Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  I dined alone with Virginia Woolf last night. Oh dear, how much I love that woman.

  Before their next dinner together, the Nicolsons dropped in unexpectedly to Hogarth House. Virginia analysed Vita’s appeal in her diary, concluding that part of the attraction was her ancestry. She also made reference to her new acquaintance being a ‘pronounced Sapphist’ and deliberated as to whether she herself was to become the next love object; but at this stage, Virginia was only amusedly toying with ideas. Despite her admiration for Vita’s dashing, aristocratic manner and also for her prolific output as a writer, she had reservations about Vita’s intelligence. Virginia, on the other hand, greatly excited Vita:

  Dined with Virginia at Richmond. She is as delicious as ever. How right she is when she says that love makes everyone a bore, but the excitement of life lies in ‘the little moves’ nearer to people.

  Vita was obviously hoping for some ‘little moves’ to be made in her own direction, but, unbeknown to her, Virginia was recording yet more doubts about Vita’s personality in her diary, judging both Nicolsons to be ‘incurably stupid’ after a dinner party at which Nessa, Duncan and Lytton had been scathing of the new guests.

  The two women appear to have met only these three times in 1923, according to their diaries and letters; this is not as odd as it seems, given that towards the end of that year Vita had become embroiled in two new love affairs, one with Geoffrey Scott and the other with Dorothy Wellesley.

  In March 1924, Leonard and Virginia moved to Tavistock Square, near their old haunts in Bloomsbury, taking the Hogarth Press with them. Vita was among the first to visit, but was horrified by the décor, referring to Vanessa and Duncan’s painted panels as being ‘of inconceivable hideousness’. She submitted her new book, Seducers in Equador, for Virginia’s perusal. Virginia was impressed by the book and began to see Vita in a new, more flattering light. Vita set up a meeting for Virginia and Lord Sackville at Knole, and, never averse to an evening of aristocratic splendour, Virginia admitted to having greatly enjoyed the whole experience.

  An admiring letter from Vita, sent on holiday in Italy during July, displayed her growing feelings for Virginia, her infamous ‘wanderlust’, her insecurity, her dislike of Bloomsbury and, significantly, the laying of ‘bait’ for Virginia to take if she chose:

  Will you ever play truant to Bloomsbury and culture, I wonder, and come travelling with me? No, of course you won’t. I told you once I would rather go to Spain with you than anyone, and you looked confused, and I felt I had made a gaffe, – been too personal, in fact, – but still the statement remains a true one, and I shan’t be really satisfied until I have enticed you away.

  In the same letter, Vita, trying to presume intimate knowledge of her new friend, attributed Virginia’s keen interest in human relationships to her needing to acquire ‘copy’, i.e. material for novels or short stories. Whatever truth there may have been in this observation, it stung Virginia enough for her to reply, admitting that she felt much pain and that such pain must, she realized, be the ‘first stage of intimacy’. Although no serious harm appeared to have been done, Virginia remembered this comment of Vita’s for a long time and sought subtle revenge two years later with this less than friendly analysis of Vita’s own character:

  Isn’t there something obscure in you? There’s something that doesn’t vibrate in you: it may be purposely – you don’t let it: but I see it with other people, as well as with me: something reserved, muted – God knows what … it’s in your writing too, by the by. The thing I call central transparency – sometimes fails you there too.

  This clever, but hurtful assessment of Vita’s tendency to distance herself emotionally in her writing, caused Vita to analyse herself with some anguish in a letter to Harold.

  Vita came for her first visit to Monk’s House on 13 September 1924, and stayed overnight. The visit was innocent enough – Leonard was present, they all discussed literature, and Ottoline, and Virginia noted how her beloved Monk’s House suddenly became a ‘ruined barn’ in comparison to Vita’s luminosity and grandeur. The party walked to Charleston, which seemed ‘grey’ and ‘shabby’ in the shadow of Vita’s illuminating presence.

