Vanessa bell, p.17
Vanessa Bell, page 17
Asheham, a small early-nineteenth-century house, sits beneath Itford Hill looking across the Ouse valley to Rodmell. Though still isolated, its position is now obscured and greatly spoilt by the mounds of spoil from the chalk pits dumped at the back of the house and by the trees that now block its view across the valley. It is set back from the main Lewes to Newhaven road and reached by a farm track lined with beech trees. Though Virginia is said to have found the house in Leonard’s company, Vanessa may have heard of it through the sculptor Eric Gill who lived near by at Ditchling, for in 1910 he and Epstein had proposed building a modern Stonehenge in the six acres of land that then belonged to the house, but nothing had come of this project. The house itself has a fragile, unreal appearance; its small, compact central block and two single-storey wings are pierced by tall, thin French windows with arched lights which give it more the appearance of a hunting pavilion than a farmhouse. David Garnett found it ‘a little set apart, not quite of the real world, like the houses in Walter de la Mare’s novels’, and that under the influence of Virginia it came to suggest a ‘timeless, underwater world’.44 On it she based her short story The Haunted House and the belief that it is haunted still persists today. Despite the grace of the exterior, the house proved to be functional enough to accommodate a large and persistent stream of visitors once the summer had begun.
If Asheham was very much preferable to lodging-house accommodation at Studland or the Isle of Wight, it did not replace holidays abroad and in the spring of 1912 Vanessa, Clive and Roger visited Italy, stopping en route in Paris where they hung a small exhibition of avant-garde English art at the Galerie Barbazanges. Vanessa was pleased with the result though she thought the Camden Town artists looked weak. The gallery belonged to Percy Moore Turner who introduced them to the poet and art dealer Charles Vildrac and to the artist Henri Doucet, both of whom praised Duncan’s work. That evening they all dined chez Vildrac. The following day they left for Milan where, to Vanessa’s annoyance, she began to feel ill. They moved on to Bologna where a doctor diagnosed that Vanessa had measles and she was sent to bed. Roger again acted as nurse while Clive despaired, convinced that his wife had typhoid. The illness had one positive result: while Vanessa was bedridden, Roger brought her some coloured papers which she cut into small squares and stuck on to board, making paper mosaics. She was delighted by the brilliancy of colour this achieved and became convinced that mosaic was a medium they ought to develop. After a fortnight at Bologna, where Roger, in between his nursing duties, produced fourteen oil sketches, they moved on to Florence, abandoning their intended visit to Ravenna and Venice. Vanessa had been advised to travel as little as possible. She could not therefore accompany Clive on his day visit to Arezzo and was stung with envy on hearing his account of Piero della Francesca’s frescos based on the story of the True Cross. She greatly admired this artist and catches an echo of his statuesque simplicity and contemplative mood in certain of her post-impressionist pictures.
That summer she made a breakthrough with her painting. Immediately after the close of the 1910 Post-Impressionist Exhibition she had begun to rely heavily on what Fry termed her ‘slithery handwriting’, freely outlining her forms in black, a technique often found in the work of Gauguin and the Nabis. What is distinctive in Vanessa’s use of the dark outline is its relaxed unselfconsciousness; instead of merely encasing a shape and making it more emphatic, the line frequently breaks off and gives the impression that she was discovering the forms and shapes as she drew. This gives her early post-impressionist paintings a remarkable openness and sensitivity. As her control of this new style developed, she began to strike a balance between design and description, marrying evanescent effects of light with a concern for decorative unity. This ‘impressionistic’ Post-Impressionism is best seen in her paintings of Asheham; but it was a passing phase en route to a more solid, architectonic and abstract style. She toyed briefly with Duncan’s semi-pointillist manner, but soon realized that she preferred to work in larger patches of colour, which first began to appear in The Spanish Model (Leicester Museums and Art Gallery) on which she was at work in June 1912. The heavily made-up model in Spanish costume had been hired by Duncan and they both painted her in his studio. Robert Ross and Charles Aitken, on a visit to Duncan’s studio, saw Vanessa’s painting and bought it for the Contemporary Art Society for five guineas; it was the first painting she sold.
