Violet to Vita- Letter No. 6

(Probably 1918)
Thursday

It amuses me to continue my indiscreet correspondence with you! Tho’ to be accurate, it is not so much discreet as speculative and analytical. Still, I don’t see why it should be a one-sided affair- in other words, why you should not answer the letters I write to you, when I should be writing others most imperatively concerning my personal welfare? But then, as you know, I have few scruples, and (thank god) no responsibilities!
In the generous empire of your affections, you must- and surely have!- allotted me one tiny province- say, not larger than the republic of San Marino (over which I have sovereign and undisputed sway, untrammeled by any browbeating constitution- where I can have my tiny say in the affairs of your empire, and a tiny voice in the thunder of your parliament?
You play a very strange and important role in my life. You have grown up with me; we have been children together: consequently you are always there, you have always been “there”- you are as immutable as the mountains, as reliable as the seasons! (until this morning!)
Sometimes I fell with you as a wild and wanton child, but nonetheless with an eradicable reverence for your superior wisdom: a fond and foolish child, rifling the world for new and wondrous toys to lay at your feet. A boastful, reckless child, forever on its mettle, because it is being “dared” to accomplish the impossible, to climb the notchless trees, to jump the 7-food hurdle. I come to you and I say: “see what I’ve done! So and so, who has the reputation of being the most fascinating man in England, has fallen in love with me!” Or, “To prove you what I am capable of, I have surpassed all the students of the Slade!”- or a dozen other things equally fond and foolish!
I wonder if our mutual biographers will know how much of my career to attribute to your unconscious influence?
The only real beauty is to be found in the simplest things- nothing elaborate can ever be beautiful. God forgive that real beauty should ever pass me by unrecognized. I was thinking yesterday at the Slade that here was real beauty: dozens of minds all intent on the pursuit of art, all striving to the utmost of their ability to ensnare beauty, and the pursuit of art, however unsuccessful is always beautiful.
Then I saw people in their true perspective and they all seemed vulgar and uninspired and the meanest drawing there was worth more than all their thoughts and endeavours.
The only two things that matter are love and beauty- beauty of character as well. There are some exceedingly unbeautiful things in my character: lies and deceit which are as morally ugly as a squint and a hunchback- just as unsymmetrical and disfiguring. So is gossip and snobbishness and bigotry. They are equivalent to a crooked nose, a harelip, and a receding chin! No, the beautiful, free, godlike things are passion and enterprise, courage and impatience, generosity and forgiveness!
Heaven preserve us from all the sleek and dowdy virtues, such as punctuality, conscientiousness, fidelity and smugness! What great man was ever constant? What great queen was ever faithful?1 Novelty is the very essence of genius and always will be. If I were to die tomorrow, think how I should have lived!
With this last Swinburnian transport, I must end this letter. Don’t you think it is entitled to an

answer? If not, this will be the last of the series!!!

.V

1. با این گفته ویولت موافق نیستم. ویولت این را وقتی نوشته که 24 سال داشته، اما عملا تا 77 سالگی یعنی تا پایان عمرش به ویتا وفادار ماند. او یک زن بزرگ بود و عشق و تعهدش از او جلوه ای با شکوه تر ساخت. (ویتا عثمانی)

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 5

August 14, 1918

Oh Mitya, I want to see you. I want to hear your voice. I want to put my hand on your shoulder and cry my heart out. Mitya, Mitya, I have never told you the whole truth. You shall have it now: I have loved you all my life, a long time without knowing, 5 years knowing it as irrevocably as I know it now, loved you as my ideal, my inspiration, my perfection.
Ah, Mitya, and you think it is a flirting fickle thing. And I am telling you the truth, as though I only had another hour of life in which to tell it to you. And the supreme truth is this: I can never be happy without you. I am nothing without you. Ah, I want you, my Mitya, my own. I would be quite content to live on terms of purely platonic friendship with you- provided we were alone and together- for the rest of my days. Now you know everything. You are the grande passion of my life. How gladly would I sacrifice everything to you- family, friends, fortune, everything. What could I care as long as we could be together?

