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Phillysound2's Profile
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Reviews Written by
Phillysound2 "a common reader" (London)
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GREY WETHERS: A ROMANTIC NOVEL, November 11, 2007
`Grey Wethers' (1923), was written directly after 'The Dragon in Shallow Waters' (I had wondered whether these two novels with Vita's 'Challenge' would form a Vita and Violet Trefusis inspired trilogy - now I think they do). Its centre is a story about love and prejudice. Both Michael Stevens and Victoria Glendinning see Vita's dual nature in the hero Lovel and the heroine Clare. Lovel is a masculine, virile, free, gypsy type with two dogs at his heel. His mother is known as a witch and his brother, Olver, is perceived as simple and close to being the village idiot and yet he speaks truth throughout the story. Lovel is 28 years old and attractive - dark, tall and lean and wears a bright red shirt thoughout the story. He and the village believe his blood is tainted - his mother and brother are proof of that -and although he would like children he believes he can't pass his bad blood on to further generations. He is clearly the soul-mate of 19 year old gentry woman, Clare. Friends since childhood they are happiest in each others company in the freedom and wilderness of the Wiltshire Downs - their spiritual home. But he rejects her once he hears village gossip about their close friendship. He will marry someone else for duty not for love.
Clare is drawn with no definitive edges in relation to Lovel. They are equals despite their very different backgrounds. Class and prejudice mean nothing to them as friends; they never profess love (they don't have to) even when they run away together at the end of the story. Clare may well be Vita's pacific other half early on in the book in relation to Lovel but I couldn't identify the likeness (the likeness is clearer in Lovel). However, she is more spirited in the company of 50 year old Mr Calladine who is besotted with her. Calladine is a soft, indecisive bookish man of Clare's own class - " He could not stand up to the winds of the Downs". Both Stevens and Glendinning say Calladine is a likeness of Vita's husband, Harold Nicolson. He has already loved and lost, " I loved a woman once. She was wholly a woman, yet every great quality of woman she lacked; I mean to say, that in every mood of capriciousness and grace she was as wholly and divinely a woman as any woman who ever enchanted a man and coloured the loveliness of his days, but under the test of graver issues her fluidity turned to falseness and she slipped between my fingers". Later he tears up a picture of someone like Violet Trefusis in front of Clare. This language is similar to that about Violet/Eve in Vita's `Challenge'. Vita, Harold and even Denys Trefusis (Violet's husband) might be mixed into the character of Calladine.
Clare is amused by Calladine at best but after Lovel abandons her friendship leaving her confused and hurt she turns almost immediately to him. "There is one thing you can do......Marry me, she said and added candidly, I know you want to". This is Violet's voice. Clare traps herself in a marriage to a man she doesn't love. Calladine treats her as a possession. He will later admit she was a like a linnet in a cage always looking towards the freedom of the Downs. In the meantime, Lovel is also trapped in a passion free marriage, tricked by a local girl into believing he must do right by her because she is pregnant by his simple brother (or is she?). But Lovel's and Clare's eyes meet at a visiting circus performance......"Merely to see her sent the heat and ecstasy of life back into his veins." This is Vita's language about Violet. Lovel rescues Clare from a fire that catches the tent. This gives them precious time back on the Downs for Lovel to explain himself to Clare and bare his 'torn heart'. The story then goes straight into Emily Bronte's `Wuthering Heights'. Clare and Lovel become Cathy and Heathcliffe (Calladine is Linton). But Vita gives them a slightly happier ending. They run away together and disappear into the snowy Downs. We see them once more. Their souls seem to be joined. Described now as 'transient creatures of eternal flight' they withdraw never to be seen again.
I really enjoyed this book. Apart from the main story there are wonderful descriptions of the Wiltshire Downs (that Lovel and Clare are an almost organic part of) and of old English village life; a depiction of a visiting circus and the caged and pathetic tamed wild bears and lions and the fire that sets the animals and Clare and Lovel temporarily free; magical mirrors, and, the gossip down at the local pub. It is, as Michael Stevens implies, a little like a fairy tale. I was surprised by the obvious borrowing from 'Wuthering Heights' towards the end of the book and wondered if Emily Bronte's novel was not as well known in the early 1920s as it is now. But I secretly thought myself that Vita and Violet, underneath their upper class exteriors, were something like Heathcliffe and Cathy and I can assume now that Vita thought so too. At the time Vita wrote this book her affair with Violet was over but its impact was still part of the fuel for her writing.
