Vanessa bell, p.12
Vanessa Bell, page 12
The combination of wealth and the lack of intellectual dedication made Cleeve House unsympathetic to Vanessa. She observed that the conversation was mostly confined to the weather, the army, sport and local gossip. She found the cheery exchange of received opinion and common sense enervating, as she told Virginia:
I often feel singularly boorish and crude. But here I feel subtle and clever and almost a genius. Unluckily the feeling is not so pleasant a one as you might suppose. It is only contrast with Lorna and Dorothy that makes me feel so, and it would be truer to say that I feel like a dolphin stranded high and dry, lashing about to find some water. When one first comes here, one thinks, well they really aren’t so bad - there are virtues in vegetables and one has plenty to say oneself. But gradually with no nourishment from without, one’s own stream of talk runs dry and one lapses into silence - and then the too awful torrent of commonplaces on tennis and the weather - oh Lord, how much can be said on the weather ... one can do nothing but subside into gloom.11
At Seend, Vanessa found herself once again living among two generations and was reminded of how iniquitous family life could be. Having recently discovered that she was pregnant, she asked Virginia: ‘What shall I do with my family of 4 when they grow up? I’m beginning to think 2 will be enough. Do you think we shall gradually fall into all the old abuses and that I shan’t have any idea what my children are like or what they want to do?’12 She was alternately delighted and terrified at the thought of having children, but all the while certain that she would be unreasonably fond. Meanwhile Clive taught her an artful method of dealing with Mrs Bell’s and Lorna’s requests: if asked to do something against his wish, he simply went his own way without argument or fuss, proffering a jocular refusal that baffled them.
On Sundays the self-congratulatory atmosphere at Cleeve House noticeably thickened. In the mornings Clive and Vanessa were left alone in the house while the entire family went to church where they occupied the front pew. Mr Bell was himself an atheist but he thought the Church a stabilizing social force and once the service had begun he would turn round to make sure that all his tenants were present. The family returned home to a large Sunday lunch and in the afternoon received visitors who obliged Vanessa by asking stilted questions about painting. When Mrs Raven-Hill called, Vanessa found her the exception. ‘I like her’, she told Virginia, ‘and it is a relief occasionally to see people who do understand what you say and have some feeling for other things beside the crops.’13 One can only guess at the curiosity tinged with jealousy with which Mrs Raven-Hill regarded Vanessa, for she had been momentarily put out when Clive terminated their relationship after his marriage. Vanessa, as yet unaware of Mrs Raven-Hill’s former role, took additional pleasure in Virginia’s letters, especially when two arrived on the same day. ‘I found more relief than you can [k]now in escaping from the Bell breakfast conversation into Sweet William’s [Virginia’s] lively wit and hairy embrasures.’14 She had also decided that their life in London had become too cumbrous and expensive and was in need of change; the degree of freedom she had so far won still did not fully satisfy her needs. But for the moment she was hampered by her pregnant state. ‘I have made no autumn plans this year as yet,’ she admitted to Virginia, ‘for I suppose that the arrival of the infant will be my chief winter event, and my plan for disposing of servants can’t come into force till next summer. It would involve of course leaving Gordon Square - but it’s all too nebulous yet.’15
On 4 February 1908 she gave birth to a son whom they named Julian Heward Bell. Twenty-nine years later, in some fragmented pencil notes, Vanessa tried to recollect this and other events in his life. On first holding him she forgot instantly the pain of childbirth and felt overwhelmed by feelings that at the time she did not understand. 16 As her strength returned she observed with pleasure the infant that had invaded her life. ‘We are both flourishing,’ she told Madge Vaughan, ‘and Julian came into the world shouting healthily and has continued to do so ever since.’17 He had dark brown silky hair, was naturally greedy and after the first week gained weight without any trouble. Vanessa followed the then customary precaution of remaining in bed for a month after the birth. To entertain her, Clive invited his friends upstairs for an hour or two after dinner. One who now began to make a regular appearance at Gordon Square was the brilliant young economist Maynard Keynes who had recently left Cambridge and was employed at the India Office.
