Pepita

by Vita Sackville-West

  fn1 This change of name and style puzzled the Americans, and some of the superscriptions to his envelopes at this time are remarkable. One of them runs: ‘To His Excellency and Imperial Highness, the Baron and Earl of West, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of Her Majesty the Empress of Great Britain and Ireland, the Cape of Good Hope, Canada, Australia, and also the Indies, at his residence 1300 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D.C.’

  fn2 Flora had married a M. Gabriel Salanson, a French banker.

  2

  Knole

  I

  Judging by the entry in her diary, my mother’s first visit to Knole made a most unexpected impression on her. Unlike most people, she does not appear to have been overwhelmed by its beauty or its magnificence, but by its orderliness. ‘L’ordre qui règne partout dans la maison et les jardins est remarquable.’ She noticed its size and thought the house so enormous that one might easily lose oneself. She observed also that there were a great many pictures and tapestries. She also thought the housekeeper, Mrs Knox, looked very pleasant and obliging. Yet it was a summer day (July 3rd), and I should have thought the sheer loveliness of the grey Elizabethan pile rising above the brilliant turf would have struck her more forcibly than the fact that it was all so well kept or that the housekeeper was disposed to be agreeable.

  After that one day spent there, she was quite content to return to London, where she was staying at Derby House. The truth is that she was enjoying herself in London as much as on the Riviera. The London season was at its height, and although she never set much store by Society, she did appreciate such fine sights as a Court ball and garden parties at Marlborough House. London was especially en fête that summer for the marriage of Lord Fife to Princess Louise of Wales and in celebration of the visit of the Shah of Persia. She met the Shah at Marlborough House, but did not think much of him, ‘Le Shah est très laid et a l’air grognon; il portrait une énorme émeraude sur le tummy.’ Her description of Queen Victoria, too, was candid rather than loyal, ‘The Queen looks very common and red-faced.’ For the Princess of Wales she had nothing but praise—so gracious, so beautiful, so wise to wear unfashionable dresses, which are so much more becoming than the outrageous modes of the moment. London held plenty of amusement for Lady Derby’s attractive young ward on whom the Prince smiled with such a friendly eye, and whose romantic birth cast an extra glamour round her already romantic personality. She was a great success and was fully but quite simply aware of it. Even Aunt Bessie Bedford relented and consented to meet her. Other relations, such as Lady de la Warr and Lady Galloway, accepted her cordially as one of the family. She was taken to the Naval Review; made the acquaintance of such brilliant young men as Mr George Curzon and Lord Dufferin; of witty women like Lady Dorothy Neville; of beauties like the Duchess of Leinster and the Duchess of Rutland, whose children she thought the most exquisite she had ever seen.

  KNOLE

  All this sounds as though she were a snob, but that would not be a fair interpretation. Putting it more simply, in the ’eighties such things as Birth and Position mattered. The Proustian attitude towards the aesthetic and almost historical value of high life and elegance was the commonplace of well-bred thought; genealogies and family connexions, tables of precedence and a familiarity with country seats formed almost part of a moral code. ‘My child, remember who you are,’ was a phrase to be heard frequently proceeding from the lips of governess or chaperone. It is a little difficult to adjust our ideas, nowadays, to such a shape of life and not to misjudge the exaggerated importance which attached to the doings of the beau monde. No wonder that a young woman of twenty-seven was slightly dazzled at finding herself not only a spectator but an actual participant. And Knole in all its glory was waiting for her.

