Bloomsbury's Outsider

by Sarah Knights

Chapter Seven

  ‘My opinions had been formed by what I had seen of the war and by the people I had been working among.’1

  Bunny’s university career ended in June 1915. Constance worried that he would enlist, as Bunny oscillated between enlisting and following her advice not to. But Bunny made a surprising decision: he elected to join Frankie Birrell and undertake reconstructive work for the Friends Relief Mission in France. Thus he could contribute to the war effort without having to fight. Although he could not tolerate organised religion, even in the pared down contemplative form which the Friends’ worship took, he believed he could be of practical use building accommodation in villages which the Germans had destroyed.

  There may have been another underlying motive for Bunny’s decision. His love life had taken a complicated turn, as there had been a development in his relationship with Lytton Strachey. Lytton had redoubled his pursuit, repeatedly inviting Bunny to the Lacket. Bunny obviously capitulated, as before leaving for France, he wrote to Lytton asking him to ‘Give me your blessing my dear’, adding, ‘don’t lets wrangle each day seriously who first shall post off the message of his love. I love you – I was innocent & you were a long while letting my pride and my love for you quarrel with each other.’2 Lytton replied, imploring Bunny to come to the Lacket one more time. ‘Of course’, he added, ‘I know that I must ask you to forgive me a great deal. The difficulty is one cannot wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve for daws to peck at.’3

  Aware that he could be summoned to the Quakers any day, Bunny threw himself into a whirlwind of activity, attending parties, dining with friends, visiting his mother, and upsetting Duncan by having sex with Betty May in his studio. On 30 June he wrote in wobbly handwriting, atop a double-decker bus, to thank Lytton for sending him his poems, which Bunny carried with him, on the first stage of his journey to France.

  The previous day Bunny had lunched with his father. Over a carafe of wine Edward began to clear his throat with what appeared to be embarrassment. Remembering the parental advice proffered before his trip to Germany, Bunny felt sure he was to be given a similar homily, but was delighted when his father’s hand opened to reveal a pocket corkscrew. Thus armed, and garbed in the Quakers’ grey uniform with the emblematic red and black star on cap and sleeve, Bunny and Frankie set off for the Marne, in Northwestern France. In the train en route, they found themselves at the receiving end of a lecture from a Scottish Quaker about the supposed immorality of French women. This did not augur well, and on arriving at Sermaize where the Friends were based, the all-pervasive air of piety did little to raise their spirits.

  The two young men were soon confronted with the realities of war. They boarded a lorry, and set off on an unforgettable drive through a blasted landscape which became so engraved on Bunny’s memory, that he was able to describe it twenty years later with absolute clarity:

  The white dust rose behind us and we were carried through chequered light under over-hanging trees – some of which had oddly splintered branches – and all the way along […] and in and out of the shadows of the aspens there were tawdry, decorated scratchings up of earth, over which tricolours fluttered and medals jingled from the wooden crosses. For this road was the extreme limit to which the French army had been pressed back upon itself and from which it had, against Joffre’s orders, rebounded like a coiled spring upon the Boches. In some places the graves were strung out as much as fifty yards apart, in others they lined the road a dozen deep. French soldiers were buried where they had fallen and the country of the Marne was like a large-scale map dotted with little flags that showed the course of battle. All through the district we were entering there were fresh graves dotted along the roads, in the fields and at the edges of the woods.4

  What Bunny saw before him were the scars left by the Battle of the Marne and by the German invasion of September 1914. He not only encountered a shattered landscape, scattered with wooden crosses, but the fragmented lives of the survivors, mostly women, the elderly and children, who had lost their homes and loved-ones.

