Thread by @polyamstories

Hello twitter! We’re so glad to be back and we have someone new to tell you about.

#polyamory #polytwitter #polyverse #polyfi #multiamory #twitterstorians #twitterhistory #sexhistory #sexhist #LGBT

We are going to learn about the story of Vita (Virginia Mary) Sackville-West, a British polyamorous and bisexual writer - today, we’ll primarily look at her life from the perspective of her marriage with her husband, Harold Nicholson. (Later on we’ll visit her from other angles).

If you have already heard of her, it’s probably because she was famously one of Virginia Woolf’s lovers.

We know a lot about Sackville-West’s relationships because she was such an open writer, both publicly and in her letters. (During the time that she and Woolf were first interested in one another, Sackville-West was more commercially successful than Woolf.)

We also know a lot about her relationship because she wrote a wonderful account of her discovery of her sexuality (both her bisexuality and her proclivity for multiple relationships) in a book which she eventually allowed her son, Nigel Nicholson, to discover after her death.

It is now published with his helpful commentary in this book, “A Portrait of a Marriage”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_…

(We highly recommend the book and have relied on it heavily here).

Here’s how her son introduces the story:

Vita understood that an account of her life would be important in the future, especially for LGBT history. She was, perhaps, looking ahead to @ItGetsBetter

She wrote that 'the psychology of people like myself will be a matter of interest' when hypocrisy gives place to 'a spirit of candour which one hopes will spread with the progress of the world.'”

One of the themes of Sackville-West’s relationship with Nicolson - not uncommon in other historical polyamorous relationships - is a long lasting primary relationship that provides a home for both parties while they explore other relationships.

(at Ascot (!) together)

Throughout her life, and despite many emotional upheavals, Sackville-West remained passionately devoted to her husband as they each pursued other relationships, usually with people of the same sex.

(Later in life, with their dog - half the photos of the couple involve dogs)

She wrote “here is only one person in whom I have such utter confidence that I would give every line of this confession into his hands...I know that after wading through it all he would emerge holding his estimate of me steadfast.”

For Sackville-West, as for others, this primary relationship was rooted in a deep love and appreciation of their primary partner that went beyond society's definition of sexual monogamy, and which did not necessarily hinge on sexual satisfaction.

The realisation that she loved Nicolson came upon her slowly:

“I missed him-he was the best actual playmate I had ever known, and his exuberant youth combined with his brilliant cleverness attracted the rather saturnine me that scarcely understood the meaning of being young.”

Vita’s sexual relationships with women began with a friend of hers, Rosamund Grosvenor. The two were childhood friends. The relationship helped her to discover her attraction to women:

“We sat in a darkened room, and talked - about our ancestors, of all strange topics - and in the hall as I left she kissed me. I made up a little song that evening, I've got a friend!' I remember so well. I sang it in my bath."

The two women arriving in court (!) together:

S-W on lesbian sex: “I want to say again that the thing did start in comparative innocence. Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find out, but my sense of guilt went no further...”

Vita found that while she was physically attracted to Rosamund, the attraction to Harold was nevertheless more profound and longlasting:

“Even my liaison with Rosamund was, in a sense, superficial. I mean that it was almost exclusively physical, as, to be frank, she always bored me as a companion. I was very fond of her, however; she had a sweet nature. But she was quite stupid...

...Harold wasn't. He was as gay and clever as ever, and I loved his brain and his youth, and was flattered at his liking for me...I wasn't in love with him then - there was Rosamund - but I did like him better than anyone, as a companion and playfellow...

....and for his brain and his delicious disposition. I hoped that he would propose to me before he went away to Constantinople, but felt diffident and sceptical about it.”

We'll be posting more about this throughout the whole week. For now, we leave you with a particularly lovely image.

Here's Harold Nicolson, far left, with Vita Sackville-West, next from the left, and Rosamund Grosvenor, her lover. (And that’s V S-W’s dad at the far right!):

(We're back!)

Sackville-West, like many of our poly historical subjects on this page, felt a lot of guilt and shame about her tendency to take multiple lovers:

Although she confessed to not having much physical attraction for Harold, she appears to have been passionate about him, noting of their engagement period, “Harold and I grudged an hour spent away from one another. I hurry over this part, because it is the same for everybody. ”

She considered the passion they had for one another, while unusual in some respects, as wild and obsessive as anyone in the first stages of love - as if it were indeed anybody’s story.

During their engagement period, Sackville-West also deepened a romantic and sexual relationship with Violet Keppel, later Trefusis, a novelist and radio broadcaster:

Here are Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel together:

Despite these two passionate relationships, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West married with Rosamund Grosvenor in attendance in 1913:

“Rosamund survived my wedding-day somehow, and rather splendidly rose to the occasion of hiding away her own sorrow; she is really rather splendid in some ways...

...Violet didn't come. I never told her anything about my engagement, and she learnt it through the papers and wrote me sarcastic letters through which I could read her anger. That was my wedding. ”

Here's the full photo - Rosamund Grosvenor as bridesmaid; she was later crossed out by Vita Sackville-West's mother, who did not approve of their lesbian relationship.