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 4

June 5, 1918

Mer Dmitri,

I adored the letter you write me “from the woods” – the only long letter I have ever had from you. Don’t you think you might make a habit of such letters? I treasured it up till yesterday afternoon, then “deguste”1 it slowly and voluptuously.

The description of Julian I thought most adequate2. You say it’s not like you! It is you, word for word, trait for trait. I laughed long and uproariously over the part where you said, all people worshipped him without his being conscious. Signiferait-il que tu commences a t’ apprecier?3 Let me think you do, at all events, and I shall not have lived in vain.

I must say I should like either a more detailed description of Julian’s appearance whereas hitherto you have confided yourself more to the impression it produced on other people. “Julian was tall,” let us say, and “flawlessly proportioned.” The proposed height of the Greek athlete is alleged to have been 5ft 10in, but Julian surpassed this by at least two inches. Julian’s hair was black and silky. Eve found herself wondering what it would feel like to stroke, and promptly did so; she was amazed to feel a sensation akin to pain shoot up her fingers and lodge itself definitely in the region of her heart. However she was determined to analyse Julian’s beauty, feature by feature, and as he lay stretched full-length in the grass, thinking- what! We wondered uneasily- here was an opportunity not to be neglected.

“How graceful he was, how young, how strong! Eve studied the recumbent figure with eyes in which lay something like a grudging caress. Yet she hated herself for finding him beautiful, for beautiful he undoubtedly was. How resentful she probed those heavily lidded eyes, green in repose, black in anger, even smouldering with some fettered impulse. She wondered: will Julian ever let himself go? Will he ever fling all reticence to the winds? Will he know what it is to experience the soul-scarring emotions of love and hatred? Then, abruptly, her gaze fastened itself on his mouth. She was conscious of a slight tremor: - that mouth, nothing if not classical- with its rather full underlip, was not the mouth of austerity, of abstention. No, it was a sensual mouth, and its sensuality was enhanced, not diminished, by the strongly moulded chin, with its cleft in it.

“Eve, often to tease Julian, told him he looked like a Gypsy, but she was later to admit that his wonderful ‘apricot’ colouring was one of his chief merits. How like a young Hermes he was, pagan, impersonal, indifferent… and a wave of unaccountable despondency swept over her. She felt very futile and inexperienced.”

How will that do? I haven’t written carefully, but it’s more or less what I want to convey. I’ll write it over again properly, if you like. It’s too wonderful, writing about you… Darling, I adore you. You’re getting too exciting for words.

1. Tasted
2. Julian is Vita in the novel Challenge.
3. Does this signify that you are beginning to appreciate yourself?

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 3

(Undated) 1918

My beautiful,
Because there’s no getting away from the fact that you are beautiful. I become inarticulate when I look at you- at the splendid ivory column of your neck, of your eyes like smouldering jewels, at your mouth with its voluptuously chiseled lips, palely red, like some fading wine stain.
I may be writing rubbish, but then I am drunk. Drunk with the beauty of my Mitya! All today I was incoherent. I tell you, there is a barbaric splendour about you that conquered not only me, but everyone who saw you. You are made to conquer, Mitya, not to be conquered. You were superb. You could have the world at your feet. Even my mother, who is not easily impressed, shared my opinion. You have also changed, it appears? They said, this evening after you had gone, that you were like a dazzling Gypsy. My sister’s words, not mine. A Gypsy potentate, a sovereign- what you will, but still a Gypsy.
They also said they noticed a new exuberance in you, something akin to sheer animal spirits- that never was there before. You may love me, Mitya, but anyone would be proud to be loved by you, even if they were to be thrown aside and forgotten- for somebody new.
Everyone is vulgar, petty, “mesquin,”1 beyond all words, in comparison with you. It would be an unpardonable impudence to limit you to one life, one love, one interest. Yours are all lives, all loves, all interests! Beloved, my beautiful, I have shown myself naked to you, mentally, physically and morally.
Good God alive! No one in this earth has as much claim to you as I have. No one in this world.