  As pacifists, members of the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Organisation were not involved in active work which might be construed as validating or supporting war, but their role was to assist the victims of war. Thus Bunny and Frankie were part of a team responsible for erecting temporary housing to provide shelter for the people and their livestock, so that normal life and livelihoods might, as far as possible, be resumed. Bunny was overwhelmed by the stoicism of the French and their determination to rebuild their lives. He sent a postcard to Edward which, he said, gave ‘a vague idea of the ruins. The houses are rubbish heaps – the gardens perfectly spick and span – a strange contrast.’5

  Initially based at Nettancourt, Bunny and Frankie worked in nearby Sommeilles, a hilltop village overlooking the Argonne Forest, where only two houses remained standing. As Bunny recalled:

  When I first saw the village, it created a strange impression. The roof of the church had been knocked in by shells and burnt; and there was nothing left of the Town Hall but a pair of smiling stone lions, a flight of steps and a handsome portico; up the main street there was one little house standing between the rows of burnt-out walls which stretched up to the top of the hill. Yet if one went in between the walls, one saw behind them neat cultivated gardens, rows of watered lettuces and bean-sticks, the climbing haricots just in flower; bees going in and out of the hives, and chicks running to shelter under the hen’s wing.6

  At Sommeilles Bunny and Frankie assembled pre-fabricated wooden frame-houses which varied according to the size of the family, usually consisting of between one and three rooms. Once the frames, joists and planks had arrived by lorry, the Quakers bolted the frames together, laid joists and floors, nailed on the walls, bolted gables and rafters and covered them with planks before finally tiling the roofs. This did not require particular skill, but was physically demanding. Bunny relished this work, revelling in his strength and enjoying the result of his manual labour.

  Bunny, Frankie and the hut building contingent soon split off from the main body of Nettancourt Quakers, moving to Sommeilles, where in late July they built themselves a hut. This had one big room and a kitchen; relics of a previous dwelling had been brought in to furnish stone steps and seats on either side of the doorway. In the hot, high summer, the weather was extremely pleasant, ‘the people smile at us & the cherries are thick on the trees’.7 Photographs of Bunny at this time show a muscular bronzed young man, his arms bare in rolled up shirt-sleeves, his hair a tousled sun-bleached thatch. The men lived largely out of doors, washing and shaving in front of the hut, a mirror nailed to the boards. In good weather they slept outside, but while Frankie, the eternal public schoolboy, relished the proximity of so many young men, Bunny found the all-male environment trying.

  They established a routine which began at 4.45 in the morning, when after a cup of tea and with cigarettes clamped between their teeth, they began work. At 7.30 they breakfasted on coffee, porridge and omelette, stopping for lunch at noon. At 5.30 the working day ended, and they would be given a substantial dinner and wine. As Bunny remarked to Lytton, ‘we live like kings & Mr Cadbury pays for it’.8 Bunny and his co-workers were fortunate because although the houses had been demolished, the gardens and cellars remained intact, from which the generous French could supply wine and vegetables, a welcome replacement for the Quaker rations of tinned fish and chocolate. But the war, which raged only twenty miles away, was ever-present in the continuous thudding of heavy guns and the noise of aeroplanes passing overhead. At night they were often woken by the sound of a heavy bombardment, which rattled the window panes, and sometimes they could see the black puffs of exploding shells above the Argonne tree-tops.

  Bunny was profoundly moved by the dignity of his French friends. One story which he could not forget was that of the Germans throwing a wounded French soldier into a burning house, where they left him to die. In an act of courage and defiance, a thirteen-year-old boy, Georges Raiwot, raked throu
gh the hot embers to retrieve the ashes of the soldier, which he carried to the cemetery to be buried. Bunny became fond of this young man, as he did of many of the villagers, in particular Georges Leglais, a former pilot who had retired after losing his right arm. It was impossible not to love these people, who despite terrible privations were nothing but kind and hospitable to the Englishmen living among them.

  While the sun smiled upon Bunny in France, in England, as Vanessa reported, ‘a profound gloom has settled on us – on Duncan particularly’. ‘I wish’, she said, ‘you could come twinkling out from behind the great ilex. How everything would change & what a nice excited furry little bear would be rolling about on the lawn instead of the rather pathetic quiet caged creature sighing beside me.’ Vanessa evidently now saw Bunny as integral to her life, or at least, in being integral to Duncan’s happiness, necessary for hers too: ‘Please write again my dear creature’, she concluded, ‘you’re so much wanted by the other members of the trio who often talk & always think of you.’9 Duncan wrote telling Bunny that he missed him more and more, and was ‘absolutely determined to love you till the end of time’.10 He also sent, by way of a love token, that first, unsent, letter in which he had declared his feelings for Bunny.

