The Bloomsbury Set at Charleston by Judith Allnatt

I recently had the opportunity to visit Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex,  which was home to some members of the Bloomsbury group including Vanessa Bell who was a painter and the sister of Virginia Woolf. 

Both sisters were fragile. In 1911 Vanessa had a mental breakdown following a miscarriage and was nursed by Virginia. Virginia, of course, suffered from depression and was tragically to take  her own life in 1941. 

In this photo of Vanessa, which sits on the mantelpiece in her studio, one can clearly see the family likeness, not only physically but in the pensive expression, both sisters having rather soulful eyes. Virginia and Leonard Woolf had a home nearby, Monks House at Firle. They were playfully referred to as 'the Woolves' by the Charleston household. 

Vanessa settled at Charleston in 1916 with her two sons, her art critic husband Clive Bell, the painter Duncan Grant and the writer David Garnett. (Grant and Garnett were lovers). Vanessa and Clive Bell had an open marriage, reflecting the freedoms espoused by the Bloomsbury group who were searching for new ways of living and loving. Vanessa had previously had an affair in France with Roger Fry (whom Virginia was also in love with) and later had a  relationship at Charleston with Duncan Grant. 

I was interested in the complex relationships playing out within the group and wanted to find out what drew them to Charleston.  They were a fairly affluent set, at home in London or Paris, whereas Charleston was an isolated rundown farmhouse with no hot water, electricity or telephone. After reading around this, two main factors seem to be involved. The group perhaps wanted a secluded place where they could feel free to pursue their unconventional art and lifestyle but also, at the height of the First World War, men were either conscripted or had to find 'Work of National Importance'  such as farming; Grant and Garnett were able to do the latter living at Charleston.

Visiting the house one feels as if its twentieth century inhabitants have just popped outside for a moment. Everywhere there is evidence of their artistic life. Many paintings, mainly portraits, hang in every room,  but also doors, tables, mantlepieces and cupboards are painted with figures or decoration. The studio, where Duncan and Vanessa painted side by side, is still scattered with paintbrushes and oils and, in a parlour, fire bricks have been  built out onto the hearth in a DIY effort to draw heat into what must have been a freezing room in winter. 

Charleston also houses a collection of dinner plates commissioned by Kenneth Clark the art historian. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were commissioned to decorate them with paintings of famous women. There are four sets of twelve comprising famous Queens, famous beauties, famous writers and famous performers, plus two portraits of the artists themselves. The slant towards the arts is noticeable here -  no mathematicians such as Émilie Du Châtelet or scientists such as Marie Curie. Although the artists were avante garde, perhaps their view of gender was still  influenced to some extent by the assumptions and prejudices of the time.

One also cannot help but question whether the complicated sexual relationships brought freedom equally to both genders. Duncan Grant was the father of Vanessa's third child, Angelica. However, Angelica was not told of this until she was seventeen and had grown up believing that Clive Bell was her father. In her 

memoir 'Deceived by Kindness', she describes the unease she felt as a child, created by an awareness  that the adults were keeping something from her. It also appears that neither man really took on the responsibilities of fathering and that this lack affected her  profoundly. 

On top of this complicated emotional situation, in her twenties Angelica was pursued by David Garnett, (her father Duncan Grant's one time lover).  Angelica, inexperienced and full of doubts was nonetheless persuaded by the older man to marry him, much against the wishes of both Vanessa and Clive Bell.  David Garnett's comment years before on seeing the newborn Angelica was : "I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 - will it be scandalous?" Presumably at the time it was seen as a flippant joke but one wonders whether the whole idea had its roots in jealousy, perhaps over Duncan's relationship with Vanessa or even because of a rejection by Vanessa of Grant's own advances. (Angelica writes that " . .  he had proposed bed to Vanessa and been rejected" and that his purpose in marrying her daughter, "at least in part, was to inflict pain on Vanessa".)

As well as giving a beautifully rendered account of life at Charleston, the memoir shines a strong light on some of the members of the iconic Bloomsbury Set: their personalities, relationships and all-too-human failings. 

 

For those interested in finding out more, "Deceived by Kindness"  by Angelica Garnett is published by Pimlico, Penguin Random House

Seven Pattle Sisters, a Woolf and a Bell by Sophia Bennett

Our extra guest for March is Sophia Bennett

Sophia Bennett’s debut novel, Threads, won The Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition in 2009. She has since published several further teen novels, including The Look and Love Song. Sophia has been called “the queen of teen dreams” by journalist Amanda Craig, for her exploration of the worlds of fashion, art and music. Her books have sold internationally to over 16 countries. Following Ophelia is her first historical book.
www.sophiabennett.com

Do you play the dinner party game? And if so, do you always imagine inviting the same people?