Yours, Lushka

1. Paltry

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 2

Dambatenne, Ceylon
January 2, 1911

I am in a strange mood today, Vita mia, I cannot make up my mind whether I am freak in every possible respect, or just simply- an unnatural child. Enlighten me by your wisdom and tell me my future, oh phythoness!
I have had every conceivable thing in the way of adventures this last two years. Shall I disclose some of the more thrilling for your benefit? You ask nothing better, do you? And it’s exactly because I comprehend your curiosity- quite natural really- that I’m determined not to tell.
I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. A great chest whose drawers are crammed with balanced sheets, verses, love letters, with law suits, novels, with locks of hair rolled up amid the receipts- hides fewer memories than my sad brain. It’s a pyramid, an immense vault containing more dead than common grave. I am a cemetery detested by the moon where, as with remorse, drag out long verses, which fasten themselves to my most sacred deaths.
--- et patati patat, I could go on reciting for half an hour if this would help to solace my spleen.
Your last missive told me much about your present state. Shall I admit it, not hiding anything, that I’ve been given much cord to twist again. What a bitch you are! Excuse my language. I employ it on certain occasions to bury my feelings which are apt to prove too much for me at times.
Well here’s something which I think will make you laugh: imagine, chere amie, that I’ve brought back an alligator from my jungle expedition- an enormous one such as no longer exists in our times, enormous as the step of a staircase!
This takes your breath away really for once. (I see your scandalized face from here: “What a vulgar outburst!”)
I killed it with my little rifle and if you are very good (as you would say), you shall have a purse made out of it for your birthday present!
Do you know that you have ceased to be a reality for me? You are so far away that it seems to me you have never existed outside of my dreams. You are a mirage which recedes to the degree that one approaches to it. Speaking about mirages, I saw a very beautiful one in the Sues Canal at the mouth of the Red Sea. I was gazing with distracted eye at the desert which stretches out to infinity, the intense implacable sun gleaming as a furnace, a camel marching with great unequal steps towards the south- when suddenly I recall letting out a loud cry: “See over there, the trees, the water?”
One looks: it seems then that a lake encircled by date trees and leafy shrubs, incredibly blue and seductive, had passed unobserved. Immediately we rush to the maps, snatch up the spectacles, then all together to the Captain, who, high up in his cabin is stretched out in a sultry posture. “What is that lake which glitters in the distance, so blue, so solitary?”
The Captain descends, grumbling, directs his telescope towards the Egyptian shore: “That, ladies, that is quite simple a mirage!” and he returns to his quarters, still shaking with his habitual healthy and vulgar laughter.
Myself, I remain for a long time leaning on the balustrade with dreaming eyes. I seemed to see so many things in this reality which, after all, was only a mirage.

Violet to Vita- Letter No. 1

Colombo, Ceylon
December 1910

To my incomparable sister
Of the velvet eyes,
The mother-of-pearl skin,
The ebony hair,

The pomegranate lips,
The clove like breath,
By the inspiration of Dawn,
Greetings and Prosperity.

I write to you beneath a bewildering swaying of gigantic bamboo trees, at the far end of a garden which ought to belong to the Thousand and One Nights, or, if you prefer, this resembles El Dorado.
Do you like orchids? I adore them.
You would have the same feelings if you could see them as I do at this moment: meaning, in clusters, purpled, narcotic, with here and there some shameful misalliance as is suitable for plebian orchids.
Haven’t I a talent for descriptions, darling? But I think you will not expect anything better when I tell you that it is 90 degrees in the shade and my poor aching body is in a complete state of collapse, both moral and physical.
Would that I were the daughter of a sea-wolf, to go roving with only sleepers on my feet, a necklace, and that’s all!!!
I am becoming incoherent; I’d better stop.
Beneath a blazing tropical midday sky, the road to Maradane is reduced to powder: … on each side arises the unexpected; foliage in turn somber, sparkling, or brilliant. The heat is such that the slightest movement is exhausting. At a distance in a cloud of dust, one perceives the great weary oxen with their bloodshot eyes and backs slashed by blows. Alongside, gleaming black, the ox drivers.
Everywhere reflections, everywhere light, and then, from time to time, a coconut falls, slowly, with a dull sound, on the brown earth.
A land of absolute repose, of an absolute beauty, a rich land, an unbelievable land, bursting forth with all fruits and spices- the purity of a vermilion hand, enamoured of light, drunk by sunshine.
POSTSCRIPT: What do you say about my oriental style? As for me, I am stunned by it! I flatter myself I am the possessor of one of the most adaptable natures in existence.

