf published, see B. J. Kirkpatrick,A Bibliography of VirginiaWoolf(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 157-74. 10. V. Woolf,Letters, 1923-1928, vol. 3, letterno. 1341.
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novels, theywould explore during the course of their friendshiptheir own and each other's familyhistory.Woolf wroteTo theLighthouse, The and and which own she wrote examined her The childhood, Waves, Years, Orlando,which examined Vita's; Sackville-Westwrote The Edwardians, which examined her own familyhistory,and FamilyHistory,which, to somneextent,examined Virginia's. In Leonard Woolf's opinion no one could have been more different fromhis wifethan Vita Sackville-West:"She belonged indeed to a world which was completelydifferentfromours, and the long line of Sackvilles,Dorsets, De La Warrs,and Knole withits 365 rooms had put into her mind and heartan ingredientwhichwas alien to us and at firstmade intimacydifficult."1What Leonard Woolf did not see, however, was how verysimilarVirginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-Westfelttheywere because theirchildhoods were in factmuch alike despite the overt difference of class. When Sackville-Westwas on one of her tripsto Teheran, Woolf tried explaining her own character: "Then there's my character (you see howvegotisticI am, for I answeeronly questions that are about myself)I agree about the lack ofjolly vulgarity.But thenthink howrI was brought up! No school; mooning about alone among my father's books; never any chance to pick up all that goes on in schools-throwing balls; ragging; slang; vulgarity;scenes; jealousiesonly rages with my half brothers,and being walked off my legs round the Serpentine by my father."'2 And Sackville-Westresponded: "But indeed my bringing-upwasn't so very differentfrom yours: I moved about too, at Knole mostly,and hadn't even a brotheror a sisterto knock the cornersoffme. And I never wentto school. If I am jolly and vulgar, you can cryquits on anothercount,foryou have thatinterestin humanitywhich I never can manage,-at least, I have the interest,but not the diabolical skillin its practicewhichis yours.And as I get older ... I find I get more and more disagreeablysolitary."'3They both had been emotionallyabandoned at significant pointsin theirchildhood: Woolf,byher mother's death and her father'sself-absorbedgrief after it; SackvilleWest, by the separation of her parents and her mother's infantilism. They both were denied free and easy access to children theirown age: Woolf, because of the illness that she was thought to have; SackvilleWest,because Knole was situatedso farfromany otherhousehold. They both had to deal with parents who were mercurial,difficultto please, lovable, and yetextraordinarilymaddening: in Woolf's case, it wvasher Au All theIIa.y:,n .tobiogtaphy o' theYears1919 to 1939 11. Leonard Woolf,Downthill (New York: Harcourt, B-ace & \World, 1967), p. 112. 12. V. Woolf, Letters,1923-1928, vol. 3, letterno. 1624. For discussions of Woolf's childhood, see Bell; Jean ). Love, Virgi'tila WToot'lSourcesoJMadnessandArt(Ber-keleyand Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1977); Louise A. DeSalvo, "1897: Virginia Woolf at 15: The Fir-st Really Livec Year of myLife,'" in Marcus, ed. (n. 2 above), vol. 2. 13. Sackville-Westto V. kWoolf, April 8 [1926], Berg Collection, folder6.
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father; in Sackville-West's,her mother. They each had lived through childhood withconstantremindersof historyand the weightysense of theirown family'splace in it: Woolf,because of her father'sworkon the Dictionaryof NationalBiography;Sackville-West,because of Knole. They both feltconflictedby the separate strainsin theircharacter: SackvilleWest, by the contrastof her Spanish heritage and her exalted English past; Woolf, by the tug between the Pattles's flamboyance and the Stephens's sobriety.14 The love that they developed provided a solid, central base from which they could each look anew at their childhoods, at their family histories,at how each had become the woman that she now was. This reexaminationresulted in profound changes for both. Virginia Woolf discussed with Vita the fact that she had been molested by her halfbrother; there is an entryin Sackville-West'sdiary from their trip to France which reads, "After dinner V. read me her memoir of 'Old Bloomsbury,'and talked alot about her brother."15Aftercoming to at least temporarytermswiththisincident,Woolf was able to enter into an erotic relationshipforthe firsttime in her maturity.Vita Sackville-West was freed into an enrichingrather than a self-destructive relationship, one that tapped both her intellectand her emotions. An index of its positive effectfor Virginia Woolf is that she, who so detested mirrors throughouther life,bought herselfan antique mirrorwhen she went to France withVita. WithVita she could take a look at her old self,and she could look anew at the self she now was. Vita Sackville-Westprovided Woolf withan alternativeappraisal of her characterto the one thatshe had lived withforyears-the reclusive semi-invalidwho had to watchherselfat all timesand at all costs. Instead of emphasizing Woolf's sickliness, Sackville-Westdwelled upon her health, her energy,her vitality,her accomplishments,her generosityin dealing withothers,her gregariousness."You are," she wrote to Woolf in 1925, "a very,veryremarkable person": You see, you accomplish so much. You are one perpetual Achievement; yet you give the impression of having infiniteleisure. One comes to see you: you are prepared to spend two hours of Time in talk.One may not, for reasons of health,come to see you: you write divine letters,four pages long. You read bulky manuscripts.You advise grocers. You support mothers, vicariously.You produce books which occupy a permanentplace on one's bedside shelfnext to Gerard MANLY Hopkins and the Bible. You cast a beam across 14. Bell, 1:18. 15. Diary of Vita Sackville-Weston a journey to France withVirginiaWoolf,September 24-30, 1928, entrydated September 26, Berg Collection. For a descriptionof the relationshipbetweenViolet Dickinsonand VirginiaWoolf,whichoccurred during Woolf's adolescence and young adulthood, see Cook, "'Women Alone ...'" (n. 1 above).
