It was probably at this time that Bunny vented his frustration in a poem entitled ‘Trouble’:
What is the matter with this house
Where my poor heart would live at ease and sleep?
The spider weaves at peace, the silent mouse
Almost forgets his fears to play bo-peep
Behind the kitchen chairs. We are not thus,
We eat nor sleep, nor scarcely even live.
What is the matter with this house – or us?
What is there wanting? What offering must I give?24
Bunny began to think the only solution was to leave Charleston and go to Russia with the Quakers. Duncan, who could not countenance being abandoned, became increasingly unhinged, one morning springing upon Bunny and spitting at him. Bunny felt he had to leave in order to diffuse the situation, and because he could see that Vanessa was also adversely affected by the prevailing atmosphere. As he concluded in the final verse of ‘Trouble’:
What is the matter? If we so ill together
Within its walls can live, let us walk out
And find in the hoarfrost and rough weather
A fireside for our hearts, – the wind a clout
Warmer than the cloak of love we tatter
And better than this house, where what’s the matter?25
Bunny discussed the question of Russia with Robert Tatlock, an old friend from his period in France who had worked with the Quakers in Russia and was now in London. Returning to Charleston later than anticipated, Bunny found Duncan frantic, demanding to know who Bunny had slept with. They fought savagely, Bunny knocking down a shelf in the process. Afterwards they both began to cry, and ‘feeling indescribably happy’ ‘lay locked in each others arms’.26 ‘After living with me for three years’ [sic] Bunny reflected, ‘Duncan hasn’t yet discovered that […] I am perfectly happy with him, if I am sometimes allowed to have the distraction of an affair with someone else’.27 But scenes of this nature grew more frequent: lamps were overturned, slippers flung through doors and boots tossed into the hallway. Bunny and Duncan both recorded ghastly days in their diaries. Bunny recognised this had much to do with the strain of working on the farm, and whenever he could, retreated into watching his bees. Duncan could sometimes see the absurdity of the situation: ‘Alix in love with James & the self chosen wife of Bunny. Bunny living with me & a furious womaniser.’28 Duncan did not, however, record that there was another ingredient in this curious mix: not only was Vanessa in love with him, but they had been having sex in the hope of conceiving a child. Bunny knew about this. In May 1915 Vanessa had confided the matter to him, and was glad she had done so, because, as she told him afterwards
you were so extraordinarily nice & I saw how generous & magnanimous a nature you have – & those are the most important qualities & the ones I care for most – You are not just pleased that people you like should be happy as most people are. You really mind when they’re not & delight in it when they are. I think that’s the most loveable quality any one can have.29
Bunny oscillated between hoping the situation with Duncan would improve and thinking he had better go to Russia. One evening, when Barbara Hiles was staying at Charleston, Bunny went to wish her goodnight. She gave him a friendly kiss, and he returned to the room he shared with Duncan, to find him in a jealous fury. ‘Why’, Bunny asked, had Duncan ‘become accustomed to treat me like this when he would be ashamed to behave so to Nessa’?30 The crises were escalating. When Bunny received a telegram from Tatlock summoning him to London, Duncan became extremely upset, believing Bunny would go to Russia. It transpired that Tatlock had recommended Bunny for work in London for the Friends’ Russian Mission. However, Duncan accused Bunny of wanting to abandon him to the farm and again threatened suicide. Unable to take any more, Bunny collapsed in tears. He was physically and emotionally exhausted and felt that he and Duncan were ‘like devils chained together by their tails’, that he was enslaved to it all.31