By Easter Vanessa was well enough to travel down to Seend where Julian was received with honour. Though he had revolutionized Vanessa’s life, bringing out strong instincts which until then had lain dormant within her, she was not so submerged in maternal feelings as to despise intelligent company. When Virginia sent her an essay she had written, a mock life of Violet Dickinson, Vanessa told her, ‘It brings back to me the atmosphere of rarefied culture and free talk which is so congenial to me and is a solace from talk of Julian or the winter of’ 81.’18 At Seend she suffered from the exchange of banalities which composed lengthy discussions on the present heat, the exceptionally hot summer of 1882 or the harshness of past winters. At the same time she received from Virginia one of the most important essays she had so far written, a lengthy evocation of their past, focusing particularly on herself, Julia and Stella.19 Vanessa was overwhelmed by it. ‘My word, what a scene of gloom it becomes after the tragedies! I felt plunged into the midst of all that awful underworld of emotional scenes and irritations and difficulties again as I read. How did we ever get out of it? It seems to me almost too ghastly and unnatural now ever to have existed.’20 She was also confronted with prose of exceptional limpidity and beauty, autobiographical writing so subtly nuanced and observed as to compare with the best of this genre. As Vanessa read, her past took on the shape of a work of art. Perhaps wary of giving too much praise, she offered small criticisms and described the whole thing as ‘remarkably well constructed’. But while it remained in her mind, life at Seend dwindled to insignificance: ‘I think in future you will have to keep me supplied with works of yours whenever I am here, for contact with your wits lifts me out of their dead level of commonplaces and I sniff the air like an old war horse and snort with delight.’21
During Holy Week the Bells went to church every day. As the drama of Christ’s death and resurrection approached, Clive and Vanessa began to look forward to a thoroughly pagan evening, to be spent dining with the Raven-Hills and another Punch illustrator, George Denhelm Armour and his wife. On their way down to Seend, in the train to Devizes, Clive and Vanessa had been obliged to listen as a clergyman from Bristol described to all those in his carriage his wife’s long and fatal illness, accused the Liberal Party of enslaving the people of England and concluded that the country’s only hope lay in ‘wiping out the blacks’. By contrast, conversation with the Raven-Hills would at least be civilized, Vanessa thought. Far from being bigoted, it ran freely over a number of subjects, including one that no one had apparently discussed with Vanessa before. ‘Talk of freedom in talk - she stops at nothing,’ Virginia was informed of Mrs Raven-Hill. ‘Different methods of stopping children and the joys of married life were freely discussed and notes compared by her, Mrs Armour and myself and I quite enjoyed myself as you will believe. Also I see that I can get some useful tips from Mrs Raven-Hill as to the best methods of checking one’s family, and I mean to make use of the dance at Devizes for the purpose, though as she is very deaf I shall probably cause a scandal.’22 After the mincing insinuations exchanged by the Bell daughters with other Seend spinsters, Mrs Raven-Hill’s unblushing animal delight in the flesh came as a relief. With her illegitimate five-year-old daughter, she sat like an unexploded mine of scandal in Wiltshire society, for in spite of her seductive appearance (even Clive’s father had once pinched her leg) her chief concern was to maintain her respectability. Clive, watching his beautiful wife talk bawdy with this pretty, well-preserved Wiltshire lady, with her faint but perceptible hint of vulgarity, was aware of the conflict between abandon and reserve at work in both their natures. To Virginia he wrote:
Mrs Raven-Hill, Mrs Armour, Mrs Clive Bell; three young or youngish women: mothers, how beautiful do they sit, each in her own day nursery smiling down Madonna-like on a smiling child. Last night they dined with three men; Mr Raven-Hill, Mr Armour, Mr Clive Bell; artists, young members of the youngest Bohemian clubs, stained by drink and lust and too warm contact with a sin-be-sodden world ... but Vanessa like some beautiful black velvet foil takes the measure of her peeresses and can judge their colour to a shade. Her appreciation is so sure that she is rarely descried, and yet she continues to get confidences. Explain me that.23
