Deceived With Kindness

by Angelica Garnett

  At the time the landlord was building a disproportionately large silage and hay barn behind the old farm buildings. As yet unfinished, it was a skeleton of bolted steel girders rising above the moss-covered slates and tiles of the flint barn. A milking parlour for four hundred cows was planned for the rickyard. The white chalk road full of potholes was to be concreted, and I imagined the constant rumbling of tractors and the hum of the milking machine interposing a mechanical screen between ourselves and the sounds of the countryside. Although farming is less destructive than many other pursuits, I felt that the air of the Sleeping Beauty which then possessed Charleston would inevitably disappear. I grew more and more depressed, especially as it became clear that the rent Duncan paid was too low to justify the landlord spending anything on repairs. I knew it was right that the agent should see it, yet I felt as though I had asked him there for nothing. He could not believe that anyone would be interested in helping us to preserve it, and thought that our only chance was to put the murals in a museum. I am thankful that the agent has since been proved wrong, but at the time I suffered greatly from the fact that my defence of Charleston had been so unconvincing.

  Meanwhile my correspondence with Frank Hallman continued and, in the course of his other visits to London and one to Sussex, our friendship deepened. But in the summer of 1976 the telephone rang, and a voice on the other end of the line told me that Frank, on the previous day, had dropped dead of an aneurism. Our friendship, so full of promise, was brought to a tragic end. He did not even have time to publish Vanessa’s memoirs. A year later I sold my house in Islington and went to live at Charleston, from where Duncan had again departed to Aldermaston, as it turned out for the last time. I thought I could keep it going until his return in the spring, but living there again was a psychological experiment which held greater risks than I had imagined.

  I loved the place and all that was in it, but there was a sense of compulsion about my return, as though this time I were going back to the cave of the enchantress, the role in which I saw Vanessa. Surrounded by the subtle and glowing colours which splashed and streaked every surface, transforming walls, mantelpieces, doors and furniture, all familiar to me from childhood, I was too close to see things dispassionately, and yet I could not tear myself away. I moved about the house as in a dream, aware of the atmosphere distilled by the vibrant colours and yet hardly seeing them, preoccupied with the effort of imagining Duncan and Nessa in their early years, youthful as I had never known them. I felt as though I had a debt to pay – and yet, on reflection, I had begun to wonder whether the debt was mine or theirs.

  Obscurely, I felt it necessary to come to terms with them in a place where I had spent a large part of my childhood and which I had always thought of as my home. At the same time the force of personality of both my parents, together with their philosophy or attitude to life, constituted a threat which until then I had never properly considered. My fear was that this threat, inextricably mixed with their love for me, would swamp me for ever. I was again alone, with no one to talk to and, in any case, little idea of how to describe my state of mind. Had it not been for the visits of one of my younger daughters, Fan, the experiment might have ended in disaster.

  First, however, there was Duncan’s ninety-third birthday party, given by Clarissa and Paul Roche at Aldermaston. I drove over there and was taken in to see Duncan in his room at one end of the house. He was very quiet and gentle, wearing his little knitted cap à l’orientale – absolutely himself. He asked questions about Charleston and about my daughters. Surprisingly alert, he remained personally uninvolved; he was affectionate, but I was mainly conscious of his exquisite good manners.

  Friends arrived and were invited into the sitting-room. Duncan was wheeled in and people went up and spoke to him: as always, he showed himself open to new impressions. Clarissa, who is a superb cook, provided us with a delicious meal, and Duncan was served in his own corner. There were gossip, giggles and intimacy; no arguments or intellectual profundity, only towards the end (and after a lot of wine) a few personal revelations. It was the sort of occasion Duncan always enjoyed.

  Duncan occupied an agreeable room full of Paul’s books and his own pictures. A canary flew from cornice to cornice, or perched on Duncan’s feet. A door gave on to a newly built conservatory, its roof supported by a central pillar of looking-glass, which Paul imagined would eventually be surrounded by a pool of water. Already he had filled the corners of the room with camellias and other plants. I felt as I went into it that I was stepping into a dream, a dream of the South, of perpetual sunshine and lethargy, and a little startling in our northern climate. It was hardly an interior which Duncan would have created himself, and I wondered whether he liked it. The important thing, however, was that he was still producing small paintings, which meant that he must be happy.

  In the spring of 1978, about two months after his birthday, Duncan died. Not long beforehand he had returned from Paris with a chill, having been to see the great Cézanne exhibition at the Grand Palais. Staying at the British Embassy as a guest of Sir Nicholas Henderson, an old friend, Duncan fell out of bed on his last morning there and caught cold: Paul, who was with him, postponed their return for twenty-four hours and then brought him back to Aldermaston and put him to bed.

  I cannot be sure how long it was after this that Paul called to tell me how Duncan was. After he rang off I suddenly realised how bad things were, and that unless I went over to Aldermaston I should probably never see him again. I suggested to my brother Quentin, who lived only three miles from Charleston, that he might like to come with me; I drove and we arrived in the afternoon. Duncan, frail as a skeleton leaf and speechless on account of his bronchitis, was nevertheless pleased to see us. He lay in bed with his cap on and with his hands, blue with cold, lying on his chest. We found ourselves in the awkward position of making conversation round someone who, though hearing and seeing, could not participate. Quentin was full of resource and knew better than to ask Duncan questions to which he could not reply. I was more or less silent. Paul kept on bringing the conversation back to the subject of who was to be the author of Duncan’s biography after his death, like a child who has been told not to touch a sore spot and cannot forbear doing so.

  We must have stayed for about an hour, which, though all too short, was sufficient to tire Duncan. It was indeed the last time I saw him: he was perfectly self-possessed, alive to all that was going on, gentle and remote with the distance that age confers. He never appeared to suffer, either from his physical ailments or from his necessary dependence on others. He looked like a cross between a mandarin and a gnome, and as I stared at his hands, long and narrow, I remembered how delicate and dancelike his gestures used to be.

  The drive back was exhausting, but it was nice to be alone with Quentin, and I think he was as glad as I was that we had been. I was pleased that my general inertia had not prevented me from asking him to go with me.

  About a fortnight later Paul rang to say that Duncan had died quietly and peacefully; just the way one expected him to go – Duncan never did anything painfully. It was decided that he should be buried beside Vanessa in Firle churchyard.

  The funeral itself took place on a grey spring day. The little churchyard was very green and situated in an au-delà-du-temps, reminding me for some reason of the garden of the Hesperides: Paris and the Three Graces would have been welcome. As it was, there was a small crowd of friends, including our former cook and her husband, and Angus Davidson, the author and translator. He was calm, dignified and pale, the only friend from Duncan’s past. A lot of people were in tears. Paul’s daughter had painted the coffin with wreaths of flowers, a Pre-Raphaelite gesture that would have delighted Duncan.

  After the funeral Paul and his children drove off, and the rest of us, with the exception of Quentin and his wife, went back to Charleston. We sat around the tea-table feeling purged of our petty rivalries and jealousies – or so it seemed to me; Angus’s benevolence and distinction may hav
e influenced us. Then they all went away, leaving me once more to my solitude.

  Immediately after Duncan’s death I began to suffer from a continuous headache. At first negligible, after a time it felt as though, when I bent my head, a set of billiard balls clashed together in the middle of my forehad. Activities such as gardening became impossible. Examinations revealed nothing and pills were useless; finally a violent pain seized the back of my neck and more or less prostrated me. As I lay in Vanessa’s bedroom I had the sensation of being sucked into a vortex from which, as in a nightmare, it was imperative but impossible to escape.

  Weeks went by during which no one was able to suggest what was wrong, weeks when I felt less and less capable of normal emotion. There was a moment when I thought of the pond as a solution, but Fan, who had been with me some of the time, came to the rescue when she wrote to say she thought I might die, owing to the strain of living at Charleston! This startled me into action, and I decided to move into a nursing home in London, where I was told I was suffering from a depression: a psychiatrist gave me jade green pills to swallow. I shall never forget the moment when, lying in bed in the evening, I felt an unmistakable trickle of vitality wriggle down my spine. I simply lay there, allowing this miracle to take possession of me, like an urn being filled with water.

  It was a long time before I felt completely normal, but I could at least lead the life of an ordinary human being, and I returned to Charleston to an exceptionally beautiful spring, when the Japanese cherry that I had put in the year before flowered with the palest pink almond-scented blossom. The rediscovery of country life, the beauty of the downs and the garden, entranced me. In addition I felt a new freedom, and the idea of writing the book that Frank had suggested now began to take hold of me. It was a way of appreciating him, of remaining in touch with his memory, and I began to see that it might be my own way out of the labyrinth. As I thought about my childhood and adolescence I began to realise that the past may be either fruitful or a burden; that the present, if not lived to the full, may turn the past into a threatening serpent; and that relationships that were not fully explored at the time can become dark shapes, in the shadow of which we do not care to linger. To me, Vanessa had become such a shade.

  When she was alive, I had seen her only as a stumbling block, as a monolithic figure who stood in my way, barring my development as a human being. Unable to wrench myself away from her for whom I had such feelings, I burdened her instead of myself with the responsibility for my life. The result was that when she died I felt almost nothing save the oppressive shadow of her presence and the faint hope that I might one day be free of it.

  Why had I not revolted while there was still time, thus discovering my own self-respect and the ability to love Vanessa while she was still alive? I realised that I had never, during her lifetime, said to her, ‘What does anything matter, since I love you?’ Was this simply because I had been too inhibited, or because I hadn’t loved her? In any case, now that she was no longer there it was impossible to say, but the idea that it might be possible to hold a dialogue with the dead began to form in my mind.

  In the passage at Charleston I had hung some photographs of my grandmother, Julia Jackson, taken by my great-great aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron. As I looked at them I became conscious of an inheritance not only of genes but also of feelings and habits of mind which, like motes of dust spiralling downwards, settle on the most recent generation. Vanessa shrank into a mere individual in a chain of women who, whether willingly or not, had learnt certain traits, certain attitudes from one another through the years. One of these was clearly seen in a snapshot that always stood on Vanessa’s writing-table, and which I now keep in the same place, of Julia in profile looking out of the window. Because of its intimacy it held a special significance for Vanessa, but for me at least half its meaning lies in its resemblance to Vanessa herself. It is not so much the physical likeness as the resemblance of gesture and intention; there is a reluctance, a hesitation in the hand raised towards the light, a doubt betrayed by the subtle and gracious lines of the pose, which links Julia and Vanessa close together. I know that I too sometimes take such poses, for example on entering a room full of people of whom I feel shy. How far back do such inheritances go? Julia’s mother for instance, one of the famous and beautiful Pattle sisters, did she also suffer from lack of self-confidence? It was she whom Vanessa, as a little girl, remembered enveloped in layer upon layer of shawls. She seems to have retired early from a life that was eminently respectable and impeccably dull to spend her mature years protected by her daughter from all disturbance. Was this merely Victorian indulgence or real fragility?

  Yet, as I read Vanessa’s early letters to her sister and to her husband Clive, I was astonished by a vitality that I had not known was there; it was like uncovering a spring of silver water. An earlier identity glowed tantalisingly through these pages and through other people’s memories and allusions, calling to life the mother I had always wanted, and with whom so many had fallen in love. Such a woman had invented the vibrant colours and shapes that surrounded me. I remembered that Bunny, who had known her well in those days, described her as full of energy – riding a bicycle, going for walks, playing with dogs and children, making jokes, a woman full of sympathy and friendliness.

  It was a woman that I could see through the much darker personality of the later Vanessa, which lay far more heavily on my consciousness. I was puzzled by the fact that there seemed to be more than the usual contrast between youth and age, as though for some hidden reason the two had been deeply divided at about the time of my birth. Although it was obviously rooted in what went before it, I could not understand what had happened to colour the second half of her life less vividly. I felt intensely attracted by the younger Vanessa, and at the same time faintly uneasy: the trouble, it seemed, stemmed from my birth.

  1

  Vanessa

  For many years I was so much a part of Vanessa, and she of me, that I could not have attempted to describe her with detachment, and even now I sometimes feel as though she might be looking over my shoulder. It is only now, and still with hesitation, that I feel I can portray her from a greater distance and affirm my separation from a personality I have spent so much time thinking about. I hope to be excused a skeleton of biographical facts without which, to my mind, her behaviour would lack meaning.

  Although she eventually formed part of a society that was to have lasting influence, it was a small group within which Vanessa exerted her power, a group very susceptible to personal ascendancy. Some of its members, notably Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes, gained world recognition, but there was some element in Vanessa which refused to compete, restricting her energies to a more personal arena, where she reigned supreme.

  She reminded me of a mountain covered with snow: at its summit the sun shone with warmth and splendour, and there was a sweetness and gaiety in the air. Further down the clouds gathered, plunging the lower, more and slopes into darkness. At the centre of the mountain ran a deep river, glimpsed only at intervals, when it surged through a rift in the hillside with unexpected and disconcerting power.

  It is strange that, given this power, Vanessa seems to have left behind her a memory less substantial than one might expect. Perhaps this is simply the effect of a complex personality difficult to define and therefore to remember, and perhaps it is also the consequence of her own reticence – her dislike of a public image. In order to understand Vanessa, one has to accept and enter her private world, a world from which she excluded all except her most cherished friends and relations, but within which she created a dazzling interior.

  Vanessa was not only Virginia Woolf’s sister, she was also the eldest of the Stephen family by her father Leslie’s second marriage. Both her parents had been married before and both were widowed. Leslie’s first wife, Minnie Thackeray, had left him with a backward daughter Laura, who was incorporated into his new family. His second wife, Julia Duckworth, a great beauty, had been passionately in
love with her first husband and suffered deeply on his death: in spite of her vivacity she remained something of a tragic figure. On her marriage to Leslie she had brought with her three children by Herbert Duckworth: George, Stella and Gerald – the first two in their different ways of great importance to the Stephens.

  The gap in age was considerable, however, whereas that between Vanessa and her full brothers and sister was as close as possible, as was their intimacy. Next to Vanessa came her adored brother Thoby, also of great importance in her emotional development; then Virginia who through the accident of sex was thrown together with Vanessa, for a time becoming a psychological burden of considerable proportions; and lastly Adrian who as an unwanted child was spoiled, over-protected and inhibited. According to Virginia, Vanessa felt her responsibilities towards them keenly: thrust into a maternal role by nurses and Julia alike, she had no choice but to respond, tempted by rewards of love and affection, and proud no doubt of being thought capable and worthy.

  But it was Julia whose nervous energy dominated the family, leaving behind in Vanessa’s mind the glow of an unattainable ideal. One evening in the bathroom, when she and Virginia were still small children, Virginia suddenly asked Vanessa whom she preferred, her father or her mother. ‘Such a question seemed to me rather terrible; surely one ought not to ask it. However, I found I had little doubt as to my answer. “Mother,” I said.’ Vanessa had, as it were, already been inoculated with Julia’s image, and in later life it was this she longed to evoke. Whenever she talked of her Vanessa’s voice would take on a hint of exaltation which hid her mother’s profile through the gold dust of memory, revealing a figure of such perfection that it was hardly real at all. Clearly Vanessa was profoundly moved, as only a child can be, by her mother’s personality. The aura of tragedy, her distinction, her natural authority had all left an indelible mark.