HYLAND
in no way sundered the couple's passionate devotion and
friendship for one another, documented in their son Nigel
Nicolson's 1973 biography of Vita, Portrait of a Marriage:
Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.
If the mythos of Knole is forever linked to that of Vita
Sackville-West, it is equally notable that the authoress
did not spend all of her sometimes flamboyant adult
life there, for, due to the Salic rules of primogeniture
followed by the Sackvilles, Vita, an only child, did not
inherit Knole upon the death of her father Lionel (1867-
1930), the 3rd Lord Sackville, who bequeathed the estate
instead to his nephew Charles. The wrenching loss of
Knole shadowed Vita her whole life long, and in 1947 she
formally relinquished any claim on the property as part of its
transition to the National Trust: "the signing…nearly broke
my heart, putting my signature to what I regarded as a
betrayal of all the tradition of my ancestors and the house
I loved." One of Vita's most famous books is the classic
English country house chronicle, Knole and the Sackvilles,
John
Miller
