Vanessa and Her Sister

by Priya Parmar

  “Violet may be aristocratic, but she is not stuffy. You just think that because she is tall and unmarried. She is an eccentric. Stella used to say that Violet wore bloomers when she bicycled.”

  Thoby, nonplussed at my mention of bloomers, came to stand beside me to see the painting. “Are the shoulders a bit—”

  “Wrong? Yes,” I said briskly.

  “But the angle of her head is good,” he said. “It is not that we want to invite girls, you understand. But you two live here, so—” He shrugged as if his comment were self-explanatory.

  “Don’t worry. It is much too late to ask Violet. Sophie is in a terrible mood and would never agree to make more sandwiches.”

  Late (three in the morning)

  They were invited for nine, and Thoby warned us not to expect most of them until after eleven, but a crowd of people arrived early. Lytton Strachey, his younger brother James, both down from Cambridge, Mr Clive Bell, Harry Norton, and Walter Lamb all trooped into the drawing room. They had been to the opera together and left at the first interval.

  “Andrea Chénier. Giordano. Disaster,” Lytton said by way of explanation. He handed Sloper his hat and dropped into the basket chair by the window.

  “You walked out?” Thoby asked as I poured Lytton his cup of cocoa. Harry Norton and Walter Lamb had drifted to the far end of the room and were looking through the bookshelves.

  “Yes,” James said, claiming the other basket chair. “Lytton insisted we leave.”

  “We had to leave. It was the most godawful cliché. Milkmaids. Shepherdesses. And there was a huge, puffy paper sheep on stage.” Lytton rolled his eyes. “One must have limits.”

  “The sheep was the best thing in it,” Harry said, settling onto the sofa. “It was the singing that was dreadful.”

  “Saxon saw it on Friday and told me that the fourth act is wonderful,” Mr Bell said, reaching for his drink. Whisky. I must remember for next week.

  “Saxon has more patience than Strachey,” Thoby pointed out.

  Nine exactly and Saxon Turner himself walked in. Saxon is never late. “I, ahem, met your brother, ahem, outside,” Saxon said quietly to Thoby. Saxon prefers to speak to one person alone rather than address a room.

  Thoby and I exchanged a brief look. George. The dance in Mayfair. I was sure he was annoyed that I had cancelled so late and had come to lecture me. Thoby quickly crossed to the door, hoping to intercept him, but he was not fast enough, and George stepped into the room. Hearty and obvious and unable to conceal his disapproval, George took in the scene. Six men and me in the drawing room at this time of night. We were suddenly playing by the old rules, the Kensington and Belgravia rules. I felt a slim wire of unease pull the room into a tense flat line.

  “George,” Thoby said smoothly, “come and meet some friends of mine.” He slowly took George around the room, making formal introductions. Lytton did not stand but offered up his hand like a Russian duchess. George’s face flushed with insult.

  “Thoby,” George said in a low, rapid voice, “shouldn’t the ladies have withdrawn?”

  “Ladies?” Thoby said looking around. “There is only Nessa. Virginia’s not down yet.”

  “You mean there were no other ladies invited to supper?” George said, his voice rising.

  “No one was invited to supper,” Lytton added unhelpfully. “We all just piled in afterwards. I am sure more people will pop along later, but I don’t know if any ladies are coming?”

  George’s eyes bulged with outrage, and James shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but Lytton giggled and leaned forward to watch as if he were at a racetrack.

  “It is not Thoby’s fault, Mr Duckworth,” Mr Bell said, boldly stepping into the fray. “We all dropped in unexpectedly, and Miss Stephen has been kind enough to make sure we are looked after. But you are quite right. It is late. We are imposing dreadfully and ought to be going.” I was amazed at how convincing he was.

  “Sloper?” Thoby called downstairs. “Would you get Mr Bell a cab?”

  “I insist Mr Duckworth take the first cab,” Mr Bell said graciously.

  “Yes, absolutely,” Thoby agreed. “It is late, and George, you do have the farthest to go.” He led the way downstairs, and George could do nothing but follow him.