Contemporaneously with this portrait she executed Nursery Tea §, her largest painting so far and one which marks a new stage in her development. ‘I have been painting my nursery scene,’ she wrote to Roger, ‘which is rather comic, but I am just in an exciting stage as I flatter myself that I am painting in an entirely new way (for me) ... I am trying to paint as if I were mosaicing, not by painting in spots, but by considering the picture as patches.’45 Compared with The Bathers of 1911, a greater degree of abstraction now controls her design. It is held together by the compositional tensions set up between the figures and still-life objects and by the warm and cool colours placed around the central expanse of the white table-cloth. Compared with Sargent’s paintings, which only a few years earlier Vanessa had greatly admired, this is a lean, conceptual painting, almost academic in its dispassionate formal organization and its deliberate eschewing of bravura or skill. The human situation presented is almost totally subordinated to abstract considerations and conveys little of her affection for her children, though it does record her delight in her younger child’s colour. ‘Quentin [as he was now called] is the one spot of satisfactory colour with his orange hair in a bright pink dress,’ she declared. ‘Someone at Studland thought he must be Winston Churchill’s son, he was so like him! I hope he won’t turn out to be a politician.’46
Since her relationship with Roger had begun, her letters to Virginia had become noticeably less intimate and informative. That summer a certain phase in their relationship was brought to a close by Virginia’s marriage to Leonard Woolf. The ceremony took place in St Pancras Register Office, in a room overlooking a cemetery. Reminded by the bleak formality of the occasion that she had registered Quentin’s name as Claudian and ought to have it changed, Vanessa interrupted the proceedings to enquire how this should be done. Afterwards the handful of guests present returned to 46 Gordon Square for the wedding luncheon. When everyone had left, except for Roger and Saxon, Clive sat down and wrote a short, painful letter to Virginia, declaring his love for both her and her husband. Near by, in the same room, Roger sat painting Vanessa while Saxon looked on.
* * *
* One painting that remains from this summer is an oil sketch of Millmead Cottage (now called The Weir House) which has previously been incorrectly titled Adrian and Virginia Stephen on the Lawn at The Steps, Playden. (See ‘Vanessa Bell’ catalogue to an exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, 1973, no. 1, and ‘Vanessa Bell’, catalogue to an exhibition at the Davis and Long Gallery, New York, 1980, no. 2.)
SIX
Asheham
1912-1914
While Leonard and Virginia remained on honeymoon, Vanessa took herself off to Asheham. She arrived at Lewes station on 16 August 1912 with a perambulator, bath, mail-cart, linen hamper, nine other pieces of assorted baggage, and Roger in tow. As she intended staying until winter, she immediately altered the arrangement of the house to suit her convenience; Roger, in between reading Ibsen and painting, pushed furniture around at her request. She then abandoned her London clothes in favour of loose skirts and a brightly-coloured handkerchief wound round her head. Her bohemia, however, had a respectable base; Sophie Farrell, who had left Vanessa’s service to work for Virginia, provided excellent meals and with the help of a maid kept the house in good order. When Vanessa asked how long it was since she had ordered dinners from Sophie, she received the reply, ‘Exactly 3 years on August 25th Miss Nessa’.1
Shortly before her arrival at Asheham there had been a fairly unsuccessful trip to Cologne. Desmond MacCarthy had recently returned from this city, having seen and praised the Sonderbund exhibition. As a result Clive, Vanessa and Roger set out for Germany on the evening after Virginia’s wedding.
We had the most hellish time in Cologne [Vanessa wrote to Virginia] at least all but the pictures was hellish. Why does any sane person go to Germany? ... The pictures were good but on the whole the show was disappointing. Except for some Cézannes which Roger will probably secure for the Grafton there was nothing but what one could see elsewhere. Our hotel was comfortable and the food very good, the trains luxurious and all one’s needs catered for. But the horrors are unspeakable. The country is completely coloured in mustard and pepper. The women are without exception ugly and ill-dressed. But the worst of all is the art, which is everywhere, no house, no train is left alone. All are covered with refined German art. It got so irritating that one longed for England.2
The children had meanwhile been sent with their nurse Flossie to Seend. They were returned to Vanessa three days after she had arrived at Asheham and she went up to London to meet them at Paddington. Julian was overcome with delight on seeing his mother, while the two-year-old Quentin strode solemnly down the platform, making even his nurse look small. In the train to Lewes their high spirits could barely be contained and at Asheham they rolled boisterously on the mattresses that Vanessa had laid on the floor of the day nursery.
With two rumbustious boys in her care, life at Asheham, despite the external prettiness of the house, could never be elegant. More and more Vanessa found herself disliking the self-consciously artistic and earlier that year had been amazed and slightly appalled by the excessive good taste displayed by the painters Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson at Newington House in Oxfordshire. The two women entertained regularly, including among their friends Henry James, Sickert and Roger Fry. Invited with Clive for a weekend, Vanessa quickly perceived what immense care had gone into the choice of colours both in the house and garden: the grey walls offset the white lawn curtains, the rich hues in the spotless chintzes and silks, the green and purple quill pens. Even the deep plum-coloured clothes worn by the two women, and decorated with orange, grey or yellow buttons, seemed to have been chosen to match their surroundings. The pictures that hung on the walls - John drawings, eighteenth-century prints and Japanese panels - merged with the discreet, expensive restraint that governed the whole, while outside pale grey and green tubs held flowers specially selected for the colour of their blooms. Vanessa wondered what would happen if a small child were let loose in the house for, though she preferred it to the philistinism at Seend, she felt that the perfectionism of the two friends lacked a creative freedom; they muffled or drove out feeling in pursuit of the refined. ‘It isn’t what we want even for the minor arts is it,’ she complained to Roger when he proposed involving Ethel and Nan in his scheme, that had already begun to form, for the Omega Workshops, ‘... I do think we shall have to be careful, especially in England where it seems one can never get away from this fatal prettiness. Can’t we paint stuffs etc which won’t be gay and pretty?’3
At Asheham her first concern was to make it habitable for her family and friends. After Roger departed she spent the first week alone with the children and servants, making red curtains with mauve lining and borders for one room and at intervals attempting, unsuccessfully, to teach Julian to read. Roger returned the following weekend and with his help she got to work on the garden. He cut down a holly-bush and fir-tree to improve the view and make room for badminton which Vanessa now instituted. She planted flowers which her new sheep-dog - a replacement for Gurth - promptly dug up. Her only neighbours were an old shepherd and his wife, Mr and Mrs Funnell, whom she employed to pump water for the house and to empty the earth closets. Each day she wrote to Clive, who was on a shooting holiday in Scotland, detailing the small activities that occupied her time. She also discussed with him whether or not to sell their Augustus John which Robert Ross thought the art gallery at Johannesburg would (and did) buy for the considerable sum of £600. She was inclined to accept their offer, preferring to use the money to buy a modern French picture. ‘I wish we could get a Cézanne. It would be a great thing to have one in England.’4 Meanwhile the heavy rains, which had earlier that month ruined the crops in the area, ceased and the warm weather returned. Vanessa began to paint, now and then basked in the sun or walked with Julian to the top of the Downs for a view of the sea.