  By the end of the Season their rooms there had been got ready for them. A little shy, perhaps, and a little apprehensive, she prepared to take up the reins of government. Although she had had plenty of experience in running the Legation at Washington, she now felt as though she were taking up such duties for the first time; at the Legation, she had merely arrived into an already organised and official household, but to Knole she came as a new mistress, with everything to arrange for herself. She mistrusted her own capabilities on several counts: ‘Laziness and indolence are my great faults. I simply can’t get up early in the morning, and it costs me a great effort to look after all the details of the housekeeping as I do. But it is my duty!’ The note of apprehension, however, very quickly changes to one of amusement; she evidently thought it exceedingly funny to find herself at the head of such affairs. ‘I keep house!’ she exclaims in English in her diary; and evidently she thought both the fact and the phrase a very good joke, for she repeats it several times at intervals. No phonetics could possibly reproduce the accent in which she frequently uttered those words which seem to have become her favourite expression: ‘Ai kip ha-oose’ perhaps approximates most nearly. She was like a child with a doll’s house, and what a doll’s house! The cook and the obliging Mrs Knox both came to her room for orders every morning, and in the afternoons she could rummage in the cupboards, discovering every kind of treasure, from Sèvres china to old lace. The family jewels were also brought for her inspection by the family solicitor, and she tried them all on. ‘Naturellement j’ai tout essayé ce soir. Cela fait plaisir à Papa.’ I think it was probably not only Papa who was pleased. She thought the diamond necklace a little skimpy (un peu maigre), but the tiara satisfied her, for although the stones were small the setting reminded her of a tiara worn by the Empress of Russia. No wonder, with all these toys of authority and possessions, that she should write, ‘Oui, décidément j’aime Knole,’ and then a little later, ‘Quel roman est ma vie!’ Yes, her life was a romance indeed. Her father let her do whatever she liked: ‘Papa est si bon, il ne dit jamais rien.’ Papa never did say anything; he had his own occupations, which included reading right through Gibbon every other year and whittling paper-knives from the lids of cigar-boxes. He liked the garden, where two Demoiselle cranes and a French partridge with pink legs followed him sedately about, but for the rest he was quite content to leave everything to Victoria as he had always left everything to Pepita. Victoria began to see more and more clearly that she could never leave Papa. What would he do without her? What would Knole do without her? What would she do without Knole? The chances of the young French marquis, who had pursued her to England, began to diminish daily. She was very sorry for him; very sorry indeed; she had not finally made up her mind to refuse him, but que deviendrait mon pauvre Papa sans moi? She made herself genuinely unhappy over the unfortunate Frenchman, for her feminine vanity was gratified and in such cases she could display a tender heart. ‘Le pauvre L.C., il fait pitié à voir.’ She was really in two minds about it, but she still stitched at her crewel-work curtain. It was precisely at that time of indecision that she made the acquaintance of her first cousin, Lionel Sackville-West. Pepita’s story was repeating itself.

  II

  He was younger than she by nearly five years, being then only twenty-two, a good-looking young man, with trustful hazel eyes, and a charmingly gentle smile. A quiet and faithful person, easily hurt by an unkind word, modest and reserved, generous and idealistic; ‘il est si doux, si bon’ she writes of him. He came to stay at Knole, and they played at draughts together in the library after dinner, when he watched the movement of her lovely hands over the board. She dazzled him by her gaiety, her vivacity; her foreign accent enchanted him, and her little trick of supplementing her English by French words; yet he felt her to be serious too, and honest; in fact she was an angel upon earth. Before he knew where he was, he had fallen madly, wildly in love.

  For some time he tried to keep it to himself. Once she met him in a passage at Knole, and he stopped her, but she prevented him from saying what she knew he wanted to say. Then one moonlit evening they went up to the state-rooms together, and in the King’s Bedroom, leaning together against the window looking out over the garden, in the shadows of that historic
room with its brocades and tapestries and silver furniture, his self-control broke down.

  The family, which had already suffered a slight shock over the first production of the Spanish children but which on the whole had settled down comfortably to the situation, now had to adjust itself to the disturbing idea that one of the Spanish children had captured the young heir to Knole. Not only did the close relationship distress them, but their English caution shrank from foreign blood of so incalculable a quality. It was asking a great deal of these conventional English ladies and gentlemen that they should welcome such an alliance with anything but apprehension. Who could foresee what strange alien traits might appear in the unmentionable Pepita’s daughter? It was already evident that she was a young woman of determined and forceful character; even her charm, which they could not but recognise, might prove to be but the mask of fascination over hidden dangers; they liked her, yes, they liked her, no one could help being charmed while in her company, but could they trust? And Lionel was so young, so inexperienced! Victoria, on the other hand, was five years older and had had six years of experience in Washington. She would do exactly as she pleased with him; he was not her match, poor boy, in any way.