  As soon as he left, the mood rose like champagne fizz, and Mr Bell, who had never had any intention of leaving, hurried back to the sofa and the party resumed.

  DESMOND MACCARTHY, LEAN, SHAMBLING, and amiable, arrived and collapsed his long frame onto the sofa next to Mr Bell. Thoby questioned him about his newest article. Desmond has a tendency to put off everything, an unfortunate quality in a journalist, and Thoby has been trying to help him meet his deadlines. Last week, Desmond asked Thoby to lock him in his study until he finished his travel piece on Spain. It did not work.

  “It was a poor choice of room,” Desmond explained, stretching out his long legs. “There were so many interesting things to read in my study. It was an impossible place to work. Goth, we must find a more boring room.”

  ELEVEN. VIRGINIA AND ADRIAN had promised to be down by ten, but of course they weren’t.

  I found them in my sitting room, arguing. They knew I would be back to fetch them. Adrian was being pedantic and trying to persuade Virginia to change into evening clothes.

  “I do not see why I should wear a corset in my own home,” Virginia said crossly. “You can breathe. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you are a lady, Ginia,” Adrian repeated.

  “And therefore not entitled to breathe? Since I do not need air, I will swim around the drawing room like a fish. Then what will you do?”

  Virginia logic.

  I could hear the heavy front door open and close and the sound of voices and laughter drifted up as more people arrived. Anxious to get back downstairs, I quickly re-pinned Virginia’s hair, smoothed her serge skirt, and clasped her jet cameo brooch to her blouse. It does not matter if she changes or not, Virginia is always beautiful.

  Adrian stubbornly refused to go down without us and sat fidgeting in the blue armchair. Since he grew to six foot five, he feels awkward and oversized at parties. It cannot be easy to be the youngest and the tallest. Only an inch shorter, Thoby never looks or feels out of place. I pulled Adrian to his feet and tugged at his cuffs and straightened his tie. “Lovely,” I said, hoping to encourage him.

  BY THE TIME WE REJOINED THE PARTY, the drawing room was freckled with several more of Thoby’s Cambridge friends, looking the way I always imagined Thoby’s rooms at Trinity must have looked, with the intellectual young men draped all over the furniture. Their talk rang out with their affectionate university names for each other: Goth, Mole, Strache, Saxe.

  Lytton Strachey had curled farther into his chair and was looking endearingly rumpled, with his round spectacles perched low on his nose and his frizzy red beard even bushier than usual. He was scolding sweet-tempered Morgan Forster about his novel.

  “That was indecently quick, Mole,” Lytton said dramatically. “You are meant to suffer, to pine, to ache, to burn. How is the work meant to be art if it arrives without pain?”

  Lytton’s own work, his unfinished fellowship thesis, is causing him considerable pain. This winter Morgan completed his first novel. It is to be published in the autumn. Everyone talks about writing a novel—Lytton, Desmond, and of course Virginia—but Morgan has actually done it.

  Virginia had claimed the small velvet sofa and was sitting, silent and still, like a toad on a paving stone. I wished she would speak. I wanted Thoby’s friends to see her dazzle the way she can when she chooses to rake the conversation into a leafy pile and set it alight. No one can burn up the air at a party like Virginia. I knew she was irritated that no one had mentioned her review of The Golden Bowl that was published in yesterday’s Manchester Guardian. Father’s friend Henry James wrote to her this morning to compliment her on the piece, and she had conspicuously propped the card up on the mantel. Adrian, recognising the problem, hurried over
and congratulated her loudly, but that only made her more cross. Adrian has no sense of timing.

  On the long sofa by the fireplace, Thoby was talking to Clive Bell about the Durand-Ruel exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. Only Mr Bell, wearing a beautifully cut tailcoat in the new style, matched Thoby’s perfect ease in the room. Virginia thinks he is uncultured and blunt, and Lytton sometimes refers to him as “Squire Bell” because of his penchant for hunting, and everyone teases him about his curly red hair, but I like his straightforwardness and the unhurried, fluent way he moves about a room. I stood nearby listening to him and Thoby talk of art. I had been to the Durand-Ruel exhibition twice, once with Margery Snowden and once on my own. Snow liked the pink-cheeked Renoirs, but I preferred the thick, muscular Degas. I knew Mr Bell was an art critic, and I was curious to hear what he made of the exhibition.