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the dingylandscape of the Times LiterarySupplement. You change people's lives. You set up type.You offerto read and criticiseone's poems,-criticise, [in the sense which you have given to the word,] meaningillumination,not the completedisheartenmentwhichis the legacy of other critics.How is it done?16 This alternativeview helped Woolf arriveat a more realisticappraisal of the breadth of her accomplishments,not despite the faults of her character but because of its strengths,and gave her the verificationof self-worthprerequisiteforaccomplishingeven more. Yet Sackville-West also saw veryclearlythat Woolf often pushed herselftoo hard, that she was not selfishenough in the interestsof her art. She recognized that although Woolf had accomplished an enormous amount in her lifetime, she was not always altogether wise in how she used the considerable energythatshe had; she would not allow herselfto relax and recoup her energies, but pushed herselfuntil illness became the only way to take, withoutguilt,the restthatshe required. Sackville-Westreminded Woolf again and again thatshe wore herselfout in the care of others,much as her mother and her half-sisterStella Duckworthhad done. In a 1925 letter,she chided her friend:"Whydo you give so much of yourenergies to the manuscriptsof other people? You told me in London thatyou had at least six novels in your head but were being severe withyourselfuntil you should get to Rodmell. Now you are at Rodmell, and what of the six novels? Between Ottoline, Gertrude Stein, and bridal parties which make you faint,what time is leftfor Virginia?"17Another time,on receivinga card addressed in Woolf's handwritingand findingthatit was reallyan advertisementfromthe Hogarth Press,Sackville-Westberated Woolf for frittering her time away on such trivialwork: "Why do you address advertisements?Has it a hypnoticeffecton you? I can thinkof no other reason whyyou should do it."18 One of the notionsthatWoolf had lived withsince her adolescence was that she needed routinework to keep her nervous systemfunctionyear, her fatherand her physiing as it should. In fact,in her fifteenth cian required her to spend time making a garden to counteractwhat theybelieved to be the adverse effectsof intellectualpursuitsupon her hypersensitivenature. The idea that she was, at times,too sensitivefor intellectualpursuits (reading, writing)but not too delicate for manual labor persisted into her adulthood. Sackville-Westsuggested that this notion was probablyno longer appropriate, if indeed it had ever been appropriate,19and that the clerical and manual labor performed on behalf of the Hogarth Press mightbe robbingher of energyneeded for 16. 17. 18. 19.
Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, September 18 [1925?], Berg Collection,folder 2. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, August 25 [1925?], Berg Collection,folder 1. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, December 8, 1925, Berg Collection,folder 3. See DeSalvo, "1897 .. ." (n. 12 above).
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her writing.If she needed a respite from intellectualwork,she might choose a less enervating,more invigoratingformof relaxation.In short, Sackville-Westhelped Woolf take another and more realistic look at herself,at her resources,and at her resilience.Woolf and her husband began to travelsomewhat more in the years followingher relationship with Vita; Woolf also learned at this time to switchfrom one kind of intellectualtaskto another,fromcriticismto fiction,to make the best use of her time and of her faculties. Meanwhile, the Hogarth Press's publication of Sackville-West's novels helped the Woolfs achieve a measure of economic securitythat they never had before. AlthoughSeducersin Ecuador,the firstnovel of hers published by them, sold only 1,500 copies, The Edwardianswas a huge commercial success-30,000 copies were sold in the firstsix months.20Woolf was well aware that Vita's novels helped the press. On September 7, 1930, she wrote her friend:"What about your novel and your poems? I ask in no idle curiosity;I look upon you now as the Woolf breadwinner,since it'smore and more certainthatmynovel wontwin us even a penny bun."21 At thattimeWoolf was writingThe Waves,and it is possible that this new economic securityhelped Woolf become even more audaciously experimentalin her evolvingnovel than she had been in the past-although her earlier workscertainlywere experimentalin theirown way.22The uniqueness of The Wavesmightthusbe considered as an outgrowthof thisextraordinaryrelationship.23It is thereforedisturbingto read Virginia Woolf's comment to Ottoline Morrell in 1933 that Vita "came with her sons, one Eton, one Oxford, which explains why she has to spin those sleepwalking servant girl novels."24Those "sleepwalkingservantgirl" novels provided the Woolfs themselveswith economic security. What in turn did Virginia Woolf do for Sackville-West'ssense of herselfas a writer?Sackville-Westloved VirginiaWoolf,not only forher intrinsicself,but also forher literaryachievement.In 1925, she began a letterwiththe words "My darling" and continued: 20. L. Woolf, p. 158. 21. Virginia Woolf,The Lettersof VirginiaWoolf,1929-1931, vol. 4, A Reflection ofthe OtherPerson, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1978), letterno. 2233. Hereaftercited as Letters,1929-31. 22. See Louise A. DeSalvo, "A View of One's Own: VirginiaWoolfand the Making of in Melymbrosia: AnEarlyVersion of"TheVoyageOut,"ed. Louise A. DeSalvo (New MIelymbrosia," York: New York Public Library, 1982); Jane Marcus, "Enchanted Organs, Magic Bells: Nightand Day as Comic Opera," in Freedman, ed. (n. 1 above). 23. Jane Marcus is in the process of investigatingthe relationshipbetween Ethel of The Waves. Smythand Virginia Woolf and the swriting 24. VirginiaWoolf,TheLetters ofVirginiaWoolf,1932-1935, vol. 5, TheSickleSide ofthe Moon,ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), letterno. 2841.
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DeSalvo
Last nightI wentto bed veryearlyand read Mrs Dalloway-It was a
very curious sensation: I thought you were in the room. ..