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TWELVE DAYS: A FANTASTIC JOURNEY, October 21, 2007
`The love of Persia filled my heart again, at the sight of her high solitudes in the purity of the April day. I rejoiced, as always, in this empty unfurnished landscape, where the imagination had room to move about, without stumbling over a multitude of objects, beautiful perhaps, but ready-made.'
This book (published in 1928) describes a 12 day trip taken in March/April 1927 by Vita Sackville-West, her husband, Harold Nicolson (who was posted to the British Embassy, Teheran as a senior diplomat) and 3 friends with 3 servants, 3 guards, cars and mules. I can't begrudge them the support; this was a tough journey and the British government wouldn't have allowed the trip to have been taken any other way. Vita aimed to harvest 1,000 bulbs of iris recticulata to take back home to Long Barn (it isn't made clear whether she had to make any payment). The group travel the Bakhtiari Road over Bakhtiari country which means a hike up into snowy mountains, down into ravines, across `jade-green rivers' to meet the migrating Bakhtiari people as they travel with their families and their herds to more hospitable grazing grounds. The group weathers a thunderstorm and mud and end up back in the sun with the smokey plumes of the Anglo Persian Oil Company (now British Petroleum - BP) ahead and then home. This is a fantastic journey.
Vita writes with wonder and deep affection for Iran but also details the reality of camping, living off boiled eggs, the cache of wine smashed by accident (I felt the disappointment!), the aching limbs from walking hard for miles and the tiresome formal receptions by Iranian nobility along the way. The book is full of the romance and the harsh lives of the Iranian people. We meet princes, dervishes, and the poverty stricken. We see their brilliantly coloured clothes, curly dark hair and almond eyes - Vita knows she is looking through romantic eyes. But there is no medication available for poor people (Vita's group offer what they have), there is a child with a broken bleeding head, there are women about to give birth in the wilderness, there are pools of anonymous blood along the road. Vita loves this country (and its classical history) but knows something must be done. She wants to see Persia self-sufficient and healthy but closed off from the world with only the elite allowed an education. From what she says, I think she would have liked to have lost herself in Persia high up in the mountains all by herself glad in the knowledge that there would be no deep intrusion from western society. Of course the intrusion was already there and Vita and Harold were a temporary part of that intrusion. In time Reza Shah would modernize his country, build its infrastructure and educate the people.
I enjoyed reading this book - which is fairly rare but sometimes available on Amazon especially in its softback 1987 reprint. It is well worth reading as a historical travel narrative and as another insight into Vita. At this time she was writing to Virginia Woolf (in the UK), who she sorely missed, yet it is clear that once in the Iranian wilderness she was content and full of the happiness and wonder of her adventure. By the end of 1927, back in England, Vita was writing Twelve Days, had embarked upon an affair with Mary Campbell nee Garman, Virginia was writing `Orlando' and Harold was posted to Berlin. It was a heady, exciting year.
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A CURIOUS DARK TALE OF CRUELTY AND THE FRAGILE LIGHT OF LOVE, October 16, 2007
Vita Sackville-West wrote this novel directly after 'Challenge' which is sweetness and light against the darkness of 'The Dragon in Shallow Waters'. The backdrop of 'Dragon' is a dark satanic soap factory. The main characters are blind Silas Dene (a murderer), his deaf and dumb brother Gregory ('magnificent men, tall, muscular and dark'), Gregory's wife Nan and Nan's eventual lover Linnet Morgan. (Lady) Christine Malleson, who is married to the owner of the factory, is the tormenting temporary aquaintance of Silas. Silas murders his wife and is never convicted; he is cruel to animals and although he has the potential for compassion, he is ultimately irredeemable and goes on to kill again.
Vita researched this book with her lover Violet Trefusis by her side but the book was written while the affair and Vita's marriage to Harold Nicolson were in serious crisis. I don't know how the book was originally conceptualised but the end result is full of unhappiness, brutality and cruelty.
This book is hard to get to grips with or enjoy. Silas and Gregory can be seen as sketches of Vita's own 'dual nature' as she saw it. Up to a point, Nan and Christine are sketches of sides of Violet's personality. The book leaves the innocent and likeable Nan and Linnet free to love each other against a backdrop of violence and murder. The story line has potential. Silas was probably meant to be a tragic figure and I suspect the book was meant to be a gothic love story amongst the factory working class (an interesting challenge for aristocratic Vita). But the book lacks coherency, is under-developed and ultimately unsatisfying - and hard to review.
Vita was a disciplined writer (and I've enjoyed other books by her) but the writing of this book was broken by Vita's intermittent concentration during 1920/21 on her memoire or confession about her affair with Violet; this was published in 'Portrait of a Marriage' much later in 1973. In 2007 (at least for me), Dragon can best be read as an interesting allegory for the real emotional chaos and unhappiness of Vita's life during 1920/early 1921. 'The Dragon in Shallow Waters' was published in the UK in 1921.
My copy of this book had one missing page and one page partially obliterated by the hand that photocopied the original book page! However, without the availability of this re-print I would have had to pay a lot more to access this rare book.
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Harold Nicolson
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by Norman Rose
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: $17.95 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
HAROLD NICOLSON : A FULL LIFE, October 4, 2007
When I got to then end of this biography, I thought to myself `What a great life!'. Harold was the son of Sir Arthur Nicolson who ended his own distinguished career in the diplomatic service as the UK's Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs and entered the peerage on his retirement. Harold would never stick to one career and never match his father. He left Baliol, Oxford University with a 3rd Class degree; this outcome was reflected in Harold's professional life. He had entry to every career he ever wanted but would never wholly commit himself or succeed to the highest level as his father did. But what careers he had. He was a gifted diplomatist and played an important supportive role at the Conference at Versailles producing one superb memorandum after another on the carve up of Europe after WW1. Many of his recommendations were accepted and it was only the streak of arrogance that ran through him that, ultimately, made it difficult for him to get beyond the grade of Counsellor.
He resigned from diplomacy to become a journalist, MP, broadcaster and amazingly prolific author (including his classic book `Diplomacy' which, I know, is still read by young keen diplomatists), and, of course, creator with his wife Vita Sackville-West, of Sissinghurt's gardens (incidentally Sissinghurst was owned 100% by Vita). His political career was rather lacklustre; he joined Oswald Mosley's ill fated New Party basically because he could and it would give him the best chance of entering Parliament. He did become an MP but he wasn't tough enough or competitive or even interested enough for a career in politics. His biography gives us an excellent inside view of Versailles; Harold remembered the conference as chaotic and disappointing but readers are reminded that his wife was conducting her most dangerous affair at this time* and Harold was dealing with that too. It also gives great insights into the British political scene leading up to WW2 and though to the 1950s.
Harold's downside is his strong sense of elitism and his vociferous, even for the times, racism. I found him obnoxious at times and degraded by the revelations. He was capable of strong dislikes and radical leftist Phillip Toynbee, a close friend of his son Ben, appears to have been his bête noire. But primarily, amongst his friends and peers, Harold was a gentle, compassionate, well liked man who loved his life. I like the way he took advantage of the silver spoon life gave him and lived his life to the full. I am amazed by his productivity. At the end of his life he had no regrets about his career and specifically said he was glad he had left his diplomatic life behind. His only regret was that his beloved wife, Vita, was no longer with him; her death broke his own will to live.
I first got to know about Harold Nicolson through his son Nigel's `Portrait of a Marriage' which brought into the public domain the open nature of his parents' marriage and the homosexuality of both. One of the main benefits of the openness and the separateness of their lives (Harold was in London on week-days) must have been that it allowed both Harold and Vita to lead incredibly productive professional lives. Their extra-marital affairs appear to have been secondary (apart from Vita's early affair with Violet Trefusis*). Harold's eldest son, Ben, wrote to Phillip Toynbee as late as September 1968 (Harold died in May), `What is ironical is that neither of them will live in history except as creators of Sissinghurst and for the Diaries [Harold's - they have never been out of print].' That, frankly, could have been good enough but when Nigel published his book in 1973 he made his parents world famous. This biography is recommended but beware that a lot of it reads like a political history book.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
PORTRAIT OF AN OPEN MARRIAGE AND ONE AFFAIR, October 3, 2007
The centre of the book and its raison d'etre is Vita Sackville-West's own extraordinary memoire about her life so far including her catalytic 3 year affair with Violet Trefusis. The affair came very close to wrecking her life with her husband, Harold Nicolson, who she loved deeply but no longer felt sexual passion for. Harold threatened to leave Vita and it was only under such pressure - on both sides of the affair - that it was ended. The memoire, written in 1920-21, and discovered by Nigel in 1962 begged a narrative and an afterword; Nigel provided this and presented an eloquent, classic book which has never been out of print since it was published in 1973.
Whether this marriage is to be admired as much as Vita, Harold and Nigel felt it should be admired is for the reader to judge. What makes it most extraordinary is the homosexuality of Vita and Harold and the fact that their once discreet open marriage is now in the public domain. They would each be getting on for 120 years old today but they still seem so fresh that readers, whatever their sexual preferences are, might learn lessons (positive and negative) from them even today.
Towards the end of her life in 1961, Vita wrote (in a letter to Harold not included in 'Portrait') that she had been 'madly in love' with Violet but the affair was now 'passion completely spent'; she wrote 'the true love that has survived is mine for you, and yours for me.' She also gently rebuked Harold for not explaining his own homosexuality in the first place. 'It would have saved us a lot of trouble and misunderstanding. But I simply didn't know.' Harold's reply, if there was one, is not published.
The intimacy of Vita and Harold's relationship is contained in their voluminous correspondence. Harold's diary, Violet's letters and Vita's mother's diary are also key sources for this book. All these were at Sissinghurst in the early 1970's. Nigel separates Vita's memoire into two chapters, draws from the other sources and adds his own voice and, to a lesser extent, that of his brother Benedict. Vita's relationship with Virginia Woolf is affectionately documented. The book created the legend of Vita and Harold who led compartmentalised lives, had multiple relationships, multiple careers and remained devoted to one another. It is a well written and well crafted tribute.
`Portrait' is, as it would be, slanted in favour of Vita and Harold. This book could not be the whole truth or a detailed portrait of the marriage but it is a portrait of two fascinating and productive people. Because of the scandal it caused, Nigel was excoriated by some for publishing this book and in essays written afterwards he would defend his decision and fill in some of the gaps. But the gaps are justified in this labour of love because it is written from such a personal stand-point. This is a wonderful read and is well recommended.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
FAMILY HISTORY: NO DETOUR AHEAD, September 28, 2007
The core of this novel is a love affair between Miles, a 25 year old socially conscious aristocrat, and Evelyn, a 39 year old fashionable upper middle class widow; the business based family she has married into has just joined the aristocracy by way of a peerage. These are shifting times. While the pair are passionately in love they both have powerful domineering personalities and are essentially different. They clash and merge and make each other happy and unhappy. Evelyn is jealous and demanding but controls her nature as far as she can; she is always aware of the unconventional age gap and is less confident in Miles's world. Miles has many compartmentalised interests including his love for Evelyn, his estate (a replica of Sissinghurst), politics, his interesting friends and he will publish a well received book on economics. He is set to become a successful, popular politician. He is a Renaissance man, and Vita's favourite Elizabethan type (as she saw herself). As they drive for the first time to Miles's estate they pass a terrible accident and as they turn down the lane to the estate the `Private Road: No Thoroughfare' sign brings on more portents for Evelyn and the reader. Yes, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
"She unlike him, had nothing to do with her time except to wring pleasure out of it. Moreover, she was violently and painfully in love, never having really been in love before. When she had married Tommy Jarrold she had believed herself to be in love, because it was the orthodox thing to do when one became engaged; but she now discovered the difference." She has a lovely son, based on Ben, Vita's first born son.
Miles "....was only 25. Love was a new discovery for him. He treated it as an enormous new region of life for him to explore, rushing into it with tremendous excitement. Yet he could keep it quite separate from other things; which annoyed Evelyn."
"Love and the woman were insufficient for an active mind. Love and the man, however, were all-too-sufficient for a starved heart and unoccupied mind. Miles learnt it, to his cost; Evelyn never learnt it, to hers."
Because of Evelyn's sense of convention, age and her lack of confidence she requires unequivocal total love ('one never gets enough love') and cannot say yes to Miles's seemingly casual marriage proposals. Miles values his independence. The inevitable break happens; they have a cruel row. Can Evelyn rebuild her life without the man she adores? The poignant unexpected ending brought a tear in my eye.
The novel includes a sketch of the 'middle class' Jarrold family. They still hold onto Victorian and Edwardian conventions while Miles moves in more intellectual, less confined circles (including Viola, Sebastian and Leonard Anquetil from `The Edwardians'). Evelyn's son, heir to the Jarrold fortune, is influenced by Miles and even more progressive. The generational layers of social change are well captured.
I enjoyed reading `Family History' because of its glimpses of 1930s high society and the early days at Sissinghurst, and, its utilisation of biographical elements including the harmful nature of the passionate love Vita encouraged in her affairs. Important elements of the novel are drawn from the Vita and Violet experience as well as from her current passionate affair with Evelyn Irons -by now Vita had established a pattern. Victoria Glendinning's introduction calls the book a period piece. It was published in 1932 and the social background is of its time (and interesting for that) but the dynamics of the love story are easy to understand today. Recommended.
NB Given the age of her books, readers should be prepared for the rare politically incorrect clanger.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
VIOLET TREFUSIS : A KEY REFERENCE, September 28, 2007
This is the first biography of Violet Trefusis published in 1976 four years after Violet's death and 3 years after Nigel Nicolson's 'Portrait of a Marriage' was published (Violet's friends had been shocked by this book). It is written, with respect and affection by people who knew Violet in her late years (John Phillips is her literary executor) and had only recently learned in any detail of her early affair with Vita Sackville-West more than 50 years before.
At 143 pages it is a rapid read but, additionally, it includes a good selection of Violet's letters to Vita Sackville-West and later letters from Vita and Harold Nicolson to Violet. It includes quotes from Violet's 'Don't Look Around' and also from her unpublished memoire 'Triple Violette'.
We get a good sense of the old version of Violet as a larger than life, witty, flirtatious, fun loving woman who entertained luxuriously and knew all of high society. She appears to have built a psychological superstructure as the sensitive young Violet was not visible to the authors (she had not shared painful memories and she rose coloured the truth) therefore they find it difficult to construct an in-depth biography and rely heavily on the few contemporary published sources of information. More of their own very entertaining remembrances would have been welcome. "She played the Faubourg Saint-Germain dowager to perfection, but always with a wink to her intimates." She would say with that wink of hers, "You must remember, I'm a very conventional old lady".
Nevertheless, this book includes the first sight of a collection of Violet's letters in full thus allowing Violet to speak for herself. The book was important for that reason. It is difficult to marry young Violet to her old enigmatic self. She therefore remains intriguing.
The name dropping gets a bit tiresome (because I don't recognize many of the aristocrats) but then that was her later life - full of aristocrats, established writers, composers and the rest of high society. An effortless, frivolous version of the bohemian desires of her youth.
This is a good read because of the insights of the authors who knew and appreciated Violet in her later years; the book remains important for this reason and because it contains the most comprehensive overview of the correspondence. The inclusion of 13 of Vita Sackville-West's letters from 1940 to 1950 (not gathered together anywhere else I believe) is particularly valuable because, from a cooling distance, the letters testify to the passion of the past and help make up for the destruction of Vita's early love letters. Here's the best quoted excerpt from Vita's letter of 3 September, 1950 when Vita and Violet were in their late 50s:
"This is a sort of love letter I suppose. Odd that I should be writing you a love letter after all these years - when we have written so many to each other. Parceque c'etait lui, parceque c'etait moi. [Because it was him, because it was me - Michel De Montaigne].
Oh, you sent me a book about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Thank you, darling generous Lushka and you gave me a coal-black briquet. It lights up into the flame of love which always burns in my heart whenever I think of you. You said it would last for three months, but our love has lasted for forty years or more.
Your Mitya"
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Challenge
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by V. Sackville-West
Edition: Paperback |
| Availability: Out of Print--Limited Availability |
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
CHALLENGE - A LOVE STORY, September 5, 2007
This novel is introduced by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son. 'It is a love story, written in the presence of the beloved, inspired by her, corrected by her with words and whole sentences written into the manuscript. Eve is a portrait of Violet (Trefusis) as exact as Vita could make it, having her model always at her side...There is no triviality nor squalor in the love of Eve and Julian, as there was none in the love of Vita and Violet. A fierce flame rose between them, as likely to consume both of them as other people who got in the way.'
The story is not particularly arresting - it's about a Byronesque hero trying to save some Greek islands - but if you read it as a contemporary record of the love affair between Vita and Violet it comes to life (especially in the Eve and Aphros chapters). Quotes from this book have become assimilated into the biographical language about Violet and Vita. My favourite quote is this from Violet as Eve (it's absolutely what she felt):
'I loathe my life of petty adventures; I undertake them only in order to forget the ideal which until now has been denied me. I have crushed down the vision of life with you, but always it has remained at the back of my mind, so wide, so open, a life so free and so full of music and beauty, Julian. I would work - for you. I would create - for you. I don't want to marry you, Julian. I value my freedom above all things. Bondage is not for you or me. But I'll come with you anywhere - to Aphros if you like.'
The quote is usually published without the reference to the Aphros islands and without the post script which runs thus;
'Privately she thought, -
If you knew how little I cared for the islands !'
Vita and Violet thought this was a great novel because it was about them, it would put into the public domain their love for each other and they would run away together, write more best-sellers and be independent and free of the conditional trust funds that were controlled by their mothers. The original title was 'Rebellion' and it would have been published around 1920. In the end Vita was persuaded not to publish as the threat of public scandal and the women's families 'crushed down' the love affair. The book was only published in the UK in 1974. If you read it like it was 1920 and as if you had the heard the rumours of the time about Vita and Violet, you might enjoy it as much as I did, well, particularly the parts which focus on Eve and Julian together.
The book was published in the USA in 1924 (so Vita didn't give up). The dedication written for the now estranged Violet is in a secret Romany style language that Vita and Violet shared. Translated it reads : 'This book is yours, my witch. Read it and you will find your tormented soul, changed and free'. The dedication really belongs to both of them; they would never be so free again. For all this unembarrassed romanticism and real star-crossed love that happened nearly 90 years ago, the book gets 4 stars from me.
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From dusk to dawn ;
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by Violet (Keppel) Trefusis
Edition: Hardcover |
| Availability: Out of Print--Limited Availability |
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FROM DUSK TO DAWN - A FARCE ABOUT THE ENGLISH, September 4, 2007
Violet Trefusis's last novel, 'From Dusk to Dawn' was published 22 years after her previous novel `Pirates at Play'. It was written to divert her from her painful illness during her last couple of years. She was waiting for the proofs when she finally died in March 1972 (she was born in 1894). It is a farce about the eccentric aristocratic English Dusk family, most of whom live on the Castle Doom estate. The money is running out and heirlooms start to be sold off. How can Lord Dusk save the day? There are travels to Capri and Switzerland and we meet with other eccentrics like the aptly named Gerald and Daphne de Looney. It's not Violet's best book but it is much better than I expected from an old lady who was very ill; she was physically poorly but her mind was just as strong and quick as ever. I would give this book 3.5 stars so I'm rounding it up to 4.
The story is hectic, lighthearted, playful even ribald in places. Few, if any, of the main players are in `normal' monagomous married relationships. - they live as they want to. There is a story within the story about Felix Kiljoy ,an ex-intelligence officer, who is a charming womaniser (based on Frank Ashton-Gwatkin) and Vivian Rashleigh who writes `satirical and saucy' novels (based on Violet) - for me this is the best part of the book because we get more repartee and Violet spends more time on the characters and the dialogue which must be based on fact and which she writes elegantly. Having read her books in chronological order I notice some mild repetition - for instance I think this is the third book in which she decribes a man in a positive way as feminine but not effeminate. Perhaps she kept a note book full of her favourite epigrams and turns of phrase.
I discovered Violet Trefusis only recently by watching the BBC TV production of Nigel Nicolson's 'Portrait of a Marriage'. Intrigued, I thought I'd read a biography and a novel for curiosity's sake. I've ended up having a lot of fun this summer reading all the novels I could get hold of. I've found her wit and joie de vivre surprisingly at odds with some of the important biographical material which tends to ghettoise her in the notorious 1918-21 period - her ultimately disappointing affair with Vita Sackville-West.
