All Passion Spent

by Vita Sackville-West

Irreverently funny and surprisingly moving, All Passion Spent is the story of a woman who discovers who she is just before it is too late.

After the death of elder statesman Lord Slane—a former prime minister of Great Britain and viceroy of India—everyone assumes that his eighty-eight-year-old widow will slowly fade away in her grief, remaining as proper, decorative, and dutiful as she has been her entire married life. But the deceptively gentle Lady Slane has other ideas. First she defies the patronizing meddling of her children and escapes to a rented house in Hampstead. There, to her offspring’s utter amazement, she revels in her new freedom, recalls her youthful ambitions, and gathers some very unsuitable companions—who reveal to her just how much she had sacrificed under the pressure of others’ expectations.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, British Literature, Feminism, 20th Century, Literary Fiction

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Novels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931).

This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately.
While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home.

She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961).

She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little old lady tries, at last, to make her own life after a lifetime of looking after other people's interests and especially her children. One wonders exactly how much 'looking-after' does the Vicereine of India do when she doesn't even hang up her own clothes or make a cup of tea? She is once described as arranging flowers though - onerous duties indeed.

So here we have a deluded, very wealthy old bat who buys a house in Hampstead and has only one servant in order that she may fulfil her childhood ambition of being an artist, although she's never even produced a drawing and never will. She is courted by a very wealthy old man who once fell in love with her (when she was arranging flowers) who pops off leaving her his priceless collection of gewgaws instead of the museums and art galleries who are panting for such marvelous freebies to own for themselves.

So what does she do, well she gives away all the money and art collections not because she is a charitable and civic-minded old lady near the end of her life, who doesn't need funds anyway, no, she does it because she is a real bitch, no matter how softly-spoken, so she can dispossess her rapacious children.

Eventually, persuaded by the maid and her lawyer, she does feel guilty about doing such a thing, but there you go, the wages of sin and all that. Eventually she pops off too and that's that.

Good read, well-written, set in a time and by an author who could not imagine anything much outside her realm of extreme privilege and where poor was only being able to afford a tiny house in a very posh area with only one servant. Thus was the lack of imagination of the entire entitled Bloomsbury Set.

Rewritten 19 Feb 2017

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

UNA STANZA TUTTA PER SÉ


Lady Slane è interpretata da Wendy Hiller nella miniserie in tre episodi realizzata per la BBC nel 1986.

Ho dato retta agli occhi del mondo per così tanto tempo che credo sia giunto il momento di prendermi un po’ di vacanze.

Comincio innalzando un peana alla collana Medusa delle edizioni Mondadori, avviata negli anni Quaranta, ogni titolo rivestito da sovracopertina che proteggeva quella rigida rigorosamente verde a caratteri dorati, che ha rappresentato una fetta consistente della mia educazione letteraria, soprattutto nei primi tempi, quelli più lontani.


La nipote che Lady Slane riesce a salvare dal matrimonio per non farle rinunciare una carriera musicale.

Forse più trasgressiva in vita che nella sua narrativa, Vita Sackville-West ci racconta qui di Lady Slane che a 88 anni decide di dare una brusca svolta alla sua esistenza.
E dopo una vita iniziata troppo presto, a diciassette anni, e passata all’ombra e al servizio di suo marito, ex viceré delle Indie ed ex ministro della Corona, e dei suoi sei figli che ha cresciuto e accudito, inizia un percorso affatto nuovo. E comincia a fare le cose che avrebbe voluto fare sin dal principio: comincia cioè a segurei quelle sue passioni che sono tutt’altro che spente.



Non è vero, infatti, che ogni passione è spenta: neppure che tutta la passione sia esaurita, consumata, spesa. Lady Slane ce lo dimostra: nella sua terza età ricuce il filo con la sua giovinezza e riprende un discorso, e un percorso, interrotto dal lungo matrimonio. Dopo una vita passata ad adempiere ai proprio doveri di moglie e madre, l’anziana signora decide di cominciare a occuparsi davvero di se stessa.
Così, quando rimane (finalmente) vedova, abbandona l’elegante quartiere di Kensington per trasferirsi in un cottage che l’aveva colpita decenni prima, ad Hampstead, una zona suburbana.


Ritratto di Vita Sackville West che nel dicembre 1922 incontrò Virginia Woolf per la prima volta. Ecco cosa ne scrisse Woolf sul suo diario: Ieri sera ho conosciuto l’aristocratica e altamente dotata Sackville-West. Non che sia poi una gran cosa per i miei gusti più difficili. È prosperosa, con un’ombra di baffi, coloratissima, con tutta la disinvoltura dell’alta nobiltà, ma senza l’estro del vero artista. Compone quindici pagine al giorno, ha appena finito un altro libro, conosce tutti. È un granatiere, dura, imponente, mascolina, con una tendenza al doppio mento. L’amicizia vera nacque tre anni dopo, e la relazione amorosa ancora più tardi. Il libro che Sackville-West aveva appena finito nel dicembre del 1922 era “Sfida”.

Fra stupore degli amici e scandalo della famiglia, Lady Slane abbandona le convenzioni sociali, le serate mondane, la sua immagine di femminilità domestica, per assecondare questa volta i suoi desideri, le sue esigenze, e le sue aspirazioni. Una forma di pacifica ribellione per ricongiungersi, nell’ultima età della sua vita, alla radice smarrita di sé.



Scegliendo una sorta di esilio volontario nella vecchia casa della campagna inglese, Lady Slane ritrova l’ambizione ormai dimenticata di diventare un’artista, e la possibilità di un nuova passione. Quest’ultima nelle fattezze del signor FitzGeorge, ricco collezionista d’arte che non l’ha mai dimenticata dopo un primo incontro in India decenni addietro, e che ora torna garbatamente alla carica.
Con questa nuova consapevolezza di sé, Lady Slane, riuscirà a favorire il talento musicale della nipote, spezzando il circolo dell’Inghilterra benpensante che costringeva le donne in una posizione di rinuncia e sottomissione.
E quindi, parafrasando il titolo di un riuscito libro di Elena Gianini Belotti, dalla parte delle donne.



Il romanzo fu pubblicato dalla casa editrice di Virginia Woolf, amica e amante della Sackville-West, la Hogarth Press che aveva fondato con il marito Leonard: e fu un successo, se ne vendevano mille copie al giorno, e gli americani versarono un congruo anticipo (“somma favolosa”) per assicurarsi i diritti di pubblicazione.


Sienna Miller

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geoffrey Scott, one of the many people who fell in love with Vita Sackville-West over the course of her life, said that there was an “indefinable something” about her writing that raised above what it otherwise might have been.

Although he turned out to be a little crazy (that’s a whole other story), I can’t help but think that he was right about that. I certainly felt that way about All Passion Spent.

Many people are not able to resist the powerful temptation to compare this work to Mrs. Dalloway. It is understandable- both books are about an older upper class women looking back over her life, and the two authors had a love affair that began about the time Mrs. Dalloway was published, and essentially ended about the time Passion came out- the plots and themes of the two books even make for a really fitting metaphor about their relationship and the different conclusions that can come out of looking back and taking stock. I was tempted by that road myself.

But as the story went on, I really decided it would be a huge disservice to simply dismiss it as a lesser Dalloway. It isn’t a lesser anything, and Sackville-West isn’t indebted to anyone or anything but her own experiences for the story on the page.

The closest I can come to defining the appeal of Vita’s writing (or what I’ve read of it so far) is that it speaks to me in a voice I can easily understand, a voice I feel I’ve heard inside my own head, describing my own feelings- but without ever descending to the middle-brow commonplaces found in so much domestic focused literature. Put it better, she says things how I would like to have said them at the time- observing obvious things it took me years to figure out how to articulate. Her truths may be easily recognized, but they are also very poetic. One of my favorite passages describes the main character, Lady Slane, driving through India with her Viceroy husband, who is describing to her the various social problems she is to address with the ladies she’s about to meet. While he’s doing this, she is watching some butterflies outside the window and thinking instead about:

“...moving into a cloud of butterflies which were her own irreverent, irrelevant thoughts, darting and dancing, but altering the pace of the progresion not by one tittle; never brushing the carriage with their wings; flickering always; and evading; sometimes rushing on ahead, but returning again to tease and to show off, having an independent and lovely life”

… until she is recalled to her undoubtedly important duties by her husband and has to leave her ephermeral world behind. It’s touching to read this knowing that Vita must have been writing this partially to her husband Harold, who worked for the Foreign Office- perhaps an explanation as to why she could never simply follow him around the world going to tea with other diplomats’ wives. He eventually quit the diplomatic service for her, actually. Had he stayed, this could have been her future- she was always afraid of any part of her life swallowing her up, especially her marriage. This is the book where she tells you why.

