Bloomsbury's Outsider

by Sarah Knights

  The garden was the recipient of all the love and attention which Bunny could lavish upon it. Having ‘fallen in love with working on the land’ at Wissett, Bunny’s love affair continued at Hilton. He planted the fruit and vegetables he wanted to eat – globe artichokes, haricots verts, aubergines and courgettes – vegetables which he had earlier promoted in his version of Gressent. He and Ray liked the kinds of dishes which Elizabeth David would champion twenty-five years later – largely French and Mediterranean. Bunny enjoyed not only the fruits of his labour, but also physical engagement with the earth. He loved to be outdoors and relished feeling his strength as he dug, raked and hoed the soil. He approached his garden scientifically, understanding the importance of compost and manure, of soil, light, water and air. But it was also a place where he could be part of the changing seasons, observing the natural world around him. Very soon he and Ray acquired chickens and ducks, and of course Bunny lost little time in making Hilton a home for bees. Now dividing his working life between the Nonesuch Press and writing, the garden provided an outlet for his physical energy.

  The Nonesuch Press had moved from its crepuscular basement on Gerrard Street to more spacious premises. Profits had been sufficient to allow Vera to purchase a substantial and graceful property, a former eighteenth century coffee house at 16 Great James Street, around the corner from Great Ormond Street, bordering Bloomsbury. The main office was on the ground floor, where Bunny also had a small office. Francis and Vera (now married) had adjoining offices on the first floor. A ‘war widow’, Mrs Stephens, was taken on as secretary, and two young women worked in the office as well. Bunny usually came in for a couple of days a week, conveniently spending the night in one of the spare bedrooms above the offices, returning to Hilton the evening of the second day. But he took Nonesuch work home, reading manuscripts, deciding which authors to bring back into print, corresponding with editors and working on the prospectuses through which he and his partners marketed their books.

  That first autumn at Hilton, Bunny was working on a new novel, The Sailor’s Return. Edward had read the book, in draft, but Bunny felt his father had neither grasped what he was trying to achieve, nor understood the importance of the tone in which the book was written. ‘The effect at present’, Edward reported, ‘is a bit too much as though it had been run into a mould.’19 Bunny found it difficult to contradict Edward, venturing that his story was ‘better than you think’, adding, lamely, ‘who knows you may like it better when you see it next’.20 But Bunny did not wish to be deflected from his artistic purpose; he wanted his story to remain cast in the narrative form of his own devising. And so he took the manuscript along to Ebury Street in London’s Belgravia, to the home of the writer George Moore, who had earlier pronounced Lady into Fox a masterpiece.

  Bunny had met Moore in 1924 when Moore approached the Nonesuch Press with a proposal to compile and edit an anthology of verse, in which he would propound his theories regarding the essence of Pure Poetry, the anthology’s title. Initially Francis and Vera opposed the idea, but Bunny thought Moore’s name would enhance the Nonesuch list. Francis, however, disliked Moore on personal grounds, and eventually only conceded to the publication on condition that Bunny would be responsible for all dealings with the author. Then in his seventies, Moore was formal in bearing, a gentleman of the nineteenth century who fastidiously observed social niceties and adhered to established routines. Attuned to such archaisms, Bunny was able to respond with due politesse, always addressing Moore as ‘Mr Moore’ and careful to flatter this egotistical individual. Thus the two men established a cordial and formal friendship built upon the subject of books.

  Perhaps Bunny turned to Moore specifically because he knew Edward didn’t rate Moore’s work. In contrast, Constance considered The Mummer’s Wife and Esther Waters ‘among the greatest realistic novels in English’, although she thought his work overall inconsistent, and liked to quote her father-in-law’s dictum that Moore was ‘a bit of a goose and a bit of a genius’.21 It was odd that Bunny had not been put off by Moore’s procrastination over his poetry book. Moore revised repeatedly, neither satisfied with what he had written nor the poems he had selected. Even when the book was being printed, he submitted additional paragraphs then changed his mind.