  Letters from home afforded a window into the habitual society and gossip which continued in England, or at least in Gordon Square. Bunny loved Lytton’s tantalising dispatches, designed to taunt the Censor, in which he offered to do all manner of things to Bunny in a series of ‘----’s. Bunny had also embarked on an epistolary flirtation with Barbara Hiles, the crop-headed former Slade student whose dancing had given him a black eye.

  Although Frankie relished living in an all male society, Bunny found the insularity claustrophobic. He began to feel restless, a restlessness compounded by being made to attend Quaker meetings. There was no variety, nowhere to go, no escape, nothing except the guns going ‘thud, thud, thud […] without stopping for five seconds altogether’.11 As someone who sought diversity, Bunny did not enjoy being confined, and felt cornered by the watchfulness of the Quakers. Mostly he missed the company of women and disliked having to live a chaste life on a rather public platform under the scrutiny of both villagers and Quaker brethren.

  To fill their spare time, Bunny and Frankie collaborated in writing a play, ostensibly based on their lives in France. Frankie could not resist introducing ‘one rather moving evening scene with all the young men getting into bed under the stars by a tenuous lamplight’.12 But Bunny was finding enforced intimacy with Frankie progressively difficult. As a result of Frankie’s inability to sublimate his feelings, Bunny began to plan a holiday in England and decided he might not return to Sommeilles, although he expected to continue to work for the Friends in some capacity. Frankie later acknowledged that the ‘surrounding Quakerism’ combined with his unrequited love for Bunny made them ‘unable to continue living in close proximity’. Frankie’s love for Bunny was such that three years later he told him, ‘I show no signs of falling in love with anybody else’.13

  Meanwhile, in August 1915 Edward arrived in Italy, where he was stationed above the River Isonzo with a British Red Cross ambulance unit. Constance seemed less concerned for his safety than for Bunny’s. She feared Bunny would soon complete the work in Sommeilles and might attempt something more adventurous and dangerous. She mounted a campaign to ensure his safety, inveigling Nellie to elicit the help of friends. Nellie wrote to Louise Bréal, asking her to use her influence to see if Bunny could obtain work at the Pasteur Institute or in the Red Cross Hospitals in France. ‘You will probably say’, Nellie acknowledged perspicaciously, ‘why doesn’t he go with Edward? He might – but Connie of course would give anything to keep him away from the fighting line.’14

  Although Bunny normally shirked leadership, he had been made Corporal, directing the building work, assigning duties, prioritising those in need of houses, ordering materials and arranging transport. He felt incompetent faced with such responsibility, but was obviously considered capable, for Edmund Harvey, the Liberal MP leader of the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Mission, subsequently appointed him Chef d’Equipe. This involved even more responsibility, including dispatching progress reports, keeping accounts and, as Bunny wryly commented, reading the Bible at breakfast ‘to prevent debauchery & license among the members’.15 To his surprise, Bunny enjoyed himself. He informed Constance that he proposed to remain in Sommeilles until work there was finished, which he anticipated would be at the end of October. Afterwards, he would come home for a holiday. ‘Whether I go back to France, or to Italy, or Russia, or Mesopotamia’, he said, ‘or whether I stay in England depends on all sorts of things.’ To Constance’s consternation he added: ‘But I am much attracted by Italy.’ ‘Driving a motor would be sickening but I don’t think more dangerous.’16 As photographs show, Bunny had some experience of driving in Sommeilles, and he felt that with a month or so of training, he would be equipped to drive an ambulance or work as a chauffeur.

  Alarmed, Constance wrote anxiously to Edward: ‘I wish it could turn out to be possible for him to do hospital or orderly work only & no driving.’ ‘I think’, she added, ‘he is distinctly less fitted in anything wanting sight & judgment of distance than most people.’17 She explained that an oculist had discovered Bunny’s focussing muscles were defective, causing him to turn his head to see things at the side. ‘If he has to meet me at the station, I see him moving his head to & fro hunting about & not seeing me till long after I have seen him.’18 She had a point: Bunny’s driving was always a nerve-racking experience for his passengers.