I was
veryunhappy because I had had a row withmy mother,and very happy because of you; so itwas likebeing twodifferentpeople at the
same time....
I felt quite light, as though I were falling through my
bed, like when one has fever.Today I am quite solid again, and my boots are muddy. They weightme down. Yet I am not as solid as usual,-not quitesuch an oaf,-because there is at the back of my mind all the time . .a
glow, a sort of nebula, which only when I
examine it hardens into a shape; as soon as I thinkof somethingelse it dissolvesagain, remainingtherelike the sun througha fog,and I have to reach out to it again, take it in myhands & feel itscontours: then it hardens, "Virginia is coming on Saturday."25 But this sun was not always altogethereasy to live with. Woolf's influence,in the long run, helped Sackville-Westdevelop herselfas a writerin ways that pushed her talentsto their utmost,but when comparing their work, Sackville-Westoften felt her own achievement diminished: "I contrastmy illiteratewritingwithyour scholarlyone, and am ashamed."26She had been similarlyawed by Woolf's Common Reader. Vita to and in continued write criticism 1928 Nonetheless, literary published a book on Aphra Behn, in 1929 one on Andrew Marvell. When Woolf read Passengerto Teheran,she wrote,in her diary,that the work was not carefullyrevised,not carefullyconsidered, too hasty, too lightlytossed off. Vita's prose is too fluent.I've been reading it, & it makes my pen run. When I've read a classic,I am curbed &-not castrated:no, the opposite; I cant thinkof the word at the moment. Had I been writingP[assenger] to T[eheran] I should have run off whole pools of thiscoloured water; & then (I think)found my own method of attack.It is mydistinctionas a writerI thinkto get thisclear & myexpressionexact. Were I writingtravelsI should wait till some angle emerged: & go for that. The method of writing smooth narrativecant be right;thingsdont happen in one's mind like that. But she is veryskilful& golden voiced.27 There is, perhaps, a hint of envy at Vita's abilityto toss off books as as she tossed offher muddyboots aftera walk quicklyand as effortlessly with her dogs. While Woolf revised torturously,Sackville-Westseemed contentwithgettingthe workdone, and Woolf appears to have resented this. She had also criticizedSeducersin Ecuador when she wrote of it to 25. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, Wednesday [1925?], Be-g Collection,fiocler1. 26. Sackville-Westto V. \Woolf, December 8 [1925], Be-g Collection,folder 3. 27. Saturday, February 12, 1927, ViriginiaW'oolf,The Diaryof I'irgi,ia l1'oo,lf19251930, ed. Anne Olivier Bell, assisted bv Andrew McNeillie (NexwYork and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1980), 3:126-27. He-eafter cited as Diary,1925-1930.
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Vita, telling her that the work was not "of course, altogether thrust through; I think it could be tightened up, and aimed straighter,but there is nothing to spoil it in this."28And she often wrote her friend descriptionsof her own process. On February 18, 1927, she discussed as if to teach, by virtue of her own her revision of To theLighthouse, what meticulous the process was all about: "I'm dazed, I'm example, I I'm sick to death: on bored, crossingout commas and puttingin go in a marmoreal stateof semi-colons despair. I suppose theremaybe half a paragraph somewhere worth reading: but I doubt it."29But Woolf's advice had itseffect.On January29, 1927, afterseeing Woolf forthe last time before her second trip to Persia, Sackville-Westwrote (with some irony): I shall work so hard, partlyto please you, partlyto please myself, partly to make the time go & have something to show for it-I treasureyoursudden discourseon literatureyesterdaymorning,-a send-off,to me, ratherlike Polonius to Laertes. It is quite true that you have had infinitelymore influenceon me intellectuallythan anyone, and for this alone I love you.... Yes, my very dear Virginia: I was at a crossways just about the time I first met you, ... You do like me to writewell, don't you? And I do hate writingbadly-and havingwrittenso badly in the past. But now, like Queen Victoria,I will be good.30 What Sackville-Westfeltshe needed, and what she got fromWoolf,was an unflinchingcriticwho would set new and high standardsto whichshe would aspire. Aftershe gave Seducersin Ecuador to the Hogarth Press to publishin 1924, Sackville-Westdid not publishanothernovel until 1930, when TheEdwardiansappeared. Sackville-Westsaw thissix-yearhiatusas the resultin part of the inhibitingeffectof Woolf's criticismand in part of her own desire to improve. She was, in addition, preoccupied at this time withthe writingof TheLand and her twvo books about her travelsin Persia.31But Sackville-Westdid not see the hiatusas altogetherbad: "At least I feel confidentthat the rank growthof my early years has been prettyseverelypruned by now, and I hope has made nice strongwoody growthinstead. We shall see."32 She probablybegan writingfictionagain because the familyneeded the money realized from the sales of her novels: Nigel and Ben were 28. V. Woolf,Letters, 1923-1928, vol. 3, letterno. 1497. 29. Ibid., letterno. 1718. 30. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf,January29, 1927, Berg Collection,folder 10. In the original letter,Vita draws a signpostshowing a crossroads,with"bad novels" on one sign and "good poetry"on the other. 31. I am indebted to Nigel Nicolson for pointingthisout (letterto the author from Nigel Nicolson, SissinghurstCastle, November 1, 1980). 32. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, August 21, 1928, Berg Collection,folder 21.
