Yours Always by Bass Eleanor;

Author:Bass, Eleanor;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER AND VALENTINE ACKLAND

Sylvia Townsend Warner 1893–1978; Valentine Ackland 1906–1969

On Christmas Day 1930 Sylvia Townsend Warner presented her lover Valentine Ackland with a book in which she had inscribed a quotation: ‘I’ll stand by you’. This inscription expressed a sentiment, a promise, that carried the two women through four decades of life together. Yet Sylvia’s commitment was sorely tested by one particular instance of Valentine’s infidelity – her affair with American heiress, Elizabeth Wade White.

Sylvia and Valentine became acquainted in the village of East Chaldon in Dorset, drawn there by the literary community that had grown up around the novelist T.F. Powys. Sylvia, then thirty-six, was scholarly, tall and waspish. In her twenties she had pursued an interest in musicology, before turning exclusively to a career in writing. Valentine, aged twenty-three, also cherished literary ambitions, and wrote poetry. Her appearance was striking: marble-skinned and melancholic, with cropped hair and always immaculately dressed – often in gentleman’s tailoring.

In 1930 Sylvia invited Valentine to share her cottage in Dorset. One evening, after a week of living together as companions, they were talking through the partition of their bedrooms. Sylvia, moved by the sadness in Valentine’s voice, came to her bedside and embraced her. Both record this pivotal moment in their relationship: Valentine writes of how, suddenly, ‘I was holding her and kissing her and we were already deeply in love’, while Sylvia recalls simply that ‘I got into her bed, and found love there’. From that point forward, a tender, playful and devoted love developed between them. In her autobiography Valentine tells of how ‘our lives joined up imperceptibly, all along their lengths’.

The early 1930s saw the couple living for a period in Norfolk, before returning to Dorset. In 1935 they joined the Communist Party, and in 1936 travelled to civil war-torn Spain to lend their support to the Republican cause. Sylvia’s career flourished, with the publication of poetry, novels and short stories, while Valentine worked as a left-wing journalist. In 1937 they moved into a Victorian house upon the banks of the River Frome in Dorset. They settled into a happy domesticity; Valentine would fish in the river, and Sylvia avidly tended their garden. During these years Valentine was prone to infidelities, in the face of which Sylvia remained sanguine: ‘She was so skilled in love that I never expected her to forego love-adventures’.

Yet 1938 heralded the beginning of a more persistent affair, one that deeply unsettled the finely tuned equilibrium of their relationship. It was through Sylvia that Elizabeth Wade White, a beautiful young woman from New Hampshire, first entered the couple’s life. Having met in 1929 in New York, Sylvia and Elizabeth corresponded. Elizabeth came to stay with Sylvia and Valentine for four months in 1938, and it was during this time that Elizabeth and Valentine began an affair. Sylvia tolerated this, even moving into the spare room to accommodate the lovers. In the spring of 1939 the three women travelled to America, and for a brief period set up home together, which proved a disagreeable experience.

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