Bloomsbury's Outsider

by Sarah Knights

  Although Peacock was one of Bunny’s favourite authors, Shelley was a kindred spirit. As Bunny pointed out, with some sarcasm, all that Shelley had been guilty of was being ‘blind to the enormous moral importance of being off with the old love before he was on with the new.’ And so, between the lines of his thoughtful and often humorous introductions to Peacock’s novels, there lodges a discourse on Bunny’s belief in free love, that it is possible to have ‘two emotions at once’. In particular, his assertion that Shelley ‘loved Mary passionately and Harriet tenderly’, mirrored his own feelings about Angelica and Ray during the years 1938–40.

  The year 1948 saw Bunny making a conscious shift from London to Hilton. He continued to spend a day or two in London mid-week, but his pocket diary reveals a growing preoccupation with what would become an all-consuming passion: farming. Just as flying had swept Bunny off his feet in the late 1920s, now farming became an obsession. If butter and cheese were rationed, Bunny reasoned, the best way to circumvent shortage was by owning the means of production. And so on 19 March 1948 he recorded in his diary ‘News of cow’. When Oakdale Milky Way arrived the children kissed her, Bunny milked her, they churned their first pound of butter and, as Bunny optimistically informed Frances Partridge, ‘We are already thinking of rearing one of her calves’.9

  Though Richard was to start at Rupert Hart-Davis the following January, William had no specific career plans and Bunny partly turned Hilton into a farm to provide occupation for him. In addition to William, the farm was managed by Harry Childs, so, in theory, Bunny could focus on literary work. But he couldn’t resist getting involved. While the farm expanded – more Jersey cows purchased – piglets born – sugar beet sown – fodder crops produced – Angelica began to withdraw. An inveterate record-keeper, Bunny’s pocket diaries invariably marked the occasions when he and Angelica had sex. The records are mere hieroglyphs celebrating an act central to Bunny’s well-being. But as milk yields improved, congress declined, replaced with cursory notes of long-drawn-out discussions. In the summer of 1948, following a ‘long talk with AVG’ Bunny miserably recorded: ‘Depressed & sleepless night. Felt completely isolated & on the brink of disaster.’10

  Bunny felt besieged from all sides. At home Angelica blew hot and cold: sometimes she was warm and cheerful, at others frosty and remote. At work, Hart-Davis was experiencing financial difficulties. The firm had been under-capitalised from the beginning, and Rupert realised that it would not become profitable without increased capital. Bunny tried to buoy him up, stating, ‘if we can survive we shall do brilliantly well and I am personally convinced that we shall survive’.11 This was not strictly true: Bunny was nervous about the business, and had written some months previously to Charles Prentice, inviting him to purchase shares, perhaps in the hope that as a shareholder his publishing experience could be tapped. No longer involved in publishing, Prentice declined, telling Bunny ‘publishing is a job you have willy-nilly to be in or out of’.12

  Bunny preferred to be away from the office, working at home, but as Rupert’s biographer Philip Ziegler commented, the ‘somewhat ambiguous division of responsibilities between the usually-absentee Garnett and the omnipresent Rupert was always a potential cause of friction’.13 Bunny sometimes felt marginalised, a situation to which he contributed by his determined absenteeism, but there was an unspoken symbiosis between the two men, for it suited their personalities to occupy their elected positions. Rupert ‘was a man of strong likes and dislikes and the dislikes were more easily defined than the likes’.14 He had given the company his name and it was appropriate for him to take on the role as the company’s figurehead, a role which Bunny anyway did not want. But both partners believed in ‘standards’, as Bunny told Rupert, ‘I could not agree more about keeping up a high standard. It is the only possible policy for us – because it is the only thing we can be sure of and can do better than other people.’15 High standards did not guarantee successful books.

  Beleaguered by business concerns, Bunny also felt compromised at home when in early September Angelica took off again for the best part of a month to Italy with Duncan and Vanessa. Bunny felt bereft, writing dejectedly to Angelica that he depended on her ‘too much: everything I think & do, is in relation to you & when you are gone, the bottom rather falls out of things’.16 He went to stay with Frances and Ralph Partridge at Ham Spray, from where he set off to a cattle sale and purchased a young cow, driving all the way back to Hilton with her on the back seat of the car.