Lady Slane is in her late eighties. Her husband has just died, her children are elderly themselves, and there are scores of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Lord Slane was a greatly respected public figure, she was considered the perfect wife. She never really got a story of her own, having married so young- when her husband dies, her children try to go on making decisions for her, and she suddenly informs them, essentially, that she is not the person that they’ve taken her for their entire lives. No, thank you, she is going to live out her last years exactly as she pleases, and she is going to arrange it entirely for herself.

They took her for dumb, you see, because she was so often silent, so subservient to their father’s every whim. Silly Mother, they said, can’t handle anything very real. As Lady Slane herself thinks many times throughout the story, no one ever asked her what she thought, or thought that she might have an entirely different self on the inside than the one she was obliged to present to the world. There’s a wonderful passage about the house she acquires to live in, speaking of the need for privacy in order to maintain any part of one’s self in a world that wants to take so much from you:

“it was a very private thing, a house, private with a privacy irrespective of bolts and bars. And if this superstition seemed irrational, one might reply that man himself was but a collection of atoms, even as a house was but a collection of bricks, yet man laid claim to a soul, to a spirit, to a power of recording and perception.”

I really loved VSW’s excellent treatment of the idea that people have many selves, many of which are private, some of which are easily misunderstood when only partially seen in the real world, or mistakenly slipped out in conversation. For instance: I adored the character of Edith, the youngest daughter of the family. She is given the first chapter, and we see how perceptive she is, what a delightful perspective she has on life. However, she can only get things out of her mouth “sideways,” voicing thoughts out loud without the accompanying train of thought that got her there- so she’s only seen as rude, stupid, or unfeeling. It’s a fascinating and a terribly sad idea that it is two worlds meeting that were never meant to is what gets you in trouble- that’s the only way to keep it intact. Lady Slane also expresses this idea beautifully. She’s talking about the idea that love or relationships are indeed worthwhile and often make up for individual expression, and yet:

“Who was she, the “I” that had loved? And Henry, who and what was he?... Hidden away under the symbol of their coporeality, both in him and in her, doubtless lurked something which was themselves, but that self was hard to get at; obscured by the too familiar trappings of voice, name, appearance, occupation, circumstance, even the fleeting perception of self became blunted or confused. And there were many selves.”

Do you see what I mean about taking a fairly basic truth and making it seem fresh again?- and yet, not hiding it behind any real tricks or disguising it behind images. She says what she means, but with such a keen observation that it becomes more than every day. I mean, what a wonderful thought the above is! It might boil down to what we’ve all heard about loving yourself first before loving anyone else, but there’s something more there- that “indefinable something.”

This is without a doubt a feminist novel- an argument for the voices and lives of women being allowed to matter, not being expected to give way to men. But I think it’s also a general argument for anyone being allowed to make their own choice- not the choice dictated to them by the thousand little circumstances of class, gender, family, which parties one attended. It isn’t just Lady Slane who has made compromises, been affected by her life: we see her recluse possible other life love and the choices he made, her landlord, her agent.

By the by, speaking of other people- It really is a novel populated by great characters. Edith, Genoux the maid, (oh, ps, if you don’t speak French- there are many lines of untranslated French spoken by this character- you can get by without it, but just so you know), the agent, her sons, her horrid daughter Carrie- they’re all recognizable and living in some way. I will say here that one of the things that might bother some people about the novel is its concentration on “rich, white lady problems: Vita herself brings that up when Lady Slane hears Genoux’s story, for the first time in the sixty years she’s been with the woman- she never asked! In 1930, it was hard not to be conscious that there were much bigger problems with the world. I kind of almost wish she hadn’t brought it up, though. Which sounds awful, but- she only brings it up at the very end, and you can tell that it’s in sort of a guilty way, like someone had just said to her, “I wish I had had these problems!” and she felt bad. I wish she had either brought it up much earlier to weave it into her tale or left it out entirely so we could journey with Lady Slane- and not worry that we really should be reading someone else’s story. I don’t know. That bothered me.

It is a regretful novel to a certain extent, and perhaps even a novel that could be taken to be making an argument for a withdrawl from life- Lady Slane does spend an awful lot of time regretting the time and self that other people took from her over the course of her life, with not much acknowledgement of the fact that she’s lived what many other people would consider to be a very full life in many respects. VSW’s answer to that is this:

“and she thought, if only I were young once more, I would stand for all that was calm and contemplative, opposed to the active, the scheming the striving the false- yes, the false, she exclaimed… and then trying to correct herself, she wondered whether this were not merely a negative creed, a negation of life, perhaps even a confession of insufficient vitality; and came to the conclusion that it was not so for in contemplation (and also in the pursuit of the one chosen avocation which she had had to renounce) she could pierce a to a happier life than her children who reckoned things by their results and activities”

I also struggle with whether I think this is merely a negative creed, and how much one could miss out on following these ideas- but honestly I think VSW struggled with this herself. As she wrote this book she herself was falling in love again and embarking on yet another ill-advised torrid affair: striving, active, needing, desiring. What is worth more? Difficult to say.

But either way, this novel is about a woman who ultimately does get the chance to come back to herself before the end, which she does in a splendid and engaging fashion. I don’t know about you, but I think that is a triumphant, hopeful ending.

Look, I'm not saying this novel is genius or anything, it certainly has its problems, the magic is certainly quieter than the great novels of this era, and I'll even admit that there's a certain amount of "read this at the right time" in my opinion of it. But it is a novel will speak to many people for many different reasons, and for that, it deserves to be more widely read than it is now.

[Georgia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would make a great play. Just two interior sets: a plush living room and a modest one. The lead is a woman in her late eighties. An elderly Frenchwoman and three old men are her counterparts. The rest are the woman's "children" all are of, or nearing, retirement and "counting" (note my choice of word) on an inheritance. One young female comes in briefly at the beautiful end. That's it. Come on theatre groups, put this novel on stage.

Comic, tragic, and with a message that's as relevant today as when it was written nearly a century ago. Live your life. It's never too late.

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

“She wondered which wounds went deeper: the jagged wounds of reality, or the profound invisible bruises of the imagination?” - Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent

I loved this book, one of the best novels I’ve read so far this year. Former Vicereine, Lady Deborah Slane, is not your typical protagonist. She is 88 years old and is recently widowed after a marriage of 70 years. Lady Slane decides to live the independent life she had always dreamed of, much to the chagrin of her snobby children. She moves to a small cottage far from her children and thinks back on her youth, marriage, life as a political hostess, and motherhood.

Despite all the wealth and opulence in her life, her children and her dutiful husband, Lady Slane’s life hadn’t truly been happy. Her musings show that the things society often says are good for women may not actually be so in reality, and that many women often have to hide their true desires, and have had their youthful desires dashed or pushed to the side:

“Youth is full of hopes reaching out, youth will burn the river and set all the belfries of the world ringing; there is not only love to be considered, there are also such things as fame and achievement and genius—which might be in one’s heart, knocking against one’s ribs, who knows?”

The language in this book was so beautiful and philosophical. I probably have very little in common with Lady Slane, being from a different ethnicity, era, and class; yet I was able to put myself in her shoes. It was quite the experience.

It was a contemplative novel and there was a lot of wisdom in the pages:

“Nothing earns respect so quickly as letting your fellows see that you are a match for them. Other methods may earn you respect in the long run, but fir a short-cut there is nothing like setting a high valuation on yourself and forcing others to accept it. Modesty, moderation, consideration, nicety—no good; they don’t pay.”

This was a good book to read on International Women’s Day. Because of its content, it made me dwell on what it must feel like for a woman having to sacrifice her dreams for a husband and motherhood. Perhaps not so common in the West nowadays, but in many other parts of the world this is still the case. Women getting forced into a certain role when perhaps they aren’t ready, or they are interested in pursuing a different path is tragic.

Recommended to fans of Elizabeth Von Armin.

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this novel quite a bit. It is set in the UK in 1931. A woman close to 90s, after her esteemed-by-many husband, Viceroy Henry Slane, dies, chooses to live in a little house with her maid rather than live with her sons and daughters, who secretly view her as an elderly wife who is mourning her husband and who will die soon. We meet several characters who visit her in her house. We are privy to her thoughts as she reminisces on her past years. For me to reveal more would be to reveal what I liked so much about the novel. Better for a reader to come upon that themselves.

But I will say that I feel glad that at least in 2023 and with at least some women, in at least some parts of this world, they have a chance to live their life the way they want it, and not be forced into a role as wife/mother and no chance of a life outside of being a wife and mother. The book I read before this one — Phoebe Junior by Mrs. Oliphant (Chronicles of Carlingford Series) also had that as one of its themes... in terms of the lack of choices women had...it was set in the mid-1800s in England and in which women received an inferior education to that of the male, and their only opportunities in life were to get married (or be a spinster).