When Bunny felt that the world was ‘absolutely at its blackest, deadliest most hellish pitch’, he learned that Edward had found a publisher for his abridgement of Gressent.32 Then Duncan was granted leave by the Central Tribunal to work half-days on the farm, giving him time to paint. Just as things seemed to be looking up, Alix informed Bunny that she was not remotely in love with him. Confronting Alix in London, Bunny found her steely and unfriendly. When she told Bunny that she felt ‘absolute indifference’ to him, his wounded pride turned rapidly to anger. In a scene which he described vividly in his private journal, he caught Alix by the neck and threw her to the ground. After telling him not to be so stupid, she politely invited him to tea. As always, Bunny’s anger turned to remorse, and feeling ashamed, he rushed away. He would never again let his anger with a woman turn physical. He might wound verbally and was always dextrous in argument, but he would never lash out like this. Consumed with regret, Bunny returned to Charleston, to be comforted by Duncan and to learn that Vanessa was expecting a baby. ‘Thinking about that’, Bunny wrote in his journal, ‘has been the one outlet for a pure & good emotion I have had.’33
Chapter Ten
‘Never try to write, but above all never have anything to do with publishing or the book trade.’ (Edward Garnett’s advice to his son)1
When he received a letter enquiring whether he would be available to work with the Friends in Russia, Bunny felt mixed emotions. He wanted to go but worried about leaving Duncan working for Hecks. Bunny’s dilemma was, however, short lived, as ‘Mr Secretary Balfour thought it undesirable that Mr Garnett should go to Russia at present & suggested that his name be omitted from the list’. Harry Norton thought the Garnetts’ well-known terrorist sympathies influenced Balfour’s decision, telling Bunny: ‘you or your mother have been too friendly with the Bolshies’.2
In October 1918 Bunny wrote to Constance, ‘Relief – oh blessed relief. They have almost stopped fighting & I can’t help believing that one will be able to live happily again occupied with decent things & not, as seemed probable a few weeks ago always be fighting with one’s fellows for things that are conceded everywhere but in wars & nightmares.’ This statement could equally have applied to Bunny’s domestic situation, although in recent months the atmosphere had improved at Charleston, Bunny and Duncan united in caring for Vanessa’s wellbeing and keeping matters as tranquil as possible. On the back of a letter to Edward, Bunny scribbled possible names for the baby, including Bulgaria, Havana, Lucretia, Linolia, Titania, Cornelia, Perdita, Leda, Angelica and Lesbia.3 Evidently he did not contemplate the birth of a boy.
Meanwhile, Bunny was enthused by the success of Lytton Strachey’s biographical essays Eminent Victorians, which had become an overnight sensation. ‘It is amusing’, he commented, ‘to have a real booming success among our circle’.4 He was enraged, however, when he read Edward Marsh’s Memoir of Rupert Brooke, published as an introduction to Brooke’s Collected Poems. Bunny disliked the way Marsh white-washed his subject, absenting Brooke’s homosexual friends (notably James Strachey and Duncan Grant) and most of the women with whom Brooke had love affairs. Bunny hated what he considered to be false hero-worship, the way Brooke had been turned into a hero and martyr.
On 11 November 1918 when the Armistice was announced, Bunny and Duncan took the first train to London, where they found the streets crammed with revellers. At Montague Shearman’s Adelphi flat, they joined in the celebrations with a multitude of friends including Maynard Keynes, Diaghilev, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, Lydia Lopokova and D.H. and Frieda Lawrence. The war over, Bunny considered what he might do. ‘I am distinctly in favour’, he announced, ‘of living in London and in such a way as to have a good deal of freedom & independence.’5 Influenced by Vanessa and Duncan, Bunny proposed to become a picture dealer. It did not occur to him that he had neither experience of the commercial world nor any particular expertise in art, having only worked in the science laboratory and on the farm. His parents thought this proposal most unwise and
that he would be reduced to ‘forcibly feeding one’s friends with pictures’.6