Her first visitors, apart from Roger, were Frederick Etchells and his sister Jessie. Frederick had become friendly with Duncan the previous summer when he had contributed to the decoration of the Borough Polytechnic. His friendship with Duncan and Roger, together with his interest in modern French painting (he frequently travelled to Paris in the company of Wyndham Lewis) should have made him sympathetic to Vanessa, but his visit was not a success. She found him slow-witted and uncouth; he irritated her by bringing a book to meals and interrupting the talk by reading aloud passages; in conversation he was long-winded, in behaviour ungallant; only after she herself had seized the size and whiting was he shamed into assisting with the layout of the badminton court. In an atmosphere that must have been thick with antagonism as well as the smell of oils, Vanessa painted them painting, Jessie seated on the floor, Frederick standing at an easel outlined against an open French window (Tate Gallery). To reinforce form, she omitted all detail, including facial features. The view of the garden seen through the window is reduced to flat bands of colour that seem to negate the suggestion of space, so that the distant white wall appears to be on the same plane as Frederick’s dark figure. Cool greens counterbalance hot orange and yellow ochre, while one of Vanessa’s red and mauve curtains creates an emphatic vertical and picks up the red of Jessie’s stockinged leg.
During their visit Mr Funnell suddenly announced that not only would he no longer pump the water but that the pump itself was broken. Clive, who had arrived from Scotland, immediately despaired and announced that the children should straightway return to London. Roger and Frederick, meanwhile, went to investigate and within ten minutes had the pump working again, and more effectively than before. Clive was so cheered by this that he promptly employed a farmhand to pump water each morning.
Apart from the Etchellses, most visitors fitted in well with the arrangements at Asheham and Vanessa found she got to know several of her friends on more intimate terms. Duncan came for a weekend and stayed for almost two weeks; Maynard Keynes appeared and Vanessa enjoyed his company more than she had ever done before. Another guest, and one who was to remain a life-long friend of Vanessa’s, was Molly MacCarthy. She had been born Mary Warre-Cornish, the daughter of the Vice-Provost of Eton and was, like Vanessa, the niece through marriage of ‘Aunt Anny’, Lady Ritchie. In 1906 she had married the conversationalist and literary critic, Desmond MacCarthy, and for the first few years of their married life they had lived in a Suffolk farmhouse. In 1910, however, they moved into a house in Wellington Square, Chelsea, and from then on Molly became a part of Bloomsbury’s inner core. But whereas Maynard had been drawn to Asheham by Duncan’s presence, Molly came primarily to see Clive who employed all his verbal skill to turn cartwheels in her presence. He was stimulated by her paradoxical character, by her combination of oblique humour and reserve, by a certain primness that was at odds with her original mind and gifts as a novelist. Molly, it seems, was undecided this summer how far their flirtation should go. It did not trouble Vanessa who remarked to Virginia: ‘Molly’s visit was quite successful, though she and Clive did not have all the tête-à-têtes they had hoped for. She is very nice and amusing, the worst of her being an unexpected moral sense which crops up suddenly and is rather tiresome.’5 Molly remained a central figure within Bloomsbury but this association did not ease the conflict within her character, as a conversation that she had with Vanessa the following year in Gordon Square suggests. ‘She and I sat and talked rather aimlessly about marriage, etc,’ Vanessa recounted to Clive, ‘as she generally does now, but it is always more or less in the abstract unluckily. I think she is rather worried about the subject and said how she thought I managed so well and she didn’t know how to - and how one couldn’t deceive those one loved, etc.’6 At Asheham, in the summer of 1912, even Duncan found Molly’s restraint an invisible barrier to free speech: ‘She is we all thought very nice, but it was rather a strain on our tongues which had wagged rather free before.’7