This was a relatively quick read and enjoyable to read. Thought-provoking.

Another Virago (Modern) Classic. Hard to go wrong with them. 🙂 🙃 😉

Reviews:
• With a review from 1931 (Indianapolis Star-Sun) to boot! https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/b...
• https://bookertalk.com/all-passion-sp...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2011/...
• https://theaustralianlegend.wordpress...

[Quo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent is a deftly written novel that seems extremely expressive of both a way of life now long gone, as well as of an older woman wistfully looking back at her life with a complex mixture of joy & sorrow.


There are passages that are quite captivating, akin in a way to Virginia Woolf, with whom Ms. Sackville-West shared both an association via the Bloomsbury group (though not as a primary figure) and an intimate relationship. The author may be better-known for her work with the gardens at Sissinghurst in Kent, a ruined castle she worked to restore & for her bond with Virginia Woolf but All Passion Spent is an exceptional novel.

We read of a life lived at the upper end of British Society when the Raj was still firing on all of its cylinders and when the main character served as Vicerine, the wife of the Viceroy of India, the colonial crown jewel, with her husband Henry Holland, First Earl of Slane, serving as Viceroy. In fact, everything we hear about "Lady Slane" is referenced in terms of her husband, who has just died at 94 but who is detailed as someone who had a "brilliant university career, a seat in parliament at a young age, a man of humor, suavity, courteous, charm, great common sense"--all of which no one could deny.

However, he was also a "hedonist, a humanist, a philosopher, sportsman, scholar & someone born with a truly adult mind". Apparently, Lord Slane somehow always managed to see both sides of an issue, certainly a rare quality in any age. Oh, & let's not forget that he also served for a time as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

But just where does being a widow to all of that leave Lady Slane? We are told that her 6 children & the spouses of the ones who are married have not taken Lady Slane as anything except an incompetent appendage to her late husband, as we infer may also have been the case with her now-deceased spouse.

She listened well & by almost always remaining silent, Lady Slane, "although inarticulate, never made a foolish remark." There is however Lady Slane's daughter Edith, someone who has never left home & who seems to go against the grain of her siblings & also her brother "Kay", who seems rather aloof from the rest of the family & from life itself, or so it seems.

The beauty of this book lies in the way it details a transformation of the widow, who in her late 80s begins to chart a path of her own, deciding to go off to live in Hampstead, rather than spend periods of time with each of her children, for we are told that Lord Slane was not a wealthy man & has not left sufficient funds for his widow to retain the lifestyle she was accustomed to.

At this point in her life, Lady Slane doesn't fancy spending time with anyone under 70 & isn't very keen on her children either, with the possible exception of Edith, who has cared for her as she aged & Kay.

After the move to a Hampstead estate she has long fancied & which has not been tended very well by an eccentric older man who proudly declares that he is both the agent for & the owner of the place, Lady Slane reminisces about the day when she passed from being a carefree girl to being the wife of a man who was moving to "the sphere when where people marry, beget & bear children, bring them up, give orders to servants, pay income tax, understand about dividends" & other tasks, who was now proposing to her.

What was a poor girl to do when a man of great means & considerable potential invites her to be his bride? But now, 70 years later & for the first time since her marriage, there was nothing else to do..."except lie back against death & examine life."

She saw herself as a young girl beside the lake. She wore the flounced & feminine muslins of 1860. Her hair was ringleted & one ringlet fell softly against her neck, with all the appearance of an engraving from some sentimental keepsake. Yes, that was she, Deborah Lee, not Deborah Holland, not Deborah Slane.

The old woman closed her eyes, the better to hold the vision. The old woman beheld the whole of adolescence, as one would catch a petal in the act of unfolding; dewy, wavering, virginal, eager, blown by generous but shy impulses, as timid as a doe peeping between the tree trunks, as light-footed as a dance waiting in the wings, as soft & scented as a damask rose--yes that was youth, hesitant as one on an unknown threshold, yet ready to run her breast against a spear.

The old woman looked closer; she saw the tender flesh, the fragile curves, the deep & glistening eyes, the untried mouth, the ringless hands and tried to catch some tone of her voice but the girl remained silent, walking as though behind a wall of glass. She was alone. The meditative solitude was a part of her very essence. Whatever else might be in her head, it was certainly not love. Lady Slane was in the fortunate position of seeing into the heart of the girl who had been herself.

Her thoughts were of nothing less than escape & disguise; a changed name, a travestied sex & freedom in some foreign city--schemes on a par with a boy about to run away to sea. Deborah, in short, at the age of 17, had determined to become a painter.

However, it seems that the idea of becoming an artist was merely an idle thought, a conceptual alternative to the life she lived, for never had she picked up a brush or considered a palate of colors. Sackville-West tells the reader that Lady Slane had been "thwarted as an artist" but I don't take this in a literal sense. Rather, "that self was hard to get at and there were many selves."

Thus, after 70 years of marriage, the erstwhile Deborah Lee launches a belated search for her identity, becomes contradictory to her children & seems to want merely to simplify her life.

She gives away the family jewels without much thought & in fleeing to Hampstead, seeks a kind of solitude, while at the same time reaching out to the elderly master of the property, Mr. Bucktrout, to a well-regarded general contractor, Gosheron, who helps her to refurbish her rooms at the estate & in turn is sought out by a man named FitzGeorge, a fellow of similar age who met Lady Slane briefly in India & has retained an elevated sense of her importance in his life for 60 or so years, only now reaching out to the newly widowed woman who has served as a kind of "immortal beloved" for him.

This quartet of elderly folks take great comfort in each other & the manner in which a 40 year old author managed to paint them so sensitively is stunning! There is another main character, a French servant, Genoux, who has cared for Lady Slane for 70 years, accompanying her & family all around the world, while always remaining at something of a distance, as class & etiquette dictate.

In time, her great granddaughter, also named Deborah, makes an appearance & serves as a foil for Lady Slane, entailing some very uplifting moments, especially given the age difference, as they find that they are like-minded in ways that both find essential. Each of these characters in their own way serves as a catalyst for an elderly woman newly in search of her re-imagined self. She is...

trying to remember, trying to put her hand on something that remained tantalizingly just around the corner, just out of reach. Something has knocked against her as a clapper might knock against a cracked old bell in a disused steeple. No music traveled out over the valleys, but within the steeple itself a tingling vibration arose, disturbing the starlings in their nests & causing the cobwebs to quiver.

Sackville-West's All Passion Spent is filled with such lilting, beautiful prose & I consider the book a small literary treasure. The author tells us that "Henry by the compulsion of his love had cheated her (Lady Slane) of her chosen life, a life in touch with the greater world & that it was a choice between masculine lordliness & abject feminine submission."



Personally, I found the novel much more complexly interesting than that summation. There is also one more plot twist near novel's end that I hesitate to reveal, while at the same time highly recommending All Passion Spent.

*Within my review is a photo of a young Vita Sackville-West & another image of the formal garden at Sissinghurst in Kent, U.K. **There is also a Masterpiece Theater filmed version of the novel from 1986, with Dame Wendy Hiller as Lady Slane that I highly recommend as well.

[Lynne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update - 23 May 2020

The DVD with Wendy Hiller was absolutely, absolutely excellent. I loved it so much that I watched it three times.

The attention to detail was remarkable and the DVD more or less stayed with the book, apart from the omission of Charles, one of the sons. But then he was such a boring, characterless individual anyway, so it as just as well.

I just cannot say how impressed I was with Wendy Hiller. She was stunning. Considering that she was seventy-five when she played Lady Slane , who was eigthty-eight in the book. The way she moved, her dress sense, the way she tentatively touched Mr Fitz-George's shoulder, a man who had loved her for around sixty years, just moved me so much. The life in India and then back to England, beautifully portrayed. The togetherness between the acting of this couple was superb and I just didn't want the film to end.

It is so rare in this thoroughly unpredictable life of ours to find such sheer beauty in a work of art. All of the cast were splendid and the French maid, Genoux, I especially adored. Her final statement in this work of art was extraordinary.

In all, I normally love a book more than a film but it is not the case here. I guess, I was just so carried away that I accidentally ordered two copies of this DVD. Such is life in this magnificent universe of ours even though we have a great problem with Covid-19. Still being touched by the hand of grace will ensure that all will be well.

I think that the BBC productions are remarkable!

And finally, thank you Vita Sackville-West for giving me such pleasure!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Through my love of browsing I serendipitously came across a DVD with Wendy Hiller today and immediately purchased it. I did so love this book and hope that the film comes up to my expectations.

* * * * * * * * * *

I was so taken with this book that I found it quite impossible to write a review on it.

But all I can say is that it is wonderful and so evocative of the time.