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attending expensive schools; Sissinghurstwas just purchased; Harold was not employed; and there was the garden at Sissinghurstto deal with.33Shortlybefore she started,Sackville-Westasked Woolf to make out "a synopsisof solid reading" that would help prepare her for the writingof fiction,as she believed Woolf prepared herself.34"I have recentlybeen appalled by my own ignorance. You see, you know all about people like Sterne,and I don't. I go worryingon, withouthaving enough backgroundof good standardsto use for purposes of comparison."35Between the years 1930 and 1934, Sackville-Westpublished what in my judgment are the four most importantnovels of her literary career: The Edwardians,All Passion Spent,FamilyHistory, TheDark Island. The respitefromfictionhad indeed made "nice strongwvoody growth." Although Virginia Woolf's friendshipwithVita Sackville-Westwas mosteloquentlycelebrated in her writingof Orlando,Woolf's love affair with Sackville-West probably provided the emotional climate that allowed To theLighthouseto come into being, as Jane Lilienfeld has so astutelyobserved.36 Like Woolf's mother,Julia Stephen, Vita was at timesinaccessibleto her, particularlyduring her frequenttripsabroad. The love affairmay thus have stirredup the feelingsof separation that Woolf had experienced as a child and that are so poignantlyexplored through the responses of several charactersin To theLighthouseto the figureof Mrs. Ramsay. Once Woolf had writtenthroughthe historyof her separation fromher mother,she mayhave needed to writea book in which she would possess Vita utterly:Orlando.As soon as she finished she conceived Orlando,as if the record of her early life and Lighthouse, the record of her friend'sheritage wrerecompanion books explaining how each of them had become the women theynow were. Orlandoowed a great deal to Sackville-West'sown0historicalaccount which Woolf had read of her family'shistory,Knole and theSackvilles,37 in their friendship.Many of the ideas that Woolf developed in early Orlandoabout time passing, about history,about impermanence,about the relationship of people to historical processes are suggested in Sackville-West'sowvnKnoleand theSackvilles,but transformedfromhistoryintoart throughthe magic of VirginiaWoolf's prose. And, Woolf's more overtlypoliticalA Room of One's Own might also be, in part, a response to seeing at firsthand the inequitiesof English society.Knowing Vita and seeing Knole certainlyled to the quasi-fantasy,Orlando,but 33. Nigel Nicolson to authot, Sissinghuiirst Castle, November 1, 1980. 34. See Brenda Silver'sIirgilia I'oolf 's ReadingNotebooks (Pirinceton,N.J.: Pirinceton UniversityPress, in press). 35. Sackville-Westto V. WVoolf, February 13, 1929, Beig Collection,folder 29. 36. Jane Lilienfeld, personal communication. See also Jane Lilienfeld," 'The DeTlwentieth ceptiveness of Beauty': Mother Love and Mother Hate in To theLighthouse," CenturtLiterature23, no. 3 (October 1977): 345-76. Allu37. See BeverlyAnn Schlack,Contilnuing Presences:Virginina ltoolJ'sUse ofLiteraysion (UniversityPark: PennsylvaniaState UniversityPress, 1979), pp. 77-100.
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may also have helped form the polemical works-A Roomof One's Own and even ThreeGuineas.On July5, 1924, Woolf visitedKnole and wrote about it in her diary: His lordshiplivesin the kernelof a vast nut. You perambulatemiles of galleries; skip endless treasures-chairs that Shakespeare might have sat on-tapestries, pictures,floorsmade of the halves of oaks; & penetrate at length to a round shinytable with a cover laid for one. A dozen glasses forma circle each witha red rose in it. What can one human being do to decorate itselfin such a setting?One feels that one ought to be an elephant able to consume flocks& be hung about withwhole blossomingtrees-whereas one solitarypeer sitslunchingbyhimselfin the centre,withhis napkin folded intothe shape of a lotus flower.... There is Knole, capable of housing all the desperate poor ofJudd Street,& withonly thatone solitaryearl in the kernel.38 For even if Vita had had a grand past, she was now, because of English law, a workingwoman just like Virginia Woolf herself-a woman who needed to writeto help provide money for the familycoffer. Orlando,in another sense, was a fictionalrewritingof English history.Through the power of her pen, Woolf reversed the centuries'old Kentish inheritance law which had prevented Vita from inheriting Knole. In the pages of her Orlando,Vita Sackville-Westowned Knole in a way that she never could own it in reality.Ironically,what Woolf did throughthe act of her fictionwas to identifythe futurehistoryof Knole with two women and with their love for one another. Although Vita could not legallyinheritKnole, VirginiaWoolfgave itto her memoryfor as long as there will be readers of Orlando.39 But Vita Sackville-Westrealized the enigmaticquality of this gift. Woolf was not above using her workin progressto thrleatenher lover,to tryto compel her fidelity.On October 14, 1927, she wrote: Never do I leave you withoutthinking,its forthe last time.And the truthis, we gain as much as we lose by this.Since I am alwayscertain you'll be off and on withanother next Thursday week (you say so yourself,bad creature,at the end of your last letter,whichis where the viper carriesits sting)since all our intercourseis tingedwiththis melancholyon my part and desire to be white nosed and so keep you halfan instantlonger,perhaps,as I say we gain in intensitywhat we lack in the sober comfortablevirtuesof prolonged and safe and respectable and chaste and cold blooded friendship.... If you've given yourselfto Campbell, I'll have no more to do withyou, and so it shall be written,plainly,for all the world to read in Orlando.40 38. V. Woolf,Diary,1920-1924, 2:306-7. 39. N. Nicolson (n. 1 above), p. 208. 40. V. Woolf,Letters, 1923-1928, vol. 3, letterno. 1821.
