All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West ~ 1931. This edition: Hogarth Press, 1965. Hardcover. 297 pages.

My rating: 8.5/10. Excellent. This book nudges me to remember that I should read more of Vita’s literary work. Her garden writing is already personally much prized, and frequently referred to in my “working” plant nursery library.

*****

An unusual piece of literary fiction about an elderly woman’s examination of her life, and her subsequent emancipation from the expectations of others. The emotional freedom thus obtained only lasts for a very short time, but the satisfaction it engenders both in the protagonist and the reader is quite glorious.

Often classified as an example of feminist literature – the Virginia Woolf parallels and comparisons are de rigueur – this novel transcends that earnest label and is also a very fine piece of story-telling, full of keen observation and humour. Vita Sackville-West was undeniably cynical, but stopped shy of coming across as bitter, at least not in this small gem of a tale.

*****

Henry Lyulph Holland, first Earl of Slane, had existed for so long that the public had begun to regard him as immortal. The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man’s initial handicaps: the brevity of life. To filch twenty years from eternal annihilation is to impose one’s superiority on an allotted programme. So small is the scale upon which we arrange our values. It was thus with a start of real incredulity that City men, opening their papers in the train on a warm May morning, read that Lord Slane, at the age of ninety-four, has passed away suddenly after dinner on the previous evening. “Heart failure,” they said sagaciously, though they were actually quoting from the papers; and then added with a sigh, “Well, another old landmark gone.” That was the dominant feeling: another old landmark gone, another reminder of insecurity. All the events and progressions of Henry Holland’s life were gathered up and recorded in a final burst of publicity by the papers; they were gathered together in a handful as hard as a cricket ball, and flung in the faces of the public, from the days of his “brilliant university career,” through the days when Mr. Holland, at an astonishingly early age, had occupied a seat in the Cabinet, to this very last day when as Earl of Slane, K.G., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., etc. etc. – his diminishing honours trailing away behind him like the tail of a comet – he had drooped in his chair after dinner, and the accumulation of ninety years had receded abruptly into history. Time seemed to have made a little jump forward, now that the figure of old Slane was no longer there with outstretched arms to dam it back …

In Lord Slane’s imposing London house, his elderly widow – of no slight age herself – eighty-eight – contemplates his dead face with “thoughts which would have greatly surprised her children”, while downstairs in the drawing-room the six Slane “children” – rather elderly, with grandchildren of their own – wait for their mother’s inevitable breakdown, and tentatively feel each other out as to how best to arrange for “wonderful Mother’s” immediate future, for of course she will now need to be “stowed away; housed, taken care of.”

When Lady Slane refuses to be “cared for” and instead makes her own arrangements for her future without familial consultation, her offspring are at first shocked, and then, in most cases, highly resentful. Herbert, Carrie, Charles and William are stiff with disapproval; only the awkward family outsider Edith has an inkling that her mother might have more backbone and brain than the others realize; while Kay is most keenly interested in distancing himself from any conflict or fuss; he enjoys his bachelor existence in his flat crowded with his collection of compasses and astrolabes.

Lady Slane distributes her jewelry, her only private asset, with little regard as to fairness; rather she seems faintly amused at the egotistical frailties this gesture reveals among her offspring and their spouses. With only a small pension as income, she rents a small house in Hampstead which she has secretly been desiring to reside in for the past thirty years, to live alone with her elderly French maid, Genoux, who has been with her since her marriage some seventy years ago. She intends to limit her visitors severely:

“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.”

But Lady Slane’s life is not destined to be one of solitude, for she soon attracts a small group of friends, of “followers”. Three elderly men find their way into her life and add richness and a strange variety to her waning days. Mr. Bucktrout, owner of her house, Mr. Gosheron, the builder who has renovated it for her, and millionaire art collector Mr. FitzGeorge, who has retained a deep infatuation with Lady Slane from the time many years ago, when she was the wife of the Viceroy of India (one of Lord Slane’s many prominent postings) and FitzGeorge himself merely one of many anonymous young men who enjoyed the hospitality of the Regency, presided over by the young and very beautiful Deborah Slane.

These three men, along with Genoux and an unexpectedly appearing great-granddaughter, Lady Slane’s namesake Deborah, bring both confusion and reconciliation to Lady Slane’s mind and soul as she strives to put the meaning of her long life into a final context.

The novel ends with Lady Slane’s death, but that is in no way a tragedy, merely an inevitable ending which is kinder than it might have been, and happier than Lady Slane had once anticipated it might be.

*****

Vita Sackville-West portrays her characters with occasional affection and continuous insight mixed with irony. All Passion Spent is short in pages, but dense in thought-provoking passages and situations; love or despise the characters as we may, we find many parallels, often unexpected, between this upper-class “lady” with few “real” problems, and our own less exalted lives. Who has not denied personal ambition at some time or another? Made that difficult compromise between desire and duty? Wished to distance themselves from tiresome people, and be allowed, at the end of one’s days, to sit against the garden wall in the sun and muse?!

Of course, most of us have no Genoux to care for our less delectable functions, to wash and dress us, and minister to our ever-more-demeaning physical failings. If there was one sour note in all of this – and there are several, but this is the main one, to my mind – it was the thoughtless assumption by Lady Slane of Genoux’s infinite capacity for servitude; there is a brief moment of realization and appreciation, but after seventy years together, the servant-mistress position is still firmly in place, with selfishness a prominent quality in Lady Slane’s refusal to fully appreciate Genoux’s parallel existence and to consider her needs and her long-denied desires, whatever those may be.

Very evocative description of the Hampstead house and garden, and of the daily rituals of the elderly Lady Slane as she realizes her last ambition.

A book to re-read. Not without flaws, but those are outweighed by the many excellences of the writer’s narrative and descriptive skills.