You are the unexploded bomb to me

A Vita Sackville-West Megamix

English novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West died 60 years ago today. For your enjoyment, below, barely arranged in any kind of order, can be found some choice cuts from her letters, beginning with my favourite (Harold Nicolson, it must be said, died long after Vita, and not from cyanide poisoning).

And beneath those letters, some news about a live show we’re putting on this weekend that you can watch from the comfort of your home, and for a good cause.

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Victoria Mary Nicolson, known professionally as Victoria Sackville-West (1892 - 1962) the poet, novelist and amateur gardener. (Photo by Sasha/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Darling, I love you so; you are my eternal spring.

I suddenly thought, supposing you were found poisoned one day when we were here alone together, and I was accused of poisoning you. Then there’s an inquest, and it is discovered that I have been buying cyanide of potassium, ostensibly to destroy wasps’ nests, but I cannot account for it: where did I put it? what have I done with it? did I give it to the gardener? wouldn’t that have been the natural thing for me to do? people aren’t so careless as all that with a deadly poison, surely, Lady Nicolson? Come now! You can’t expect us to believe that . . .

And then my Counsel produces our letters to each other, years and years of letters, full of love.

What a silly story.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Harold Nicolson
31st January 1956

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Los Angeles is hell. Take Peacehaven, multiply it by 400 square miles, sprinkle it all along the French Riviera, and then empty the Chelsea Flower Show over it, adding a number of Spanish exhibition buildings, and you have the Los Angeles coast. The Americans have unequalled genius for making everything hideous.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
28th March 1933

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As I get older, I find I get more and more disagreeably solitary, in fact I foresee the day when I shall have gone so far into myself that there will no longer be anything to be seen of me at all. Will you, please, remember to pull away the coverings from time to time? or I shall get quite lost.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
8th April 1926

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I like the sense of one lighted room in the house while all the rest of the house, and the world outside, is in darkness. Just one lamp falling on my paper; it gives a concentration, an intimacy. What bad mediums letters are; you will read this in daylight, and everything will look different. I think I feel night as poignantly as you feel the separateness of human beings; one of those convictions which are so personal, so sharp, that they hurt. It seems to me that I only begin to live after the sun has gone down and the stars have come out.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
18 September 1925

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You and I cannot be together. I go down country lanes and meet a notice saying: ‘Beware, unexploded bomb.’ So I have to go round another way. You are the unexploded bomb to me.

I don’t want you to explode.

I don’t want you to disrupt my life.

My quiet life is dear to me. I hate being dragged away from it.

This letter will anger you. I don’t care if it does, since I know that no anger or irritation will ever destroy the love that exists between us.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Violet Trefusis
1940

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I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
21st January 1926

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Snippets pulled from the following books: Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West; Vita & Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West & Harold Nicolson; and Love Letters: Vita and Virginia.

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Letters Live(streamed)

We’re putting on two Letters Live shows this weekend, both at Hay Festival in Wales. We never give too much away in advance, but all you need to know is that many letters will be brought to life, on stage, by a cast of amazing performers including Benedict Cumberbatch. The first show, on Saturday evening, is sold out but can be streamed, live, for a small fee, with all proceeds going to the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. Tickets for that stream can be bought here. And should you happen to be in Wales on Sunday, we have a show on at 11.30am, with completely different letters, and there are tickets remaining. So, if you’d like to join us in person for what promises to be a fantastic, family-friendly show, grab a ticket here.