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Sackville-Westrealized that Woolf was now more comfortable with writinga work of fancyabout her than she was about returningVita's gesturesof affectionin the real worldand expressingher love forVita in a physicalway. Woolf herselfeven acknowledged as much. On March 20, 1928, afterfinishingOrlando,she wrote:"Did you feela sortof tug,as if your neck was being broken on Saturday last at 5 minutes to one? ... The question now is, will my feelingsfor you be changed? I've lived in you all these months-coming out, what are you reallylike? Do you exist?Have I made you up?"' And on April 3, 1928, Sackville-West wrote Woolf: "I won'tbe fictitious.I won't be loved solely in an astral body, or in Virginia'sworld."42 It was the eroticismof the real Vita that began to give Woolf her greatestdifficulty.And although their friendshipoutlasted their love affair,Sackville-Westnow and again made referenceto theirearlier and more erotic momentstogetherwitha certainnostalgia,even though she had many other outlets for her physicalaffections,and Woolf herself often looked back to the days of their lovemaking:"There was once a woman called Virginia,and she had a small hairy animal called Potto. Does thisbringanythingback to mind?The sound of your lovelybalmy voice coming across the marshes last night... stirred the embers of desire."43As a trulygood friend,Sackville-Westunderstood that Woolf had difficulty actingon her eroticimpulses,althoughshe also chided her on that account. After Woolf's trip to Berlin to see Vita and Harold, Woolf became ill. Leonard Woolf believed thathis wifehad overexerted herselfwith Vita.44But Vita had her own view of what ailed Virginia: "Do you know what I believe it was, apart from the 'flu? it was SUPPRESSED RANDINESS. So there-you rememberyour admissions as the searchlightwent round and round?"45 The necessityfor a differentbut related suppression may offer another reason, besides those mentionedearlier,forSackville-West'snot writingfictionduringa six-yearperiod: it was not possibleto deal overtly withlesbian love at thistimein Englishhistory,as the RadclyffeHall case proved. One of the mostcompellingexperiences in Sackville-West'slife during these yearscould not findexpressionin fiction.Woolfhad solved the problem by creating the form of Orlando to contain her love for Sackville-West.In Sackville-West'searliernovelChallenge,about her love affairwithVioletTrefusis,she had come to an answerbycreatinga male character to represent a womnan-no true solution, for it falsifiedthe 41. Ibid., lettei no. 1873. 42. Sackville-Westto V. W(oolf,April 3, 1928, Berg Collection,foldel 20. 43. Decemtber29 [1931], V. Woolf,Letters,1929-1931, vol. 4, letternio.2497. 44. W\hatcaused thisillness\ was cliscussedc to one another.See at lengthin theirletteirs V. W(oolfto Sackville-West[.January 30, 1929], Letter,21929-1931, 4:10: "Leonard and the dr. savs its mntracketvlife in Berlin." 45. Sackville-Westto V. W(oolf,Febluart 7, 1929, Beig Collection,folder 28.
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experiencesof women who loved women. It is easy,therefore,to see why the RadclyffeHall case was extremelyimportantto Sackville-West.46 On August 31, 1928, Sackville-Westwrote to Woolf that she felt veryviolentlyabout the Well of Loneliness. Not on account of what you call my proclivities;not because I thinkit is a good book; but really on principle. [I think of writingto Jix suggesting that he should suppress Shakespeare's Sonnets.] Because, you see, even if the W. of L. had been a good book,-even if it had been a great book, a real masterpiece,-the result would have been the same. And thatis intolerable.I reallyhave no words to say how indignantI am. Is Leonard really going to get up a protest?or is it fizzling out? . .. Don't let it fizzle out.47
It was not until Sackville-WestwroteFamilyHistory,whichwas published in 1932, and The Dark Island, which was published in 1934, that she was able to approach overtlythe issue of lesbianismin her novels,48 and even then the issue was somewhatsubmerged.FamilyHistoryis interesting in lightof Sackville-West'srelationshipwith Woolf because in it she discusses the fateof women who suppress theirlesbianism.In some sense, EvelynJarrold,the centralcharacter,may be a portraitof certain tendencies Sackville-Westfound in Virginia Woolf and a criticismof Woolf's continuing inabilityto give full acknowledgmentto her own lesbianism. has EvelynJarrold,whose husband died when she was twenty-four, been raised in a societywhich encourages a passionate reserve in its women and whichfindsthe idea of women lovingwomen so repugnant that it must be suppressed-primarily, Sackville-Westsuggests,because it challenges the primacyof men. Thinking of a partyshe will attend, EvelynJarrold realizes that there is "no one she wanted to see except perhaps her niece Ruth, who was fresh and young, and who idolised her."49 Their encounter is filled with emotion, and we see Evelyn through Ruth's point of view: Ruth was always strangelyelated when she had been with Evelyn. She always came away, her head swimmingwith unusual, suggestive, dangerous notions. What was Evelyn's life, apart from what anybody could see of it? Outwardly, she led the ordinary, semidecorous, semi-frivolouslifeof a woman dividingher timebetween her family connections and her personal amusement.... Ruth 46. See Cook, "'Women Alone...'"; and Fassler (n. 1 above). 47. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf, August 31, 1928, Berg Collection, folder 21. 48. See Fassler, who observes that Sackville-Westdeals with "the lesbian passions which she [Sackville-West]both glorifiedin and feared" in The Land, the poem that Vita published in 1928 (p. 245). 49. V. Sackville-West,FamilyHistory(New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1932), p. 26.