Vita Sackville-West has always fascinated me. Ever since I read The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, I have been intrigued by her personality. She was indeed quite unusual for the period in which she lived. Plus Virginia Woolf's own Letters (comprising six volumes) cover her friendship with Vita Sackville-West.

I went to her gardens in Sissinghurst, Kent many years ago. There was one section in the gardens where all the flowers were white. I've never forgotten that!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that's embarrassing: after nominating this book for a group read on the theme of regret, I find myself DNF'ing this meandering and unfocused tale.

VS-W sets up a great premise: a widow who has subordinated herself to her career politician husband and her mostly unpleasant family, at the age of 88, decides to put herself first. Only nothing really progresses from there.

We see lots of pointed manoeuvering and outrage from her family who, at various points, reminded me of the families in Agatha Christie and Jane Austen. Then lots of flashback memories from Lady Slane and her musing on her life.

I get the sense there is to be a resolution in the final third but I'm giving up before getting there. The fact is VS-W just isn't that good a novelist: her pacing is off, I don't believe in any of the characters, and where I expected charming eccentricity like an older version of the Mitford women, that's just not what I'm getting. The verve and wit of Vita's letters never make an appearance.

Instead, this book feels amorphous and plodding. A fairly radical advocacy for female autonomy and a level of healthy selfishness depends on elite social status and privilege. This is the same world as Virginia Woolf, of course, but without VW's acute intelligence and literary artistry, I was left floundering for some kind of narrative thread to hold onto and, frankly, was bored.

[Blaine DeSantis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this is just a marvelous book that was written back in 1931. It is short (174 pages) but is a wonderful read that you can linger over due to all the issues it raises. Divided into 3 parts, it deal with the last year in the life of Lady Slane who is 88 when her husband (a great British diplomat) dies. During that year she questions her life, her love, passion (talent) denied, her children and how she wishes to live out the last year of her life. Very insightful, and really made me think about her fictional life and how it crosses with my life. While it is written by a lady whose main character is a lady it is easy to try and pigeonhole this as a ladies book. Not really. To me it is a book on reflection on life. In many ways this compares with books such as Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell and The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner. Superb books that make a reader think and discuss the issues of life and aging.
Please read my full review of this and other books at www.ViewsonBooks.com

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quote by Vita Sackville-West:
“Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, When I have no engagements written on my block, When no one comes to disturb my inward peace, When no one comes to take me away from myself And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle, A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection, Being so contrived that it takes too long a time To get myself back to myself when they have gone."

Vita says this, but it could just as well have been Lady Slane, the story's central protagonist, or me! Do lines such as these hit a chord within you too?

Here follow two more quotes:

"I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal."

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop."

I believe these lines give readers a feel for Vita’s mode of expression. Perhaps I should mention that the quotes are not from this book. I find her writing alternately poignant and elusive. Lines brims over with irony. Vita’s points of view resonate throughout. The writing is reason enough to read this book.

The plot, what is that about? An elderly woman becomes a widow. She’s eighty-eight when her husband of ninety-four dies. She’s been the dutiful wife of a prominent public figure, the Viceroy of India and a member of the British House of Lords. She’s devoted her life to him and the raising of their six kids, now all in their sixties. It’s 1931. When she married, she toyed with the idea of being an artist. Nothing came of that. She had loved Lord Slane, and he had come first, as was the norm then. Now with his death, she takes her chance and tactfully but adamantly declines further control of her life by others, particularly her own kids. This isn’t to say she now intends to become a painter, but what remains of her life, she wants full control over! Take one guess how her kids react. We observe what each says and does. You will laugh and you will cringe, well at least I did. I could easily relate, given that my own husband recently died after fifty years of marriage!

Dialogues are pitchperfect. What the characters say is what people of such personality types do say. Lady Slane’s kids are all in their sixties. They’re not babies anymore! What falls from their lips and what they do has you nodding in recognition. One son and his wife are so parsimonious! The eldest son is so correct and proper, but intelligent, thoughtful or kind? Scarcely! That’s another matter! The youngest daughter is sixty, kind but so easily flustered, no one takes her seriously. The reactions of Lady Slane’s kids are what I like best about this book, and how their mom says exactly how she feels about each. She can sum each one up in a word or two! Vita Sackville-West demonstrates a real understanding of people and family relationships! What is said is straightforward, honest and true. I love this.

Both Lady Slane and I are struck by younger people's incessant habit of rushing around at top speed!

For me, Lady Slane’s reaching out toward independence is less convincing. Nor does the longtime friendship with her French maidservant living beside her since her marriage, ring true. Lady Slane knows too little about her! I fail to understand why she has waited so long to take an interest in her!

On completing the book, I’m struck by the thought that Vita Sackville-West is pushing readers to acknowledge how seldom life is viewed through anything but one’s own perspective. People are rarely capable of comprehending another’s point of view. Me included…….

I listened to this read by Britta Nilzén, after first being translated from English to Swedish by Irja Carlsson. The narration is very good except when French is spoken, for exampley by Lady Slane’s maidservant. Then it’s practically incomprehensible! Otherwise, the narration is very good, so I’m still giving it four stars.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I have considered the eyes of the world for so long that I think it is time I had a little holiday from them. If one is not to please oneself in old age, when is one to please oneself? There is so little time left!"

Lady Slane is yet another recently widowed character who has now become a 'problem' to her children. She however, surprises them by having plans of her own and decides she would like to go and live by herself (and her French maid), in Hampstead. She doesn't want visits from anyone younger than her. She has, like many other characters, spent her life sacrificing her own wants and needs to those of her husband and children, now it is time for her to live for herself.

This one has been languishing in my bookcase for years. I don't know why I left it so long but I'm very glad I finally got to it. Now I should pick up the others I bought, being sure I'd like them.

[Antoinette · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I started getting into this book, I thought “ this book is igniting a passion in me.” A passion for the written word and its power. I started to feel that tingling that tells me this book is going to be special. Did this hold through for the whole book ? Sadly, no!

The writing drew me in right away. The author certainly has a talent with words.

“ What a queer thing appearance was, and how unfair. It dictated the terms of people’s estimate throughout one’s whole life.”

In Part 1, Lady Slane’s husband has died , and at the age of 88, she decides she will do what she wants for once. Her adult children are appalled as they had already planned the rest of her life for her.

“...I have considered the eyes of the world for so long that I think it is time I had a little holiday from them.”

In Part 2, Lady Slane is in Hampstead, reflecting on her life. It was sad to see how much of her life was shaped by her husband, and her dreams were left by the wayside. At the age of 88, she of course was aware that her time was running out.

“Then, she had been face to face with life, and that had seemed a reason for a necessity for the clearest thinking; now, she was face to face with death, and that again seemed a reason for the truest possible estimate of values, without evasion. The middle period alone had been confused.”

What I loved about this book was the writing. I loved watching Lady Slane find herself at last. With her new acquaintances, she became her youthful self.
Why I did not give this book a 5 were the long soliquays, which made my mind drift off.

This is a quintessential English book of the Bloomsbury group.
If you like reflective books, you will enjoy this one. The family interactions were enjoyably funny. I do think the title is perfect for this book!

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction, by Joanna Lumley

--All Passion Spent

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know exactly why the fiction written by women in the 1930s appeals to me so much, but it does. I knew from the very first page that I was going to enjoy this little novel. The author, Vita Sackville-West, was a choice of the Dead Writers Society in the first quarter of this year.

It is the story of a person who got chivvied into a life that she didn't really want, preventing her from following her heart to the life of a painter. When she is in her late eighties, her husband dies, leaving her finally to do what she actually wants for what remains of her life. It turns out that she wants her family to leave her alone. Against their advice, she rents a small house and proceeds to do what she wants, which seems to be largely assessing her life and visiting with new friends.

In actuality, Lady Slayne has led a privileged existence, protected from difficulty by her husband and his money. Her inability to pursue her art career has been the only impediment in her life, but that has blighted her happiness. So she feels perfectly fine about arranging her final years just as she chooses. Why shouldn't she?

It's difficult to avoid thinking of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, with the argument that creative women need space of their own to practice their craft. This author, Vita Sackville-West, had an intimate relationship with Woolf and they undoubtedly discussed this very subject. I've never felt very motivated to read Woolf, but this book may have changed my mind on that prejudice.

If you enjoy this book, might I suggest that you also try Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April and/or Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life was that lake, thought Lady Slane, sitting under the warm south wall amid the smell of peaches; a lake offering its even surface to many reflections, gilded by the sun, silvered by the moon, darkened by a cloud, roughened by a ripple; but level always, a plane, keeping its bounds, not to be rolled up into a tight, hard ball, small enough to be held in the hand, which was what people were trying to do when they asked if one’s life had been happy or unhappy.

