MANUSCRIPT: Challenge (manuscript).
Original Manuscript
With Related Correspondence
Sackville-West, Vita. Challenge. 1923.
Foolscap; ca. 250 unbound leaves; ink and occasional pencil manuscript on rectos and occasional versos; occasional paper clip rust stains; loss of text on occasional damaged leaves.
Together with:
Autograph letter signed “Mar” to Harold (“Hadji mine”), Thursday, n.d. [July 1919], on British Delegation, Paris letterhead (struck out with “Long Barn” substituted), four pages; referring elusively to Challenge and its two protagonists.
Together with:
Telegram addressed in French to “Madame Nicolson,” n.d. (postmarked February 14, 1920); one page, from Beauvais, lightly creased; telling her that “Madame Vrefnois [presumably Trefusis]” is in Paris and likely to be in the Ritz Hotel.
Together with:
Autograph letter fragment signed by Vita (“Mar”) to Harold, n.d. [possibly July 1920]; 2 pages; small marginal tears, somewhat creased; assuring him that she will no longer be seeing Violet, mentioning the garden and expressing her concern for him.
Manuscript draft, with revisions, possibly incomplete, of this novel written for and about, and partly in collaboration with, Violet. The manuscript dedication—which departs radically from that in the published version—reads as follows: “Dedicated, with gratitude for much excellent copy, to the original of Eve.” This suggests Violet’s active participation, and it seems likely, therefore, that the paragraphs of text Vita added on occasional versos as well as some of the revisions throughout were the result of consultation with Violet, who ultimately designed the dust-jacket for the first edition. The printed dedication is in Romany—from which the couple derived their private language—and translates as follows: “This book is yours, honoured witch. If you read it, you will find your tormented soul changed and free” (from George Borrow’s The Zincali: An Account of the Gipsies in Spain).
The autobiographical text is divided into three parts: “Julian” (Vita), “Eve” (Violet), and “Aphros” (the Greek island setting). The title page bears alternative titles in pencil and black and red ink: “Enchantment,” “Froth,” “Foam,” “Rebellion,” “Rebels” and “Vanity,” each suggesting an emotion engaged by Vita during the period of its composition. By the time Vita had finished the manuscript, she had settled on “Rebellion” for the title, but another work by that name was published soon after and Collins persuaded her to substitute “Challenge.”
Also present is an epilogue “to be printed at the beginning of the book;” and a pen and ink sketch map of Heraclion and the archipelago of Aphros. With occasional notes to the typist, and several pages annotated in margins with dates of composition and places (for example Paris, Monte Carl, and Long Barn). Nigel writes that during this period Vita was literally channeling her life into her work:
as her love for Violet intensified, so did that between Julian and Eve in the novel, with incidents, conversations and letters lifted into the book from reality…. Challenge is Vita’s defense of Violet, and of herself. Violet seemed to her a creature lifted from legend, deriving from no parentage, unprecedented, unmatched, pagan. Their bond of flesh was so compelling that it became almost a spiritual, not a bodily, necessity, exacting so close and tremulous an intimacy that nothing existed for them outside.
For the two years leading up to and following the publication, Vita’s attentions and energies would fluctuate between her erotically thrilling adventures with Violet and the love and sense of calm she felt when she was with Harold. One moment she was dressed as a man, strolling through a London park with Violet on her arm, and the next, she was reveling in life at Long Barn with her family and gardens.
At the beginning of 1920, Vita negotiated a publishing deal with Collins. Shortly thereafter, in thrall to Violet, she elope
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