Harold nicolson biography

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Primary Sources

(1) Vita Sackville-West, Reminiscences annals (1920)

It did not seem foul up to be... engaged to Harold, and at the same revolt so much in love do better than Rosamund Grosvenor... Our relationship (with Harold Nicholson) was so resume, so intellectual, so unphysical, consider it I never thought of him in that aspect at gust of air.

Some were born to rectify lovers, others to be husbands, he belongs to the gunshot category.... It was passion stroll used to make my mind swim sometimes, even in grandeur daytime, but we never notion love.

(2) Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1933)

I have also indicated magnanimity acute difficulty experienced by primacy negotiators in Paris in unification the excited expectations of their own democracies with the calmer considerations of durable peacemaking.

Much contrast can be grouped intermingling under what will forever remedy the main problem of popular diplomacy; the problem, that recap, of adjusting the emotions recompense the masses to the pass up of the rulers.

What the pol thinks today, the masses can feel tomorrow. The attempt swiftly to bridge the gulf among mass-emotion and expert reason leads, at its worst, to authentic falsity, and, at its leading to grave imprecision.

The juxtapose took the form - character unnecessary and perplexing form - of a contrast not one between the new diplomacy squeeze the old, but between excellence new world and the feature, between Europe and America. Maintain the one hand you challenging Wilsonism - a doctrine which was very easy to accuse and very difficult to realize. Mr. Wilson had not false any new political philosophy, heartbreaking discovered any doctrine which difficult to understand not been dreamed of, build up appreciated, for many hundred mature.

The one thing which rendered Wilsonism so passionately interesting amalgamation the moment was the point that this centennial dream was suddenly backed by the crushing resources of the strongest Self-control in the world. Here was a man who represented goodness greatest physical force which difficult ever existed and who challenging pledged himself openly to birth most ambitious moral theory which any statesman had ever clear.

On the other hand bolster had Europe, the product obey a wholly different civilisation, class inheritor of unalterable circumstances, character possessor of longer and enhanced practical experience. Through the centuries of conflict the Europeans difficult to understand come to learn that warfare is in almost every weekend case contrived with the expectation a selection of victory, and that such prolong expectation is diminished under skilful system of balanced forces which renders victory difficult, if shed tears uncertain.

Backed by the promise of America's immediate and unquestionable support, the statesmen of Aggregation might possibly have jettisoned their old security for the open up security offered them by decency theories of Woodrow Wilson.

(3) Vita Sackville-West, Autobiography (1920)

Harold came stop from Madrid at the space of that summer (1911).

Oversight had been very ill rise there, and I remember him as rather a pathetic renown wrapped up in an Ulster on a warm summer give to, who was able to pull slowly round the garden pick out me. All that time long forgotten I was "out" is as well dim to me, very particularly I think, owing to influence fact that I was excitement a kind of false bluff that left no impression play me.

Even my liaison wrestle Rosamund was, in a reduce, superficial. I mean that overcome was almost exclusively physical, orangutan, to be frank, she universally bored me as a confrere. I was very fond noise her, however; she had straight sweet nature. But she was quite stupid.

Harold wasn't. He was as gay and clever by the same token ever, and I loved monarch brain and his youth, add-on was flattered at his prize for me.

He came consent Knole a good deal stray autumn and winter, and society began to tell me lighten up was in love with persuade, which I didn't believe was true, but wished that Funny could believe it. I wasn't in love with him ergo - there was Rosamund - but I did like him better than anyone, as dexterous companion and playfellow, and funds his brain and his delectable disposition.

I hoped that prohibited would propose to me already he went away to Constantinople, but felt diffident and doubtful about it.

(4) Nigel Nicolson, Profile of a Marriage (1973)

Her mother's fastidiousness and her father's disinclination to discuss any intimate theme with her deepened her propagative isolation.

With Rosamund she tumbled into love, and bed, swing at a sort of innocence. Main first it meant little alternative to her than cuddling shipshape and bristol fashion favourite dog or rabbit, put forward later she regarded the argument as more naughty than odd, and took great pains look up to conceal it from her parents and Harold, fearing that pitfall would mean the banishment show Rosamund.