Vanessa, however, saw comparatively little of Mrs Raven-Hill and a great deal of her mother-in-law, Mrs Bell, a small, kind lady whose slightly bulging eyes gave her the appearance of a frightened rabbit. She lived entirely in the shadow of her stiff, stout, white-haired husband who was occasionally prone to outbursts of violent temper. Once when Clive’s brother Cory accidentally broke a decanter, Mr Bell turned on him in fury in front of the entire company though Cory was by then in his forties. When Mr Bell was absent from the house Vanessa found the atmosphere noticeably less oppressive. Her spring visit ended with her making plans for a holiday in Cornwall. She sent Virginia, who had gone on ahead, instructions concerning rooms, carriages and luggage. The prospect of rejoining her sister delighted her. ‘I shall look for your handsome red tie and soft nose at St Ives - Oh God what a joyful sight.’24
In her anticipation of pleasure, Vanessa overlooked the effect that her small son would have on the rest of the party. Virginia and Clive had been delighted and relieved by his safe birth but once this was over had not been unduly enthusiastic about his presence. Clive, fearful of mess and alarmed by fragility, had at first declined to hold the child. At Seend he had been infuriated by Julian’s loud screams and had begun sleeping in a different room from Vanessa. To Virginia the infant, with its devouring need for attention, must have threatened her own habitual presumption on Vanessa’s maternal affection. As it was she had never overcome her resentment of Clive who, in her opinion, did not equal the Stephens either in intellect or looks. If Clive was irritated and frustrated, Virginia was experiencing a more agonizing sense of real loss. In Cornwall both were infuriated by Vanessa’s habit of interrupting the conversation in order to discern whether it was Julian or the landlady’s two-year-old who was crying. The caterwauling increased their discomfort and both sought some form of escape.
They began to take regular walks along the sea’s edge. Alone together they talked easily and at length because for some time Clive had acted as Virginia’s mentor. He was also a delightful companion, well-read, witty, responsive to others’ feelings, entertaining and even-tempered. But never before had he spent so much time alone in her company and he was therefore able to establish their friendship on a new footing. What happened next has been attributed to Clive’s tendency, which grew marked in later years, to indulge in flirtatious teasing when in the company of the opposite sex. What was surprising, and fatal, was Virginia’s willingness to respond. Quentin Bell has argued that Virginia, out of possessive love for Vanessa, ‘had to injure her, to enter and in entering to break that charmed circle within which Vanessa and Clive were so happy and by which she was so cruelly excluded’.25 By obtaining Clive’s love she was, by proxy, sharing in the love which he got from Vanessa; in the same way that as a child she had broken into the intimacy that existed between Thoby and Vanessa, so now she sought to establish a triangular relationship in the mistaken belief that it would bring her again closer to her beloved sister. Therefore if this flirtation was stimulated partly by Virginia’s malevolence, it was also fuelled by her need for affection.
For Vanessa it was a double betrayal. On the one hand it exposed the limitations of Clive’s love and therefore of their marriage; on the other it was, she remembered, a curious experience feeling so jealous of Virginia at a time when she thought her the most fascinating woman she knew. This was her dominant memory of this incident: therefore it would seem that it was Virginia’s behaviour which hurt her most. Up to this moment the relationship between the sisters had been unusually close; when apart they wrote to each other daily, exchanging teasing compliments and much affection, their love also finding physical expression in what Vanessa called ‘petting’. Moreover Virginia was able to contribute to Vanessa’s creative life in a way that Clive could not, and at this period one receives the impression that Vanessa needed Virginia almost as much as Virginia needed her. Now this reflexive intimacy was to be exposed to a corrosive jealousy, for though Vanessa realized that Virginia’s flirtation with Clive was more a game of wits than a matter of passion, this did not lessen the outrage.
When exactly Vanessa became aware of what was happening is difficult to ascertain. Clive, as his letters to Virginia reveal, had fallen in love and probably chose to hide from his wife the extent of his feelings. Immediately after Virginia left Cornwall, Vanessa wrote:
I wonder what you have said about us. ‘Of course Nessa was quite taken up with the baby. Yes, I’m afraid she’s losing all her individuality and becoming the usual domestic mother and Clive - of course I like him very much but his mind is of a peculiarly prosaic and literal type - And they’re always making moral judgement about me. However they seem perfectly happy and I expect it’s a good thing I didn’t stay longer. I was evidently beginning to bore them.’ Now Billy, on your honour haven’t you uttered one of these sentiments?26
This vignette, informed by the watchfulness that protected their relationship, suggests that as yet Vanessa was unaware of any treachery.
