Vanessa bell, p.36
Vanessa Bell, page 36
Today I am calmer. I don’t quite know why. I think some kind of almost insanity has gone, anyhow for the time and it is a great relief. ... But since the first few days after you went I have been getting more and more unable to deal with them [irrational feelings] and at last dreaded being alone at all. Today it’s different. I was really absorbed painting this morning and the time seemed short. ... I can’t bear to think I may have forced you to talk to George when you didn’t want to. ... Duncan my dearest please forgive me for all the horrors I have made you go through. As I have said often it’s being so much in the dark that prevents one from understanding and has made me so intolerable. ... But the fact that I don’t know if he’s the kind of person who ever can live quietly near you and see us both and work and be happy with you makes it much harder for me.46
On the same day Duncan was writing a letter which crossed with Vanessa’s. He asked if he might arrive back in London and see her that coming weekend. He confessed that if he had learnt anything during the last two weeks it was his need for her. As he explained: ‘I have discovered the main difference between a male love affair and a female one. With a man one is really alone without being lonely, with a female that is never so because one never knows and it is always interesting, what a female thinks and feels. But occasionally one wants to be alone.’47 Vanessa could perhaps infer from this that her future would not be as bleak as at one moment she had feared. The next development in this uneasy situation was that Vanessa joined the two men at Charleston and there they all painted, she and George undertaking a portrait of Duncan. As a guest in her house, George behaved with politeness and charm but as their relationship developed he was quick to sense her dislike and could become insolent or rude. There was a vindictive streak in his nature and once, to hurt Duncan, he made advances to Quentin in the older man’s presence.
Throughout this painful month Vanessa told no one of her distress, neither Clive, Virginia, Helen Anrep nor Roger. Only after she had gone down to Charleston did she write disingenuously to Clive: ‘We have been painting quietly and have had a visit from that curious painter you met at Cassis called Bergen - who is slightly inarticulate but nice and quite interesting as a painter. He turned up in London, poor and very much in want of a studio and a little peace from difficulties of various sorts in London, so we asked him here. It has been a restful interlude.’48
Such was the extent of Vanessa’s self-control she could drop the shutters of privacy even between herself and those nearest to her, isolating herself from the people she loved. Her refusal to discuss George Bergen with others may reflect on her unwillingness to admit even to herself the fear he caused her. Then, too, there was her dislike of emotional display, of unnecessary thought being expended on issues that did not merit such consideration. Her letter to Clive, however, is not just uninformative, but plainly deceptive. One suspects it was not really Clive she was trying to deceive so much as herself.
Duncan, too, insisted on a curtain of privacy around his personal life. His emotions, however, were much nearer the surface than Vanessa’s and he found it necessary to have an outlet. To Bunny, he wrote:
I have left George and Nessa in the studio. It is after supper and seems to be the first time I have been alone for weeks. ... my life for the last two months has been simply turmoil. Turmoil of love, anxiety, terror and sadness and happiness - but all at such a rate I have no particular memory of time or night as being different from day. ... I have been reading Countess Tolstoi’s diary. God! What a life to lead when one is in love, and after one is married. But it puts all sorts of ideas into one’s head and makes one realize how one suffers oneself and makes others suffer, and also how unnecessary perhaps it is. Doubts about love - others’ love to [for] oneself are terrible. ... I know perfectly well that George loves me and I know or rather feel that something I can give him he wants as much as I want what he can give me. But why do I get into a state when he is tired and I am tired and therefore think that he has no feeling for me? And why does Nessa not believe I love her as much as ever I did? When she is unhappy I am unhappy too. ... Why does she not realize that my love for George gives me more power to love her instead of less. And when she is not here I feel too that something is wanting in my life, however happy I am alone with George.