  “Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir. Paul Durand-Ruel bought them all for practically nothing when they were first painted,” Mr Bell said. “Incredible vision.”

  “Does it take vision to understand beauty?” Thoby asked, tilting the conversation towards philosophy as always.

  “Goth, it took vision to understand that they were the vanguard,” Mr Bell said with feeling.

  As if anticipating my interest in the conversation, Mr Bell shifted up to make room for me on the long, low sofa. I sat as gracefully as I could and tried not to slouch.

  “But does beauty always live in the vanguard?” Thoby asked. “What if something is beautiful but never becomes popular? Would it still be beautiful?”

  “Durand-Ruel knew that they were the next incarnation of painting,” Mr Bell replied. “That takes a visionary!”

  “Maybe he just liked them?” I said without thinking.

  They both turned to look at me.

  “Ha!” Mr Bell laughed. “Simplicity is everything. Goth, your sister has trumped us all. That is the answer right there.”

  I flushed with the praise. Not a potato tonight.

  Friday 24 February 1905—46 Gordon Square (early—perfect light)

  I waited for Maud to finish clearing up the detritus of last night and then brought my easel over to the window to work on my Virginia portrait.

  A lovely room.

  White walls. Right away I took to the white, white walls. Clean and punctuated with tall, fragile windows set in a light, straight row. This house has not such an anaemic leanness as 22 Hyde Park Gate. It is more generous in its proportions, a house that takes deep, pure breaths, lives on a diet of ripe melon and cold milk, and goes for brisk walks in the early afternoon. And we front such a genial square. It is a square built for gardens and gossip and indiscreet summer evenings, with a curvy path slipping through its soft green centre. This square makes me feel part of the world and less as though the world were happening somewhere else.

  Later (mid-afternoon)

  George and Margaret just left. The lecture I avoided last night doubled in size this afternoon. Family quarrels are more tiresome than making amends, and so I will invite them to luncheon next week to make up. I will have to send a card. Our new sister-in-law is very particular about receiving an invitation—and of course we don’t send out invitations any more. We should ask Gerald too. What would Mother and Father think if they knew that the siblings and half-siblings had split so cleanly into two camps? Duckworths and Stephens, unwound at the roots. It was not always like that. Stella was a half-sibling, and she was as much my sister as Virginia. But George and Gerald are not Stella.

  And—I spoke to George about our funds, and he says that we should each have enough to travel next month. Ginia assumed I would go away with her and was annoyed when I announced that I was already planning to travel with Snow.

  1 March 1905—46 Gordon Square (late)

  Tonight was our official housewarming. Our society debut. But I’m not sure I enjoy society any more. And society certainly doesn’t enjoy trundling all the way to Bloomsbury. Everyone declared the house “lovely” but bemoaned its location.

  “So far from everything,” the Balfours said.

  “But close to the British Museum,” said the Freshfields.

  “Your mother would be heartbroken to see you here,” Aunt Anny said.

  “It suits us,” Thoby said, closing the discussion.

  Thursday 2 March 1905—46 Gordon Square (late)

  This evening’s at home felt so sincere after the hollowed-china feeling of last night’s housewarming party.

  Last night the talk was about the who of everything, and it was dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. Who is marrying whom? Who is bankrupt; who is standing for office; who is having trouble with their cook; who is buying a motorcar? Dull.

  Tonight the talk was purposeful, intentional. No one spoke unless there was something to say. When there was nothing to say, we made room for silence, like a thick blue wave rolling through the house. And then there were the arguments. Chewy, swift, loud arguments. I sat transfixed as the words sprinted through the room.

  I watched Thoby argue with Mr Bell about art and Harry Norton and Desmond growl over a new translation of Racine. Lytton tried to provoke Morgan into a disagreement over publishing, but Morgan was too flexible to take up the bait. Then all of them pitched in and discussed the nature of good. Good in friendship, in art, in perception, in beauty, in words.

