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William Collins An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2014 Copyright © Matthew Dennison 2014 Matthew Dennison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Front cover shows Lady with a Red Hat (oil on canvas), Strang, William (1859–1921) / Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, Scotland © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums) / Bridgeman Images; Shutterstock.com (roses) All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780007486960 Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007486977 Version: 2015-05-20
For Gráinne, with all love
‘… he told her that he could find no words to praise her; yet instantly bethought him how she was like the spring and green grass and rushing waters.’ (Orlando, Virginia Woolf) ‘All the coherence of her life belonged to Condaford; she had a passion for the place … After all she had been born there … Every Condaford beast, bird and tree, even the flowers she was plucking, were a part of her, just as were the simple folk around her in their thatched cottages, and the Early-English church, where she attended without belief to speak of, and the grey Condaford dawns which she seldom saw, the moonlit, owl-haunted nights, the long sunlight over the stubble, and the scents and sounds and feel of the air.’ John Galsworthy, Maid in Waiting (1931) ‘… we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.’ Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928) CONTENTS
PART III: Invitation to Cast Out Care
PART V: The Land and the Garden
1. Vita by Philip Alexius de László, oil on canvas, 1910 (© National Trust Images/John Hammond) 2. Vita with her mother; Vita with her father 3. Knole; King’s Bedroom, Knole (© English Heritage) 4. Harold, Vita, Rosamund Grosvenor and Lionel Sackville on their way to court; Vita and her parents (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 5. Vita as Portia by Clare Atwood, oil on canvas, 1910 (© National Trust Images) 6. Vita and Mrs Walter Rubens (© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans); Vita (© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans) 7. Sir Harold Nicholson, c.1920 (© Private Collection/Bridgeman Images); Vita at Ascot with Lord
