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Can a ghost be in two places at once?
Last month I saw two houses where the same woman seemed to walk. As luck would have it, she was a writer: the extraordinary Vita Sackville-West.
At the turn of the last century, she grew up at Knole, one of the greatest of England’s great houses. This palace of a place is said to be a “calendar house,” meaning it has 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards — not to mention its own deer park.
As you can see, Knole is enormous.
Even a close-up can’t help but be substantial.
The clock tower
And here are the deer.
Amazing as the outside is, the inside is even more extraordinary. The darkened rooms are filled with priceless paintings and shimmering silver and exquisite tapestries. Passages lead every which way, and steps appear where you least expect them. At the top of the ballroom walls, mermaids dance. If houses can have souls, this one does.
By the time Vita came along, Knole had belonged to the Sackvilles for nearly three centuries. She was an only child, and her parents were cousins. Had she been a boy, she would have inherited without question. Instead she lost the house, and she never quite got over the blow. When you walk through the house, it’s hard not to hear the footsteps of her ghost.
She did, however, go on to create another extraordinary place with her husband Harold Nicholson. I’ve wanted to see their gardens at Sissinghurst for a long time.
The tower at Sissinghurst
A quiet corner of the White Garden
The blooms are exquisite.
And so are the color combinations.
A purple border, with the tower just visible in the upper right
You can feel Vita Sackville-West’s ghost in this place, too — especially in her writing room in the tower, which is kept just as she left it. There are fresh flowers on the tables, as there were in her day.
Seeing these places made me wonder if we all leave pieces of ourselves behind in the places we love most deeply. If so, there are ghosts of me out there… by a waterfall, in a barn, in a yellow bungalow surrounded by lilac, lavender, and roses.
Are there any ghosts of you?
Alchemy Pie 
I love this post. Okay, probably a lot of that has to do with how I feel about old houses & just straight drooling envy at you getting to be over there seeing THESE houses. 🙂
But, yes, ghosts. I’m sure that mine are in the sandbox at the first house I lived in (or more likely the SPOT where that sandbox was), the corner of the bedroom in my parents house where I spent hours curled up reading, and I think at the first, tiny house my husband and I both shared. I’m kind of hoping that ghost is being kept company by my husband’s orange tabby who welcomed me in.
So glad you liked the post, Becky. I have to admit, those great houses were one of the lures when we moved here. But I’m moved by the connections we have to more ordinary places, too, like your sandbox and the tiny house with the welcoming tabby.
365 rooms! And a deer park!
Wow.
I like to think, if we do leave ghosts of ourselves in places, that there is a ghost of me in the last house I lived in in Iowa (ages 3 to nearly 11), in my old bedroom, once pink. And maybe in the den in the first house I bought, where I did so much writing. But especially the one in Iowa.
Isn’t it something how places become part of us? I like to think that in some small way we become part of them, too. I’m picturing you in that “once pink” bedroom right now.
I thought nothing could be lovelier than those gardens … then I loved the back of mother and daughter under the tower. And that writing room. So wonderful you felt a ghost there.
Yesterday Peter and I were in a bookshop where I browsed through a new book by Michael Holyrod about some women including Vita Sackville-West, but put it back. It didn’t fit with my latest reading, or have enough to make me forget the waiting piles at home. But seeing her name two days in a row, now I have to wonder. Is that a ghost speaking?
When I catch repeated echoes of a name or place or idea, I ask similar questions. Sometimes it’s just coincidence. But yes, maybe sometimes a ghost speaking.
And so lovely that you caught a glimpse of us under that tower. I wondered if anyone would. I ought to have relied on your discerning eye.
So much to love in this post! Like Becky, I envy your getting to see these gorgeous places. Knole looks so massive. Wow! One could live there for years and years, it seems, and never get to spend time in all the rooms.
You got that close to those deer? They didn’t run away?
Funny that you mention ghosts. Recently, I looked around our present house, thinking about the countless hours I spend here, wondering if the next family who lives here will sense my former presence, all the intense feelings that went on . . .
It sounds like we’re sisters in spirit, Jama, as I have the same wonderings, too. When we closed the door on our much-loved house last year, I felt as if I were leaving a part of myself behind. I still can feel the bannister under my hand, still see the view past the lilac, still feel my feet dancing on the worn kitchen floor.