My ideal guest list changes all the time. David Bowie and Iman are regulars, along with Shakespeare, for the laughs and theatrical anecdotes, and Jane Austen for the ‘fine eyes’ –  I’m sure she was describing her own – and the wry looks. The Queen is endlessly fascinating: think who she’s met. Right now I’d add Omar Sharif. I’d want Douglas Adams, for the essential babelfish; Carrie Fisher, Peggy Guggenheim, Nora Ephron, and Lady Gaga, so I could thank her for her politically restrained but meaningful performance at the Superbowl … My ideal dining room is large, and situated in New York. There are white roses on the table. Jimi Hendrix is tuning up in a room nearby. Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone may be persuaded to sing. I am, needless to say, an insanely successful novelist and screenwriter. This is my tribe.


Once upon a time, there were seven sisters who grew up in India. They were rich and beautiful and when they settled in London they didn’t need to play an imaginary dinner party game. Their lives were one endless, enchanted version of it.

They were the Pattle sisters and their names were Adeline, Sarah, Maria, Julia, Louisa, Sophia and Virginia. I discovered them when I was researching my new book, Following Ophelia, set in the world of the Pre-Raphaelites. Their father James was an Anglo-Indian merchant and “"the biggest liar in India”, acccording to his great-granddaughter, Virginia Woolf*. When he died, he was shipped back to England in a barrel of rum that, according to legend, exploded on the journey. Their grandfather on their mother’s side was exiled to India from France after ‘flirting excessively with Marie Antoinette’ as her pageboy. They were never going to be boring.

The main character in Following Ophelia is a redheaded muse to a fictional acolyte of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelite girls were known as ‘stunners’ and my most treasured resource for research was Wives and Stunners, by Henrietta Garnett, who it turns out is a descendant of the brilliant Pattle girls.

My Lady Betty by Val Prinsep

Through Garnett’s account, the sister I encountered first was Sarah. She was one of the three most famous, known in London society as ‘Beauty’, ‘Dash’ and ‘Talent’. Sarah, though very attractive, was ‘Dash’. She married a director of the East India Company called Henry Prinsep and in 1850 came to live with him at Little Holland House in Kensington, where she hosted a brilliant salon for the great and good (and somewhat scandalous) in Victorian society, whose guests regularly included Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Thackeray.

In those days Kensington was on the edge of London proper and though large mansions were springing up, it still had a rural appeal, with lanes bordered by hawthorns and cherry trees. Little Holland House was the dower house to the baronial home nearby, with an expansive garden. George Watts, one of the leading Pre-Raphaelites, lived with the Prinseps there, and Sarah’s son, Val Prinsep, became a follower too, introducing her to Millais, Rossettti and Burne-Jones. Meanwhile, Henry Prinsep was now an aspiring MP, so she knew everyone in the British political establishment.

‘Dash’ described Sarah’s charm, wit and energy. Her eye for interior design was extraordinary. According to Garnett, “The walls were painted Venetian red and bottle-green, the furniture was black lacquer with gold inlay and many of the objects and curios had been brought back from India. Watts had painted murals in the great drawing room … There was about the place the aura of an enchanted kingdom”. I simply had to have Sarah in my book. There wasn’t really room for her, so I ripped out a key scene and replaced it with a costume party ruled over by the hostess, dressed as Cleopatra.

Sadly, Little Holland House was pulled down in 1871 when the Prinseps’ lease ran out, to make way for the rapid building projects that were going on. However, one of the neighbours to build a house on its border was Sir Frederick Leighton, later the President of the Royal Academy, who filled his own mansion with treasures from his travels. The Leighton House museum has strived to recreate the interiors as closely as possible to the way he had them – complete with indoor fountain, Moorish tiles, stuffed peacock and Venetian-style mosaics in the Arabic room – so if you want a whiff of the enchanted kingdom, I recommend a visit there.

I’d have put the other Pattle sisters in my story too, but it would have started to take on War and Peace proportions if I had. However, I was sorry to miss them out, so here are three of my favourites.

Beauty, Virginia Pattie, Countess Somers by GF Watts

‘Beauty’ was Virginia, the youngest girl, who outshone even her elder sister. By now I’m thinking of the Dancing Princesses. Thackeray was friends with the Pattle family from childhood and always admired Virginia the most. He even wrote an article praising her beauty in Punch. Thackeray lost his fortune so could not hope to marry her himself, but on her marriage to Viscount Eastnor in 1850, he graciously wrote, "She looked beautiful, and has taken possession of Eastnor Castle and her rank as Princess, and reigns to the delight of everybody."