Nevertheless, Bunny pursued the idea. He wondered whether he should have a business partner and concluded that Frankie Birrell, who had worked at the V&A, was the obvious candidate. Frankie – who had no business experience and was hopeless with figures – was delighted with the idea. In a letter studded with emotion, he told Bunny that his main pleasure in life had been the few occasions when the two men had been together since working in France in 1915. He worried, however, about what would happen if they invested everything in the same venture and if his unrequited love for Bunny became intolerable to either of them. ‘I am putting this down on paper now at a distance’, Frankie wrote from France, ‘because when I am with you, I know I should be falling too much in love with you to be able to put it clearly.’7
For the time being, Bunny’s concerns turned to the impending birth of Vanessa’s baby. He and Duncan gave Vanessa their butter rations and Bunny was a reassuring presence chopping wood for the fires and providing vegetables from the garden. On Christmas Eve he went to fetch the doctor and at 2 o’clock on Christmas Day morning a baby girl was born. ‘It is a queer little creature’, he observed, ‘very lovely and full of independent life.’ ‘It is a curious emotional experience’, Bunny reflected, ‘waiting for someone else’s child to be born.’8 Bunny wrote to Lytton Strachey, telling him Vanessa had given birth to a girl. ‘My dearest cowboy’, he wrote,
Vanessa was safely delivered of a daughter at two o’clock this morning. […]. It is extremely beautiful & not in the least what one is led to expect – that is to say not a wizened old man from Mr. Yeats, or a sort of skinned rabbit & boiled lobster – it is simply a very small very lovely naked human, with signs of great will power and intelligence […]. Its beauty is the most remarkable thing about it. I think of marrying it: when she is twenty I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?9
Although the last sentence does seem scandalous, it was a piece of light-hearted whimsy which Lytton (who confessed to being ‘slightly rubbed the wrong way by simple domesticity, babies, & rattles’) would have enjoyed.10 It was a means of conveying an important piece of ‘family’ news without recourse to the usual details of baby’s weight and duration of labour. Bunny’s outrageous proposal corresponds exactly in tone to his other letters to his ‘dearest cowboy’. ‘Will it be scandalous?’ is gossipy and risqué, a verbal raised eyebrow which Lytton would have relished. It was a piece of Strachey-ese similar in tone to his earlier letter to James Strachey, proposing orgies. Above all it is a gay comment, a piece of badinage from one gay man to another, reminiscent of the homosexual poet Brian Howard’s alleged remark when confronted with Bryan Guinness’s baby son: ‘My dear, it is so modern looking.’11
It was rapidly evident however, that baby Angelica was not thriving and was losing, rather than gaining, weight. Bunny telephoned Noel Olivier, a qualified doctor, who, unable to get away, sent Dr Marie Moralt. It transpired that the local doctor had recommended the baby be fed with orange juice and had prescribed dilute carbolic. Bunny busied himself cycling backwards and forwards to the Lewes chemist, and under a new regime Angelica began to flourish. Bunny stayed on until the end of January 1919, but London and independence beckoned. He took a job at Probsthain’s Bookshop on Great Russell Street where he hoped to gain commercial experience.
Bunny persisted with the notion of becoming a picture dealer despite lingering doubts and parental opposition. He would rely on the advice of Vanessa, Duncan and Roger Fry, who would recommend up-and-coming artists. He would also have a monopoly of selling Duncan’s work. Bunny assured his mother: ‘Vanessa is extremely level headed and quite disinterested […]. If she thought this scheme were likely to fail & involve me in continual horrors she would not encourage me in it.’12 With no capital of his own, Bunny tried to raise funds from his friends. On Armistice night, Harry Norton agreed to help, but in the cold light of January changed his mind. He thought the whole endeavour too risky and that Bunny was not a ‘very suitable person to run it’.13 He also believed the venture could only succeed if Bunny went into partnership with an experienced dealer, apparently disqualifying Frankie. Furthermore, Percy Moore Turner, the owner of the Independent Gallery in London where Duncan exhibited, was not pleased at the prospect of one of his artists being poached. Confronted with such obstacles Bunny decided it would be more pragmatic to run a bookshop.