  Snow was here too. She had meant to return home to Yorkshire for a few days, but I persuaded her to stay down in London another night so she could experience a Thursday at home. I was impressed by her composure. She surprised me by speaking about the difference between beauty and importance in painting. She had just read an article on the subject by Mr Roger Fry, the wonderful lecturer with the wild grey hair and the wire spectacles. Snow spoke, in her round, clear voice, with intelligence and conviction, and I sat back, feeling pleased that I had introduced a person of value to the room.

  Virginia sat wrapped in heavy quiet until well past midnight. Her reserve held fast until Lytton and Thoby began to talk about the death of Greek writers.

  “Sophocles? Was Sophocles eaten by dogs?” Lytton asked.

  “No,” Thoby said. “That’s not right. Aristophanes, maybe? And which one of them drowned?”

  “Aeschylus,” Desmond guessed. “I wish Headlam was here.” Walter Headlam is editing a new translation of Greek verse, but he has a cold and could not come.

  I could feel Virginia’s gathering frustration. She has been studying Greek for years now, but I doubted she would correct them. I know she worries that her patchwork education at home does not hold up beside a university education like Thoby’s.

  “Sappho? I am sure Sappho drowned,” Desmond called out from the green chintz sofa.

  “Sappho leapt to her death,” Virginia said, her voice cracked and low like a distant thunderclap. “Euripides was killed by dogs.”

  Everyone leaned in to hear her.

  “And Aeschylus?” Thoby asked, proud of her for knowing the answer.

  “As prophesied, Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise that fell from an eagle’s claws,” Virginia said without hesitation.

  Later in the evening, Virginia found her pitch. Morgan asked her about her writing, and Virginia was brief, clear, and disarming. She spoke of rightness and beauty in the unfettered, clean phrasing she prefers. Her voice broke free of its rusted shell and slid like a deep river over rocks. I watched them watch her. She stands with them as an equal, even if she is afraid she doesn’t. She looked particularly beautiful tonight. In the way a woman does when she does not know it.

  Friday 3 March 1905—46 Gordon Square

  A short note from Mr Henry James arrived in the second post. He has heard of Thoby’s mixed evening at homes and wrote specifically to express his disappointment in my loose conduct. Virginia, it is assumed, sails under my colours.

  MR SARGENT

  5 March 1905—46 Gordon Square

  “But why are you going to Portugal?” Lytton asked again. He had to speak up to be heard over the rai
n falling against the drawing room windows.

  “Because I want to go to Spain,” Virginia answered, as if that made sense.

  “Adrian wanted Portugal, Ginia wanted Spain, so they compromised and are visiting both,” Thoby said without raising his head from the newspaper.

  Virginia and Adrian were leaving at the end of the month to travel on the Continent. They are an unlikely pairing, but Thoby has promised to go to the Lake District with Clive Bell and Saxon for a few days in early April, and I am going to France with Snow.

  15 March 1905—46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury

  Snow, Thoby, and I went to see the great painter Mr John Singer Sargent in his studio in Sidney Mews. Snow and I studied under him at the Royal Academy, but my pen bolts at calling him anything less formal than his full name. His infamous portrait of Madame X hung in a prominent place. I have seen her several times and am struck each time by the artificial turn of her head. She is so posed. Striking, certainly, but the life in her seems to stem from her awkward, wrenching, haughty stance. I suppose that defiance is just the point he was trying to make?

  I watched the practised, casual way the great man discussed his method but I failed to work up the nerve to ask him for criticism. I wanted to ask his opinion of my portrait of Nelly, still grandly called A Portrait of Lady Robert Cecil. That name feels stiff and Victorian. I asked Nelly if she really wanted to use the whole mouthful, but it seems she does. Or I suppose she does. In the last few years dear Nelly has become quite deaf and conversation is a struggle. Strange to think that she is only a little older than Stella would be. But Stella will always be twenty-eight.