She never was a princess, but became Countess Somers. A similar offer is made to my character in book two. She finds it very tempting.

‘Talent’ – reputedly the only plain sister of the seven – was Julia Margaret Pattle, who married another Indianl colonial official called Charles Cameron. For her 48th birthday her daughter gave her a camera. She soon became a pioneering photographer, with leading exhibitions in her lifetime,and a long list of important artistic and literary clients for her photographs. She would have been perfect for my series, but only got the camera in 1863, five years after my story is set. Dammit.

Four Young Women holding flowers by Julia Margaret Cameron. Wellcome Images

Once established, Julia was usually to be seen in dark dresses stained with chemicals from the developing process. Her work was used to illustrate Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and other poems, and there was recently a small exhibition of her photographs at the V&A. In 1860, she moved to Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, near Tennyson’s estate, and many of the Pattles and Prinseps are buried there, in a churchyard very much like the Cornish one where my wedding pictures were taken. This is my closest link to the Pattles, and I’m keeping it.

Maria Pattle (born at sea – why am I not surprised?) didn’t get a famous nickname, but she did have famous grandchildren. Her third daughter Julia, named after her eponymous aunt, I assume, married Herbert Duckworth and then Leslie Stephen. She was the mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

Julia Stephen by Julia Margaret Cameron

I visited the Vanessa Bell exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery recently, and as well as loving the obvious influence of Matisse, Dufy, Picasso and Cezanne in her work, combined with her equally compelling natural talent for line and colour, I was fascinated to look out for Pattle family characteristics in her self-portraits and family sitters. I think I found them, but perhaps I was being wistful. It’s a glorious exhibition, by the way, full of wonderful examples of her work. If you like Charleston House and that era and aesthetic at all, you should really go.

Virginia and Vanessa Stephen playing cricket

Henrietta Garnett, the author of Wives and Stunners, is Vanessa’s granddaughter, and Virginia Woolf’s great niece. Seeing her family tree brought home to me how the salons and family connections of Vanessa’s Victorian great-aunt Sarah repeated and replayed themselvses in the Bloomsbury Group. At an event at the Charleston Festival last year, I was lucky to hear Virginia and William Nicholson talk about visiting the house – Vanessa’s home – as family and friends, and what a welcoming place it was. The family were riculously well-connected, but more than that, their lives sang with energy, talent and warmth. They made friends, looked after them, played hostess and created exquisite houses where the literary and artistic talent of the day wanted to stay and play.

Vanessa even painted a bedhead for her husband’s lover. It’s a very sexy nude. As the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition note points out, this was either extremely generous, or a sardonic comment on the woman in question. There was tragedy too. The complicated love lives created confused children. Henrietta’s mother Angelica was devastated to discover, at 18, that her beloved ‘uncle’, Duncan Grant was really her father. Virginia battled mental health problems, ending in suicide. But that’s not the lasting impression that Charleston gives you: it’s a place of retreat and acceptance, where art flourished above everything.

Going back to the Victorians, the story of the Pattle sisters is one where women are feminine and domestic, but also intelligent, productive and influential. I’m not saying it’s a model for us now, but looking back into history we can make assumptions about women being subservient and overlooked. They so often were, of course, but here are some fascinating exceptions. It helped that they were very rich, beautiful, talented and charming. It always does. But they broke rules, expressed themselves and shaped their society as much as it shaped them.

So, if my time machine buttons were set to mid-Victorian London, I would witout question choose to emerge in Little Holland House. I doubt Sarah Prinsep would turn much of a hair – she’d seen a lot since her Calcutta days, and the stories of her grandfather escaping pre-Revolutionary France. I’d look around for signs of Tennyson in the conservatory, or Thackeray and possibly Rossetti on the lawn. I’d check out Val Prinsep and George Watts’s paintings in the studio. I’d see if Julia Margaret Cameron was setting up a photo somewhere. And I’d hope, very much, that they would invite me to dinner.

"VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE CASK OF RUM"(A talk by Prof. Joan Stevens, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.)

 ‘Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Muses’, by Henrietta Garnet


Competition Question:

"If you could pose for any artist who has ever lived, who would you pick and why?"


