Vita Sackville-West

by Vita Sackville-West

  I dreamt I could write poetry. I dreamt that I wrote and wrote till I nearly died. I was so unhappy when I woke up that I cried (not dream-tears, real tears). If only I could remember the poetry I wrote during this dream I daresay it would be real poetry, but it has all gone.

  This dream was not accompanied by any landscape, it was just a dream in the void.

  It was one of the happiest dreams while it lasted but quite the most miserable on waking.

  February 4, 1944

  This is not a dream but a waking experience. There was an air raid at 5 A.M., I was alone in the South Cottage, the siren woke me. I was not frightened at first, then I became so frightened I could not control my limbs from trembling. The droning procession of planes began overhead, they went on and on, I thought there must be hundreds passing over. I lay in bed waiting for the crash. I heard the London guns start. I thought it was silly to stay where I should be most frightened so I went downstairs. This was the first time I had ever given in to the wish to go downstairs. I sat on the Coronation chair because the walls seem most solid there and I could have the light on in without showing, and also there was no glass. I had Martha with me. I had forgotten to bring a book with me and dared not go upstairs again to fetch one. The planes were continually overhead and the doors rattled in the gunfire and I think some bombs. I had nothing to do except think and I tried to think how I could think myself into not being frightened. I thought, “That is one of our fighters, there are young men in it who are so excited that they are actually enjoying this, they hope they will meet a German plane and shoot it down,” but none of this seemed to console me. I did not feel excited in the least or enjoying it, and could not persuade myself to feel so. So I thought I would try thinking about something else and I thought about God. I tried to think phrases like “I am in God’s keeping,” but that didn’t work because I didn’t know how God intended his keeping to work out. So then I tried to see God—staring at a knot in the wood of the door—and of course I saw nothing at all—but in about two minutes in the midst of my staring a complete peace came to me—my limbs ceased from trembling and an indifference to my fate took the place of terror. This is all quite true and so striking that I must record it.

  March 17, 1944

  I was in a cowshed. There were lots of cows, and wash swilling about on the concrete floor. I got shoved about by the huge forms of cows. I tried to single out my own cow, but evidently got hold of the wrong one by mistake. This wrong cow was intractable so I gave her a leather glove to chew to keep her in a good temper. Another cow then pushed me aside, and in a rage I hit her on the nose. She then looked at me with an expression of (unbearable) reproach; sat down on her haunches; and exposed her udder which was bleeding with dark blood. I then realised that she was showing me, as a sign of identification, a small misformed spleen—and that she made me understand that I had often had trouble in milking this spleen.

  The dominant impression left by this dream was that the other cow was trying to take advantage over my own cow—and the bleeding udder of my own cow was unendurably pathetic.

  God in the void

  This is the most extraordinary dream I ever had, and through it all I was aware that I must make a poem of it. It was a dream in outer space. God was so angry with the entire universe that he decided to annihilate everything down to the smallest particle of the lightest atom. So then there was nothing left—no matter, no force, no energy, nothing—nothing but the mind of God left alone in something emptier than our conception of the emptiest space.

  I was worried by not knowing whether God would start creating afresh.

  I don’t remember the date of this dream, but it was after the atom bomb—some time after—a year or so.

  I dreamt another landscape—very northern—sort of rolling downs with grey-green turf stretching away indefinitely. There was a lot of water about—pools—and a sense of the sea somewhere—and a milestone which said ONE DIRECTION: 500 kilometers. All very melancholy, but somehow I was happy there.

  January 16, 1950

  I dreamt I was travelling along a road and I fell in with a crowd of gypsies They seemed to be all one family—there was the grandmother, and the middle-aged people, and lots of small children. The point about them all was their extreme cleanliness and their incredible beauty, and their happiness. They were not only beautiful, all of them, but their physical stature was on heroic proportions: the young men were superb, like Michelangelos, and they seemed to be about seven-feet tall. The grandmother had pure white hair, brushed back from her temples—the children were like Italian peasant children (Roman ciociari, perhaps) and they swarmed round me, tumbling about like puppies—and they were all clean and gay—no squalor. There seemed to be no young women—only the old woman & the young men & the children—and a medium-aged couple—of whom I saw only the man clearly, immensely tall and magnificently proportioned, in a sort of tight jerkin with a polo collar—the woman with him was dim. I couldn’t see her—but knew vaguely that she was there. They asked me to come with them and I went—we went into a sort of wooden inn and they cooked in a big pot over the fire—and I was so happy.

  October 20, 1950

  I dreamt I was at the Moulin des Rats with Anna. We shared a bedroom, a very plain respectable little room, with two beds on opposite sides, and she kept me awake by making loud speeches addressed to the prime minister. This annoyed me so much that I got up & wandered down the passage and went through a door which admitted me to a completely different part of the house. Here the rooms were large and lofty, luxuriously furnished with sofas and large pieces of furniture and filled with great urns full of beautiful flowers; great rosy lilies in particular, set on pianos, blazing lights. These rooms were full of people, men and women: the men were the spiv type, the women were immensely tall, some of them, about seven-feet high and very slender and marvellously dressed; I noted one or two specially—one wore a flowery frock with a sort of bolero jacket and a tiny hat perched right on top of her head—and another one had a dress of black stiff taffeta, with the skirt slit open in front right up to the waist and nothing underneath it; this shocked me dreadfully and what shocked me most was that when she moved one saw her white thighs with brown suspenders down them, holding up her long stockings.