  Bunny should have delivered his complete manuscript to Prentice in January 1925. Although he had finished the book, he wasn’t happy with the result. He had already re-written it once, but still felt it was ‘a question of grouting the rubble in the piers’. Unfortunately Knopf had anticipated announcing the novel in his Spring List, and Bunny worried that he would be annoyed about the delay. He also worried that one of his main characters might be of dubious acceptability to his American publisher: ‘I have broken it to him’, Bunny informed Prentice, ‘that Tulip is a negress’.22

  Hopeful that Moore might be able to help grout the rubble in his manuscript, in early March 1925 Bunny dined with him at Ebury Street. This set the pattern for subsequent meals, in which the menu invariably consisted of whiting (a fish Bunny detested) followed by miniscule mutton cutlets and potato, and then fruit tart; all washed down with a single diminutive glass of sauternes. If Bunny disliked Edward’s minute dissections of his text, it is hard to understand how he endured those of George Moore. It was as though in turning his back on his father’s critical judgement, Bunny jumped from the frying pan into the fire. For Moore not only pedantically questioned individual words, but constantly changed his mind about the words he questioned. He disliked the novel’s ‘dismal’ ending, and even when the English edition was in print, tried to persuade Bunny to alter it for the French translation. All this continued until Bunny finished writing the book towards the end of May. Between times, he dutifully journeyed back and forth to Ebury Street, suffering the whiting and the procrastination, the criticisms only slightly sweetened by the sauternes.

  Moore’s involvement alarmed Edward. ‘I hope to goodness’, he declared, ‘you will not catch his manner’, adding dismissively, ‘This is all very well for his writing & for people who like it. But if you caught his manner it would be a reflection of something reflected.’23 Thenceforward it was Edward who read Bunny’s manuscripts, for having experienced the mentoring of Moore, Bunny felt comparatively at ease under his father’s affectionate scrutiny and more confident in his own powers of judgement. Even so, Bunny dedicated the book to Moore, perhaps as an act of deference rather than gratitude.

  The Sailor’s Return was an unusually brave book for its time, as its subject was inter-racial marriage and the prejudice which ensued. The plot is simple: set in the nineteenth century, it revolves around an English sailor, William Targett, who finds himself marooned in Africa, where he falls in love with a young African princess, Tulip. He marries her, they have a son, Sambo, and when the child is three years old, Targett brings his family to England. They settle in Dorset in a village called Maiden Newbarrow, closely based on East Chaldon, where Targett becomes publican of the local inn, The Sailor’s Return.24 Tulip’s dowry, in the form of gold and jewels, allows Targett to rent the inn and buy fine clothes for his wife.

  From the outset, Tulip and Sambo meet with hostility, not only from the locals, but also from Targett’s sister, Lucy. Various efforts are made to hound Tulip and Sambo from Maiden Newbarrow, but these are thwarted by Targett’s loving protection. Eventually he is set upon by a local carrier and his henchman, and dies from his wounds. The ‘dismal’ ending, to which Moore referred, finds Tulip fleeing to Southampton in an effort to obtain a passage to Africa for herself and Sambo; only Sambo can be taken aboard; Tulip returns to Maiden Newbarrow, where she becomes skivvy to the new publican. Ironically, she is now accepted in the village, for she has become invisible, and wearing rags rather than fine clothes, no longer presents a threat by muddying the waters of race and class. In the eyes of this fictional community, she finally occupies her rightful position as a serf or slave. As for Sambo, there is no resolution: the reader remains ignorant of his fate.

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nbsp; By means of Bunny’s now customary simple, direct and lucid prose, he distanced himself from his text, like a scientist looking through a microscope to reveal the complexity of the specimen beneath. At the same time, he consciously approached the craft of fiction ‘as a painter & not as a writer should work’.25 He always acknowledged that those years with Duncan and Vanessa in the First World War had a formative effect on his writing. ‘All writers’, he said, ‘have a great deal to learn from painters, for painting is a purer art than story-telling.’26 By this he meant that he liked to see the story unfold visually before him. ‘It takes time for the images to solidify’, he wrote later, adding, ‘I may not say whether a donkey on the beach is light grey or chocolate but I have to know it myself’.27