Just answer in the Comments below and then copy your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk


Closing date: 11th March


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SISTERS by Adèle Geras

Note: When I wrote this post, I  hadn't read Christina Konig's excellent post about LIFE IN SQUARES. I do hope readers of this blog will excuse a slight overdose of the Bloomsbury Group. My post is sufficiently different from Christina's I hope, for this to be excused. 

The whole world, it seems,  is Bloomsbury Mad. Actually, ever since Vanessa and Virginia Stephen moved to 46 Gordon Square in 1904, the lives of these two sisters and their friends have fascinated biographers, critics and anyone interested in a story of highly intelligent people and their doings: literary, artistic and sexual. Perhaps it's their sexual shenanigans which have kept the interest alive and the recent BBC drama, LIFE IN SQUARES, did concentrate on that aspect of their lives perhaps rather too much. The drama was quite well done, I thought, though Virginia I felt, was woefully miscast and Rupert Penry-Jones, much as I admire him, didn't appear to be much older than James Norton, playing the older Duncan Grant. I saw no good reason why the same actor couldn't have been used for both old and young, but there you are. The series certainly looked wonderful and Eve Best as Vanessa has made me resolve to wear my string of amber beads round the house, as she did. Most importantly, the drama suffered, I though from only being three episodes long. There was far too much happening in all these lives to cram into such a short time frame. If it had been longer, the characters could have been much more fully developed and the situations, and complicated relationships of the Group could have been explained to those of the viewing public who didn't know the intricate stories of these lives. As well as that, more episodes would have been able to convey the artistic and literary importance of these two women, who, in the time allowed, were just beautiful people who swanned around, with occasional bouts of grief and thwarted love to interrupt the apparent idyll.

This (above) is Charleston House, Vanessa's home for most of her life.  You are not allowed to photograph the interior, where Vanessa and Duncan Grant and other artists decorated every available surface. You saw the rooms in the TV series, and they are most beautiful. The scale of the house is very small. It's really a farmer's cottage and feels like it: rough, as well as beautiful. The furniture comes from the Omega Workshop, where Vanessa Bell produced wonderful (unsigned) designs for furniture. Duncan Grant's  work is everywhere. He was the love of Vanessa's life and more than that, her closest friend in the world, except for her sister, Virginia. Anyone who missed the tv series and who is interested has only to put Charleston House into Google to see what it looks like. They will also find many of Vanessa's works reproduced.

Many people can't stand the Bloomsbury group.  Snobbish, they say. Elitist. Spoilt. Anti-semitic. And on and on. This may very well be true but also, clever, ground - breaking artistically, and leaders of the intellectual life of their day, whose lives are still fascinating to many, including me. I can say exactly why I am drawn to them. It's because of the relationship between the sisters. I'm an only child and I suppose I romanticise the bond that can exist between sisters, because I've always wished I had one of my own. In February, I read a novel which I can't recommend too highly. It's called 'VANESSA AND HER SISTER,' by Priya Parmar, and it's published in paperback by, of course, Bloomsbury.  It is completely gripping and deals with a period of their lives when they were young. After reading that, I'm now reading an excellent joint biography by Jane Dunn called 'A VERY CLOSE CONSPIRACY.' That is brilliant and shows one thing very clearly.  No matter what was going on in their love life, or in their intellectual lives, each sister was emotionally the centre of the other sister's world. They were close, and loving and Vanessa never stopped being the chief looker-after of Virginia. We know about Virginia suicide, and that death is, horribly, part of the drama of their lives and their story. But what is clear from what I've read is that Virginia, for many reasons, was always in a state of precarious mental health.  Vanessa was her mainstay. Leonard Woolf also looked after her, but it was her sister to whom she was most attached.

Both sisters  had to be constantly creating.  Virginia fell ill when she couldn't write for some reason, and Vanessa, together with other denizens of Charleston, used their artistic talent to transform everything. Both sisters made beautiful gardens, and the mosaic above shows that every corner of Charleston was worked on: painted, decorated with beautiful pictures and patterns and enhanced by the artist's hand and eye.

Virginia and her husband Leonard took a house just a few miles fro Charleston, in the village of Rodmell. The house is called Monk's House and it's a National Trust property. There is no café and therefore none of the lovely NT scones but it's a wonderful place to visit. The photo above shows Virginia as painted by Vanessa and below, there's a screen painted by Angelica Bell, Vanessa's daughter by Duncan Grant, which looks like something from a stage set. That seems remarkably appropriate. The conversations and situations both at Charleson and in Monk's House were indeed very dramatic. I also think it's very beautiful.