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could not reconcile thisideallydomesticatedEvelynwiththe spoilt, luxurious Evelyn ... who gave you the impression of a life lived behind a life;who was, in short,apparentlya model of the domestic virtuesand who yetsuggestedall the . . . passion of Shakespeare.50 Ruth is absolutelycorrect; Evelyn is seething with subterranean emotions that,given her upbringing,she cannot acknowledge even to herself. But Ruth trustsher love for Evelyn, and, although she does not attach a name to it, knows that she would prefer to see Evelyn over anyone else: "Her heart would turnover, as it alwaysdid, when she first caught sightof Evelyn in the room."51 Ruth's longing for Evelyn haunts the rest of the book. For what EvelynJarroldcannot acknowledge,because it is a prospecttoo dangerous forher even to contemplate,is the factthathad she loved Ruth,she mighthave been farhappier. Instead, she torturesherselfforthe love of a man. She falls in love with Miles Vane-Merrickand he with her, but she demands more and more of him and findinghis love insufficient, then refuses to see him. In self-ignoranceshe transmutes her unacknowledged love for Ruth into a love thatwill destroyher. Sackville-Westis commonly considered to be a representativeof conservative,if not reactionary,political and social views. Part of the reason for this is that only two of her novels,Challengeand The Edwarare readilyavailable,whilethe mostpoliticallyradicalof her novels, diants, FamilyHistoryand All Passion Spent,are out of print. An indicationof the extentto which Sackville-West'spoliticaland feministattitudeswere affected-at least temporarily-by her relationship with Woolf is indicated by comparing The Heir, firstprivatelyprinted in 1922, withAll Passion Spent and Family History,published in 1931 and 1932, respectively.The Heir, subtitled"A Love Story,"records how a Mr. Peregrine Chase, manager of a small insurance officein Wolverhampton,a "sandy, weakly-lookinglittleman, with thin reddish hair, freckles,and washy blue eyes,"52comes to love Blackboys, an Elizabethan manor house left to him by an aunt whom he never met. Although initially persuaded by solicitorsto sell the house, Mr. Chase graduallydevelops a sense of the importanceboth of privateownershipand of tradition.He walks through the manor house, feeling its wood, smelling its smells, hearing its peacocks screeching,walkingacross its polished oak floorsand acquiring a verynew sense of himself. Chase has grownup in a verydifferentworld fromthatof his aunt, who passed all her days among the amenitiesof Blackboys. Chase, by contrast,is poor and has spent all his life up to this point in factory towns. Although Sackville-Westdescribes the cheerless drudgery of 50. Ibid., pp. 32-33. 51. Ibid., p. 36. 52. V. Sackville-West,The Heir: A Love Story(London: Richards Press, 1949), p. 12.
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Chase's work,and the dispiritinglife in factorytowns,the solution that she provides in TheHeir is reactionary:Chase fallsin love witha place as well as with the very landholding traditionthat denied Vita SackvilleWest Knole House-her heritage.In one sense, TheHeir is an exercise in wish fulfillment;Chase enjoys Blackboyseven if Sackville-Westwas denied Knole. She neithercriticizesthe systemthathad divestedher of her own property nor investigates,as she would in later books, the relationshipbetweenprivateownershipand society'spatriarchalstructure. In "A Cockney's Farming Experiences,"writtenwhen she was only ten, VirginiaWoolf had dealt withtheseveryissues; she had returnedto them in 1906 in "The Journalof MistressJoan Martyn"thatinvestigates the land tenure systemof medieval England.53There Woolf establishes that the tension between women and men is rooted in an inequitable landholding systemthat denied virtuallyall women and a significant number of men a peaceful and sociallyacceptable means of supporting themselveswithdignity.As a result,women were nonpersons,while the men excluded fromthe systemwere driven to lawlessness,ventingtheir anger upon the bodies of women: the daughters and wives of landholders. Thus, when they met, Woolf and Sackville-Westwere as opposed as twowomen could be in theirresponsesto the privateownership of property. Before her relationshipwith Woolf, Sackville-Westhad never fully investigated the inequities in the landholding system, although she had railed against the factthatshe was not born male and thus by Kentishlaw could not inheritproperty. During the years of their friendship,the two no doubt discussed theirdifferences.Woolf's A RoomofOne's Own, published in 1929, took up, among other subjects,the place of women in a societythat opposes theirownershipof propertyas well as other inequitiesof the propertyholding system.Such views were extremelydifferentfromthe assumptions underpinningTheHeir. In A RoomofOne'sOwn,statementssuch as the followingchallenged Sackville-West'spoint of view: True, they [men] had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouringin theirbreastsan eagle, a vulture,forever tearingthe liverout and pluckingat the lungs-the instinctfor possession,the rage foracquisitionwhichdrivesthemto desire otherpeople's fields and goods perpetually;to make frontiersand flags;battleshipsand poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children's lives. Walk throughthe AdmiraltyArch ... or any otheravenue givenup to trophies and cannon, and reflectupon the kind of glory celebrated there. Or watch in the spring sunshine the stockbrokerand the great barristergoing indoors to make money and more money 53. Louise A. DeSalvo, "Shakespeare's Other Sister,"in Marcus, ed. (n. 2 above), vol. 2; Susan Squier and Louise A. DeSalvo, eds., "'The Journal of MistressJoan Martyn,'by Literature25, nos. 3/4 (Fall/Winter1979): 240-74. Century Virginia Woolf,"Twentieth
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and more money when it is a factthatfivehundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine.54 It is likelythatWoolf's influencewas profound, for Vita SackvilleWest'sAll PassionSpent,published in 1931, is as astonishinglyfeminist,in its own way, as VirginiaWoolf's A Roomof One's Own. It demonstrates what life is like for a woman withouta room of her own. As the novel opens, the body of Henry Holland, Earl of Slane, career diplomat, formermember of Cabinet, formerPrime Minister,formerViceroy to India, is awaiting burial. His widow, Lady Slane (her name is apt), eighty-eightyears of age, has yet to live a life of her own. She has followedhim to all the capital citieswhere his career has taken him; she has cared fortheirchildren,whom she does not verymuch like; she has received and worn the splendid giftsof jewels, given her by heads of state,whichshe does not verymuch value. But she has never painted the pictures she has dreamed of making: "Duty, charity,children, social obligations,public appearances-with these had her days been filled; and whenever her name was mentioned,the corollarycame quick and slick,'Such a wonderfulhelp to her husband in his career!'"55 During these years she has alvays been surrounded-by her husband and her childrenand servantsand diplomats.She has, in fact,been made into an island unto herself-taken care of, isolated,protectedfromthe invasion of insidious influencesfromthe outside, as one would protectand care for a crown colony. And, like a crown colony, Lady Slane does not like what has happened to her under the dominion of her husband's influence,although she has kept her silence throughthese sixtylong years of her life with him. (Imperialism,it would appear, begins at home.) The opportunityto live a life trulyher own only comes to Lady Slane with her husband's death, when she makes a life for herself in Hampstead Heath: "She walked slowlybut happily,and withoutanxiety, as in a friendlyretreat,no longer thinkingof Henry's opinion of his children,or indeed of anythingbut the necessityof findingthe house, her house."56 What Lady Slane learns is that the differencebetween trulyliving and merely existingis the differencebetween acquisitivenessand the renunciationof worldlygoods in excess of what is needed fora comfortable life.She concludes thatthe world is horrible:"It is horriblebecause 54. VirginiaWoolf,A RoomofOne'sOwn (New York: Harcourt,Brace & World, 1929, 1957), pp. 38-39. 55. V. Sackville-West,All PassionSpent(New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1931), p. 50. at the The poi-tionof thisessay devoted to All PassionSpentwas given, in diffei-ent formn, Modern Language Associationconventionin San Francisco, 1980. I w\ouldlike to thank Susan Squier, who chaired the session, for helpful -remarksanctencour-agement. 56. Sackville-West,All Passiol Spent,p. 78.