The truth is I want them both. I want too much I suppose. Sometimes I find the tears rolling down my cheeks simply because I love both so much. That is a detestable form of self pity. But at the same time I cannot help thinking that if Nessa could see into my soul at such moments she would see that everything is all right.49
ELEVEN
High Yellow
1930-1934
In terms of books, articles and pictures, Bloomsbury’s output during the interwar years was prolific. Artistic success was accompanied by increased sociability, despite their distrust of ‘society’, a distrust which in Vanessa’s case was very deeply ingrained. They were very much a part of the London ‘scene’ and the extent to which they were seen and observed can be gauged from the frequency with which their names appear in memoirs of the period. With the widening of their circle of acquaintances, the term ‘Bloomsbury’, as has been said, degenerated in meaning. By now it was often used to suggest not the original core of friends who met on Thursday evenings but a certain manner, faintly upper-class, decidedly intellectual, often witty, slightly eccentric.
The outlook, natural in the grand exemplars, and acquired by their followers, was one of great tolerance: surprise was never shown at any human idiosyncrasy, though an amused wonder might be expressed at the ordinary activities of mankind. The chief, most usual phrases one heard were ‘ex-quisitely civilized’, and ‘How simply too extraordinary!’, the first applying to some unusual human concatenation, the second to some quite common incident of burgess life, such as a man going to a railway station to meet his wife after a long absence from home. But, no less than by the sentiments themselves, the true citizens of Bloomsbury could be recognized by the voice in which they were expresseed. The tones would convey with supreme efficacy the requisite degree of paradoxical interest, surprise, incredulity.1
As Osbert Sitwell goes on to admit, the ‘Bloomsbury’ mode of speech ‘spread and took captive many’. The manner became a mannerism and as such was instantly recognizable. ‘Bloomsbury’ now often meant no more than a certain fashionable, camp attitude. In the spring of 1935, when none of ‘old’ Bloomsbury were in Spain, the painter Edward Burra and Clover de Pertinez overheard in a Spanish nightclub, where nudes in diamanté jock-straps pranced across a small stage, ‘a high Bloomsbury voice pipe from the row behind ... “So much beyooteh in such a sordid little place’”.2
Bloomsbury’s exclusiveness has also been subject to exaggeration. Helen Anrep once remarked of Vanessa (admittedly often formidable and reserved) that though most of her friends had to pass through a fine sieve, others dropped into her bowl by dribbling over the side. She tolerated not only Duncan’s homosexual friends but also characters from the criminal fringe around the Tottenham Court Road who occasionally found their way into his studio. She and Duncan were also on easy terms with a small number of young artists. They copied in the National Gallery with Adrian Daintrey and afterwards drank with him in a St Martin’s Lane pub. They impressed Robert Medley with their commitment to painting and he found them ‘very good people to cut one’s teeth on as a young man, as from their conversation it was quite apparent that they were impatient of all hypocrisy.’3 Wogan Philipps (now Lord Milford) rented a studio above Vanessa’s and Duncan’s at Fitzroy Street, exchanged greetings and jokes when passing, but never ‘dropped in’ unless invited to do so. However, when Duncan decided to execute a portrait of the highly cultivated hostess who was to become a close friend, Violet Hammersley, but was frightened to do so alone, he suggested Wogan should paint her too. For a period of about a month he was regularly in Duncan’s studio; he noticed that while Duncan was very flattering about his painting, Vanessa was a much more severe critic. On one occasion while he was present Vanessa expressed regret that they did not know more artists in Chelsea and Hampstead. She did little to rectify this situation and their circle of artist-friends remained small.