‘What I don’t want to do’, he informed Constance, ‘is to embark hastily on something which however good in itself will completely sidetrack my life for several years’. Characteristically, Bunny did not want to be confined to one quarter, but needed to be able to scurry off in other directions at will. He thought a bookshop would at least enable him to retain some vestigial freedom, although, as he told Connie, ‘I don’t think it will be a roaring success ever!’14
A new love was on the horizon and Bunny was ready to be distracted. In the middle of January when he spent the weekend with his parents and Nellie at The Cearne, they received a visit from Rayne Garnett, the twenty-year-old daughter of Edward’s brother Robert. Bunny had not seen her since she was a young child. Rayne, who worked as a gardener for the Duchess of Marlborough at Crowhurst in East Sussex, arrived clad in her gardener’s garb of corduroy coat, breeches and gaiters. Disconcertingly, she confined her conversation almost exclusively to matters of pruning. Initially Bunny found both her directness & her facts rather off-putting, but nevertheless he sat up to talk with her when the others had gone to bed, and in consequence lay awake all night believing he had fallen in love. He found Rayne beautiful, similar in appearance to Rosalind Thornycroft, although more comely of figure, rather like one of Renoir’s portraits of women. Still seeking plurality in his relationships, Bunny believed Rayne could offer everything he wanted and that he would find in her ‘a sister, a lover, and so on’.15 Courtship did not proceed smoothly. Bunny adopted a man of the world attitude, lecturing his cousin on the merits of both promiscuity and contraception. Although Rayne eventually capitulated and they became lovers, this was against stern parental opposition. Her father forbade her to visit Pond Place, fearing she would be tainted by the fact of Edward’s and Nellie’s cohabitation and by Bunny’s contamination too.
Bookshop plans were hampered by Frankie’s absence in France concluding his work for the Quakers. Bunny was so hard up that Maynard had taken pity upon him, buying him a smart suit, so that at least he might look the part of a businessman. Carrington also came to Bunny’s sartorial rescue, sending him a parcel of clothes which had belonged to her brother Teddy, who had died in the war.
Bunny felt his life had reached a watershed, with the doors of Charleston closing and an uncertain future stretching ahead. He noticed that Duncan’s feelings had changed. Although Bunny continued to receive letters and invitations from him, and on occasion they had sex, the warmth they once shared had dimmed. As Bunny reflected: ‘Duncan is kindness itself & I think is rather worried about me & afraid I may be unhappy.’16 Yet Bunny still clung to Charleston, spending weekends there and tending his bees. He foolishly orchestrated a situation in which he manoeuvred Rayne into the position of gardener-in-residence at Charleston, as if endeavouring to unite these two strands of his life, to bring his girlfriend into the extended Charleston family. Vanessa and Duncan were not Rayne’s natural allies. Vanessa disparagingly described her as ‘like a wooden figure out of Noah’s Ark or an over-sized doll who has been on a farm’.17 Duncan was disarmed by Rayne’s eagerness to talk about Bunny, finding her openness embarrassing and misplaced. But, expressing a fear which Bunny found it hard to suppress, Duncan predicted that Bunny might ‘get rather bored with her society when she becomes more & more dependent on yours’.18
With the bookshop on hold, Bunny resolved the only way to independence was to write, and to do so with an eye to popular success: ‘With a thousand pounds in the bank one can do what one likes.’19 He still saw something of Betty May and it was she who gave him an
idea for the subject of a book, a ‘sevenpenny shocker’, which, he informed Edward, ‘has no merit, form, style, or anything else’, but which Bunny had dashed off in sixteen days. ‘It’s not simply for the servants’ hall’, he explained, ‘but for the young who are ready to accept anything which they think is life.’ ‘Of course’, he added, ‘I will spare the name of Garnett the infamy of being on the title page.’ Coming from a family where servants’ halls were non-existent, it is ironic that Bunny’s views about class were still somewhat shaped by this kind of stratification. But his was largely an intellectual snobbery defined in terms of taste and the kinds of books people read, rather than their social background.
Bunny called his seven-penny shocker “Dope-Darling”. The story is about Roy, a medical student who is in love with his childhood friend, Beatrice, a qualified doctor. Roy has his eyes opened when he encounters a young night-club singer, Claire, who tells him things ‘that no girl Roy had ever met would have said’.20 Claire is a drug-addict who bears a striking resemblance to Betty May, with a nod to Lillian Shelley. Roy abandons Beatrice and marries Claire, mistakenly believing he can cure her of her addiction. She remains unstable and attempts suicide.
The story is cinematic in its use of melodrama, a verbal narrative resembling the flickering black and white silent films in the picture-houses of the time. Moreover it can also be read, alongside Sax Romer’s novel Dope and D.W. Griffith’s film Broken Blossoms (both 1919), against a background of a prevailing preoccupation with the ready availability of drugs, in which fears about the ‘fairer sex’ being seduced into a sub-culture of drugs were the focus of sensationalist newspaper headlines.
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