  The final meeting during 1924 between the two women caused Virginia to lapse into uncharacteristic vulgarity; in a letter of 26 December to Jacques Raverat, she proclaimed that Vita’s real claim to uniqueness was neither the fact that she strode over her own land, surrounded by hounds, nor her prolific output as a novelist, but rather her legs, which Virginia described as ‘running like slender pillars up into her trunk’. In this way, the year finished on a note of excited anticipation.

  During the first part of 1925, the two writers met infrequently. Vita was shaking herself free from the clutches of the enamoured Geoffrey Scott and was also writing The Land, which would become her most famous, prize-winning poem. Virginia was starting to write To the Lighthouse, although she was plagued by headaches and minor illnesses. Vita and Virginia gradually grew closer over the summer, inspired by their common interest in literature. They wrote to one another regularly, in letters that flattered and teased, or were wistful and then provocative. Vita wrote with growing respect to her friend as she realized the multifarious nature of Virginia’s daily schedule:

  You seem to combine in yourself at least six whole-time jobs: novelist, journalist, printer, publisher’s reader, friend, relation. Each of these an occupation in itself.

  But it was not until December, after Harold had left for Persia, that Virginia spent a long weekend with Vita at Long Barn. She arrived on the Wednesday and spent the next three days and nights alone with her, before Leonard arrived to collect her on the Saturday. Whilst her guest enjoyed breakfast in bed, Vita wrote to console and reassure Harold:

  Please don’t think that

  a) I shall fall in love with Virginia

  b) Virginia will fall in love with me.

  The physical aspect of Virginia and Vita’s relationship, which began during this visit, was tentative, sporadic and not always successful. Virginia never alluded to it with anyone else, but Vita confided to Harold that although they had slept together, on this and subsequent occasions, their relationship was based mainly on companionship and deep affection. This was a far safer option for Vita, who was terrified of tipping Virginia into a mental breakdown. Virginia, unable to commit the details of their physical union to paper with quite the same frankness, still managed to convey the vibrant image of Vita striding into the grocer’s shop at Sevenoaks in her pearls, confiding to her diary that this difficult year had been finished in ‘great style’, and even attributing her newly passionate relationship with Vita to Leonard, claiming that he had encouraged her to write to Vita in the first place.

  What Leonard made of this claim is not known, but what is clear is that after a few initial misgivings, he saw no great harm in the friendship, rarely questioning it and, in time, realizing Vita’s positive effect on Virginia’s health, vitality and creative output. After Virginia’s death, Vita was one of the first people allowed to visit Leonard, and they continued to treat one another with great affection.

  The correspondence between Vita and Virginia increased in intensity when Vita departed for Persia with Dorothy Wellesley in January 1926. Only one day after her departure, Vita was already ‘reduced to a thing that wants Virginia’ and Virginia’s letters reciprocated the agony of being apart. After four months abroad, Vita returned to England and the two women spent a night alone together at Monk’s House. Vita, as usual, sought to reassure Harold:

  Virginia, not a muddle exactly; she is a busy and sensible woman. But she does love me, and I did sleep with her at Rodmell. That does not constitute a muddle though.

  By October 1926, Vita was seeing more of Dorothy Wellesley than she was of Virginia – a fact that she tried to conceal – but a visit to Tavistock Square in November forced her once more to analyse, with uncanny accuracy, Virginia’s future and their friendship:

  I know Virginia will
die, and it will be too awful (I don’t mean here, over the weekend, but just die young) … oh Hadji, she is such an angel; I really adore her. Not ‘in love’, but just love – devotion.

  The exact form that this ‘devotion’ took, and the role played by each woman, is in a sense less clear than the issue that, until recently, was far more fascinating to the general public: whether or not Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were actually lovers in the true sense of the word. As we have seen, Vita herself admitted to having slept with Virginia, and Nigel Nicolson, Vita’s son, made reference to the ‘physical element’ of their relationship in his Portrait of a Marriage, although he also states that to call this union an ‘affair’ would be a ‘travesty of their relationship’.

