A few years ago the book Portrait of a Marriage was recommended to me. I knew nothing about Vita Sackville-West or her family and to be perfectly honest I’ve always found writing from that time period to be inaccessible (I’ve started Mrs. Dalloway at least four times and have read the same 50 pages each time.) But somehow this book was different.

The narrative may be part of what makes it accessible and represents its subject best. Vita Sackville-West is a character full of extremes and contradictions. Her childhood gives us one contradiction. Her grandmother was a Spanish dancer named Pepita while her grandfather was the baron of her childhood home of Knole. Pepita’s ‘gypsy blood’ gave Vita the impetus to cultivate the dark, brooding, and romantic that was a major part of her personality. She visited Romani camps and felt quite at home there. In fact, when trying to convince Virginia Woolf to run away with her, Vita tells her that they’ll go off and join the “Zingas” in Spain. This is juxtaposed to her love of her titled father’s side, most specifically seen in her dedication to both her childhood home of Knole but also of Sissinghurst, the castle she inhabited after she married. The gardens of Sissinghurst are so renowned that you can still visit both the Elizabethan castle but also see the gardens that are still taken care of by the government.

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The other major contradiction Vita displayed, and is most well known for, is her gender identity and sexual orientation. Although in the last decade we have come to talk about these things separately Vita did not. She had the feminine side to her personality which enjoyed sex with men and was happy to stay in a marriage with a husband and children she loved (it’s important to note that her husband was also bisexual and their marriage was an open one), she also had a masculine side to her who was attracted to women and wooed many women, most famously her school friend Violet Keppel and Virginia Wolfe. However, her opinions on this sapphic aspect of herself vastly varied between natural and deviant depending on the day.

“I hope you miss me, though I could scarcely (even in the cause of vanity) wish you to miss me as much as I miss you, for that hurts too much, but what I do hope is that I’ve left some sort of a little blank which won’t be filled till I come back. I bear you a grudge for spoiling me for everybody’s else companionship, it is too bad.”

Vita Sackville-West

It is in discussing her home life that the narrative of Portrait of a Marriage succeeds. Her son writes 3 chapters and focusses on how much his parents loved each other and how, while the marriage was not without its dark times, it by and large was a successful marriage even with the obstacles many open marriages present. Vita writes 2 of the chapters of Portrait of a Marriage which are filled with her passion for her lovers, especially Violet. She acknowledges that her bisexuality is intrinsically who she is but expresses her feelings of disloyal to her husband and devious in her behavior.

Today, as we celebrate Vita Sackville-West’s 127th birthday we take a minute to celebrate a person who lived a life full of notions far beyond the time period she lived in (so much so that Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando about Vita being a being that spanned sexes and time periods)

She speaks to me because she is a multi faceted person who through her letters and writings, we get a sense of what it was like to be a woman of intelligence in that time in history who lived outside of societal norms. I tried to emulate one of my favorite photos of Vita. PS- Can we all just agree that everyone looks better in black and white photos?

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