  If Edward worried that Bunny was confining himself to a formula, he need not have done. Although the directness and immediacy of the prose remained, conferring a style which was becoming identifiably that of David Garnett, the subject matter was a complete departure from his two previous works of serious fiction. As Bunny told Lytton Strachey, it was ‘a big canvas, drawn entirely from the imagination’.28 Moreover, although some reviewers perplexingly failed to identify any moral core to the story (perhaps a sign of the times), the theme reflected Bunny’s belief in the personal rights of freedom and free will. He didn’t underline any particular message, expecting his readers to make up their own minds, but the message is not hard to discern, and chimes with Bloomsbury’s emphasis on the priorities of personal relationships. In choosing Tulip, Targett exercised his right to make his own choices in love irrespective of the mores of a wider society. The Sailor’s Return underlines this dichotomy between private and public morality. Bunny believed that whereas individual morality could be employed in relation to oneself and to the outside world, ‘The community has no morals, it only has power which it uses with greater or less expediency & intelligence or stupidity’.29

  Reviews were largely very favourable and universal in praising Bunny’s prose, ‘the exquisiteness with which the story is told’, ‘that simple, exact English of his’;30 ‘death and violence seem a mere ripple of prose. Perhaps it is the short simple words he uses.’31 Some praised the honesty and ‘truthfulness’ of the story: ‘Mr Garnett […] does not shirk the truth of things, and the reader who has followed the poignant story from beginning to end will be forced to admit that it must have happened so, though he will also reflect mournfully on man’s inhumanity to man.’32 The Daily Telegraph declared: ‘the action moves inevitably forward at an even pace to its sad end, with nothing arbitrary or unnatural to enhance the tragedy, only the inevitable pressure of circumstances and the malice of the ignorant’.33

  There were a few dissenting voices. R. Ellis Roberts in Weekly Westminster shared George Moore’s concerns about the ‘miserable ending’, feeling Bunny should have allowed Tulip and Sambo to leave – or to die – together, ‘as simple and savage people can die’.34 The Daily News disliked ‘the black heathen’s’ attitude to Christian customs, and felt it lacked imagination to allow ‘the heathen’ to show herself ‘less cruel than the Christians’.35 The TLS review began by asking, ‘Exactly what Mr Garnett’s intention may be in writing this tale of a sailor who married a negress and settled down in a Dorsetshire village’, concluding ‘we have no means of knowing’.36 This, however, inspired a riposte from Bunny’s friend, the doyen of literary critics, Desmond MacCarthy, writing as ‘Affable Hawk’ in the New Statesman. He devoted several pages to the review, demolishing the TLS review word by word. MacCarthy affirmed that ‘It is a sad enough story, but it does not damp one’s spirits’, pronouncing it ‘a work of art’.37

  While Bunny was in the thick of writing and re-writing, he and Ray were excited about the imminent birth of their baby – or babies – the local doctor was certain that Ray was carrying twins. On Easter Sunday, 12 April, a fine boy was born at 8.45 in the morning. Bunny was delighted with the timing, because he had to fetch the doctor away from church. There was only one infant, but he weighed a hefty 9lb 6oz. According to Bunny, the baby had Garnett hands, which he thought miniature examples of those of Edward and Dr Richard Garnett. Bunny and Ray named their second son William Tomlin Kasper. Tommy was thrilled to be commemorated thus. ‘My dear’, he wrote to Bunny, ‘I do wish your new baby the greatest luck in the world, & if his good fortune in happening on his parents be an augury for the future, he should do well enough […]. I think of you both (as I always do) & of your family & your establishment & your work with a great deal of love & admiration.’38

  Bunny’s establishment came alive at weekends, when he and Ray filled the house with friends and family. Cambridge had long been an outpost of Bloomsbury (or was Bloomsbury an outpost of Cambridge?) so Hilton was ideally positioned to welcome those of the Bloomsbury–Cambridge axis, and their friends and friends of friends. One letter from Bunny to Constance, written in June 1925, gives a flavour of Hilton’s hectic social whirl:

  Garrow Tomlin has been with us since the Friday before Whitsun […]. We have also had two friends of Ray’s camping here, visits from Cambridge [Ray’s brother Tom Marshall and his wife Nadine], & on Friday last the Partridges [Carrington and Ralph Partridge]. On Saturday Lytton came to tea […]. In the evening we went to the play [in Cambridge], followed by a dreary party. Next day [John] Hayward, Frances Marshall, Lettice Baker and someone else came out for tea & dinner […]. Tomorrow Rayne [Bunny’s cousin] & John Nickalls & Christopher are coming to tea […]. On […] Saturday Francis Meynell brings down a cricket eleven – Francis & Vera stay the weekend.39

  This was the first of several Hilton Village versus Publishers cricket matches, for which Bunny and Ray would prepare an enormous cold lunch and cricket tea. In the evening there would be dinner, the publishers’ team seated around the long dining table in Hilton Hall.