  That was part of Angelica’s problem. She had married a writer, and as an artist, she expected they would achieve the same sort of creative harmony which her parents enjoyed. One of the things Angelica appreciated about Bunny was his work as a novelist, and throughout her childhood this is what he had been. At Charleston she had been in the company of painters and writers, or people like Maynard with great intellectual capabilities and aesthetic sensitivity. But now her husband was driving around with a cow in the back of his car. When she read his letters, detailing the second visit of the Man from the Ministry of Agriculture, she was reminded that Bunny had changed. He was writing a novel, but instead of telling her about that, he remarked that Topsy had given a record amount of milk. It was not surprising that Bunny felt Angelica seemed very far away and wondered whether, perhaps, she would go ‘further & further away’, even after she came back.17

  With the exception of a week staying with Tim White on Alderney, Bunny had not been abroad since his trip to Paris with Angelica in 1938. He was consequently looking forward to a holiday in Paris with Mina in the New Year, but over Christmas illness descended on Hilton. First Bunny became ill with flu, then all four little girls went down with whooping cough, then William was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. Bunny soon followed, diagnosed with atypical pneumonia. Although Mina kept open her invitation, Angelica was so exhausted that Bunny decided to stay at home. He eventually caught up with Mina at the end of March 1949, at Juan les Pins on the Côte d’Azur, where she rented a villa overlooking the sea. This was Mina’s solution to the problem of their different sized pockets. Mina was wealthy and expected to stay at the best hotels, but Bunny explained that if she wanted to stay at the ‘Ritz-Carltons’ his money would run out in a few days.

  The two friends spent their time working on their respective projects. Bunny was re-writing Elephant Bill, a book by Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Williams about his wartime experiences with elephants in Burma. Although the story was exciting, Williams could not write, and Bunny spent considerable time ghosting the book. ‘There is a certain charm’, he reflected, ‘in being a “ghost” writer. One has so very little responsibility.’18 Actually, Bunny took this work seriously, devoting the best part of five months to the task.

  As Bunny and Angelica began to realise, the problem with separate holidays was the heightened demarcation between liberty and sacrifice, with one person enjoying freedom while the other remained trapped twixt cowshed and nursery. They resolved to spend part of August together in France, taking their older daughters and leaving the twins (now aged nearly three) at Hilton in the care of a nanny who had worked for friends. In the event Angelica departed on 3 August, taking only Amaryllis. Bunny remained at Hilton, for Henrietta could not travel, having contracted measles. He hoped this would cause only a temporary delay, but a few days later it was obvious that both Nerissa and Fanny had been infected. Nerissa developed pneumonia and was admitted to hospital, seriously ill. Although she rallied as a result of the new wonder-drug, penicillin, Bunny couldn’t leave the twins, as all his ‘latent love & feeling of responsibility’ had surfaced.19 He eventually left for Paris, with William and Henrietta, three weeks after Angelica’s departure. After a few days, Bunny set off on a tour with William, leaving Angelica in Paris with Amaryllis and Henrietta. There they remained while Bunny and William returned home. The twins were delighted to see Bunny, although, as he told Angelica, they said, ‘ “Mummy gone” – & apparently think it’s final’.20

  In early
1950 Bunny revived the Cranium Club, which had lapsed as a result of the war. ‘It is very pleasant’, he told Mina, ‘to meet some old friends – though going through the list of members I saw that out of 51, thirteen are now dead.’21 Adrian Stephen had died two years previously, but the most recently departed was Charles Prentice, the publisher who had taken Bunny on at Chatto and had been devoted to Ray as much as to him. Prentice died in Kenya after an overdose of barbiturates, having been ill for some months. He had fallen in love with his sister-in-law, Lynn Adamson, with whom he lived for several years, causing opprobrium in some quarters. Bunny had remained loyal, and had last seen Prentice on the eve of his departure for Kenya in 1949. Lynn Adamson gave Bunny Prentice’s ring.

  Despite Bunny’s fears that he would end up on the literary scrap heap, he remained very much in the public eye. The previous year, the publication of The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock was marked by a live BBC radio broadcast, in which Bunny entered into a discussion with ‘Dr Richard Garnett’, played by the actor Felix Aylmer; a young Welsh actor, Richard Burton, took the role of Shelley. Bunny’s short stories, Purl and Plain were broadcast by the BBC that year. In January 1950 A Rabbit in the Air was broadcast on BBC radio and in March ‘New Books and Old’ concerned A Man in the Zoo. Elephant Bill was published in May, a best-seller, which sold out a fourth impression by Christmas. (Bunny received no royalties, his ghosting all in a day’s work at Hart-Davis.) He was also still working as an occasional reader for Jonathan Cape, for whom he was editing The Essential T.E. Lawrence.

  Having outgrown its cramped offices at Connaught Street, in July 1950 Hart-Davis moved to 36 Soho Square. This had the benefit of an enormous basement suitable for keeping stock, a ground floor reception room occupied by typists, a large first-floor office for Rupert and smaller offices for production and publicity. In theory Bunny shared Rupert’s office, but still the absentee partner, he worked mostly at Hilton. By now Rupert’s mistress, Ruth Simon, had been brought in as an editor, and she occupied a cubby hole off Rupert’s office and shared with him an apartment at the top of the building.

  According to Philip Ziegler:

  The atmosphere in the office was as carefree as in the flat above. ‘It was great fun to work there,’ Teddy Young remembered, and the word ‘fun’ is one which recurs repeatedly in descriptions of the daily routine. A lot of work in fact got done, but there was always time to joke or gossip. The directors took long and usually bibulous lunches and nobody complained if the junior staff from time to time indulged themselves as well.22

  Bunny’s bibulous lunches were confined to mid-week, but he enjoyed his work, obtaining the same sort of pleasure from reading manuscripts that Edward had done. But Bunny remained concerned about the state of Hart-Davis finances, believing that although they anticipated a small profit in this third year of trading, the business required more investment. He had put in all he could, mortgaging not only Hilton but also The Cearne. Just when he persuaded Mina to invest £700, the company had a piece of luck. As Richard Garnett explained, ‘Dr Henry Goverts, a wealthy bibliophile based in Liechtenstein, but with a taste for all things English, was tempted to invest in a British publisher.’23 Hart-Davis fitted the bill.

  In June 1950, when Angelica presented her first Memoir Club paper, Frances Partridge noticed that Bunny ‘beamed out upon the rest of the company from within a warm blanket of absorption in his own affairs’. She recalled that afterwards they ‘walked in a body through the hot dark night to Duncan’s rooms, passing James [Strachey] standing on his doorstep in a white silk suit. It was as if all London had shrunk to Bloomsbury and was peopled only by those human portents.’24 Even in its diminished state, the Bloomsbury Group carried on its traditions in its time-worn territory as if little had changed. But changes were taking place, especially in the Garnett household, where Bunny and Angelica tried to negotiate a modus vivendi. Angelica was increasingly restless and dissatisfied with life. Bunny understood her need for space, her craving for time to paint, but life with four daughters and a muddy farm always seemed to impinge. In July, when Angelica spent a fortnight in France she wrote to Bunny: ‘We will both turn over a new leaf when I return.’25

  In November Bunny added another fifty acres to his farm, having purchased Kidman’s Farm at Hilton. He reported to Mina that he was ‘becoming a farmer as well as all my other occupations’, and that ‘the fields, animals, plans of growing crops makes me extremely happy’.26 Just as he liked to dress the part, don the uniform, carry the immaculately rolled umbrella, he now carried the ‘Farmer and Stockbreeder’ diary in his inside pocket. Here a new name began to appear, against his one or two days each week in London. It was then that he saw Ann Hopkin, his former secretary at the PWE. The affair probably began in April 1951, when Ann wrote to Bunny stating that she was very fond of him.27 It was Bunny’s first defection from Angelica.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘It is a miracle to recreate yourself when you have been changing for nearly sixty years, and living with yourself all the time.’1

  In the autumn of 1951 Bunny started writing his autobiography. He had been toying with the idea for several years, thinking he might write something about a single period, perhaps Sommeilles or living at Charleston during the Great War. As far back as 1938 Maynard Keynes had encouraged him to write his memoirs: ‘I am not one of those who have acquaintance with the past, but you are, and you should use it.’2 Of course Bloomsbury’s Memoir Club promoted ‘acquaintance with the past’, stirring up a potent mix of nostalgia, introspection, ribaldry and what Bunny summed up as ‘an almost gourmet-like love of the foibles of old and intimate friends’.3 Bunny found he could easily recall his past, could view his life ‘as a whole & get an impression of the periods & changes’.4

  If he could look back with objectivity, he did not approach the present with such detachment. Ann Hopkin’s father had recently died, and Bunny, always a reliable listener and good comforter, provided a level of consolation to which she responded by falling in love. Ann was half Italian and half Welsh, an attractive olive-skinned, dark-haired woman of thirty-two. She had been called to the Bar in 1948 and was now working at Somerset House in the Solicitors’ Office of the Inland Revenue. She told Bunny she had already been wounded in love and couldn’t bear to be hurt again. He promised not to make her unhappy.

  Bunny had also formed an intense friendship with Rosemary Hinchingbrooke, the thirty-six-year-old wife of his neighbour, the Conservative MP Victor Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke. According to Bunny, Rosemary was ‘a big attractive woman with short fair hair which contrasted strikingly with her light brown eyes which were so often expressive of a surprised sincerity’. Their friendship got going one day when he was on his tractor, ploughing. Rosemary drew up in her car, got out, and asked if she might drive the tractor. She climbed up, her skirt pulled up to her thighs. ‘That’, Bunny said, ‘was the beginning of my personal friendship with her’. He employed the word ‘personal’ to distinguish between her friendship with Angelica, for, as he put it, the ‘friendship with Rosemary was not one but two. Her friendship with me was one thing; that with Angelica was another.’5 Rosemary was a good listener, the recipient of both Bunny’s and Angelica’s confidences. She was also a keen artist, often painting with Angelica. Indeed, the two women and their children were in and out of each other’s homes. As Henrietta Garnett observed, the Garnetts and Montagus became ‘a kind of clan’.6

  Bunny turned sixty in March 1952, an event which passed without celebration. He spent Easter week with Mina Curtiss in Paris, where she had taken an apartment on the prow of the Isle St Louis, with views of both banks of the Seine. During the 1950s Mina travelled from America to France on an almost annual basis, where she undertook research and translated works by Degas, Halévy and Proust. Throughout the 1950s Bunny would spend a week or two with her there most years. Knowing that Bunny was hard up, Mina offered her patronage diplomatically, telling him that as the apartment was paid for, he would need only
to fund his passage across the Channel. In Paris Bunny had a taste of the high life to which Mina was accustomed, dining in the best restaurants, entertained by Parisian intellectuals and haute societé, engaged in a ceaseless round of exhibitions, dinners and afternoon tea. Invited to tea by Alice B. Toklas, Bunny was particularly taken by her ‘vigorous chestnut moustache’.7

  This taste of good living was a momentary respite from difficulties at home. When Bunny returned he found Angelica absent, at Charleston with the children. He wrote telling her, ‘I long to see you darling & feel as though I should never do so again’.8 She returned to Hilton only to leave a fortnight later for a painting holiday with Rosemary. Bunny worried she might not return, that she was immersed in other relationships and found him old and uninteresting. His letters to her were full of anxiety: ‘Don’t do anything you may regret’, he urged, ‘Darling I long to see you: will you love me when you come back?’9

  Bunny was also worried about Hart-Davis Ltd. Not only had the company experienced a bad spring, but Bunny found his attitude to the business progressively at variance to that of Rupert. Their gentlemanly manner of dealing with contradictory opinions had given way to frayed tempers and loud verbal exchanges. The firm was losing money, economies had to be made: Teddy Young went half-time and then left; standards were subsumed by cheaper type and bindings. Having already agreed to a substantial cut to his expenses allowance, Bunny now agreed to waive his salary for a whole year. Rupert made no such sacrifice.

  Bunny believed he could afford this gesture as he anticipated receiving payment for the rights to A Man in the Zoo, again the subject of a putative film. Mina had introduced Bunny to ‘an old beau’, ‘one of the few intelligent Hollywood producers’, a man of ‘excellent taste’ who had been educated in England.10 This was presumably John Houseman, with whom Mina had been in love at one time, and with whom she worked at the Mercury Theatre in the 1930s. By 1953, however, the treatment was in the hands of Howard Koch, a left-wing scriptwriter blacklisted by Hollywood and resident in London. Whether the payment was down to Houseman, Koch or someone in between, it was not forthcoming in 1952 when Bunny needed it badly.