  Could they but have glanced into the diary the Spanish enchantress was keeping every day, written for no eyes but her own, their very natural anxieties might have been considerably allayed. They would therein have discovered a soul far less sophisticated than the sinister background and the six years of experience in Washington had led them to suspect. They would have discovered, for one thing, that she frequently prayed to God for guidance, and for another that she was deeply distressed by the conflict which had now arisen in her own heart over her cousin and the persistent young French marquis, the ‘pauvre L.C.’ of the diary. They would have discovered also that she was determined to play straight by both these young men: ‘I had a long talk with Lionel after dinner. I was very frank and very loyal. Toujours loyal! That is one of the family mottoes…. Went to the kitchen garden with Lionel and ate green plums…. Went to the chapel where Lionel so much wants our marriage to take place. He tries to be reasonable, and I try to be kind to him (bonne pour lui), in spite of remaining very loyal…. L. C. refuses to give me up. Here am I between Lionel and L. C.; each one knows about the other, for I have been very loyal towards both of them.’ That is not the language of a deceiver or a schemer. Lionel, for his part, was trying to behave honourably, as his letters attest. He writes that L. C. (whom they had nicknamed ‘Abroad’) was first in the field, so perhaps he has no right to take her away from him. All he wants is her happiness. So he writes, but he is away in Germany learning German because he is going in for a Foreign Office examination, and is quite obviously beside himself with love and anxiety. She, I think, still preferred ‘Abroad’, but other considerations were beginning to creep in. Lionel, after all, was the heir to Knole. ‘… I wonder whether I shall ever marry Lionel?—How much people admire Knole! I should be very lacking in ambition were I to renounce it, but one’s personal happiness should come before ambition.’ This was all very well, but Lionel repeatedly called it Vicky’s house—‘It shall always be Vicky’s house’, and that was more than poor ‘Abroad’ could offer her. ‘I do not think I could ever accustom myself to a poor existence, now,’ she writes, and another day she asks herself with candid snobbishness whether she will become a French marquise or an English peeress. She was not indifferent to admiration, far from it, and records her triumphs with complacent pleasure. Thus she liked it when the servants came to see her in her finery, dressed up for a dinner-party, and when she goes to dinner with some neighbours she accepts their subservience as her due, ‘Ils étaient tous bowing and scraping devant moi. J’étais jolie ce soir, je crois.’ The admiration of the servants and the neighbours was intoxicating her by degrees. More and more did she incline to think that her future lay at Knole as its mistress and hostess. Lionel was absolutely her slave; nothing in the world existed for him except her; his infatuation was complete. Patiently and obediently he composed his love-letters in somewhat schoolboyish French, only to have them returned to him with corrections by his lovely tyrant. Finally, one December night, after they had gone again to look at the moonlight flooding the King’s Bedroom, she accepted him.

  ‘Abroad’, on receipt of this news, arrived in England, rushed down to Knole, wept, stormed, threatened suicide, and was eventually sent back to Paris in a state of collapse. She professed deep pity for him, which was genuinely felt, but which I think was not wholly unmixed with a fresh gratification at this proof of his devotion. She also received a despairing letter from the American who, in Washington, had offered her £50,000 a year as pocket-money. But her mind was made up, and a great peace descended on her now that the uncertainty was over. She allowed herself to discover more and more qualities in her Lionel: he was so gentle, so thoughtful, so ardent; she missed him dreadfully whenever he was obliged to go away. It was not long before she was writing that she could scarcely believe in such happiness.

  There were difficulties, of course. The family as a whole had been accommodating, but the Church naturally proved less sympathetic. Lionel was sent to interview Cardinal Manning in person, who told him flatly that their idea of daughters being brought up as Catholics and sons as Protestants was ‘not more right than picking pockets’, and that she would certainly be excommunicated and cut off from her Church for the rest of her life. It was the same difficulty as had arisen over the Frenchman, but this time her determination rendered her almost indifferent. Very well, she replied; she had done her best by offering to bring up her daughters in her own creed; but as the Church would withhold its benediction on that condition she must go forward without it, and nothing should ever persuade her that she had done wrong.