  Bunny and Ray were conveniently placed to offer hospitality to a changing cast of Cambridge undergraduates, bright young men and women who had caught the eye of a Harry Norton or Maynard Keynes. One such was John Hayward. He was a remarkable man. Not only was he more than competent to edit the Nonesuch Press Collected Works of Rochester while still a twenty-year-old undergraduate, but he did not let the matter of his progressing muscular dystrophy interfere with living life to the full. Bunny thought him ‘exceptionally courageous’, ‘gay, affectionate and very witty’.40 He was a considerable literary scholar, an assiduous collector of books, and in the 1930s his London flat buzzed with the conversation of writers and intellectuals. Hayward was a flamboyant character, a dandy, but not a fop who, according to Bunny, had the air of a seventeenth century dramatist about him. When Bunny wrote praising Hayward’s Introduction to Rochester, the young editor replied that it was ‘the kindliest letter I have ever had’.41 Like many others to come, Hayward was always grateful to Bunny for this early support of his literary career.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘My life now is divided into two parts. Nonesuch & Hilton. Two or three days a week I go to town […]. Then I am a business man, well dressed, & a devil for work. I go to parties etc. Here I look after my bees, potter in the garden, fiddle away at a big book I have in my head & entertain weekend visitors.’1

  In the summer of 1925 Bunny began another book, a re-working for an adult audience of the tale of Puss in Boots. In order to concentrate on writing, he decided to accompany Alec Penrose to France, where they would spend a month at Cassis, on the Provencal coast. In mid-July, Ray, Richard and baby William were dispatched to Judy and Dick Rendel in Kent, while Bunny and Alec left for France.

  Alec’s wife Bertha and young daughter Sheila were already installed at Cassis, together with Alec’s brother Roland Penrose and his beautiful girlfriend, the poet Valentine Andreé Boué. In the circumstances, it was difficult for Bunny to focus on writing, and he was easily seduced by conversation and the delights of swimming in a warm sea. He wandered about wearing only trousers and a singlet, his arms bare and brown; swam every day, sailed in Roland’s boat, and consumed
delicious meals, drinking a bottle of wine at each of them. He attended fêtes and festivals, danced with lovely girls, and enjoyed something of a celebrity status with people joking about foxes turning into women.

  All this he relayed to Ray in letter after letter. ‘I love & treasure the thought of you every moment of the day’, he wrote, ‘You don’t know how much I bless the day that sent you to me, for my own sake & my children’.2 In his desire to share his happiness with Ray, he did not stop to consider how she felt, languishing in England with a small child and baby in tow. She was exhausted, but staying with relatives was not the kind of holiday she needed. Neither did she need to be told by her husband that he was having a fine time in close proximity to a glamorous beauty. He could not keep his eyes off Andreé, telling Ray she ‘interests me very much. I want to make real friends with her.’ ‘I am not’, he added disingenuously, ‘the least in love with her or excited by her though she is beautiful beyond anything one is used to. She is the most beautiful creature I know.’3

  Ray’s anger manifested in silence: she punished Bunny by refusing to write. Why should she write happy responses to Bunny’s descriptions of a woman with whom he seemed besotted? Bunny’s protestations of love for Ray, often expressed in the context of her role as the mother of his children, might well have made her feel like a brood mare. But instead of understanding the cause of her silence, Bunny began to pen increasingly petulant letters in which he questioned Ray’s love. ‘You are a cold hearted unimaginative thing’, he scolded, ‘& you have hurt me by your misery of silence’.4 Ray finally capitulated because she needed to know about Bunny’s plans to return home. ‘My nerves are raw’, she wrote, ‘& I am very tired. This means nothing to you as I’ve said it often before but my God I am tired & it seems a pity to be too tired to be happy now that Richard & William are small & adorable & want me all the time. When they are older I expect they will be as unkind as you are & give me the heartache same as you do.’5