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it is based upon competitivestruggle-and really one does not know whetherto call the basis of thatstrugglea conventionor a necessity."57 In Hampstead Heath she is able to establishwithpeople outside her social class equalitarian relationshipsthat come to mean more to her than any relationsshe has ever had: with Mr. Bucktrout,owner of the house, who understands the rhythmsof life; with Mr. Gosheron, fix-it man, who understandsthat makingand fixingthingstakes a long time; and withGenoux, her maid, who understandshow lonelyone can be in the midstof people. She is now also able to establisha deeply feltequality with a man, with Mr. FitzGeorge, who understands the life she has chosen for herselfin her last year. In the closing pages of the novel, Lady Slane gives her greatgranddaughter,Deborah, an aspiringmusician,thecourage to refusethe marriage that is arranged for her and to embrace the life of an artist. "This hour of union with the old woman soothed her like music, like chords lightlytouched in the evening,withthe shadows closing and the moths bruising beyond an open window. She leaned against the old woman's knee as a support, a prop, drowned, enfolded, in warmth, dimness, and soft harmonious sounds.... On some remote piano the chords were struck,and they were chords which had no meaning, no existence, in the world inhabited by her grandfather.. but in her great-grandmother's world they had their value and their Just as A Room of One's Own can be thought of as an significance."58 of outgrowth Orlando-after tracingthe historyof the traditionwhich Sackville-West'sfamilyrepresented in Orlando,Woolf discussed its implicationsin A Roomof One's Own-so All Passion Spent,a fictionaltreatment of the themesin her friend'spolemical tract,can be thoughtof as an outgrowthof A Room of One's Own. The image of Deborah leaning against her great-grandmothercaptures Sackville-West'ssense that courage to question the traditionsof her heritagecame to her fromher too, the fictionalportrait relationshipwithVirginiaWoolf. Interestingly, of Lady Slane anticipatesthe mysticallife that Sackville-Westchose for herselfas an older woman. Sackville-Westexplored similar political themes in FamilyHistory. Although she used EvelynJarrold to representthe nature of repressed lesbianism,she also has her representthe conservativeview which must be overcome if England is to change. And the novel uses the person of Viola Anquetil,who is a socialistand a pacifist,to explore those facetsof Virginia Woolf. The marriage of Viola and Leonard Anquetil presents an interpretationof the Woolf marriageverydifferentfromrecentones 57. Ibid., p. 113. 58. Ibid., pp. 286-88.
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in which Leonard takes care of Virginia. In Sackville-West'sview, it is Virginiawho givesLeonardpeace and serenity: Viola Anquetilcame forwardto greether,a calm,tall,self-possessed woman in a dress of Venetian red. She was a beautifulwoman in early middle-age, statuesque, her dark hair lying sleekly in two bands above her brows,and gathered into a knot at the back. Her hand, when she gave it,was cool and slender; her manner peaceful. Evelyn, who had heard that she was alarming, realised that this woman had a verydeep lifeof her own. She realisedthatthestreamof lifein thishouseflowedverydeep and strongand intense,and thatits thewoman.It certainly did notproceedfrom proceeded serenity entirelyfrom theman; anymanwiththattqueerscarred to face was bynaturea stranger serenity. Serenityhad been thewoman'sgiftto him,and their understandingenveloped them as witha radiance. Not thattheyspoke to one another,or even glanced; thattwas unnecessary.But itwas clear that theywere absolutelyunited.59 Viola and Leonard Anquetil have a relationshipas equalitarian as the politicalviewsthattheyespouse. As Jane Marcus has observed,Virginia Woolf believed thatthe originof fascismwas in the patriarchalfamily.60 Both All Passion Spent and FamilyHistorysuggest too that imperialism begins in the patriarchalfamilyand thatsocialistsand pacifistslike Viola and Leonard Anquetil have also rejected the microcosmof the patriarchal familyfor more equalitarian livingarrangements. Anotherremarkablefeatureof FamilyHistoryis Sackville-West'sgift there to VirginiaWoolf of fictionalchildren,just as Woolf had restored Knole to Sackville-Westin Orlando.VirginiaWoolfoftenwondered what life mighthave been if she and Leonard had had childrenand whether she would have been a good mother.61(She seems to have feared that she would not have been.) In FamilyHistory,the couple based on Leonard and Virginia Woolf have two remarkable children: happy, healthy,intelligent,politicallyactive,informed,capable of discussingthe most heated issues of the day. Lesley Anquetil is a young woman who, like her mother, knows her own mind and is filled with the spiritof adventure. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-Westused the opportunityof theirlovingfriendshipto explore firsttheirown and each other'sfamily historiesand then the political and social ramificationsof their lives. 59. Sackville-West, FamilyHistoo, pp. 161-62 (my italics).In thisnovel,Sackville-West has spelled the word "that"in two diffelentways: "eitherwithone 't' or withtwo,in older to differentiatebetween the conjunctionand the demonstrativeadjective and demonstrative or relativepronoun" (p. vii). I have retained this idiosyncracy. 60. Jane Marcus,"Thinking Back throughOur-Mothers,"in Malcus, ed. (n. 1 above), pp. 1-11. 61. See, e.g., V. Woolf,Diarn,1925-1930, 3:107.