  Whether the threat of excommunication was ever carried out I do not know. My mother often told me that it was; but I think that perhaps she was dramatising the situation. In any case, they were married in the chapel at Knole on June 17th, 1890, according to the rites of the English Church. The chapel was small and the accommodation limited, but the family turned up nobly to support the wedding of Pepita’s daughter. Aunt Bessie Bedford absented herself indeed, but she did send a cheque as a wedding-present, and was handsomely represented by her sons Lord Tavistock and Lord Herbrand Russell. M. de Béon was also among the privileged guests. Lord and Lady Derby lent a house for the first part of the honeymoon. Triumphal arches spanned the streets of Sevenoaks; the Chinese Minister from Washington sent a cloak of Tibetan goat; a bonfire was piled round the foot of a tall fir-tree, and burnt for two hours before the tree fell. How Pepita and Catalina would have revelled in it all! How it differed from Pepita’s own marriage!

  Thus my mother and father set out on the first stage of their married life, and my mother’s future seemed assured.

  3

  Seery

  I

  It seemed not only assured, but rosy. She had youth, beauty, wealth; Knole to rule over; an unobtrusive father; an adoring husband with whom she was now passionately in love; a child whom she alternately scolded and hugged, very much as Pepita herself had done. Her sister Flora was safely married; Amalia made her home at Knole; the boys Max and Henry were, apparently, contentedly farming in South Africa on the lands which their father had given them. The sky, so far as the eye could see, was clear. There were amusing interludes: they went to Egypt once, and sailed up the Nile in a dahabiah, and on another occasion they went as members of the British Delegation to the coronation of the Czar and Czarina in Moscow, where, owing to the magnificence of her jewels, my mother, to her great enjoyment, was frequently mistaken for one of the Grand Duchesses by the crowd. Then on yet another occasion, nearer home this time, my mother, who was interested in works of art, met an exceedingly charming and exceedingly stout gentleman named Sir John Murray Scott. The significance of this meeting and of the effect it was to have upon her life was naturally hidden from her at the time. All she knew was that this Sir John Scott invi
ted her to accompany him after luncheon to inspect the treasures at Hertford House. What she did not know until years afterwards, was that when he went home that evening he added a codicil to his will by which he left her the sum of £50,000.

  MY MOTHER AND I

  The foundations of the friendship thus laid by chance were strengthened when Sir John paid a return visit to Knole. He and my mother sat out in the garden together, talking with an intimacy that surprised them both, and under the spell of her southern warmth and sympathy his admiration rapidly changed to affection and his affection to dependence and love. I do not mean that Sir John was ‘in love’ with my mother. I do not believe that he ever was, and during the many years when I was constantly in their company I had ample opportunity for observing them. She most certainly became, however, the centre and pivot of his life. Devoted and generous as he was to his many brothers and sisters, the sun in his heaven (and its thunderstorms also) were represented by my mother and by her alone. However often he might swear that he would have nothing more to do with her,—that he couldn’t stand her temper, her fuss, and her exactions,—the simple truth remained that he couldn’t live without her, and we all knew that a day or two after the angriest letter or the stormiest departure he would come abjectly back. It was impossible not to be fond of him, for of all human beings he was the most kindly, the most genial, the most lovable, and the most grand seigneur. His generosity and hospitality were unbounded, and proceeded from no love of ostentation,—for he was essentially simple,—but from the inherent warmth and open-handedness of his nature. A certain magnificence attended him even as he stumped down the street, blissfully unaware that everyone turned round to look at him: one might say that it was an almost Johnsonian progress, save that in contrast to the great Doctor he was always as fresh and pink as a baby, with his white mutton-chop whiskers, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. An enormous man, six-feet-four in his stockings, he weighed over twenty-five stone, and for all my efforts as a child I never could get a five-foot measuring tape to meet round the place where his waist ought to have been. There was something monumental about him, which made everyone of normal size look mere friskers around him. Perpetually flapping a large silk handkerchief to keep away the flies, he rolled and billowed along on disproportionately tiny feet. If we ever mislaid him in an unfamiliar town, we could be pretty sure of finding him gazing wistfully at the cakes in the windows of a pastrycook, with a crowd of little boys lost in admiration of that colossal back.