Home and family

 

    I've been reading Robert Sackville-West's book Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles, a portrait of his ancestral home and his far from ordinary family. Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent, is a calendar house, having - allegedly - 365 rooms, 52 staircases and 7 courtyards spread over 4 acres, but the book is not so much a guide to a building or an account of its changing fabric over the centuries, more a description of a place and the people who, in all sorts of ways, have been bound to it and by it.

    The story begins in 1604 when Thomas Sackville, 1st. Earl of Dorset, acquired a lease on the property, and as generations of Sackvilles follow on down to the present day, and as the house expands and contracts, suffers periods of deterioration and renovation, of shuttered emptiness or the bustle of busy daily life, so the family which occupies it finds its fortunes rising and falling, its wealth conserved or squandered, its members withdrawing and looking inward or living in the public eye.

    Where I think the book really gets into its stride is in the late 1800s when Victoria, mother of Vita Sackville-West comes to Knole. The illegitimate daughter of Lionel, 2nd. Lord Sackville, and Pepita, a Spanish dancer, Victoria was brought up in Paris, attending a convent in the Rue Monceau [a neighbour of the Ephrussis]. A vibrant, strong-willed woman, she was to marry her cousin Lionel, 3rd. Lord Sackville, and have only one child, and she - Vita - who because of her sex would never inherit Knole, loved the house with a passion and 'crystallised' it as "Chevron" in her novel The Edwardians.

    Bypassing Vita, the estate went to her childless cousin Eddy (the model for Davey Warbeck in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love), then again in an indirect line until the author inherited, his birth in 1958 the occasion for much rejoicing including the flying of the Sackville flag from Vita's tower at Sissinghurst.  Since 1946 the house (but not the park or the collections within the building) have belonged to the National Trust, and achieving the necessary balance as tenant/owner/custodian/host is something Robert Sackville-West must do daily. He says this book is his "stamp of territoriality" when his home is as much a public place as a private one. It's an eloquent, expressive mark-making, an appreciation of a remarkable heritage, and a fascinating insight into what connects one to a house. 

Comments

[Violet]

I have this on the self and I don't know WHY I haven't read it yet, because I am a big Vita fan and Knole is such a fabulous place.

[Cornflower]

I've never been to Knole but would love to visit it - and Sissinghurst, too.

[Margaret Powling]

I have visited both Sissinghurst, where Vita and Harold created their world-famous garden, and I have visited Knole, which Vita loved so much yet couldn't inherit, and I have to say that Sissinghurst is my kind of place and Knole isn't - large, yes; historic, yes; awe-inspiring, yes. But my overwhelming impression of Knole - with its ancestral portraits, carved oak, panelling, and furniture - was that is it Very, Very Brown!

[Cornflower]

Wonderful description, Margaret! I shall remember that, if I ever go.

[Dark Puss]

What do you mean if!? It's not like travelling to Tierra del Fuego. Come on, live dangerously and leave Edinburgh for a few days.

Your irritating feline friend. P xx

[Cornflower]

It takes a lot to get me to leave home; I've turned down four or five London invitations in the last month alone.