Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Certainly not me. I’m immensely fascinated by her, as I am with all intelligent women (my Kryptonite, my weakness). I think I first found her during college which, admittedly, was a little late. And after watching The Hours, I was hooked, line and sinker. I tried to read all her works and devoured every bit of detail about the life of this progressive feminist thinker. In this regard, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf was an indispensable book. The experience was like being given a front row seat into the daily lives of two unconventional women, and the enduring romantic friendship that blossomed between them.

Vita and Virginia met in 1922, and had a fairly established lesbian affair even though both were married at the time. Vita, the aggressive aristocrat, almost worshiped Virginia, the frail, enigmatic writer. In her letters, Vita made no qualms about her feelings. For example, this excerpt which Vita wrote while on a long voyage to Asia:

Milan, Thursday, 21st of January 1926

“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 undumb 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 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.”

I rest my case.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia, for her part, immortalized Vita by making her the hero in the gender-bending book Orlando. Incidentally, this is where Orlando Bloom a.k.a. Legolas got his name (quite fitting because Orlando and Legolas are both androgynous characters). Nigel Nicolson, Vita’s son, has famously described the novel as the longest and most charming love letter in all of literature. Reading the letters, it seems Vita was herself both flattered and touched.

Vita Sackville-West

“I think a lot about Virginia - which makes up for much - and really, I have been loving Virginia enormously lately - in an intense, absent way, (absent in distance, I mean,) which has been a great satisfaction to me - like a tide flowing in and filling a lot of empty spaces. Orlando, I am glad to reflect, compels you willy-nilly to spend a certain amount of your time with me. Darling, I do love you.”

The editors Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell Leaska did a great job including helpful footnotes, so following the letters was quite easy. The detailed introduction also gives a thorough account of the complex relationship between these two literary giants (albeit spoilerish). I was patient enough to read through 36 pages of it before diving into the actual letters myself. I suppose you can do the opposite - letters first, introduction later - to maximize the shock factor, where they may be found.

Not often do we get a chance to be this intimate with great minds, who unabashedly declared their passion for each other. I feel very fortunate to have read this book. Cheers to all the women who dare to be different!