  I met a housemaid and asked where was the lavatory and was shown into a huge room, all marble I think, also full of great pink lilies in white urns. I looked round and saw a woman watching me from a corner. This made me furious, and I said, “Who are you? What is your name? Are you a lady?” She laughed and said “I knew what you were going to do, so I watched, so I am not a lady.” But she was nice, I felt, and I thought she was the only benevolent person in that awful house. She was quietly dressed in black, rather chic, and it worried me that her frock was smeared with powder.

  We went out together into the sumptuous rooms, where we were immediately surrounded by all the other women and their spivs. There were more women than men. The women all had immensely long nails, like Chinese mandarins’ nails; I don’t think they were coloured, but they were sharp and claw-like. I felt surrounded and jostled by them all. Such a crowd. The only one who kept close to me and I felt protected me was the woman in black with that messy powder all over her frock.

  Then Anna appeared; I can’t see what she wore, but I know her arms were bare, and one of the spiv men came forward and threw his arms round her. I knew she ought not to be there, and I tried to get her away from him; I struggled with him and then I saw he had got an open clasp-knife in his hand and was trying to slash the upper part of her arm. I knew that if I couldn’t get her away, a long thin cut of blood would appear down the whiteness of her arm.

  I did get her away, and the next thing I knew was that we were all sitting at a sort of concert party in rows on chairs.

  Then I woke up, but as I woke up, I heard Anna saying “Darling! Where are your pearls?”

  General

  I dream quite often about Knole. I dream about the deer gallo
ping down the stable passage, their hooves rattling on the wood boards. This is a dream mixed with the vision of tangled legs of deer and arms of fighting men—rather like a Paolo Uccello. I like this dream. I like any dream that takes me back to Knole. I wish I dreamt oftener about Knole. I don’t often, now. I think about Knole all the time, every day, but I don’t often dream about it now. I wish I did. It used to be a sort of substitute for not going there. It makes me dreadfully unhappy sometimes, never going to Knole. Perhaps I will go there again one day, but it will never be the same—never, never the same—never, never, never.

  Christmas 1950

  Uncle Charlie sent me a master key to the garden gates. I had asked him for it. It was nice of him to let me have it, and he wrote a nice letter saying he hoped I would use it (which I never would) but he just spoilt the whole thing by adding “I have had the word Knole erased.”

  I suppose he thinks I might lose my key again.

  It was not my fault that I lost it. The green leather box in which I kept it disappeared after the sale of Long Barn—but I have still got the key.

  I shall get Copper to put back the word Knole on my key.

  February 14, 1951

  V. to H.

  I dreamt I was condemned to be beheaded, & said to you “I am afraid you will mind.” “Oh, don’t worry about me,” you replied, “I shan’t mind, I’ve got George the Fifth.” Not a very kind remark, I thought.

  September 8, 1951

  It is a long time since I have put down any dreams. I think it may be rather boring, meaning nothing except to oneself. I did however have a dream out of which I think I might make a poem—a real deep poem of experience.

  Anyhow I don’t want to put that down now—I wanted only to record a recurrent dream I have:

  It is a recurrent dream about a party where I am very popular. Very much in demand. Everybody likes me—and clusters round me, and makes a fuss of me. I can very easily interpret this dream: it goes right back to when I came out and nobody liked me—and I suppose I minded.

  This dream was very vivid. It took place at Sissinghurst. I went down towards the moat, and found a sort of arch like a bridge through which I went, and there I found a sort of community of young people making pots. Young potters in fact. They were all very gay and they were dressed in brightly coloured clothes, and they all seemed to accept me as one of themselves which pleased me. I forget what happened then—except that I woke up wishing I could find that arch and still feeling surprised that I had never noticed it or found my way through it—or up a sort of paved way towards the place where the young potters were working.

  A dream I had in France (October 1955)

  I dreamt I saw a mouse, obviously ill, so in order to give it a quick death I picked it up and threw it into a puddle of water. Somebody said “Don’t you see the water is not deep enough, it won’t drown, it will just go on swimming about.” So I picked it out again, and as I did so it bit my finger. Somebody said “That mouse has got a disease and you will get it.” I was terribly distressed by this, because I said “Harold wants me, Harold needs me, and if I get a disease I can’t look after him.”

  September 23, 1957

  It is a long time since I have written anything about my dreams.

  Last night I dreamt about Long Barn. This was a very deep-sleep dream. I went to Long Barn with Bunny. I had let Long Barn and so didn’t think I ought to wander about—but I did. There were lots of young people staying there, about 15 of them, all in slacks and polo-jumpers, all very gay and coloured and charming. I met my tenants; they were called Kramer. They had put a new staircase into Long Barn, and had furnished it lavishly with tapestries—they have made it all look very nice. I approved. I knew I could still find my way about, and said to Bunny, “Come this way—I know my way about my own house,” but I got a bit confused owing to the new staircase, and the long room having turned into something like the hall at Penshurst or the old kitchen at Knole.