  Vanessa wrote to tell Bunny how glad it would make her to see him again, but she could not resist communicating her happiness in having Duncan to herself. ‘I have been extraordinarily selfishly happy lately’, she wrote:

  I sit out or in & paint with the animal & he takes me for walks in the evening & he’s there when I wake up & when I go to bed & sometimes in between too (which in between can be read either way) & he’s been so extraordinarily charming & odd in his ways & speech & so unlike any body or anything else in this world & so amazingly nice to me that I have been about as childishly happy as one can be.19

  When Bunny returned to London for his holiday, Duncan was so overwhelmed at seeing him that he needed a day to recover his composure. Lytton wrote addressing Bunny as ‘Darling, darling creature’, asking ‘How have you managed it, dearest David, to be … just what you are?’20

  After only two weeks, Bunny returned to France where he hoped work at the Pasteur Institute might materialise as it would enable him to be with Duncan, who had been invited to Paris with an offer of design work by Jacques Copeau, the influential theatrical producer. On 3 November 1915 Bunny and Duncan left together for Paris, but at Dieppe they became separated; Bunny continued alone, assuming Duncan would join him later. Although Duncan had obtained prior approval from the Foreign Office to work in Paris, he was subjected to intensive questioning. As his answers proved unsatisfactory, neither the French nor the English authorities would allow him to proceed to Paris or to remain in France. And so, as he wrote to Bunny, ‘I am being shipped back […] like any bloody undesirable alien’. ‘When shall I see you again?’ he asked. ‘It is too beastly.’21

  Alone in Paris, Bunny trailed about the boulevards, as he told Lytton, ‘a pale bloated lonely figure like the last stages of Oscar Wilde’.22 He felt life would be intolerable without Duncan, and worried how he would survive without money. Vanessa sent him £5, and wrote suggesting that as it seemed doubtful Duncan could go to Paris, Bunny should return to London. ‘You know of course that I’m not simply disinterested in suggesting this but apart from what it would mean to me wouldn’t you both really be happier in London?’23

  Conscription appeared increasingly probable. As the war continued, fewer men were enlisting, the initial patriotic influx long over, and the impetus of Kitchener’s call to arms (‘Your Country Needs You’) on the wane. The voluntary system could no longer cope with a conti
nuing war and mounting casualties. But Bunny’s sojourn in France with the Quakers had once and for all settled the question of whether to enlist. As he later explained: ‘My experience at Sommeilles had given me confidence in myself and had also turned me into a pacifist.’ He read Clive Bell’s pamphlet Peace at Once (1915) and agreed with his argument that war should be ended as soon as possible by a negotiated peace. As a result of the devastation he witnessed in France, the destruction of communities and desecration of life, he could not believe that war was justified. Conscientious objection was the only rational option.

  Edward’s return to England in November 1915 coincided with bad news. As a result of wartime privations, Duckworth had terminated Edward’s employment. He and Constance would have very little income and this would mean they could not afford to support Bunny financially if he remained in Paris. Bunny decided to return to Sommeilles to see everyone there one last time. Before doing so, he wrote to Frankie’s father, Augustine Birrell MP. Bunny had heard from Lytton that D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow had been banned as obscene and burnt by the police. Bunny wrote asking Birrell to intercede. Like Edward, Bunny disapproved strongly of censorship, believing it undermined artistic freedom and truth. Birrell replied dismissively that the book was ‘a stagnant pool of dull water collected at the bottom of a disused Quarry’.24

  Back at Sommeilles Bunny found the weather vile and the personnel changed. He could no longer talk easily to Frankie, for there was a ‘silent listener at every conversation between Francis & me’.25 There Bunny received a letter from Maynard, written very much with Duncan in mind: ‘Why don’t you come back?’ ‘If you come back here, either you get a job or you have a very good excuse for leading what life you like and an opportunity you may never have again of seeing if you can write. It’s really absurd to stay out there and quite against reason. Lastly its here Duncan is.’ ‘My dear Bunny’, he added, ‘do come back; on my word its good advice.’26 Vanessa wrote too, imploring Bunny to ‘make your two allies happy by coming for there are also lots of quite unreasonable reasons, such as thinking how happy we three should be […] & altogether how absurd it is in this life not to snatch at any obvious happiness one can get even at some risk’.27