Leonard Woolf — who was Vita Sackville-West’s publisher at Hogarth Press — called All Passion Spent her best novel, and it’s kind of hard to talk about this book without talking about the Woolfs. Sackville-West began writing this in 1930, while in a relationship with Virginia Woolf (a period considered the artistic peak of each of the women due to their positive influence on one another), and not only would Woolf base the main character of Orlando on the androgynous Sackville-West, but All Passion Spent has been called the fictionalisation of the ideas in Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own. To that end: All Passion Spent is about an eighty-eight-year old woman, newly widowed, who, after seventy years of supporting her husband’s illustrious career and domestic happiness (at the sacrifice of her own artistic ambitions), decides, to her children’s horror, to retire to some rooms of her own and live out her days as she pleases. This novel is philosophically sophisticated as the Lady Slane considers her life and its meaning and it is gently humorous as the underestimated old woman takes her pompous children down a peg or two. Not a long read, there’s a lot to this and I found it all delightful.

Of course, she would not question the wisdom of any arrangements they might choose to make. Mother had no will of her own; all her life long, gracious and gentle, she had been wholly submissive — an appendage. It was assumed that she had not enough brain to be self-assertive. “Thank goodness,” Herbert sometimes remarked, “Mother is not one of those clever women.”

After the death of their eminent father (onetime Viceroy of India, British Prime Minister, peer of the realm), the six Holland children — “old, black ravens”, not one below sixty — gathered to decide what to do about Mother. After determining that they would sell the family home and use the proceeds to offset the costs of shifting her around between them, they were flabbergasted to discover that Mother had her own ideas, and indeed, had already set in motion a plan to go see a man about a small house in Hampstead she had admired thirty or so years earlier. Moving there with just the French maid (only two years younger than Her Ladyship) who had served her throughout her marriage, and with instructions for the children to not visit too often (and for her exhausting grand- and great-grandchildren not to visit at all), Lady Slane settles into a life of contented contemplation. She makes a couple of unlikely new friends (her landlord and an eccentric associate of her son’s who had known the Vicereine in India), and the walks that they take around Hampstead Heath — the setting for all their best conversations — apparently echo the frequent walks that Vita and Virginia took upon those same pathways as they discussed the ideas that would become their most famous works.

Sackville-West insisted that she was not a feminist (stressing that women’s rights were human rights and universal human rights were what interested her), and in this novel that is more about ideas than plot, she gives her characters some very interesting conversations about privilege and duty and being true to oneself:

”You really mustn't talk as though my life had been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would covet: position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. I had nothing to complain of — nothing.”

“Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered. Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift. You know that as well as I do. Frustrated, he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape. All meaning goes out of life, and life becomes existence — a makeshift. Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation. You were too young, I suppose, to know any better, but when you chose that life you sinned against the light.”

For her own part, Sackville-West refused to sin against the light: Entered into an open marriage (that allowed her and her husband to pursue same-sex relationships as they pleased), Vita refused to play the role of smiling hostess in support of her husband’s diplomatic and political careers; insisting on an independent life of her own to pursue her writing and gardening and love affairs. Although she does not judge Lady Slane too harshly here for the conventional roles that she assumed, All Passion Spent ends on the hopeful note of a great-granddaughter who decides to break her engagement, and future hopes of becoming a duchess, in order to pursue her own artistic ambitions. This was a charming and thoughtful novel and I end by acknowledgeing the debt I owe to the Vitas and Virginias who committed to paper a different vision of feminine potentiality.

[Chari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Estoy por ponerle las cinco estrellas si es por lo mucho que lo disfruté.

[Ilana (illi69) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“On the contrary," said Lady Slane, "that is another thing about which I've made up my mind. You see, Carrie, I am going to become completely self-indulgent. I am going to wallow in old age. No grandchildren. They are too young. Not one of them has reached forty-five. No great grandchildren either; that would be worse.  I want no strenuous young people, who are not content with doing a thing, but must needs know why they do it. And I don’t want them bringing their children to see me, for it would only remind me of the terrible  effort the poor creatures will have to make before they reach the end of their lives in safety. I prefer to forget about them. I want no one about me except those who are nearer to their death than to their birth.

These things—the straw, the ivy frond, the spider—had had the house all to themselves for many days. They had paid no rent, yet they had made free with the floor, the window, and the walls, during a light and volatile existence. That was the kind of companionship that Lady Slane wanted; she had had enough of bustle, and of competition, and of one set of ambitions writhing to circumvent another. She wanted to merge with the things that drifted into an empty house, though unlike the spider she would weave no webs. She would be content to stir with the breeze and grow green in the light of the sun, and to drift down the passage of years, until death pushed her gently out and shut the door behind her.”

When Lady Slane’s husband passes away, well into his 90s, her six patronising and self-important children and their spouses decide she must spend the rest of her life dividing her time between each couple, living in their homes and contributing to the expenses in a manner which will be amply profitable to them, while presenting this to her as being in the interest of maintaining her correct place in society. But 88 year-old Deborah, Lady Slane, who has always effaced herself behind her husband, a former Viceroy of India and a member of the House of Lords, has always dreamed of becoming an artist, and decides otherwise; she will move into her own house in Hampstead, thank you very much, and furthermore, she will only invite elderly people like herself who have similar priorities and share her views on life. Now that she is closer than ever to dying, she wants nothing to do with the constant striving and ambitions of the young. Having installed herself in her new home, she makes a very good friend of the cottage’s owner, the elderly and very thoughtful Mr Bucktrout, who sets about renovating and redecorating the house at his own expense so she can live in greater comfort. Then a vague acquaintance, a man from her distant past in India, Mr FitzGeorge, who has become a millionaire and an eccentric, renown for his collection of fine art, reintroduces himself into her life. He has always been in love with the once beautiful Lady Slane, and they form a special kind of friendship which will influence the rest of her ladyship’s few remaining years.

Vita Sackville-West, among her many passionate love affairs, was very famously a lover and companion to Virginia Woolf. Here she borrows a theme which the two women and their friends no doubt often discussed together, and explores how a woman who has money at her disposal, and access to more than a mere Room of Her Own, might choose to live out her final years, when she has the wherewithal and mental fortitude to free herself of social constraints imposed on her by her own familial obligations—the most binding of all.

The back story about the close friendship between these two authors was far from my mind when I chose to read this book, so it turned out to be a very timely read so shortly after revisiting Woolf’s A Room of One's Own in September of 2012. I loved and took comfort in these reflections on old age, and how one might eventually look back on life from the distance of a great many decades, having acquired completely different priorities from those of earlier years. I also found it strange and intriguing that these reflections resonated perfectly with my own at that stage in my life, albeit my then 93-year old friend Liselotte considered me to be a mere young girl, when I was still in my early 40s, and as all things are relative, I suppose she was right.

I found this review again on LibraryThing, surprised I hadn't posted it here yet, but then seeing it needed some editing, and decided to revise it a little before publishing it here on Goodreads. What led me to it in the first place is when I noticed today I'd failed to catalogue a green Virago edition of this book I'd purchased in 2017 from a UK seller. Failing to catalogue a book can have serious consequences for me, such as purchasing more copies of similar editions (unbearable drama!). When I already have the title in other edition, which really is an inexcusable waste of time and money and space. I thumbed through it to check on the quotes from the book I had only transcribed from the audio version previously, which of course had many small mistakes, mostly do do with punctuation, but also a word contraction or two, which I attribute to the wonderful interpretation of Dame Wendy Hiller for the audiobook. I reflected that this novel has gained further relevance to me in these six or seven years later, as I was rereading passages from the book. Most people my age are still running around, overachieving as a part of their daily routine, but my lifestyle is one of a disabled pensioner because of lifelong health problems which grew in intensity and made me unable to have a normal life anymore, whatever that is anyway. I've had to make my own choices and surmount many people's expectations—people in my own family especially, had to disappoint them to put my priorities and my wellbeing first, without consulting anyone once I knew what their own ideas on the matter were, just as Lady Slane does in the novel. And just as my beloved Liselotte did, in her own way, may she rest in peace now. In that way, the novel is ageless, and Lady Slane is ageless. She lives the life that any woman should be able to live. She lives a life of her own choosing. I suppose this is a book to grow old and comfortable with, a literary equivalent to Lady Slane's house in Hampstead which is always being improved upon and gets prettier and cozier over time. Though of course life is full of surprises. Some are good, some are not. Some just are.

I look forward to reading All Passion Spent again very soon.

The title of the novel comes from the last line of John Milton’s Samson Agonistes, a portion of which Sackville-West used as the book’s epigraph:

324. From 'Samson Agonistes

ALL is best, though we oft doubt,
What th' unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft he seems to hide his face,
But unexpectedly returns
And to his faithful Champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns
And all that band them to resist
His uncontroulable intent.
His servants he with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind all passion spent.

[Mariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

She could go on, for a little, secretly continuing to be herself.
Lady Slane, born to elderly children and their too unsafe from death's hand, dying a little girl, a fawn lovingly caught in its own spotlights standstill, the spawn, the question to do you love me yes. My overwhelming feeling about Mrs Henry Holland was that when the voice of the novel describes her as sweet and stupid it was she herself that breathed this as the sweet and stupid air in her lungs.

I had looked forward to tonight all week. I'm off tomorrow for the holiday. Because I'm off tomorrow, tonight belongs to me. Tomorrow won't be nearly as sweet. I was going to curl up with a good book. I had dearly loved Vita Sackville-West's No Signposts in the Sea. I do not love All Passion Spent. I don't think there was anything about it that I liked. I'm kicking myself. Why couldn't I have picked something else to read?

When Deborah is a young woman she gives herself over to the man who asks her. The book describes her secret self she would keep alive within to feed, to love, to resist losing what she wanted against the tide of duty. If there is anything I have come to know about myself as a reader through writing my reviews on goodreads all of these years it is this: Don't just tell me what everything means. She is thinking this because this means that and because she thought that it also means this other thing. That will lead to this thing happening. Oh yeah, and this other thing: Pretty means absolutely fuck all to me. If you have to constantly write that any character is pretty you are missing the point. Pedestals are wrong. I don't care if the elderly friend of her happy with his hobbyhorse son Kay remained in love with Deborah for decades because he saw her look pretty one damned time. No, no and no. It would have meant more to me to know that he resisted emotional entanglements of any kind by witnessing his restrained interactions with Kay than being told all of it on a platter. Sackville-West never allows them to be themselves. God, that is really boring and just not even a story. A woman in her eighties. If you can't just be yourself without worrying about looking hot when you are eighty what is the point of living? That also defeats the purpose of the "premise" of the book that she finally lives for herself at eighty something when the controlling husband dies. If she is going to be living for herself, as her own person at long last, why is it so damned important what the three old men she rekindles acquaintences with think of her? If it was as in No Signposts in the Sea the freedom of being yourself with another person, who won't think your trivial life is trivial, it would be different. You meet with someone else and can go further. That's beautiful. That's not this book.

This is Deborah's secret self: She is afraid that she isn't worth very much. Oh, how I wish that the pain of a muted life had been felt, had been seen. Her sort of favorite daughter Edith puts herself out there (only I don't see it happen so much as get the narrated treatment again). She will say the wrong thing and fall in society of white sheep. Her mother was never found out and what did it matter, in the end? She longs for an artistic life and never moves a finger or an eye in its direction. It felt more like flattery of a special person she had a passing fancy of. Perhaps when she was a girl someone she admired made a comment in favor of artistic people and the desire got stuck in her head and would catch up on all of her other thoughts. I don't really know how she thinks, for all All Passion Spent is an echo of her thoughts. She doesn't have any special feeling even for the two children she likes best (Kay and Edith). She considers the other bossy children to be like her husband Henry (I never hated the book more than when she is "in love" with him). I don't know if their making assumptions about a person who never spoke up was any worse than the men who made assumptions about her that she wanted them to have. Her kids knew a woman who just did whatever she was told and that was her on the outside to them. Did her inside want anything more than to vaguely wish that she had had time to reflect on what she really wanted? She said yes to his marriage, or rather didn't say no. I get more out of imagining any young woman in her position than I do of this particular woman after reading a whole novel about her. It must be hard to be married to someone with expectations that you live up to who they want you to be. I know that she suffered in over her head parties and it is all in the past. I'm told. The most telling thing about her patterns was that she repeats that Edith and Kay were her favorites for reasons other than that she cared about them. The second time because they weren't Henry's in spirit. It all came out sounding like flattery fulfillment more than anything else. I didn't like that. Her ironic knowing smile when her big britches kids make plans for her she doesn't intend to follow. Well, then don't. But what stopped you before? You, right? Why is the knowing smile about them and never yourself? It was this that made her and the novel appear in cahoots, her enjoyment of being sweet and put upon. It isn't HER fault she doesn't live. As she floats above the ground, her head a hot air balloon.

I guess if there was anything I did like is that the ending is of her eldest daughter Carrie. Her tummy squirming is of being judged by Misters Bucktrout and Gosheron, mommy's ardent admirers. Her self, if one watches oneself in mind like passing by a mirror and see what other see instead. The fear that what they see is not what you want to see is more important than what they really see. They represent her mother and her, the mother she didn't know and will never have again. She must kill it to go on living. I liked that I knew she would have to do this without being told. Last damned page, though. It could have been good to examine the danger of ones secret self. It would be at risk every day in a world of other secret selves walking about. What did that look mean, did she think me silly, I always sound so dumb. But if you don't have the you that is at peace when no one else is around you are doing it wrong. If you can't do it that is important.
I have no intention on visiting with family tomorrow. It would take me ages to recover from it. I would think them true and I would have to read many, many books to forget myself and them (good books). Why would you write about secret selves and have nothing at all about what you have to think about all of the time to survive? I don't know, this whole book reads like some agreed upon system of what everyone is like anyway. Pretty people with titles and houses and suitors and stuff and free time. That's just not true. She loves Henry so much, she didn't know him. But what would she say if it happened more often that he said she was intelligent? How would she feel about him if she could have seen him and he never knew her? No, I just don't like books that talk, talk, talk and don't ask any of the good questions anyway and they never trust you to know the secret selves at all. What would they look like if you met them? Would you ever know they wanted to be something more than they felt they were? Would they even care that you felt those same things too, or dare to dream it? It pisses me off I'm robbed of suspecting it about Edith because she TELLS me she does. (I could have wondered if Kay was so comfortable by himself he didn't worry about the insides of outsides.) I wouldn't like this book even without the other problems for that alone. It really is the most unforgivable book mistake, for me. Don't they know it is where I live. Do they even care?

So for months she had lived intensely, secretly, building herself in preparation, though she never laid brush to canvas, and only dreamed herself away into the far future. She could gauge the idleness of ordinary life by the sagging of her spirits whenever the flame momentarily burnt lower. Those glimpses of futility alarmed her beyond all reason. The flame had gone out, she thought in terror, every time it drooped; it would never revive; she must be left cold and unillumined.

[S©aP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le prime 45 sono pagine di ingresso. Vicenda narrata e indispensabile costruzione di atmosfera, avrei capito dopo. Appena più lunghe di quanto la mia attesa fosse disposta a sostenere, in questo periodo. Stavo per lasciare, e riprendere in futuro, archiviando tuttavia nella mente una traduzione gradevole, lineare, in un italiano molto elegante e sobrio, vario e scorrevole. Ma l'incontro con i libri, si sa, non è casuale (o, sovente, non dà l'impressione di esserlo). In un pomeriggio di pioggia nordica, ho deciso di leggere una pagina in più e questo è diventato il migliore romanzo che ho letto, e leggerò, nel 2011. Senza ombra di dubbio. La vicenda, il contesto, anche letterario, e l'argomento, sono datati. Hanno una loro collocazione precisa e vi sono fiumi di saggi esplicativi, cui attingere per commentarla. Ma i concetti che vi si esprimono, e la delicatezza con cui sono declinati, portano a mio avviso il marchio di una modernità assoluta e incontestabile, oggi più che mai. Di un futuribile, direi, e cristallino coraggio sociale. O quello di una scomoda universalità, che forse relega questo scritto in una retrovia per poche menti serene. Non so. Queste, però, sono riflessioni a freddo. Voglio che qui emerga, invece, la sorpresa continua e crescente che ho provato nel rapimento dei concetti. Il piacere; puro. Lettura; rilettura; riflessioni libere; annotazioni. Un tripudio. E la sottile malinconia di fine libro; pure nella certezza che una sola parola in più avrebbe rovinato, annacquandolo, questo piccolo capolavoro. Ma anche l'equilibrio perfetto del monologo interiore; la cristallina sensibilità d'autrice (che, circa trentenne, descrive consapevolezze di un'età che non le appartiene); la lucidità spietata con cui i caratteri deprecabili, le attitudini peggiori di alcuni personaggi, non vengono stigmatizzati, bensì lasciati nudi, a denunciare sé stessi; lo stile, impareggiabile (oggi sconosciuto), di un simile atteggiamento, non solo letterario. Infine, e su tutto, la profondità del ragionamento sulla vita. E la meravigliosa condivisione di concetti tanto belli e naturali da definirsi, con imperdonabile errore, o con dolosa superficialità, scontati. Una grandissima lettura.

