Vita Sackville-West

Vita was born on 9 March, 1892 in Kent, England. 

* Pisces Capricorn Cancer-Leo Aries Sag*
 

 

Vita Sackville-West was a British poet, a novelist, and world-renowned horticulturist.
She was the descendent of an aristocratic family whose Gothic manor house, Knole, in Kent, England was a gift from Elizabeth I.

 She was a complex woman who
was married to  
 Sir Harold Nicholson (21 November 1886)  

and she was also famous for her passionate affair with the novelist Virginia Woolf, among other high profile lesbian affairs.

Together she and Nicholson worked on the creation of one of Britain's most beautiful gardens; Sissinghurst Castle.

Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships, 

as did some of the people in the Bloomsbury Group 
of writers and artists, 

with many of whom they had connections.

  

One of Vita's lovers was Violet Trefusis

 

These affairs were no impediment to the closeness between Sackville-West and Nicolson

 and he gave up his diplomatic career partly so 
that he could live with 

 Sackville-West in England, uninterrupted by 
long solitary postings abroad.

 Following the pattern of his father's career, 
 

Harold was at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, 

Member of Parliament, and author of biographies and novels.

 The couple lived for a number of years in Cihangir, Constantinople, and were present, 

in 1926, at the coronation of Rezā Shāh, in Tehran, then Persia.

 They returned to England in 1914.

Vita in her wedding dress

The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature",

 as a result of this affair.

Her most famous woman lover was Virginia Woolf

Unusually, the moment of the conception of Orlando was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on 5 October 1927: "And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other" (excerpt from her diary published posthumously by her husband Leonard Woolf).

 Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: 

"She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West and Nicolson found Sissinghurst in 1930. 

Although Sissinghurst was derelict, they purchased the ruins and the farm around it and began constructing the garden 
we know today.

The layout by Nicolson and planting by Sackville-West 

were both strongly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll. 

 Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.

Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust,

 given by Sackville-West's son Nigel in order to escape payment

 of inheritance taxes.  

Its gardens are famous and remain the most visited in all of England.

 The garden is designed as a series of 'rooms', 

each with a different character of colour and/or theme, 
the walls being high

 clipped hedges and many pink brick walls^.

The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room,

 one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, 

making a walk a series of discoveries

 that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. 

   Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, 

while Sackville-West focused on making
 the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

The site of Sissinghurst is ancient, "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood 

and Sissinghurst had once been owned by Vita's ancestors.

A manor house with a three-armed moat was 
built there in the Middle Ages. 

In 1305, King Edward I spent a night there and in 1573, 
Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst. 

Vita's tower at Sissinghurst

A very delightful and enchanting recording was made of
 Vita Sackville-West's

reading from her first poem called The Land, 
written in 1926. 

 

*oh do please listen*

  

 

"We are all things, the flower and the tree;
We are the distant landscape and the near.
We are the drought, we are the dew distilled;
The saturated land, the land athirst;
We are the day, the night, the light, the dark;
The waterdrop, the stream; the meadow and the lark." V.S.W

An excerpt from V.S.W's novel 'The Edwardians':

Then...there is another danger which you can scarcely hope to escape. It is the weight of the past. Not only will you esteem material objects because they are old.... you will venerate ideas and institutions because they have remained for a long time in force;... You inherit your code ready made. That waxwork figure labelled Gentleman will be forever mopping and mowing at you. Thus you would never forget your manners, but you would break a heart, and think yourself a rather fine fellow for doing it... You will never tell lies - avoidable lies - but you will always be afraid of the truth. You will never wonder why you pursue it because it is a thing to do. And the past is to blame for all this; inheritance, tradition, upbringing; your nurse, your father, your tutor, your public school, Chevron, 

your ancestors.' Vita Sackville-West The Edwardians  

She died at Sissinghurst, Kent on 2 June, 1962. 

-astro.com/astrodatabank & wiki