Sizzling affairs of married aristo writer who bedded 50 women including Virginia Woolf
SHE was the married aristocrat whose lust for female lovers saw her bed more than 50 WOMEN.
Now Vita Sackville-West’s most famous affair — with tragic writer Virginia Woolf — is being explored in a passionate new film based on their letters and diaries.
Vita, who was married to MP Sir Harold Nicolson and grew up in a stately home given to her ancestors by Queen Elizabeth I, had an insatiable appetite for other women.
She was so besotted with one of her lovers, socialite Violet Trefusis, that she interrupted her HONEYMOON with husband Denys — and insisted she sleep with her instead.
In private letters, later published by her son Nigel, Vita confessed: “I treated her savagely . . . I made love to her, I had her, I didn’t care, I only wanted to hurt Denys.”
Soon after, Vita disguised herself as a man — which was easily done with her statuesque, 6ft frame — and eloped to Paris with Violet.
Husbands Denys and Harold had to hire a small aeroplane to fly to France to bring them back — the threat of divorce eventually convincing Vita to return.
After the incident, Harold — who was also bisexual and had a string of affairs with famous men including Welsh composer Ivor Novello and literary critic Raymond Mortimer — wrote in his diary: “Damn! Damn! Damn! Violet. How I loathe her.”
But the affair Vita is most known for is with author Virginia, who she met in the early 1920s.
In a letter to her later, Vita recalled how she was right to “force myself upon you” and how they “behaved so disgracefully” on the sofa.
Their tempestuous six-year affair is the focus of film Vita And Virginia, starring former Bond girl Gemma Arterton as Vita and The Night Manager’s Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia.
Director Chanya Button says: “Vita was a poet, aristocrat and a famous kind of cad. She had so many lovers.
“She and Virginia were both incredibly unconventional women who were living in a way that was progressive — that would be progressive even for now.”
Gemma, 33, adds: “Vita is a real conundrum. She was very loving and caring but could be brutal and cold.”
Mother-of-two Vita was a better known author than Virginia when they met in 1922.
By that stage she already had a very open marriage with Harold.
Virginia, who was also portrayed by Nicole Kidman in 2002 film The Hours, had married left-wing writer Leonard Woolf despite not being attracted to him.
But she was far more discreet about her lesbian leanings, knowing that such affections would be frowned upon in polite society.
Remarkably, neither wife was ever divorced by their husband.
The two women grew up in very different social circles and had opposite personalities.
Virginia was born into a middle-class London family and suffered from depression for much of her life.
Vita had a forceful nature and was raised in 400-year-old Knole House, in Sevenoaks, Kent.
Her father Lionel, a baron, married his cousin Victoria, one of seven illegitimate children born to her husband’s uncle.
It was an unhappy childhood for Vita — who enjoyed dressing in manly clothes — with her mum leaving her dad due to his womanising.
Vita’s grand-daughter, Juliet Nicolson said: “From the age of 12, Vita was fairly sure she was gay, something she hid from her mother.
“She would play in a khaki uniform then come in and put on her silks and pearls.”
In 1913, at the age of 21, Vita married then diplomat Harold, who became a National Labour MP in Leicester in 1935. She was already in a relationship with Rosamund Grosvenor.
After having their two sons, Nigel and Benedict, Vita and Harold rarely slept together again.
In 1918 Vita fell in love with Violet Trefusis, whose sister Sonia was the grandmother of the Duchess of Cornwall.
After that affair ended she set her sights on Virginia who, like her, was part of the Bloomsbury literary set in London.
Budding writer Virginia was ten years older than Vita, who had just published her book The Heir.
But it was Vita who made the first move at Virginia’s home in South West London.
In one letter, the aristocrat wrote to her: “How right I was to force myself upon you at Richmond and to lay the trail for the explosion which happened on my sofa in my room here where you behaved so disgracefully and acquired me for ever.”
The film depicts Vita as being an untamed force of nature, very different to the emotionally detached Virginia.
But Virginia’s great niece, Virginia Nicholson, sees it differently. She said: “Virginia was fun. For her friends she made life seem like a party. The real Virginia wrote letters to her lover that are flirtatious and witty. Vita’s replies are equally frisky.”
Virginia, who had suffered mental health issues from the age of 13, was at her most creative during their relationship.
She had been told by a doctor that writing worsened her anxiety, but Vita insisted the opposite was true and encouraged her.
Virginia wrote her best-known books, Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse, during this time.
Her novel Orlando: A Biography, with a gender-changing character at its centre, was inspired by the cross-dressing Vita.
It was described by Vita’s son Nigel as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature”.
Yet Virginia was not enough for Vita’s aggressive sexual appetite — and she carried on seeing other women.
This spelt the end of their relationship in around 1928, but the pair remained good friends.
And Vita’s reputation for promiscuity continued.
One former partner, Olive Rinder, summed it when she told her: “You do like to have your cake and eat it — and so many cakes, so many, a surfeit of sweet things.”
Among her other lovers was Alvilde Lees-Milne, whose historian husband James Lees-Milne also enjoyed a relationship with Vita’s spouse Harold.
This swapping of partners was made even stranger by the fact that both Harold and Vita had been witnesses at the Lees-Milnes’s wedding. Virginia, who drowned herself in 1941 at the age of 59, had a couple more relationships with other women but remained close to her husband Leonard.
In her suicide note, she told him: “You have given me the greatest possible happiness.
“You have been in every way all that anyone could be.
“I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came.”
Equally, there remained a special bond between Vita and Harold. They created a magnificent home together at Sissinghurst Castle, near Tunbridge Wells, in Kent.
The garden they designed is considered to be one of the finest in England, and is now an important attraction for the National Trust.
Vita died of cancer in 1962 at the age of 70. Harold followed six years later at the age of 81.
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Their son Nigel said: “Each found permanent and undiluted happiness only in the company of the other.
“If their marriage is seen as a harbour, their affairs were mere ports of call.
“It was to the harbour that each returned.”
- Vita And Virginia is in cinemas from tomorrow.