  It is abundantly clear that the key elements of the relationship were not sexual ones, but the far more enduring qualities of love, friendship, inspiration and respect; but how far the common assumption of Vita being ‘maternal’ towards Virginia is true has recently become less certain. Vita’s son Nigel offers, in his latest biography of Virginia, an opinion that clashes with those of all Vita’s and Virginia’s biographers to date:

  It was said that Vita was like a mother to Virginia, but I can find no evidence of this. Their relationship, though tentative at first, was always on the level, protective, perhaps, on Vita’s side, but not maternal, nor submissive on Virginia’s. They were mutually solicitous and provocative.

  Nicolson’s claim that there is ‘no evidence’ is puzzling; Virginia herself wrote in her diary that Vita ‘lavished on’ her the ‘maternal protection’ that she needed from the women in her life. Perhaps Nicolson’s opinion was influenced by the sometimes less than maternal attitude that Vita had towards both her sons, or perhaps he, more than most, has reason to suspect Virginia of exaggerating matters in her diary. Nonetheless, he stands alone with this particular theory; for Vita herself described incidences at Tavistock Square where she sat with Virginia at her feet, rumpling her hair in an obviously maternal manner. Virginia wrote to Vita that ‘like a child, I think if you were here, I should be happy’, thereby imbuing Vita with the qualities of a surrogate mother. In his The Interrupted Moment – A View of Virginia Woolf’s Novels (Stanford, 1986), Lucio Ruotolo claims that Virginia’s Orlando was written to reclaim this maternal love of Vita’s, and that Vita ‘enjoyed the role of protectress and found Virginia’s fragile dependence a source of some attraction’.

  Although Nicolson’s comments make it seem unlikely that Virginia received enough maternal affection from Vita to compensate for the losses of Julia and Stella during her childhood, what can certainly be deduced is that Vita went some way towards restoring the confidence that Virginia lost so traumatically at the hands of her half-brothers in the claustrophobic atmosphere of 22 Hyde Park Gate. After years of having a complex about looking in mirrors (stemming from an occasion where the young Virginia had seen, or imagined, the distorted reflection of an animal looking over her shoulder), Virginia purchased an antique mirror on her trip to France with Vita in 1928. The author Helen Dunmore sees the relationship between Vita and Virginia as providing ‘solace, perhaps for the wounds which were inflicted upon Woolf’s sexuality and sense of herself as a sexual being in childhood and youth’.

  Early in 1927, a delighted Virginia accepted the invitation to stay with Vita at Knole. Lord Sackville, together with his mistress Olive Rubens, patiently answered Virginia’s endless questions, as she no doubt gained inspiration for the new novel that was beginning to shape itself in her head as respite from To the Lighthouse, which was published in May of that year. Vita loved Lighthouse and, years later, borrowed the poem Luriana, Lurilee that Virginia had included in the novel, for her own anthology of poetry, Another World Than This (the compilation was also to include a few lines from Virginia’s Orlando).

  By July 1927, however, Vita’s affections became seriously diverted from Virginia as a new attraction arrived in the form of the beautiful poet Mary Campbell. Vita concealed the affair from Virginia, and their correspondence continued to be full of affection and declarations of love; Virginia still believed that her only rival for Vita’s affection was Dorothy Wellesley. Thinking about Dorothy made Virginia insecure, and on 16 September, it provoked her to write Vita an uncharacteristically terse letter, which made no secret of her jealousy:

  I won’t belong to the two of you, or to the one of you, if the two of us belong to the one. In short, if Dotty’s yours, I’m not. A profound truth is involved which I leave you to discover.

  Vita replied casually, but in the very last line of her letter she implored Virginia not to become too distant, adding that she, Vita, depended on her.

  On 5 October, after a time of uncertainty for Virginia, the balance of power in this unpredictable friendship shifted back in her favour. Finally aware of the existence and importance of Mary Campbell to Vita, Virginia recorded, firstly in her diary and then in a letter to Vita, her ideas for Orlando, to be based on Vita’s life and her Knole ancestry. Vita was enchanted and ensnared once more, and Virginia, for the meantime, was assured of her devoted attention:

  My God, Virginia, if ever I was thrilled and terrified it is at the prospect of being projected into the shape of Orlando. What fun for you; what fun for me. You see, any vengeance that you ever want to take will lie ready to your hand.