Yet she was more ready to drop her reserve with painters than with other people. Around this time Frances Marshall entered Bloomsbury, becoming intimately associated with the circle around Lytton at Ham Spray. She was admired by many, especially by Clive who praised her ‘gravely humorous conversation and airily competent mind’ as well as her legs which were, he said, the prettiest in London. Only Vanessa, being cautious with her affections, was at first a little reserved with Frances. She was still more circumspect with the composer Dame Ethel Smyth whom Virginia now saw once a week: once a year was enough for Vanessa. She had less curiosity about people than Virginia and rather more honesty. Of this latter quality she once said, ‘Perhaps I set too much store on it but I think real intimacy is impossible without it.’4
Clive’s inconstancy also contributed to the changing scene. Now that his affair with Mary Hutchinson had ended (they were later reunited as friends), his crisp wit and natural charm sought fresh outlet. In town Clive was always impeccably dressed and fastidiously groomed; but his talents as a seducer did not rest primarily on his physical appearance: he was far more subtle and affecting. Aware of the old saying that one should flatter a beautiful woman for her brains and an intelligent woman for her beauty, Clive gave to his women friends an attentive sympathy that was rare in this period when sexual stereotypes helped determine behaviour and created invisible barriers of communication even between husband and wife. If the woman’s marriage was unhappy, as in the case of Bertha Penrose, the fiery redhead Wyn Henderson or Beatrice Mayor, her need for Clive’s solicitude perhaps hastened her collapse into his arms. He had a gift for giving happiness to others. He encouraged his women friends to talk and chatter, thereby raising them in their own estimation. He appeared to take them all seriously, offered advice on their reading and recommended his favourite French authors, in particular Mérimée, as well as the letters of Horace Walpole. One suspects that Clive himself strove to imitate Walpole’s epistolary style in the many sprightly letters that he wrote to the opposite sex and which he expected them to keep. Their replies suggest that he gave to certain of these ladies some of their happiest experiences. When the affair ended or he was abroad, they missed the brio and attack that characterized his style. For though various in character, all these women repeated the same refrain - the desire to talk with him. Conversation was his métier for it gave him a more immediate audience than his writing. If in his books he occasionally harangues, like an orator addressing an anonymous crowd, when talking he was alert to the interests and susceptibilities of his listener; in conversation, despite his name-dropping and love of familiar stories, he could be the most entertaining and sympathetic of men.
In contrast with the passing affairs that Clive enjoyed with many women at this time, his relationship with Benita Jaeger lasted some six or seven years. When Clive met her she was living over the Étoile restaurant in Charlotte Street. There she remained, for though she sometimes lived in Clive’s flat when he was away, it was his rule never to have anyone domiciled with him. (Though Clive did once propose to a French lady, Vanessa was correct in her assumption that he would never remarry as there was no woman whose company he preferred to her own; even with Mary Hutchinson he had never spent more than two weeks alone with her and on those occasions had grown edgy and bored.) Benita had been brought up in Germany and had come to England in 1926 determined to enjoy what her upbringing had not provided: Clive was both able and willing to oblige. She accompanied him on many social occasions, meeting the elegant and vivacious Christabel McLaren (later Lady Aberconway) as well as a great many of his literary friends. Though Clive encouraged Benita to chatter about the adventures she had had and the friends they both knew, they also spent a great deal of time dancing. They went to the fashionable Gargoyle in Dean Street, or Souvrani’s (later Quaglino’s); in Paris they danced at the Grand Écart, in Cannes at Le Boeuf sur le Toit. They travelled together extensively, at one time undertaking a six-week cruise to the West Indies. At home Benita often acted as hostess at Clive’s dinner parties, for which he always hired a butler from Fortnum and Mason’s. At these Benita, with her curly hair cut short on the advice of fashion expert Madge Garland, and wearing a Lanvin evening dress which plunged daringly low at the back, was bright, vivacious and eager to please.
In 1930 Clive and Benita spent six weeks at Cannes, at Madge Garland’s villa in the rue d’Antibes where they frequently entertained Raymond Mortimer, Brian Guinness and John Banting who were staying near by. At other times Benita felt awkward and in the way, realizing for the first time how much of the day Clive needed to himself, to read and to write. On a subsequent visit with him to Cassis she herself started to write an autobiographical novel which Raymond Mortimer praised so highly she was encouraged to show it to Virginia whose opinion promptly terminated the project. Like others, Benita was advised on her reading by Clive. She managed the first two volumes of Froude’s History of England and developed a liking for biographies of women. When in 1935 she saw Charles Laughton, the young James Mason and Flora Robson perform Measure for Measure and discovered how much she could enjoy Shakespeare, her immediate action was to ring Clive and tell him. He was pleased, but afterwards told her, ‘We, of course, only read Shakespeare.’ For a brief period Benita tried half-heartedly to become a painter. She had more luck with films and at Elstree and in Germany her chic appearance earned her walk-on parts, some with a few lines. When she eventually married the artist John Armstrong, Clive was upset and kept to his flat for a week. John Armstrong helped develop Benita’s interest in sculpture and before long she became adept at portrait busts and heads of children. Clive, whose affection always overruled any sense of propriety when it came to reviewing his friends’ work, gave her first exhibition a glowing press.
