# - Sackville-West, Vita.

discussing virginia woolf, the bloomsbury group, her poems and prose, literature, politics, the war and her life at sissinghurst, and offering Margaret reams of advice on writing prose and poetry, over 320 pages, 4to and 8vo, written in ink and pencil, two autograph envelopes, chiefly Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, 20 October 1941 to 11 November 1960 (but chiefly 1941-1945), about 10 letters apparently incomplete, some fraying, short tears (with occasional loss), creasing, and smudging of ink, most letters annotated or marked in ink or pencil by Margaret Howard (supplying dates and occasional comments), red stickers attached to three letters, lower portion of two letters torn away (with loss), two letters with filing holes

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The "reckless" and "passionate" Margaret Howard wrote to Vita after hearing her read 'The Land' on the radio. She had never previously heard of Vita, but her broadcast sparked a sympathy which would develop into mutual fascination. Vita responded to Margaret's first letter by sending her another poem, 'Solitude'. A visit by Margaret to Sissinghurst soon followed, marking the beginning of an intense friendship and vibrant correspondence.

Margaret herself was an aspiring poet and novelist. Her "puzzling ability" to write attracted the admiration and occasionally the envy of Vita, who encouraged Margaret to write an autobiographical novel (the drafts of which she commented on at length) and tried to get her poems published in the Spectator and New Statesman ("...They are remarkable, you know, my idiot waif, I can't think how you do it..."). Vita set high standards for Margaret, and her comments are ruthless, especially when directed against "elegant variation" and "deplorable" punctuation ("...By the way, your type writer doesn't seem to possess a full-stop, although it is rich in commas. It doesn't seem to possess a semi-colon either. Pity...").

"...Your assets of course are your sensitiveness, your humanity, and your puzzling ability to express yourself. That you are a natural writer there can be no doubt, and that is the main thing. I only wish you had more leisure and not so many chores. It must be maddening to have to wash up when one's head is full of ideas. I know that I would just eat with one fork out of a saucepan if I lived alone and had to do everything for myself..."

The difference in their social backgrounds is more than evident in Vita's letters, in which she frequently adopts a patronising, albeit affectionate, tone towards her young acolyte. Vita was nevertheless enchanted by Margaret's "freshness of approach" ("...I am sick of sophisticated people...")

"...that 'difference of worlds' is enriching for both of us...I am as fascinated by yours as you no doubt are fascinated by mine. Romance is always the thing one doesn't know, and probably wouldn't care about if one did know it. The rags and fleas of a basement; the velvets and brocades of Knole. Your struggles for self-expression in writing; the superior high-born sophistication of Bloomsbury for me. (But I fought myself free.)..."

Margaret's curiosity about Vita's literary life prompted detailed letters about her acquaintance with other writers, and particularly her friendship with Virginia Woolf

"...Virginia wasn't all 'cool intellect' by any means. She had the warmest and deepest and most human affection for those she loved. They were few, perhaps, and she applied alarmingly high standards, but her love & humanity were real, once they were given..."

"...I wonder what you will make of Orlando. The first part -- the Elizabethan part -- is one of the loveliest and most fantastic things in English, I think. The preface with all those names was a joke -- sheer high spirits -- to amuse her friends or mine..."

"...if you want to see how sane Virginia could be, read 'The Common Reader'...she could indulge not only in flights of fancy but also in sharp good sense..."

"...You make me very heartsick for Virginia at moments, your dazzled recognition of her genius, your excitement at discovering her. It is a landmark in one's life, reading her for the first time..."

The Bloomsbury circle of writers fascinated Margaret, who invited Vita's opinions about, for example, Lytton Strachey ("...He was lank and dank and depressing. It gave me great pleasure to hear Virginia say to him once, 'Lytton, you are like a dead slug in a well'...), Ottoline Morrell ("...a very queer personality...with masses of purple hair, a deep voice, teeth like a piano keyboard, and the most extraordinary assortment of clothes, hung with barbaric necklaces...a born Bohemian by nature..."), Aldous Huxley ("...he is so damned intelligent, but I loathe his attitude towards sex..."); Dorothy Wellesley ("...she has the real stuff of poetry in her, but she never would take enough trouble. It poured out of her pen and she just left it recklessly in its rough state..."); E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Edmund Gosse ("...rather a tea-party old gentleman...was most entertaining. He had a delicate malice about him. Virginia couldn't abide him, and you will find him in Orlando thinly disguised as Nick Greene...He was small, grizzled, and neat in appearance. Harold and I once gave him a lift in the car; he sat at the back, and when he got out we saw that his black coat was covered with grey hairs from my dog. We looked at each other in horror and said never a word, but watched him walk briskly away across Hyde Park like a little bear with a furry pelt...") and Alice Meynell ("...trailed about...wearing dove-grey draperies and saying something very, very beautiful once every few hours...The effect on the children was such that they eventually reacted: Viola married the local butcher, or it may have been the milkman, and the others took to giving parties where everybody was stark naked...").

"...you must get the impression that they were all very gregarious, but what you overlook is they spent only the winters in London and that for long months in the summer they were buried in the country...V. and Nessa were sisters and very devoted. It was all 'family' really...Far from being gregarious, Nessa would almost hide in a cupboard if she heard anyone coming...you must remember also that they were all very old friends...and why you should think them cold-blooded I can't imagine: either they had very happy home-lives or else catastrophic love-affairs..."

There are also frequent references in the letters to the effect of the war on Vita's life at Sissinghurst. She talks of its intrusion, however, as merely troublesome: she cannot retire to her tower because the Home Guard is using it as an observation post; the lane is blocked by lorries; the R.A.F. make "a row" at night; bombs fall on nearby fields; a shell shatters windows. A young good-looking officer tells her of his marital troubles; a consumptive young airman verging on insanity writes a "heartrending" letter about his novel, and three Polish officers interested in heraldry turn up to ask her about the tower at Sissinghurst.

As their friendship develops, Vita's letters to her "darling waif-novelist" become increasingly affectionate. In answer to Margaret's questions, or often spontaneously, she comments on such varied subjects as Knole ("...I would sacrifice my soul for that place. It's simply that I love it so much I can't go there, any more than one could watch someone one loved in the arms of another..."), her sons Ben and Nigel ("...I'm not in the least maternal, I like my sons because they are both likeable people, not because they happen to be mine..."), the daily concerns of her life at Sissinghurst (involving at different times haymaking, weeding, nettles, a dead sheep, a missing donkey, her dog ("as beautiful as she is savage"), sorting and picking apples, etc.), Knole, Greek mythology and history, the effect of poverty on art ("...A struggle of existence is not life; life is the life of the spirit, surely; of feeling, of sensibility, of expansion..."), her love of solitude and her "hatred of the endless petty crowding of life".

Vita's concern for Margaret extended to her son Anthony, for whom she bought a violin ("...to find a boy who is eager to give up his whole life to this quest is a thing which touches me very much..."), wanting the gift to be anonymous. She also agreed to become his guardian ("...I know that if ever your horrible idea of dying materialised, and you left me A. as a sort of ward, he would have a good friend in Harold..."). Anthony eventually became a professional violinist.

a collection remarkable for the wealth of detail it provides on vita's attitudes, literary friendships and wartime life, as well as for its candour and wit.