  Virginia’s letters from thereafter, regained their coquettishness; she appeared to be doing everything possible to ensure that Vita still found her desirable above all other competition. Her letter of 5 December playfully discusses what might happen if she were in Vita’s bed. Vita responded, as intended, with a desperate request for a visit, but even as she received that letter she was composing three passionate sonnets, not for Virginia, but for Mary Campbell. Vita’s duplicitous nature was once more in full swing. In addition, she was writing letters that were economical with the truth to Harold; although she did tell him about Roy Campbell’s dramatic suicide bids, she failed to reveal the reason for them – namely, that Roy had found out about Mary and Vita’s affair.

  By the summer of 1928, as Virginia finished writing Orlando, her relationship with Vita finally began to settle into fond friendship. She still loved Vita, but was aware that Vita’s heart belonged elsewhere. Since breaking with Mary Campbell, Vita’s new love was Hilda Matheson, the Head of Talks at the BBC; ironically, Vita and Harold did a BBC radio interview at around this time, in which they discussed the virtues of marriage(!).

  All Vita’s other distractions were temporarily forgotten when she first opened her copy of Orlando. She was truly humbled on two levels; as a writer, she was impressed by Virginia’s literary achievement, and on a personal level, she was deeply flattered at the comparisons between herself and the dashing Orlando. She wasted no time in thanking Virginia:

  Darling, I don’t know and scarcely even like to write, so overwhelmed am I, how you could have hung so splendid a garment on so poor a peg.

  Orlando, started almost as a joke and intended to provide Virginia with some light relief between her two difficult novels To the Lighthouse and The Waves, achieved fame instead for being an open declaration of her love for Vita. With this novel, Virginia returned Knole to her friend, giving her back the inheritance that she had been denied, and eulogizing Vita’s connection with this lovely and ancient house. Orlando has been described by Nigel Nicolson as Virginia’s ‘most elaborate love letter’, which indeed it is, but others see a more technical reason behind it.

  Lucio Ruotolo claims that Orlando represented an ‘important break in Woolf’s literary development, an escapade, as she put it later, from the more demanding task of formulating new directions from the novel’. Suzanne Raitt sees the novel as being ‘about the loss, and the recovery, of maternal care’. Discussing the diversity of performances by actors who have played Orlando, both in terms of text and also of gender, Brenda R. Silver maintains that the novel’s connection with Vita has ensured that Orlando has always had a following among those who know the real
story behind its ‘encrypted lesbianism’ She also states that the playing-down of this lesbianism in Sally Potter’s 1992 film, was the reason why British filmgoers praised and accepted the film whilst some Americans disappointedly complained that it was not properly a ‘lesbian film’ at all. And Vita’s mother, Lady Sackville, was outraged at the book’s publication, with its revelation of the affair between her daughter and that ‘madwoman’ Virginia Woolf.

  With the writing of Orlando, Virginia exorcized some of her more painful feelings for Vita and eased her draining obsession with keeping her love. She also inspired her friend to work harder on her own historical novel, The Edwardians (published in 1930 by the Hogarth Press), which was again based on Knole and the Sackville family. It is a romantic story, conveying Vita’s love of traditional values coupled with her dislike of Edwardian ones. The book was a bestseller, making money for both author and publisher, but Virginia preferred All Passion Spent, Vita’s next book, which was based on the whimsical reflections of an old woman at the very end of her life. It can be seen as a feminist novel and was likely to have been influenced by Virginia’s A Room of One’s Own, based on two lectures given at Cambridge, one in the company of Vita.

  In 1930, Vita and Harold purchased Sissinghurst Castle in Kent after finding out that it had Sackville family connections. They did not move in until 1932, after much renovation work had been done, but here, with a tower she could use as a writing-room and other cottages and outbuildings to provide enough bedrooms and sitting-rooms for the family, Vita found further consolation for the loss of Knole. Soon after moving in, she wrote a poem, ‘Sissinghurst’, and dedicated it to ‘V.W.’, again enraging Lady Sackville, who was still fuming about the publication of Orlando. ‘Sissinghurst’ reveals a calmer, more reflective side of Vita, as she takes stock of her new surroundings: