“Not much
to my severer taste—florid, moustached, parakeet coloured, with all the supple
ease of aristocracy, but not the wit of the artist. She writes fifteen pages a
day…knows everyone. But could I ever know her…She is a grenadier; hard;
handsome; manly; inclined to double chin.”—English novelist and critic Virginia
Woolf (1882-1941), on first meeting novelist and future love Vita
Sackville-West [pictured], in a Dec. 21, 1922 entry in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924, edited by Anne Olivier Bell,
assisted by Andrew McNeillie (1978)
I think it
was one phrase—"florid, moustached, parakeet coloured”—that grabbed my
attention in this passage about the stunning androgyne Vita Sackville-West.
After this, it was that bit about a new acquaintance who “writes fifteen
pages a day.” (I wish I could equal that output!)
I can’t
imagine describing anyone this way. But then again, that was part of the acute perception
and sensibility of Virginia Woolf.
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