As for Knole, it is indeed magnificent! And the deer are eerily tame. Sweetpea walked right up to them, trying to show them how to pose for the camera.
I love Vita…She’s one of those historical figures that I feel sure would have been a bosom companion, even though it’s highly unlikely that such a thing would have been true. I love Virginia Woolf’s novel ORLANDO b/c it’s a paean to Vita and to love in all forms. I can imagine how heartbreaking it must have been to lose Knole b/c of her gender, but as you note, Sissinghurst is quite lovely, too. Thanks for sharing this with us!
I’ve been known to cherish the same illusion about Vita. And isn’t Orlando extraordinary? It fired my imagination when I first read it years ago.
One of the most wonderful things about Knole is that the original manuscript of Orlando is on display there. Under a glass case, it lies open to this page:
“This vast, yet ordered building, which could house a thousand men and perhaps two thousand horses, was built, Orlando thought, by workmen whose names are unknown. Here have lived, for more centuries than I can count, the obscure generations of my own obscure family. Not one of these Richards, Johns, Annes, Elizabeths has left a token of himself behind him, yet all, working together with their spades and their needles, their love-making and their child-bearing, have left this.”
All the commotion of the Great Hall faded into stillness as I read those words in Woolf’s own strong, pale hand.
Wonderful to see these photos of places I’ve heard mentioned so many times! The special house I grew up in burned to the ground when I was sixteen; there’s a daycare center there now. I don’t think my ghost is there, but the ghost of our house is in me and shows up in my work.
I think those are the most important ghosts of all, Kit — the ones that inhabit our work.
And of course there are the ghosts of the books we have read. Whenever I walk through the older parts of London and near St Paul’s, I think of your Meg. And bitter winters now make me think of Kit and Christy.
Oh! One of my very favorite books in the world is The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West. It’s not fine literature, but it brims over with an extraordinary love of subject, even while the author is uncompromising in dissecting that subject.
I still can’t even drive down the street where I lived with my grandmother for many years because I can’t bear the ghosts I know will be there.
I have a place like that in my life, too, Melissa. I expect it haunts me more than any ghosts actually haunt it, but still I haven’t gone back.
But lovely to hear your take on The Edwardians. I have never read it, but with a review like that, I can see I must!
what a beautiful place.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the photos.
Oh how gorgeous! And I kept clicking on the picture of the writing room hoping it would enlarge and expand! I love to sit still in old places listening for echoes of ghosts, and I wonder who they were and what their lives were like. Lots and lots of stories!
Hmm, my ghosts? Usually found reading under pine trees where the dry needles smell so good and perhaps eating a crunchy Winesap apple. 😉
I wish that picture did expand… or even better, that it allowed us inside. Even at Sissinghurst, you can’t enter the room. I stood on the quiet stairs outside it for quite some time, though, imagining myself inside.
But pine needles and Winesaps sound very tempting, too!
Thanks for the photos. The photo of the writing room has an intense emotional energy to it. It’s pulling me in even as it isn’t the kind of space I envision for my own best work.
My ghost must walk the second floor of Garfield house, with occasional visits to other parts of the Williams campus. This is a neat question though — good for sorting through whether I have enough places in my life where my ghost would want to settle.
So glad you enjoyed the photos and the question, Kat. If I have a ghost at Garfield, I think it walks that same floor and stands by my old window, looking out at that wide expanse of green lawn.
Oh!
Oh, Amy, thanks for posting these wonderful pictures! I just pored over them this morning, and am longing to see both great houses…. and Vita’s ghost.
Re: Oh!
Aren’t they something?! You would enjoy them so much, Nancy, especially the writing room. Not to mention all those portraits at Knole, each with its own story…
I had never heard of a calendar house before and am so happy I came by today to see your beautiful photos. Love the deer. I think my ghost is at Bunnell’s Pond in Northeast PA, where I spent many summers…she is hovering over the waterfall, looking down on the wildflower garden tended by a neighbor for decades upon decades, now a ghost himself.
So kind of you to stop by, Toby. I love the idea of a calendar house, too. And I’m also very taken by that waterfall and wildflower garden of yours. It sounds like a very good place to leave a ghost (or two).