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Because of theirfriendship,Sackville-Westwas able to look more closely at her rage over not being able to inheritKnole; at her loneliness as a child growing up in a house that contained 365 rooms but very little warmthand affection;at her continuingdependence upon the whimsof an irrationalmother,whom she nonethelessadored; at her feelingsof being inadequate, even stupid; at the impulsivenessin her that often hurther and thosearound her; at the traditionsthathad deprived her of Knole. For her part, Woolf was able to examine her childhood in a way that she never had before; to look at her ambivalence toward Sir Leslie Stephen, the fatherwhom she both detested and adored; to understand that the motheringthat she required from women in her maturityresulted fromher mother'sand Stella Duckworth'sdeaths; to examine the possibilitythat her sexual reticence had its source in her having been molested by her half-brothersratherthan in some failingor lack of her own; to look anew at her fears that she would not have been a good mother had she and Leonard chosen to have children; to acknowledge her strengthsas a woman.62 According to Quentin Bell, "On 10 March [1935] the Woolfs drove in a snowstormfrom Rodmell to Sissinghurstto see Vita. As theytook theirleave Virginiarealised thattheirpassionate friendshipwas over."63 What put the fire of their love affairout is hard to say. Virginia Woolf often protestedagainst what she perceived as Vita's promiscuity. AfterOrlandohad been published, Woolf wrote: "For Promiscuousyou are, and thats all there is to be said of you. Look in the Index to Orlando-after Pippin and see whatcomes next-Promiscuitypassim."64 What, in fact,comes after "Pippin" in the index to Orlando is "Pope, Alexander." Woolf had given Vita a copy of Pope to carrywith her on one of her trips,so whatactuallydoes come after"Pippin" is a reminder, in code, of an earlier and more affectionatetime in theirrelationship.65 In a letterwrittento Vita in August 1931, VirginiaWoolfwritesof "Potto expiring"-Potto being the name bywhichthe two referredto the sexual experiences they had shared.66 And in 1934 Vita published The Dark Island, dedicated to Gwen St. Aubyn,which is, in part, a historyof their love, so that the centerof Sackville-West'saffectionhad shiftedby then. There was a shiftas well in Sackville-West'spoliticalviews. In the 62. I have reached these conclusions as a resultof reading Vita's unpublished letters in conjunctionwithVirginiaWoolf's published responses,whichprlovidesa verydifferent view of them and theirrelationshipthan reading eitherside of the correspondence on its own. Publishingcollectionsof one correspondent'sletterswithoutresponsesfromtheother promotes a "great person" view of historyand makes it more difficultfor the reader to thinkin termsof interrelationships. 63. Bell, 2:183. 64. V. Woolf,Letters,1923-1928, vol. 3, letterno. 1911. 65. Sackville-Westto V. Woolf [ January 1926?], Berg Collection, folder 4: "I have your littlePope in my pocket." 66. V. Woolf,Letters, 1929-1931, vol. 4, letterno. 2417.
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letterin xvhichshe described"Pottoexpiring,"Woolfwrote,"What about Harold and Mosley? But dont write if it hurts." Harold Nicolson was about to leave the Evening Standardto edit Action,the journal of Sir OswvaldMosley's New Party.The New Partydriftedin manydirections, but it had become, in 1931, fascistin nature. Sackville-Westseems to have regarded her husband's involvementwithMosleyas unfortunate.67 Nonetheless,she and Woolf may already have begun to separate on the matterof pacifism.Although Vita Sackville-Westhad writtenpositively of pacifismin both All PassionlSpentand FamilyHistory,she responded negativelyto those same views when Woolf published ThreeGuineas.68 But they would not completelydisengage from one another until the time of Virginia Woolf's death. Indeed, according to Mitchell A. Leaska, the whole of BetweentheActs can be thought of as one long "the longest suicide note in the Ensuicide note to Vita-in his wvords, glish language."69
While the fireof theirlove flared,the abilitytheygave one another to look inwTardand backward together,to reexamine a past that was difficultforeach of themto deal withalone, was one of the most important aspects of their friendship.The record of that giftis preserved in the score of literaryworks that they wrote while theywere lovers and loving friends. Department ofEnglish HunterCollegeoftheCityUniversity of NezwYork 67. See Nigel Nicolson's introductoryremarksto "1931" in Harold Nicolson,Diaries (andLetters,1930-1939 (New York: Atheneulll, 1966), pp. 65-67, and to the lettersand diary entriesin 1931, ibid., pp. 67-100. 68. Bell, 2:205. 69. See MitchellA. Leaska's edition of Po?ltz Hall, in press.
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