PS - Vi è, certamente, tutto un discorso sociale da intavolare sul romanzo e sull'autrice; sul circolo di Bloosmsbury e l'amicizia con V.Woolf; sulla condizione sociale delle donne nel primo trentennio del '900; sul ritmo di una narrazione che potrebbe non essere recepito, oggi, e su tanti altri aspetti meno emotivi, più tecnici. Nulla che possa comunque migliorare il gradimento, o aumentare l'eventuale indifferenza, verso questo prodotto purissimo, e autonomo, di letteratura.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself.”

This quietly intense novel tells of an old woman making changes to her life after the death of her husband. They had had everything society at the time thought important: money, position and family. She discovers, however, that she had always wanted something else. It’s a story of aging and the meaning of life. It’s about sacrifice and character and honesty. It is profound, but it reads easy and light, almost like a short story.

I knew of Vita Sackville-West only from her connection with Virginia Woolf. Now I’m especially curious about her poetry. Some lines in this were gorgeous, combining subtle meaning with the beauty of a landscape painting.

“Something had knocked against her as the clapper might knock against a cracked old bell in a disused steeple. No music travelled out over the valleys, but within the steeple itself a tingling vibration arose, disturbing the starlings in their nests and causing the cobwebs to quiver.”

I enjoyed the truths about the artistic nature and I liked the way the character of Lady Slane deals with regret—the focus is on her awareness, not on blame or depression.

And I found it especially comforting that we never really stop discovering things.

[Gattalucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eppure qualcosa la offendeva: quell'insopportabile alterigia maschile, quella gretta remissività femminile.
Dov'era la verità allora? Tiranno d'amore, Henry l'aveva defraudata della vita che si era scelta, ma gliene aveva data un'altra, grandiosa, certo,splendida di mondanità (se le fosse venuta voglia di queste cose) o una vita, alternativamente, che la relegava nella stanza dei bambini. Alla vita di lei, lui aveva sostituito la sua con i suoi interessi; o quelle dei loro figli con le loro potenzialità. Secondo il modo di vedere di Henry, lei doveva lasciarsi assorbire da entrambe con altrettanta gioia. Non gli era mai passato per un istante nel cervello che lei potesse preferire essere semplicemente se stessa.
Una parte in lei si era sottomessa.
Ma la sorte attende beffarda di smascherare Lady Slane negli ultimi giorni della sua esistenza, che aveva pensato di difendere dalla mondanità, dalla avidità dei figli, e dalla energia faticosa della gioventù di nipoti e pronipoti, ritirandosi in campagna lontano da tutti. Ma il passato, quello vero, solo suo, la raggiunge:
“Ma ho avuto tutto quello che molte donne mi invidierebbero: posizione, agi, figli, e un marito che adoravo. Non avevo di che lamentarmi affatto”
“Se non che siete stata defraudata dell'unica cosa che per voi davvero contava...I vostri figli, vostro marito, gli splendori che vi circondavano non erano che altrettanti ostacoli che vi allontanavano da voi stessa. Secondo il suo modo di vedere vostro marito vi ha dato tutto quel che potevate desiderare. Soltanto vi ha uccisa. Gli uomini, in effetti, le uccidono le donne. Almeno alla maggior parte di loro piace essere uccise. Ora siete in collera con me?
No -disse Lady Slane- mi sembra di sentirmi piuttosto sollevata, ora che sono stata scoperta”
Victoria Sackville West, amica-amante di Virginia Woolf: bella la sua riflessione sul ruolo delle donne nella società, la loro libertà, i fili invisibili ma tenaci degli obblighi, e del controllo che riescono a esercitare sulle scelte della loro vita.
Parla poco di vecchiaia, come invece potrebbe sembrare. Parla di donne. E lo fa con stile e dolcezza.
Una piccola perla inaspettata

[Blixen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scriveva Nick Hornby: " A volte un libro non può proprio fare a meno di essere alta letteratura; è impotente contro le proprie complicazioni, perché le idee che contiene mettono alle corde la semplicità espressiva".
Prendiamo questo libro ad esempio, 167 pagine dedicate ad una donna di ottantotto anni e ai suoi ricordi. Si può pensare ad una storia ricca di eventi: la protagonista era stata vice-regina delle Indie, invece gran parte del libro è dedicato ai piccoli piaceri della vita quotidiana ai quali la donna decide di dedicarsi alla morte dell'importante marito. Non è più ricca ed è attorniata da un manipolo di figli aridi e avari. Cosa vuole Lady Slane? Vivere senza costrizioni sociali, con poco denaro attorniata dalla bellezza di incontri puri e sinceri nella natura incontaminata tanto decantata da Constable nei suoi quadri.
Eppure tutti la cercheranno, tutti sentiranno il bisogno di essere amati da questa donna silenziosa, che scava silenzi di ammirazione e stupore negli animi dei protagonisti.
Nel suo animo, invece, resta la tristezza di un passato in cui si è donata solo agli altri, senza avere l'occasione di dedicarsi al suo grande amore: la pittura.
Il matrimonio aveva chiuso tutte le ambizioni, le aveva relegate nei sogni romantici, nelle fantasticherie freudiane alle quali abbandonarsi quando non è richiesta l'attenzione e si può stare in silenzio con se stessi. Ora, ad ottantotto anni ogni passione è spenta, ma con serenità, senza rimpianti dolorosi, perché il suo amore per l'arte, nonostante tutto, ha vivificato ogni singolo giorno della sua vita anche se non è diventata una pittrice.
... quello che mi piace in certe persone, non è che si soffermano morbosamente sul senso della morte, ma che mantengono incessantemente il senso di quello che, secondo loro, è essenziale nella vita. La morte, tutto ben sommato, è un episodio. Anche la vita è un semplice avvenimento. Le cose che intendo io sono al di là dell'una e dell'altra.
A Vita Sackville-West va riconosciuta una grande capacità narrativa, uno stile educato, pulito, aggraziato in cui prevalgono le descrizioni come prospettiva dell'animo, come corollario di un teorema ben tratteggiato. Ma che descrizioni! Che piacere lasciarsi cullare dalle parole e viaggiare tra riflessi di luce e colori cangianti. Il finale lascia un po' perplessi, è un po' lasciato lì, senza cure, ma alla fine tutto il libro ( sia lo stile, sia la prosa in sé) è in perfetta sintonia con la voce della protagonista e con la sua storia.
Un bel libro che alla fine lascia un senso di serenità e fa rimpiangere un tempo in cui solo chi era capace pubblicava libri.

[Marie Saville · Rating 4 out of 5]

"¡Qué alboroto arman las mujeres con el matrimonio!, pensó, y sin embargo, quién podría culparlas, cuando el matrimonio– y sus consecuencias– es la única gran historia de sus vidas. ¿Acaso no es esta la función para la qué se las ha formado, vestido, engalanado, educado —si algo tan parcial puede considerarse educación— protegido, mantenido en la ignorancia, segregado y reprimido; todo ello para que en el momento adecuado puedan ser entregadas, o que ellas mismas entreguen a sus hijas, para la tarea de atender a un hombre?"

En una imponente casa de Londres una familia da el último adiós a un padre y esposo. Lord Slane, ilustre figura del imperio británico, deja seis hijos (a cada cuál más ambicioso) y una recatada y ejemplar viuda. Lady Slane, a sus ochenta y ocho años, ha encarnado el ideal de esposa y madre victoriana durante toda su vida. Complaciente, callada y generosa, nunca ha expresado, ni mucho menos impuesto sus deseos; al menos, hasta ahora. Ante el asombro de sus hijos, que ya se disponen a acogerla en sus respectivas casas, Lady Slane les comunica su deseo de retirarse a una pequeña casa de Hampstead en la que pasar en soledad sus ultimos años.

En la calma de su nuevo hogar, acompañada de su fiel criada Genoux y de encantadores nuevos conocidos, Deborah, rebautizada como Lady Slane, podrá al fin rememorar los momentos clave de su vida. Una vida brillante y perfecta a ojos de los demás, pero en realidad marcada por las imposiciones, el sometimiento y por la renuncia a ser ella misma.

Qué hermoso, y a la vez, que triste contemplar a Lady Slane, descansando en su jardín de Hampstead, mientras se contempla siendo joven de nuevo; llena de sueños y esperanzas. Cuando solo era Deborah Lee y aspiraba a convertirse en pintora. Unos sueños que siguieron acompañándola en silencio, como una nube de mariposas revoloteando a su alrededor, mientras ella se ocupaba en ser la perfecta esposa. 'Toda pasión apagada' es uno de esos libros que dan mucho más de lo que prometen. Un intenso y demoledor momento de lectura, envuelto en una quietud aparente.

Una crítica a la institución del matrimonio victoriano y a la reducción de la mujer al mero papel de esposa y madre,
que se salda con un final absolutamente perfecto entre Lady Slane y la nueva generación de mujeres, encarnada por su nieta.