  This was a happy dream. I wasn’t cross or resentful about Long Barn.

  1959

  This was a truly horrible dream I had on the Cambodge [ship they took to the Far East in January 1959]. I dreamt B.M. was dead, and her body lay on one bed and her head on a pillow of another bed. I was looking at her body (covered by sheets, all decent) when I suddenly realised that Rollo had got her head off the other bed’s pillow, onto the floor, and was gnawing the raw red stump of the neck.

  Her face was still beautiful—just like her face in life. It horrified me to see Rollo chewing at the raw stump.

  VITA’S BOOK OF A THOUSAND PITIES

  My dear

  This is my book of a thousand Pities.

  You will not want to write in the book, but you must be gracious, and you will.

  What do you think is a pity?

  You may think several things are a pity.

  If you cannot remember for the moment, what you think a pity, then play a game like this, and you are sure to find a suggestion.

  Art

  Architecture

  Bores

  Beauty

  Bolsheviks

  Committees

  Clothes

  Civilization

  Dullness

  Death

  Dust

  England

  France

  Food

  Fascism

  Gold

  Girls

  Health

  Hell

  India

  Journalism

  Kindness

  Literature

  Letters

  Life

  Meals

  Mussolini

  The Nation

  Prisoners

  Politics

  Psychoanalysis

  Places

  Religion

  Relations

  Rest

  Socialists

  Society

  Tea

  Voices

  Vandals

  Work

  Youth

  and so on!

  PART III

  LETTERS (1920–1927)

  Most of the family letters included here come from the years 1920–1927 and present a glimpse of life in Vita’s family in that emotionally turbulent period. So Vita’s letters exchanged with Harold, a few selected from a flood of affectionate and detailed communications—and a very few from their children to them—as delightful as they are amusing—provide an authentic sense of family warmth, completely unforced. Nothing gives a stronger feeling of place, person, and relations than this kind of correspondence.

  The letters to Virginia Woolf are from the same period, during which Vita’s affair with Virginia was in full flower.

  Vita was, in my view, a wonderful letter writer, assuming entirely different tones for each correspondent. The correspondence featured here shows how, to Harold, her letters are continually affectionate, witty, and detailed, and how, to Virginia Woolf, they are both loving and literary. Vita could present herself as warm and cold, in other circumstances. I have included only letters of the first kind.

  FAMILY LETTERS: FROM THEIR SONS

  These letters from Vita’s and Harold’s sons give an intimate look at the family and proof of the warmth of their household. While their sons’ personalities were as different from one another as the letters indicate, their affection for their parents was equally clear. The original spellings have been retained.

  Commenting to Harold on their contrasting letters to her, Vita compares their two sons: “Isn’t it funny how much more opti [optimistic] Nigel is than Ben? So characteristic!” In her opinion, Nigel was the sunny, cheerful one, sharing Harold’s character, and Ben, the discontented one, gloomier, more like herself. “If Nigel stays as he is, he will be happy and everybody will love him, but there is a distinct Dostoeffsky [sic] touch about Ben!” And, writing to Harold on December 26, 1926, about Nigel, she calls him “a born comic.… He is infinitely serviable, unselfish, and affectionate. Also sturdy, practical, resourceful,
independent, humorous. I see no flaw in him, as a character; everybody loves him.… My darling, we are very, very lucky in those two boys. They will, respectively, satisfy all that we could wish for: Ben our highbrowness, Niggs our human needs.”1

  September 12, 1922

  Dear Mummy—

  I eat a pin yesterday which I think is a very stuped think to do. I was sucking it and it suddenly it fell out of my hand and into my throat.

  Melle [their French governess, also called Goggie or Gogy] was very upset is’ent she kind she does like it when we do things like that.

  Mummy you ned not worry, for I had not pain at all.

  Melle has look after me very well, and if it had not been for her I dont know what I would do.

  Melle has stoped up all night for me.

  She put Nigel in her bedroom and now we are waiting for me to sit down and Melle put’s it through muslin.

  Nigel send his love to you

  Your loving Ben

  September 15–16, 1922

  Dear Mummy—

  Nigel can read very well, I let him read the rainbow which is very difecoled for him. I knoly had to tell him a few words and afterwards I gave him a panny for reading so well ans when Miss Evans came I asked her if she would put him on to another more diffeculed book.

  Now days I call Melle gogy for annie name, do you think that it is a good name. Thank you very much for the Post you sent me I show it to Miss Evans as you said and she said that it was the same kind of history as the History book that she is going to bring down, because we have finished the History book that we have been reading all the turm and last turm.

  Joan went back yesterday she did not want to go because she liked school, she loves the handcerchefs that you gave her I notest that she had one of them in her pocket, when she came to do lessons yesterday.

  Daddy gave me two french books last year that Melle found in the big cupboaerd in Nigel’s bed room and I have picted up a lot of French wored’s out of it. Tell Swend that if shen evere he is naughty he will have to come back here in your bag, he wont like that I am shure.