In physical terms Clive and Virginia’s transgression was of small account. ‘I was certainly of opinion,’ Virginia wrote to Clive, recalling one moment during their Cornish holiday, ‘though we did not kiss - (I was willing and offered once - but let that be) - I think we “achieved the heights” as you put it.’27 To which Clive replied, ‘I wished for nothing in the world but to kiss you. I wished so much that I grew shy and could not see what you were feeling; that is what happens always, and one of the worst things in human nature.’28 But as none of them cast a sentimental eye on chastity, the extent of their dallying was not the issue: they had violated not so much the state of marriage as Vanessa’s trust, offending against the sanctity accorded by Bloomsbury to personal relationships. ‘My affair with Clive and Nessa’, Virginia significantly termed this episode, when she looked back on it seventeen years later. ‘... For some reason that turned more of a knife in me than anything else has ever done.’29
Vanessa, when she became aware of this affair (if such it can be called), found herself in a difficult position. If she gave vent to the anger and jealousy it aroused in her she was in danger of alienating one if not two of the people she loved most. It was therefore necessary for her to contain her emotions. She created no fracas, made no ‘scene’: she simply withdrew into herself. She had an instinct to preserve things, people, relationships, and therefore did not allow her suffering to become destructive. In so doing she found that she could bear it so long as it was kept within herself. Admittedly she was motivated in part by selfishness but also by a formidable capacity to contain and thus control pain. ‘You know’, Virginia once observed, ‘only very rich soft natures like Nessa’s absorb their experiences.’30 This explains why she remains a central figure within Bloomsbury, her presence embracing others, like Piero della Francesca’s Misericordia Madonna extending the protection of her cloak to those around her, a figure offering large repose, wise tolerance and an extraordinarily rich, mellow understanding.
Clive, meanwhile, was unsettled. He, Vanessa and Julian went down to Seend that summer. There he sat in the garden, emotionally drained and undirected, wondering whether either the Greek scholar Walter Lamb or Lytton had proposed to Virginia. He was made disconsolate by the noise of hammering which mingled with Julian’s cries, as a huge marquee was being put up in preparation for a garden party. By the evening he had recovered enough to write to Virginia: ‘When the world is asleep all sorts of nice things happen at Seend; hares and small rabbits come up into the garden and nibble the heads of carnations, owls hoot from fir-tree to fir-tree, and the flowers make violent love.’31 At other moments the less attractive aspects of life at Cleeve House made him irritable and slightly depressed:
Life here is very like a bad novel: Dorothy’s nurses coming and going, Lorna’s tennis parties, family news and neighbours’ delinquencies. Discussion without thought, joviality without wit, dissertation without intellect or knowledge. Quantities of feeling without subtlety and endless activity without result. The simplest causes continue to produce the most inevitable effects, and the effects to provoke the most unfeigned astonishment! Tout va bien, le pain manque!32
More revealing is his analysis of himself, for his excitement over Virginia caused him to reflect in another letter to her on the limitations of his character.
I feel like an emotional convalescent as I lie in the shade and gradually recover the power of dreaming. No longer always about the future either, I have a little scrap of a past to dream about too. By midday Lytton and Walter [Lamb] have become remote, my family has ceased to exist, I am as detached as a French novel and as unreal. Everything gets form - not its real form, the form which I believe you see or come at somehow by sheer force of imagination - but a form which it borrows from me and which I borrow from the National Gallery or the British Museum. Still I don’t think you ought to despise it, though I admit that almost anyone with five hundred a year and no encumbrances and a Trinity exhibition can learn to fill his pockets with it and give some away when the summer makes him pensive. I sometimes ... could almost cry for the beauty of the world; that is because I am not great, I can’t lay hold on it; I just go fingering the smooth outside, for ever pushing it out of my grasp ... I am condemned all my life, I think, to enjoy through an interpreter; but then as the interpreter is art one must not complain too much.33