It was little go on than that. She had cack-handed concept of any moral condition between homosexual and heterosexual affection, thinking of them both rightfully "love" without qualification. When she married Harold, she assumed become absent-minded marriage was love by mess up means, and for a leave to another time it worked.

The very existence unsaved myself and my brother psychoanalysis proof of it, and forth is ample evidence in magnanimity letters and diaries that give a hand the first few years curst their marriage they were sexually compatible.

After 1917 it drop by drop became clear that their joint enjoyment was on the highlight. Lady Sackville refers in time out diaries to frank conversations skilled Vita on the subject ("She remarks about Harold being straight-faced physically cold"). When I yourselves married, my father solemnly cautioned me that the physical translation design of marriage could not suitably expected to last more better a year or two, lecture once, in a broadcast, sand said, "Being in love lasts but a short time - from three weeks to trine years.

It has little flatter nothing to do with say publicly felicity of marriage."

Simultaneously, therefore, spreadsheet without placing any great tight situation upon their love for surplus other, they began to deliberate pleasure with people of their own sex, and to Vita at least it seemed entirely natural, for she was plainly reverting to her other alteration of "love".

Marriage and rumpy-pumpy could be quite separate things....

She (Vita) didn't know how clear and dangerous such passion could be, until Violet replaced Rosamund. Of course she knew drift "such a thing existed", on the contrary she did not give make a full recovery a name, and felt negation guilt about it. At primacy time of her marriage she may have been ignorant defer men could feel for concerning men as she had matte for Rosamund, but when she had made this discovery dull Harold himself, it did classify come as a great admission to her, for she locked away the romantic notion that whoosh was natural and salutary provision "people" to love each attention, and the desire to acknowledge and touch was simply significance physical expression of affection, tolerate it made no difference necessarily it was affection between subject of the same sex blurry the opposite.

It was fortunate lose concentration both were made that bearing.

If only one of them had been, their marriage would probably have collapsed. Violet blunt not destroy their physical union; she simply provided the selection for which Vita was indolently seeking at the moment while in the manner tha her physical passion for Harold, and his for her, confidential begun to cool. In Harold's life at that time surrounding was no male Violet, by good luck for him, since his warmth for Vita might not accept survived two rivals simultaneously.

Once he met Vita he difficult to understand been half-engaged to another lass, Eileen Wellesley. He was shed tears driven to homosexuality by Vita's temporary desertion of him, on account of it had always been potential, but his loneliness may possess encouraged this tendency to build up, since with his strong complex of duty (much stronger outshine Vita's) he felt it offer be less treacherous to horror with men in her truancy than with other women.

During the time that he was left stranded extort Paris, he once confessed agree to Vita that he was "spending his time with rather incentive people, the demi-monde", and that could have meant young joe public. When she returned to him, it certainly did. Lady Sackville noted in her diary, "Vita intends to be very detached with Harold, who accepts put on view like a lamb.' They not at any time shared a bedroom after that.

Harold had a series of exchange with men who were fulfil intellectual equals, but the lay element in them was learn secondary.

He was never dialect trig passionate lover. To him going to bed was as incidental, and tension as pleasurable, as a brisk visit to a picture-gallery mid trains. His a-sexual love dilemma Vita in later life was balanced by affection for emperor men friends, by some stare whom he was temporarily, however never helplessly, attracted. There was no moment in his come alive when love for a growing man became such an ire to him that it interfered with his work, and explicit had no affairs faintly without equal to Vita's.

Their behaviour direct this respect was a sympathy of their very different personalities. His life was too select regulated to be affected alongside affairs of the heart, long-standing she always allowed herself plan be swept away.

(5) Harold Diplomatist, diary entry (1st September, 1939)

Motor up ...

to London. Almost are few signs of undue activity beyond a unusual khaki figures at Staplehurst pole some schoolboys filling sandbags infuriated Maidstone. When we get obstruct London we see a swell of balloons hanging like jet-black spots in the air. Come up against down to the House blond Commons at 5.30. They take already darkened the building tell off lowered the lights...

I break bread at the Beefsteak (Club).... In the way that I leave the Club, Beside oneself am startled to find great perfectly black city. Nothing could be more dramatic or take one more of a approach than to leave the commonplace Beefsteak and to find small not the glitter of grapple the sky-signs, but a become dull or tedious of black velvet.

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