Portrait of a marriage (original 1973; edition 1973)

I wrote a really nice review, but then Goodreads hiccupped — and it seems to be lost. I don't have the energy to try to recreate it just now. ( )

Continuing my reading about Vita and Violet, I felt it important to read 'Portrait of a Marriage'.To use the official lingo, is both a primary and a secondary source of sorts. The book is split into roughly for chapters, plus an introduction. Two of the chapters are by Vita, and each is followed by a chapter by Nigel Nicolson, her son and literary executor.

After his mothers death n 1962, Nigel found a locked bag among her things. Inside the bag was a notebook of her writing. After a few pages of abortive poems, he found pages and pages of writing. The first page, dated 1920 began 'Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life...but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living so who knows the complete truth...' The 80 pages that followed were her attempt to write down her love affair with Violet Trefusis, and, in working her way through everything she'd been through and felt, to come to terms with the fact that it was ending.

The rest of the book then, is Nigel's attempt to place that affair in the context of his parent's marriage, to show how they weathered it, to add his own insights and explain Vita and Harold's unconventional and amazing marriage, supplimented with letters and diary entries from Harold, Vita and Violet.

The result is so dense that it's almost hard to think of it all at once, except to say that the combined effect of is it all is extraordinary.

It's such a feeling book. Everyone feels so much. Violet and Vita's love, Harold and Vita's love, even Nigel's love for his parents not just as parents, but as people. That's really what came through it for me. All the different kinds of love people have for each other, the ways they can make each other miserable and the ways they can comfort each other, the ways they can set each other aflame, and the ways they can be a safe harbor, just how strong, how destructive and how healing love can be. How it can destroy lives or enrich them.

Vita knew that one day a love like what she had with Violet, and her own nature which was drawn to 'love' Harold, and be 'in love' with women, would be accepted and seen as normal, and I'm glad she was (for the most part) right.

I was also so struck by Vita and Harold's marriage, how they remained each other's anchor, each other's 'true north', as Harold said, regardless of any love affairs Vita had with women or Harold had with men. They loved each other and accepted who each other was, and it's really incredible to me. ( )

Continuing my reading about Vita and Violet, I felt it important to read 'Portrait of a Marriage'.To use the official lingo, is both a primary and a secondary source of sorts. The book is split into roughly for chapters, plus an introduction. Two of the chapters are by Vita, and each is followed by a chapter by Nigel Nicolson, her son and literary executor.

After his mothers death n 1962, Nigel found a locked bag among her things. Inside the bag was a notebook of her writing. After a few pages of abortive poems, he found pages and pages of writing. The first page, dated 1920 began 'Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life...but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living so who knows the complete truth...' The 80 pages that followed were her attempt to write down her love affair with Violet Trefusis, and, in working her way through everything she'd been through and felt, to come to terms with the fact that it was ending.

The rest of the book then, is Nigel's attempt to place that affair in the context of his parent's marriage, to show how they weathered it, to add his own insights and explain Vita and Harold's unconventional and amazing marriage, supplimented with letters and diary entries from Harold, Vita and Violet.

The result is so dense that it's almost hard to think of it all at once, except to say that the combined effect of is it all is extraordinary.

It's such a feeling book. Everyone feels so much. Violet and Vita's love, Harold and Vita's love, even Nigel's love for his parents not just as parents, but as people. That's really what came through it for me. All the different kinds of love people have for each other, the ways they can make each other miserable and the ways they can comfort each other, the ways they can set each other aflame, and the ways they can be a safe harbor, just how strong, how destructive and how healing love can be. How it can destroy lives or enrich them.

Vita knew that one day a love like what she had with Violet, and her own nature which was drawn to 'love' Harold, and be 'in love' with women, would be accepted and seen as normal, and I'm glad she was (for the most part) right.

I was also so struck by Vita and Harold's marriage, how they remained each other's anchor, each other's 'true north', as Harold said, regardless of any love affairs Vita had with women or Harold had with men. They loved each other and accepted who each other was, and it's really incredible to me. ( )

Written by their son Nigel, he tells the story of Harold Nicolson's 49 yr marriage to Vita Sackville-West, a union based on trust, shared interests, deepening love, frankness and reciprocal infidelity. It's chronicles Vita's love affair with Violet Trefusis, the crisis which nearly broke their marriage.

Contains BW photographs. ( )

I remember seeing the BBC dramatisation, with the wonderful Janet McTeer as Vita Sackville-West, and Cathryn Harrison utterly irresistible as Violet Trefusis. A large chunk of the book consists of Vita's own autiobiographical account, unpublished and unknown until after her death. It was the most unconventional of marriages, with both partners taking same-sex lovers, yet I think what is already apparent to me is the bond between Vita and her husband. Though unconventional, I think ultimately it was a successful marriage.

'Like both her parents [Vita] was a snob, in the sense that she attached exaggerated importance to birth and wealth, and believed that while the aristocracy had much in common with working people, particularly those who worked on the land, the middle class (or 'bedints' in Sackville language) were to be pitied and shunned...'

"...I am a snob enough to love long dinner-tables covered with splendid fruit and orchids and gold plate, and people whose names I can find in the Daily Mail sitting all around. I get on with them so much better than with little dancing things in ballrooms. Except souls. I do like souls. They are amusing and easy and not heavy to talk to." (V S-W)

'Souls' is Sackville-speak for 'anyone with the slightest interest in the arts or general ideas' (Nigel Nicolson) but he qualifies Vita's remark above: "Her real friends were souls, but souls who had some breeding and a gun, who could make a fourth at bridge and knew the difference between claret and burgundy..."

On the subject of marriage, I rather like Violet Trefusis' rather testy summation :- "Marriage is an institution that ought to be confined to temperamental old maids, weary prostitutes, and royalty."

"Marriage [thought Vita and Harold] was only tolerable for people of strong character and independent minds if it were regarded as a lifetime association between intimate friends." (Nigel Nicolson)

'As Harold wrote to [Vita], "When you fall into Violet's hands, you become like a jellyfish addicted to cocaine."' (Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage)

Nevertheless, the Nicolsons' marriage survived Violet, survived the lovers who came after her (though none of Vita's subsequent relationships was as explosive and potentially damaging as the one with Violet). In spite of the comment quoted above, Harold was remarkably non-judgemental of Violet, even sympathetic towards her. I suspect the marriage would not have lasted - despite the obvious close bond between Vita and Harold - if the couple had been less balanced, if either party had been prone to jealousy, if Vita's affairs had been with men and Harold's with women. As it was, they complemented each other perfectly - she had her books, her writing, he had the Foreign Office. Later, they both had the gardens at Sissinghurst. Vita comes across as a rather remote mother, but the tone of this book (written by her younger son) is uniformly respectful and admiring, though the greater part of his affection is reserved for his more demonstrative father.

Life without Vita, Harold says, 'would be despair like one can't imagine - a sort of winter night (Sunday) at Aberdeen, and me in the streets alone with only a temperance hotel to sleep in.'

Most books about famous marriages tend to concentrate on the imbalances, the problems, the doom - what I like about this book is that it presents a flawed but balanced relationship - each partner sensitive to the needs of the other (though Vita never really grasped the importance to Harold of his career). I also like the fact that the tone of the book is revealing without being salacious, and Nigel Nicolson clearly *likes* all the people involved; when they behave badly he is neither too indulgent nor too harsh.
[June 2004]