Portrait of a Marriage

Tonight at my book club we discussed Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. The book is listed as authored by Nigel Nicolson. In fact, 2 of the book's 5 chapters are straight from an autobiographical piece by Vita Sackville-West, who was also Nigel's mum.

In his 3 chapters, Nigel keeps telling us how wonderful their marriage was, but I somehow was left unconvinced. It was certainly an unusual relationship. Both of them were bisexual, with strong same-sex leanings, and the physical side of their relationship died out early on. But they did have a lot of shared life together and a deep emotional bond of some kind.

In her 2 chapters, Vita gives an account of her "duality" and tells the story of an intense lesbian affair that threatened her marriage and social standing. Her account appeared only after she died and her son found it in her papers.

For most of their marriage, they followed their druthers
And only had sex with others.