The book-flap includes Violet's selected background: her mother, Alice Keppel, the 7th Earl of Albermarle, Jean Cocteau and Marie-Laure-Noailles and her French and Italian medals - a snob to the last! She dedicated the book to her long standing friend (Violet called him her 'second husband') Frank Ashton-Gwatkin and he provides a loving and interesting introduction including one of her poems. At the end he quotes a 'discerning friend'. It has always been difficult for mercurial Violet to be described without a string of nouns and adjectives. Her dimensions have never been truly captured by any biographer and perhaps now they never will be. The unnamed friend's contribution (translated from french):
'By birth a woman of the world, by taste a writer, by deliberate intention an actress, by instinct an artist, by nature an epigrammatist, she added to the allegro brillante of her talents the friendship of the elect of her generation.
Loyal and exacting,
Generous and possessive,
Passionate and violent,
Fantastic and capricious -
Violette.'
She remains intriguing...
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A ROMANTIC COMEDY : STYLE, WIT, GENTLE MALICE AND LOVE, September 2, 2007
Violet Trefusis was most recently in fashion from 1973 to the 1990s due to the `outing' by Nigel Nicolson of her 1918-1920 affair with his mother Vita Sackville-West in his `Portrait of a Marriage' (1973). She is now out of fashion and Violet's novels are out of print again. Luckily, I was able to track most of them down on Amazon. This particular novel is the best that can be found in English (she often wrote in French). It includes an excellent introduction by Lorna Sage and an afterword by Violet's literary executor John Phillips.
Violet writes deftly and sharply with a pen which probably had a diamond nib. Her comic, ironic, gently malicious eye sets out the English aristocratic protagonists as people who, though charming, are emotionally retarded by the decorum of mores and conventions that can turn the propensity for love into the safe passion of the collector. It is a comedy of errors about the perception of the importance of love. Only Caroline, married too young to the undemonstrative Sir Anthony Crome and the mother of a daughter, has thought about the importance of love and analysed her position; she longs to break through convention and even out of her class to achieve happiness through love (even though this is a woman who feels she has to keep her `brainy' pursuits secret and not flaunt her sportswoman skills she doesn't focus on these areas of suppression). But she has fallen in love with Nigel who is much older and less confident than she is and tied to the past including memories of his mother and a broken love affair. Although he is very much in love with Caroline, he is also a friend to Anthony. At the end of the book Caroline does her reckless best to incite Nigel to take reckless action.
I read this book to find out more about Violet. Sure enough Violet is written into Caroline and Nigel (and there are shades of Vita and Vita's husband Harold Nicolson elsewhere). She promotes her philosophy of love which was not the norm for her time and her class where a suitable marriage could be based on companionship and passion could be contained in acceptably discreet affairs (as demonstrated by and demanded of Violet by Violet's own mother, Alice Keppel). Divorce was possible but could be scandalous.
"I want to make sacrifices for you, Nigel. I want to throw everything away for your sake.........I wish we had to work, work hard. I wish I could have a child by you. You think that the lover has the romantic part. You're wrong: a lover, the sort of lover you'd be if I let you is a convention. But what is not a convention is a husband who is a lover. You would be that kind of husband. Oh, can't you see that it's your duty towards yourself, towards me, to run away with me and marry me". With some translation this quote from Caroline is right out of Violet's blighted relationship and her correspondence with Vita Sackville-West.
This is an enjoyable, elegant, concise novel. I loved the quality of writing and wit which made me chuckle and smile and read quickly until I got to the above, surprisingly serious, quote which bolted out in relief from the rest of the book. I realised that Violet wasn't that complicated. She was rich, young well connected and in the shadow of her mother. She wanted to be loved for herself, she wanted proven love that required sacrifice; to be fulfilled in an exclusive whole relationship - outside of societal constraints if necessary. In real life Violet depended on Vita to be her accomplice, in the book Caroline depends on Nigel. In the end, in Violet's real life, she would, as poor compensation for losing her struggle for her one 'true love', become a lover of things, houses, and places and would mock herself and the society she was resigned to be part of - as she does in this excellent novel.
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(London)