Dambatenne at 5000 feet,
200 feet from the sun.
4 December 1910.

I am giddy, the dizziness of heights.
I feel tiny, so tiny … you have no idea … from one moment to the next it seems that I should be swallowed up. All the surrounding mountains conspire to cruch me with their weight. Immense shaggy rocks are heaped up pell-mell around the house. The view is superb. 2000 feet below us smiling hills with delicate sylvan slopes can be perceived.
You see it, the stump of Adam’s Peak in the distant haze. Nearby it’s the jungle, then, the sea. Here and there the lagoons-girded by banana trees, pomegranate cactus, camphor trees, eucalyptus, and nutmeg trees- smoke in the sun like enormous tubs.
Unnecessary to tell you that I am of a sovereign laziness and that nothing less than a monsoon would make me abandon my divan. All of this is understood.
How far away is England! Vita mia!
How is it possible that you are not here?
It occurred to me several times during my sojourn, to ask myself, in effect, why you don’t make any effort to come here, in spite of everything, in spite of everything??? I shouldn’t wish to be in your place for an empire! This is not so bad, it seems to me, for a person who is double-faced.
Now for the little matter-of-fact information you love: we will be going perhaps to spend several days towards the end of this month at Nuwara Eliya, but you can write to me here and it will be forwarded.
I had all sorts of adventures on the steamer that I should like to be able to tell you about in person. Among others, one very amusing with a Spanish lady and other with – ma non importa. It will keep. Enough to tell you that the lady Violetta amused herself madly at the expense of others. Which is perhaps not altogether a good thing, but one pardons youth for many things, especially at 16 ½. These are what you call puerilities. I call them simply imprudences- which amounts to about the same thing.
Do try not to get married before I return.

Dambatenne
12 December 1910

In vain one looks for some coherence, some telltale blade of grass in the inextricable labyrinth which is your last letter- a labyrinth, alas, which lacks an Ariadne to provide the conducting thread.
But after a brief attempt, I give up guessing! It’s too hot to persist. Unless you have become suddenly enamoured of some happy mortal, I confess myself incapable of reading between your lines. Oh well, this will arrange itself.
In attentively rereading suddenly a sort of heavy anguish which I can only qualify as apprehension has just made my heart beat rapidly and makes my hand tremble as I write to you …
It’s trembling and it’s sad.
For the first time your extra two years seem to me very real, arrogant, sinister.
But don’t believe that I haven’t foreseen this moment: often I have imagined myself at this turning.
Oh, for pity sake, tell me that I am wrong, that it is my devilish imagination which overpowers me.
After all, I’m only a girl. I ought to have foreseen that perhaps at your age a masculine liaison would come about. I would be wise to accept this. I feel that I’m about to say improper things. You won’t laugh, promise that you won’t laugh. For a long time I’ve asked nothing of you, so grant me this. It would hurt so.
Tomorrow we’re going to Nuwara Eliya. We plan to spend most of this week in the jungle where these gentlemen-hunters are going to hunt alligators.
I hope terribly that they won’t force me to participate. These enormous beasts all bleeding- pouah! It makes one shudder. Then we will go to see the buried cities, beginning with Anuradhapura. The jungle makes me tremble. I pray to return intact.

Violetta