Vita Sackville-West by William Bracewell

Illustration by Louise Pomeroy. 

William Bracewell is a Principal Dancer of The Royal Ballet in London. The Welshman first found ballet as his little secret at the age of eight, as a primary school boy in Swansea. Now 32, he lives in London with his partner Andrew where he holds one of the most prestigious positions in the British creative arts. Now five years into their relationship, Bracewell loves pottering in the pair’s garden, has taken up a sideline in ceramics and discovered a love of fashion. 

It’s a bright morning in early June, one of those days where the sun is doing its best to find gaps in the cloud to warm the air and soil. A day trip with my boyfriend has been planned for weeks after an intense run of rehearsals and performances at The Royal Opera House, where I hold the position of principal dancer with the Royal Ballet. It comes at the perfect time. Our retreat destination is Sissinghurst Castle Garden which lays nestled in the Kent countryside and is the life’s work of Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson. In lots of ways it’s a very traditional English country garden now taken care of by the National Trust, but as soon as you scrape the surface of their story and delve deeper into the garden history you realise they were nothing like the conventional early 20th century privileged couple you might expect.

I first came across Vita a few years ago when my interest in gardening began to flourish, reading plant profiles between rehearsals became a thing… I know… and visits to the famous gardens of the UK saw a sharp rise. Along with Great Dixter House and Gardens in Rye, Sissinghurst stands out as one of my absolute favourites for its encompassing nature, wild but trained form and vision to remain relevant with additions by incredible modern designers like Dan Pearson - Google him right now, he’s a genius. Vita was a poet, novelist, biographer and gardener but what sparked my interest as much as those things were her relationships. She married Harold Nicolson in 1913 and there is no doubt they were in love and very much enjoyed each other's company. It was however more of a platonic love with many other facets to the relationship. Vita was actually what we would now call bisexual or pansexual and Harold also had relationships with both men and women. That’s not to say this was a marriage of convenience and their compassion and respect for one another has been written about extensively.

One of Vita’s first loves was Violet Keppel, a teenage friend, but perhaps more well known is her relationship with Virginia Woolf. Their intimate writing and letters to each other are a thing of beauty and allow glimpses into the deep, passionate and tender love between the two.

In the letter below from Sackville-West to Woolf we see the longing she felt while travelling away from Virginia: “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.” She continues, “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.”

Virginia Woolf’s writing is the subject of the 2015 ballet Woolf Works created by Wayne McGregor which I was lucky enough to dance last year. I say this because the elements of understanding people and place are so important when I dance. I need to know what my surroundings are, not just the details of the auditorium but the space in which the story takes place. The first part of Woolf Works is set in a garden so for me it had to be Sissinghurst. I could feel the soft grass underfoot, the heady aroma of summer roses and the heat of the evening sun emanating from the high stone walls as I moved across the stage. In that moment I was transported from the stage, and it’s experiences like this that stay with me more than any technical aspect of a piece of dance. I believe a good performance should transport someone to anywhere but the present moment of day to day life. 

I sometimes think about why I’ve been drawn to gardening and plants so much, and I was recently reminded of the similarities between garden design and theatre design. Both aim to create atmosphere and drama, with direction of light being key in how they work, and both very much use character and characterisation. For example, if you think of a tall, towering palm you immediately start to build a character - this plant evokes an emotion from the way it looks, smells and feels, quite similarly to how you create a character for theatre. In essence, as you build a garden you’re introducing different characters to a space and witnessing how they interact. This is so incredibly similar to building a cast within a performance. Both are living, breathing things that communicate, change and adapt, are brilliant and flawed. Sometimes I get the same social anxiety of introducing two friends as when I put a planting combination together in the garden.

So back to Vita, and my continued admiration for her. She had multiple partners in her life, her unashamed sexual vivacity drawing her to both men and women, and imagining such thriving, if secretive, fluid relationships in the early 1900’s is incredible. It’s difficult to comprehend what their reality might have been like, considering the laws in place regarding homosexuality, where relationships between two women were largely ignored by law makers at the time. Her defiant boldness to be as open as she was, and her ability to pursue passion and love are inspirational. 

I can’t help but wonder why so many other great gardeners of the last hundred years have also been part of the queer community; Ellen Willmott, Derek Jarman, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Pearson. What draws them to this vocation? Is it a need to care and tend to something if perceived traditional family values are out of the question? Is it a way to create inviting spaces for themselves and their community to comfort and escape from what can sometimes be a harsh and isolating society? Is it trying to bring more beauty to a world in which you can be faced with hostility? Or is it purely coincidence and I’m reading far too much into this…perhaps.

It takes huge courage to be true to who you are without compromise or fear, something I think Vita embodied just by being herself. She saw a world that lay in front of her and decided to build a life that fit her needs. I certainly want to be a bit more like Vita. 

Louise Pomeroy is an illustrator from Brighton, currently based in London. Her work is a mix of hand-drawn line and digital colour. She especially enjoys drawing portraits, hair, plastic bags and fetish imagery. Find her at www.louisezpomeroy.com. Follow her in on Instagram.