Me reconcilio pues con Vita Sackville-West, tras la decepción de 'Dark Island' y me quedo con esta frase: "En el crepúsculo que poco a poco iba invadiendo su vida, tenía la sensación de reencontrar las emociones de su alma adolescente".

[Suzanne Stroh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fair Spouse says I am not allowed to while away any more time writing reviews on Goodreads until I tell you about this wise, gentle, funny feminist classic written in 1931 by Vita Sackville-West. Yes, I said "Sackville-West" and "feminist" in the same sentence. The audiobook performance by Wendy Hiller is my favorite of all time. I listened to it again about a year ago, on a trip across the country, and I resented having to get out of my car. The book reads like music. Hiller reads it like she's singing an aria.

Born in the 1860s, Deborah Slane spent most of her life in the company of the upper classes. She also spent it as the wife of a Viceroy, doing her duty. Now it's time for fun--only don't go telling her six uptight children, sexagenarians and septagenarians themselves, all bent on coddling or controlling her, each in the style dictated by his or her temperament. Lady Slane rethinks her life and decides to take drastic action (which is very funny) to live out her days the way she wants and with whom she wishes.

Funny scenes; sharp, witty writing when called for; eccentric and lovable characters; marvelous atmosphere including gorgeous scenes of contemplation and memory painted in light and fragrance; real ideas; and a few surprises. This is some of Vita Sackville-West's warmest, most humane writing (and I include her gardening letters in my assessment). It expresses her outlook and views on most things (especially on marriage) with economy, clarity and relaxed style. Lady Slane is the author's dream partner, as a character, in philosophic enquiry.

Any novel about old age, money-grubbing adult children and a beautiful, artistic woman over eighty risks cloying sentimentality on the one end, horrifying bad taste on the other. This one avoids both ends of the spectrum. In many ways it's a perfect book, often dismissed as a minor novel compared with, say, To The Lightouse by Virginia Woolf. This is better than To the Lighthouse, and it competes well with Mrs. Dalloway, the book that infuses this one. Is that a sacrilege? Well I think it's true. Sackville-West's feminism in All Passion Spent is clearer than anything comparable by Woolf. I feel this more strongly every time I re-read this very re-readable book. If you like dreamy novels to mull over, chapter by chapter, on your walk or in the bath, this book will win your heart.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

”It is terrible to be twenty, Lady Slane. It is as bad as being faced with riding over the Grand National course. One knows one will almost certainly fall into the Brook of Competition, and break one’s leg over the Hedge of Disappointment, and stumble over the Wire of Intrigue, and quite certainly come to grief over the Obstacle of Love. When one is old, one can throw oneself down as a rider on the evening after the race, and think, Well, I shall never have to ride that course again.”

“But you forget, Mr. Bucktrout,” said Lady Slane, delving into her own memories, “when one is young, one enjoyed living dangerously - one desired it - one wasn’t appalled.”

As her biographer Victoria Glendinning notes in my Virago edition to this book, when Vita Sackville-West wrote this story - about an 88 year-old widow who desires to retire from social and even family life - she was, herself, only 38 and “at the height of her own energies”. In some ways it is a mystery that V S-W was able to convey old age so convincingly, but in other ways this book seemed to presage her own gradual withdrawal from social life - and her increasing desire to be left alone at Sissinghurst with her writing and her garden.

This is a delicate book, ruminative and gentle, but not without mischief. I think the premise will appeal to many readers, perhaps especially middle-aged women who are overwhelmed by the demands of their busy lives. Who doesn’t fantasise, at times, about retreating to a small house (in Hampstead, no less!) of one’s own choosing? Who doesn’t desire to be done with all the ambition and struggle of the world?

The book begins with Lord Slane’s death. He has been a Viceroy of India and a Prime Minister. He has been a ‘great man’, consulted and feted, until the end of his life. One of the strongest images of the book is quoted by Glendinning in the introduction, but I think it would have stood out for me even if I had not been alerted to it. “Her love for him had been a straight black line drawn right through her life. It had hurt her, it had damaged her, it had diminished her, but she had been unable to curve away from it.”

Not everyone will be able to identify with a protagonist who feels released by her husband’s death, specifically because she feels that at last she is free to be entirely herself - but this premise (thesis?) had a poignant appeal for me.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Blaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forty four years ago, after my first year of law school, l was working for a law school classmate whose family owned a plot of land on a small island on Lake Champlain. I was the unskilled labour for his project of building a house: painting, digging a trench for a grey water system and carrying supplies from the dock at the other side of the island to our building site. A perfect break from classes in property, torts, contracts and criminal law.

We lived in a large house shared by all the island’s landowners, with one day off each week to go to the nearest city, Burlington, Vermont, for groceries, building supplies and for me, a bookstore. The visits to Burlington were also when I had my first, second, third, etc. tastes of Ben & Jerry’s, then just an ice cream stand operated out of a derelict gas station. I probably met Ben or Jerry, scooping out my ice cream cone, but I didn’t know its significance at the time. The ice cream was excellent. Reading and listening to the University of Vermont radio station (I recall a student announcer describing the composer of Clair de Lune as Claude Duh-bus-cee) were the only entertainment available on the island, and I recall enjoying a book of Henry James’s novellas, a philosophy Quarterly and a Dickens novel.

My friend’s mother visited for several days in the middle of the summer, taking one of the larger rooms in the house with her small dog (John and I were in what had probably been the servants’ quarters), and checking up on the work she was financing. She struck me as wealthy, literate, artistic and very superior. Her name escapes me. She was not impressed with my reading. “No, no, what you must read is Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent. That will tell you far more about life than Henry James … or Dickens, or that … philosophy!”

I didn’t rush to follow her advice, but after these decades I’m glad I’ve had occasion to read West’s novel, which I’m sure is far more understandable to me than it would have at age 21. I’m not quite as derelict as Lady Slane, or Ben and Jerry’s gas station, but a story about looking back at life is more meaningful to me having had my marriage, career and children than it would have been. And the picture of old London, the wisdom and blindness of eminent men, the lives of “club men” and the way one life can “kill” another bring more to me now. The feminism is mild but genuine. I wouldn’t give up James and Dickens for West, but I’m glad to have them all.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prior to reading this novel, all I really knew about Vita Sackville-West was that she inspired Woolf's Orlando. For that reason, I was expecting something rather dashing and romantic. --So you can imagine my initial disappointment when this turned out to be an uneventful book about old people!

This is a quiet, if assertively feminist, work. It isn't quite my own brand of feminism. I kept thinking, "Yes, I see your point, but I can't quite relate to it." It seems to me, there are worse things than a wealthy husband!

I don't normally do a synopsis, but here's the essence of the story: Her lead character Deborah is passively led into a marriage she doesn't want. She secretly resents her husband, because she believes his career stands in the way of her own passion for art, -- a passion she has not pursued in any way. Though described as a devoted wife and mother, Deborah doesn't appear to mourn her husband's passing (at the opening of the story) or to feel any affection for her children, her home, or any other tangible aspect of her life. I can't reveal any more than that, but yeah, what passion spent? This book should be called, All Attachment Averted (says me).

But Vita kept ahead of me! She outsmarted me! She answered my criticisms as quickly as I could form them: Yes, this character is a detached and idle dreamer. Yes, she's very, very privileged. Again and again, she led me right into her trap.

All Passion Spent reflects Woolf's argument for the "androgynous mind". Deborah is too feminine. Her husband, too masculine. This theme echoes throughout the lives of all the book's characters, regardless of actual gender. The very concept of gender is a difficult one to define. I can't say whether Vita achieved this, but I give her credit for even trying.

Beyond that, it's a book about life, death, aging, beauty, and self expression. This book shimmers with startling insights. But it doesn't, to misquote Fitzgerald, turn the light on within my own soul. Or does it?:
"...the children themselves were entirely ignorant, an ignorance which added considerably to Lady Slane's half-mischievous, half-sentimental pleasure, for pleasure to her was entirely a private matter, a secret joke, intense, redolent, but as easily bruised as the petals of a gardenia."

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. After her husband's death, Lady Slane escapes from her controlling children to end her days with her faithful servant Genoux in a rented house in Hampstead. Here she finds peace and friendship with her philosophical landlord. Her children seem only concerned with what other people will think and what is the 'done thing'. Lady Slane wanted to be an artist, this idea was abandoned upon marriage, I was sad that her new found freedom didn't enable her to find an outlet for her artistic expression but it did end with a hint that not all her family would conform to the requirements of their class. The story made it clear that most of her children were really not nice people but it leaves the question who raised them ? I felt sorry for poor Genoux, she seemed unappreciated and taken for granted, she had given up her life too. What happened to her after Lady Slane died ? Genoux is surely the one to feel her death the most. I would like to think Mr Bucktrout will help her.