Edie was Vita’s closest friend and lover in her later years and she writes to Harold in 1958: ‘You see, if Edie died, I should really feel rather desolate. For one thing, she is about the only person who understands how much I love you, and would know what I would feel if you got ill or died. She is my only close friend. I haven’t got many friends, and I don’t want them, but it is nice to have one friend to whom one can talk openly, and if I lost Edie, I should have nobody left.’
Vita Sackville-West loved intensely and often: Mary Campbell, Dorothy Wellesley, Rosamund Grosvenor, Gwen St Aubyn and others are to be included in Vita’s prolific romantic life. The wonderful collection of letters, objects and mementos in Vita’s Writing Room remains as evidence of her sentimental attachment to the relationships in her life. In Vita’s lifetime the room remained her own private haven; admittance to others was infrequent and selective and the collection within is deeply personal and significant.