[more soon!]

The marriage was happy, and included a sexual relationship at its start:

“We were a sort of by-word for happiness and union. We never tired of one another! How rescued I felt from everything that was vicious and violent!...

...Harold was like a sunny harbour to me. It was all open, frank, certain; and although I never knew the physical passion I had felt for Rosamund, I didn't really miss it. This lasted intact for about four and a half years.”

The two had three children, a stillborn son and two other sons, Benedict and Nigel.

After these 4 and a half happy years, a crisis of sorts erupted when Vita and Violet considered running off to be together on the continent.

Historians speculate that this might have been precipitated by Violet receiving a proposal of marriage from Denys Trefusis and realising that she did not want to be in that relationship.

[Violet and Denys]

At times Vita would travel around with Violet dressed as a man, partially to allow them greater freedom, partially for its own thrill.

“I saw people I knew, and wondered what they would think if they knew the truth about the slouching boy with the bandaged head and the rather vovou appearance, and if they would recognize the silent and rather scornful woman they had perhaps met at a dinner-party or a dance?...

...I never appreciated anything so much as living like that with my tongue perpetually in my cheek, and in defiance of every policeman I passed.”

Vita and Violet made several failed attempts to leave their other partners for one another. First, Vita and Violet made plans to run off together, but then Vita would at the last minute stay with her husband.

[painting of Violet Trefusis]

Then they left England together but Denys caught up with them, even keeping them company on a trip across the chanel, where they all got along rather well:

“We were all gay, we were even light-hearted, not negatively, but positively; it was as though time were suspended, and all human relations suspended too, except Denys's and my common love for Violet. We had no hostility, I think, towards one another...

...We were foes who, while our enmity was in abeyance, were prepared to like one another. ”

Although Denys, Violet’s new husband, chased after her for a while and then let her be, Harold mainly let Vita have the relationship and wrote her regularly, hoping that she would, eventually, return.

And indeed - as often occurs - stability proved the strongest hold.

Vita to Harold during a difficult time:

“I don't know what is going to happen or become of me, and I simply cling and cling to the thought of you. You are my only anchor...

...I hate myself. Oh, I do crave to be with you. I feel like a person drowning who knows there is an absolutely safe boat somewhere on the sea, and if they can only keep up their strength long enough, they will reach it.”

After a long period of upheaval Vita returned to Harold and from then on their other relationships caused relatively little in the way of conflict between them.

They socialised with their metamours: “So carefree were they that quite often at Long Barn Harold's friend and Vita's would join the same weekend party, and the four of them would refer to the situation quite openly.”

[Vita S-W chats to her husband's lover, Raymond Mortimer.]

Vita went on to have relationships with both men and women, including the architectural historian Geoffrey Scott, who was reportedly disappointed to learn that she had no intention of leaving her husband for him:

Meanwhile, as his son put it, “Harold had a series of relationships with men who were his intellectual equals, but the physical element in them was very secondary...To him sex was as incidental, and about as pleasurable, as a quick visit to a picture-gallery between trains.”

His lovers included the writer Raymond Mortimer (in the photo earlier in teh thread!) and Edward Molyneux, the fashion designer.

They established a unique family life with their two sons. “Harold built his own study at the far end of the new wing; and we, the children, were set firmly apart in a cottage higher up the hill. This physical separation of the family was symptomatic of our relationship...

...Each person must have a room of his own, but there must be, and was, a common room where we could periodically unite.”

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson managed not to worry about what society thought too much:

“I suppose” wrote Vita “that ninety-nine people out of a hundred, if they knew all about us, would call us wicked and degenerate. And yet I know with absolute certainty that there are not ninety-nine people out of a hundred less wicked and degenerate than we are....

...I don't want to boast, but we are alive, aren't we? And our two lives, outside and inside, are rich lives - not little meagre repetitions of meagre cerebral habits.”

Vita is most famous for her affair with the novelist Virginia Woolf (who we will write about later in this series). Yet that affair was comparatively short (-er than her other multiple relationships) - although the friendship remained lifelong.

(Side note about how Virginia Woolf treated Vita Sackville-West’s children here:

https://twitter.com/SSteinLubrano/status/1100864803000578048

)

Vita was very open with her husband about this affair as with the others: “I've rarely taken such a fancy to anyone, and I think she likes me. At least, she's asked me to Richmond where she lives. Darling, I have quite lost my heart. [19 December 1922]”

She told Harold about their sexual life (and relative lack thereof) in more detail than most people, all while conducting a little jealousy-reassurance: “Besides, Virginia is not the sort of person one thinks of in that way...

...I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that's all. Now you know all about it, and I hope I haven't shocked you. My darling, you are the one and only person for me in the world; do take that in once and for all, you little dunderhead.”

(This is by most accounts the extent of their physical relationship - she wasn’t just telling Harold what he wanted to hear!).

Thread continues here:

https://twitter.com/polyhistories/status/1103776079687364612