I shall be alone Thursday night. Could you stay two nights? I don’t want to seem as if I had you in secret, though it’s infinitely more to my taste, exploring about in the recesses secretly. Write me a tactful letter, making out a good case for whatever it is: and let it be as long as you can. (Your stay and your letter.) No one else is coming.
Virginia Woolf, carta para Vita Sackville-West, 3 de Agosto de 1927 (via Letters of Note)
[A few days after meeting Woolf for the first time]
I simply adore Virginia Woolf… She is utterly unaffected: there is no outward adornments—she dresses quite atrociously. At first you think she is plain; then a sort of spiritual beauty imposes itself on you, and you find a fascination in watching her. She was smarter last night; that is to say, the woollen orange stockings were replaced by yellow silk ones, but she still wore the pumps. She is both detached and human, silent till she wants to say something, and then says it supremely well. She is quite old. I’ve rarely taken such a fancy to anyone, and I think she likes me. At least, she’s asked me to Richmond where she lives. Darling, I have quite lost my heart.
—Vita Sackville-West, carta para Harold Nicolson em 19 de Dezembro de 1922, Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson 1919–1962 (via Letter of Note)
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, carta para Virginia Woolf, 21 de Janeiro de 1926
Lady With a Red Hat, 1918 por William Strang (1859-1921), óleo sobre tela. Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, Escócia.
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.
—Vita Sackville-West, carta para Virginia Woolf, 22 de Janeiro de 1926