Benita and Vanessa rarely met. Clive’s social life was now largely separate from that of Vanessa and Duncan, though they had many acquaintances in common. Vanessa first glimpsed Benita at a party given by Alix Strachey in Stephen Tomlin’s new studio; she noted with a certain admiration that Benita’s costume consisted solely of two scarves, strategically pinned and fastened at the top to her necklace. Later when she heard that this gay, humorous and au fond reliable young woman in Clive’s life was bedridden with flu, she surprised Benita by calling at Charlotte Street to see if she was in need of anything. When they were brought together on rare social occasions they must have made a striking contrast: Benita small, pretty and fashionable; Vanessa tall, a little awkward and dressed in bizarre clothes made from stuffs bought in Italian rag markets. Vanessa rarely resorted to face powder and was the least vain of women, yet she got on well with Benita when they met. At one party given by the Kenneth Clarks, they commiserated together, finding the songs too long, the sandwiches too short.
If Benita figures rarely in Vanessa’s letters of this period, a name that, for other reasons, often recurs is that of Mrs Elizabeth Curtis. She was a war widow and the headmistress of Angelica’s school Langford Grove, an institution stamped with her character and initially begun by her (despite a flat in London, a son at Eton and a yacht elsewhere) in order to make ends meet. Situated in an elegant Georgian house near Maldon in Essex, the school cared more for culture than academic standards. Though a senior mistress, Miss Baggs, had been employed to give the school academic respectability, her classes were frequently interrupted by Mrs Curtis’s habit of bursting in and selecting certain pupils whom she would carry off to London to see a play reviewed in the paper that morning, or to attend a concert at Cambridge or Ipswich. Equally suddenly she might decide that the whole school ought to be involved in mounting a tableau in the grounds and again the timetable was disrupted. Miss Baggs tried hard to retrieve the situation but was repeatedly flouted.
To most Mrs Curtis appeared impossibly vague, unreliable, autocratic and prone to delusions of grandeur, for her manner hinted at vast estates and inherited culture. Few of her pupils could respond to the friendship she offered. She desired to bring out their innate gifts, but her enthusiasm for play-acting often produced only forced, embarrassed performances. She wanted to civilize and catered, therefore, for an out-of-date society which believed a girl should be groomed rather than educated. Angelica, however, thrived well at this school and she became one of Mrs Curtis’s favourites. Looking back on her schooldays, she has recalled ‘an atmosphere of distinction, humanity and tolerance. ... There was a hint of extravagance in the air, a suggestion of fantasy which sometimes threatened our equilibrium, and which may have shocked some observers.’5
Mrs Curtis’s unpredictable behaviour did not alarm Vanessa. On her visits to the school she was often persuaded to remain longer than she intended and, missing the last train back to London, would be obliged to stay the night. The next morning she travelled home clutching a gift from Mrs Curtis - a bouquet of greenery from the garden, large enough to fill the entire carriage. The headmistress’s vagueness, love of beauty and unconventionality were entirely sympathetic to Vanessa and she remained on terms of friendship with her long after Angelica had left Langford Grove.
One friend put through Vanessa’s fine sieve at this time was Maynard. Relations had been strained ever since his marriage to Lydia in 1925; now the London Artists’ Association provided further grounds for disagreement. As Maynard’s collection of paintings by his contemporaries reveals, he either did not have a very good eye or he often acted on principles of kindness rather than taste. In the running of the LAA he sometimes insisted on measures which Vanessa felt decreased the artistic merit of a show. In June 1930 a major row broke out between Vanessa and Maynard over a landscape exhibition in which work by LA A members mixed with that of the Old Masters. According to Raymond Coxon: ‘She threatened (to Keynes) to resign if a projected show was to be titled “Constable to Coxon”. Keynes gave way and Pitchforth and the other outsiders, the small clique surrounding Fry, were relegated to the floor below.’6 Vanessa tried to be fair, as she explained to Maynard:
