Word: vitae
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After all, the revelation that Vita Sackville-West was a bisexual was not expected to be among the greater literary events of 1973. But gossip of this sort is only a trap Nicolson set to make sure of an audience--the real purpose of the book is to propose a change in our expectations of marriage. Nicolson, after an anguished divorce, recommends a form of marriage consisting of mutual respect and affection but not sexual exclusivity. Sexual attraction and even compatibility become unnecessary for a "successful" marriage. The proof he offers is the life of his own parents--a bizarre...
...Vita Sackville-West, the darkly handsome child of a great Kentish family, a minor poet and novelist (The Edwardians). He was Harold Nicolson, cherubic British diplomat, Member of Parliament, brilliant belletrist and historian (Making Peace, Some People). They were married in 1913 and stayed married for nearly half a century, inhabiting a succession of manors and gardens and picturesque ruins. Their union resulted in two gifted children and was for years regarded as the kind of enviable domestic alliance that survives long separation and divergent interests...
...soon after his mother's death, their son Nigel Nicolson, by then a London publisher and M.P., unlocked a Gladstone bag hidden in Vita's tower writing room. In it he found her 1920-21 memoir of an intense three-year affair with Violet Keppel, an iconoclastic redheaded girl whose mother had been the mistress of King Edward VII. The occasionally purple memoir, written when Vita was 28. makes up about a third of this book. Along with it Nigel Nicolson offers biographical annotations and an elaborate tribute to his parents' "perfect marriage...
Gladstone bag and all, the book has become a delicious and gossipy literary event in England. But what should be said is that the memoir has an honesty and self-awareness quite unmatched by Vita's other writings. It is more touching, moreover, in its swift portrait of Vita's childhood world than in its moments of passion: "Mother did not cry; she always tries not to cry because it gives her headaches." Vita remembers herself as a cruel, lonely tomboy roaming around Knple, one of the last great private estates in England. Her only affectionate companionship came from...
...affair with Violet, which began after five happy years of marriage, arose through "an absurd circumstance." World War I had given Vita a chance to run around in breeches. Harold was away, Violet appeared in red velvet. "I hadn't dreamt of such an art of love," Vita recollects. Soon the two women were running off to France together?over and over. In the circumstance, Harold carried British sang-froid and tolerance to laughable extremes. From Versailles, where he was busy working on the treaty, he used to cable money with an "Enjoy yourself." He made quips about "wild oats...