Vanessa's bedroom at  Charleston looks out on to the garden. So does Virginia's at Monk's House. They are beautiful rooms, characterised also by very narrow beds. Below is Virginia's, which is the size of the bunks on overnight trains. This is a single bed if ever there was one. 

And in another part of the same room, at the foot of Virginia's bed, is a bookshelf which I found the saddest and most moving thing in the whole house. It's full of Shakespeare Plays, each covered in paper from the endpapers printed by the Hogarth Press. Virginia covered the volumes during one of the times when she was ill. I took a photo of 'ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,' which struck me as ironic. But here we are, still thinking about the sisters, still reading the novels and looking at the pictures and discussing the lives. That's ending well, in many ways. 

'Life in Squares' - how I learned to love the Bloomsbury Group - by Christina Koning

I must confess that I started watching ‘Life in Squares’, the new three-part drama about the Bloomsbury Group, which was recently shown on BBC2, with considerable reservations. What on earth was there left to say about these - to be frank - rather self-indulgent and privileged people, that hadn’t already been said in a host of books by and about them, and latterly, in films and television programmes in which the whole gang - the Woolfs, the Bells, Duncan Grant, Keynes, Strachey, Roger Fry - were made much of? Wasn’t it time to call for a moratorium on the Bloomsburies and all their acolytes, past and present? From which it may be obvious that, with certain honourable exceptions (yes, I mean you, E.M. Forster), I’m not a fan of this particular ‘set’, whose achievements, though undeniably impressive, seem to me to have been over-valued, to the detriment of other, no less impressive, talents in twentieth century Art and Literature.

‘Life in Squares’, I thought, would be just another breathless hagiography, celebrating the already over-celebrated lives of the Blessed Virginia and her crowd. I promised myself I’d give it ten minutes, and then switch over to something more enjoyable. An hour later, I was still watching - and unashamedly riveted by - the successive dramas unfolding in Amanda Coe’s treatment of the lives of what was then a disparate group of Cambridge friends (and their sisters), meeting for tea and chat about art and books, in the Gordon Square house belonging to the orphaned Stephen siblings. With so many characters to incorporate - the list above is only partial, leaving out quite a few of the era’s major figures (no mention of D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, or Wyndham Lewis) - Coe wisely chose to focus on the central relationship, between Virginia Stephen (later Woolf), and her sister Vanessa. Interestingly enough, and despite Virginia Woolf’s far greater posthumous fame, it is Vanessa who emerges as the more dominant character. From her impetuous - and soon to be regretted - marriage to the philandering Clive Bell, to her no less extravagant love for the painter Duncan Grant, she comes across as passionate, headstrong and likeable.

Part of this is due, no doubt, to Phoebe Fox’s sympathetic portrayal - helped by her strong physical likeness to the beautiful Vanessa. Nor is she the only piece of great casting in this superior mini-drama: James Norton gave a wonderfully dissolute performance as Duncan Grant, convincing this viewer, at least, to reconsider him, not only as an artist, but as a key figure in what was to become a kind of blueprint for the Bohemian lifestyle, as the Bloomsburies metamorphosed into the ‘Charleston set’. Having visited Charleston - home to the Bells and Duncan Grant - and Monk’s House, at Rodmell, where the Woolfs established themselves during the same period, I was delighted to see both places featuring strongly in this television drama. That gave me another reason for continuing to watch, as well as the fact that I was now hooked on the tangled love affairs and intermittent crises which were unfolding. The period covered - from the 1900s to the 1940s - is one in which I have been interested for a long time. I was glad to see it reconstructed so accurately and (dare one say it?) aesthetically. From the Art Nouveau silks and velvets sported by Vanessa as a young woman, to the more austere wartime garb worn by her older self (of which more later), this was a feast of period detail: beautifully lit and shot. 

Of course, there were a few things I’d like to have seen done differently. The decision to cast a second group of older actors - with the wonderful Eve Best playing Vanessa - in order to convey the passage of time, was not wholly successful, and might have caused confusion to anyone not familiar with the story. The need to compress the events of forty years into three hours led, inevitably, to certain things been glossed over - or left out altogether. The 1920s and 1930s - arguably the most important period, as regards the literary and artistic output of the group - was shown only in passing. Individual episodes - such as Duncan Grant’s decision to become a conscientious objector, at the outbreak of the First World War - were barely touched on. The relentless focusing on the Grant/Bell menage meant that even Virginia Woolf’s suicide got short shrift. But overall, this was a well-written and engaging dramatisation of a fascinating period. It certainly converted this Bloomsbury sceptic to a more appreciative frame of mind. Now - where’s my copy of To the Lighthouse?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0649cyj