It seems as though neither Virginia nor Clive were the first to embark upon this relationship. My own interpretation is that it happened largely because, unable to share Vanessa’s absorption in her very young baby, they both felt unhappy and excluded, and were thrown together. Perhaps Virginia, still in an unstable condition more than a year after the death of Thoby, allowed herself to be tempted into a potentially dangerous situation, forgetting that Clive was a man of flesh and blood, all too human in his responses to woman. More than his equal intellectually, she did not bargain for physical attraction, yet Clive’s evident admiration went to her head.
It is also possible that when Vanessa had originally broken the news of her engagement, she had been too happy to be tactful and was inconsiderate of Virginia’s susceptibilities, thus leaving in Virginia’s mind the impression of a forceful personality that would stop at nothing to get what it wanted; so that from the beginning Virginia had suffered from a feeling of exclusion. Later intensified by Vanessa’s preoccupation with her baby, this feeling became shared by Clive who, finding his sister-in-law within easy range, was unable to resist the appeal of her beauty, let alone her intelligence.
It was not, however, Clive’s attention that Virginia wanted to attract, but Vanessa’s: her behaviour constituted an appeal for help addressed to Vanessa over Clive’s body. Nor was it simply an appeal for inclusion in her sister’s married life, but a protest against being asked to stand on her own and forgo Vanessa’s vigilant protection. Thoby symbolised virginity and the almost irresponsible games of adolescence at which Virginia was an adept. Now that he had disappeared she was not only faced with an intolerable loss, but was also being asked to share in the happiness of a physical maturity with which she felt unable to sympathise, and certainly did not experience with Clive. Such a demand made her feel painfully inadequate, and appeared quite unacceptable. She retaliated with another, that Vanessa should give up her husband. Its complete lack of common sense indicates the depth of her anguish: she leaped to the conclusion that she had lost Vanessa’s love for ever. Virginia never wanted Clive for his own sake, and it must have been Vanessa’s awareness of this that led to her restraint, not least with Clive, against whom she seems to have harboured no resentment.
One imagines that a quiet word or two would have put an end to the whole thing. Why didn’t Vanessa, who was in an unassailable position, utter them? Apart from her innate dislike of emotional confrontation, her silence may have hidden a nascent doubt about her feelings for Clive – feelings which cannot have been improved by his behaviour – and at the same time a reluctance to tell Virginia that she was tired of looking after her, a reluctance justified by Virginia’s lack of stability.
So the flirtation, never consummated, came to no definite conclusion: it revived, off and on, from 1908 until 1914. I feel my brother Quentin is right when, in his biography of Virginia, he says: ‘On the whole the break-up of the Bell marriage, that is to say its transformation into a union of friendship, which was slowly accomplished during the years 1911–14, made for a relaxation of tension between the sisters and a slow dissolution (never quite complete) of Virginia’s long troubled relationship with Clive.’ Although Virginia never obtained any deep physical or spiritual satisfaction from it, it was too stimulating and too flattering to be given up.
Whatever the truth, Vanessa’s trust had, however, been shaken: Virginia not only wanted more than was reasonable to ask, but had betrayed their former relationship. It was an episode that left behind a permanent scar. Years later, seeing them together, in spite of their habitual ironic affection and without any idea of the cause, I could see in their behaviour a wariness on the part of Vanessa, and on Virginia’s side a desperate plea for forgiveness. This attitude had not arisen out of the blue; it was evidence of an incident which, though long past, could not be forgiven because it had not been fully acknowledged. Both sisters had frozen into attitudes which they found painful and which prevented the normal flow of feeling.
With the birth of her sons Julian in 1908, and Quentin in 1910, Vanessa’s second passion in life, maternity, was fulfilled. At Asheham, the house in Sussex taken by Virginia and shared with Vanessa, she effortlessly organised a life where friends, children and animals lived together in acceptable though primitive conditions. Surrounded by other painters, and visited by a shifting population of guests, among whom were Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, she enjoyed working in their company while controlling their existence with gentle laissez-faire. Her sense of humour, her flair for improvisation and her sympathy for other people’s emotional difficulties, together with her unquestionable capacity to get what she wanted, gave her a special place among that group of friends who were later to be called Bloomsbury. They recognised in her a force that was more full-blooded and more intransigent than their own, an emotional power that had to be reckoned with, even though it was seldom expressed directly. If Vanessa adopted them with all the strength of her nature as a sort of extended family, she required from them an allegiance, almost an obedience, which they seemed to give willingly, feeling that her combination of beauty and maternal authority was almost irresistible. Most of these friends were young men, many of them, though not by any means all, homosexual. Vanessa, though a sympathetic friend and listener, did not take their love affairs very seriously: sexual emancipation, though a source of some trouble and a good deal of amusement, was hardly as important as friendship.
Vanessa’s prejudices went deep and could be formidable, but their nature was personal and idiosyncratic. When they were not aroused, her tolerance, both moral and ideological, was almost unlimited. This fact, together with her sense of humour, played an important part in her relations with the opposite sex, who were both disarmed and reassured by her ability to defuse intensity and see the funny side of things. Her humour was anything but noisy and abrasive; neither was it, like Virginia’s, brilliant and high-spirited. It had its moments of inspiration, however, which seemed to owe their soft explosions to some profundity of which she herself was largely unaware. Without invention or fantasy her jokes were comments, depending for some of their quality on a dry common sense that to her seemed obvious enough – and to others was a source of amazement and joy. She often misquoted a proverb, or put two together to produce a mixture that to other ears was both bizarre and delightful, such as ‘It’s a long worm that has no turning,’ or ‘It’s an ill wind that makes the leopard change his spots.’ Her habitual form of expression, one might even say her frame of mind, was ironic. In spite of the sense of power that emanated from her she was seldom direct, seldom sustained; when on occasion she saw things in black and white, a single word or phrase was enough to show where her feelings lay, escaping from her almost against her will. Usually, however, her meaning was too subtle to be appreciated without seeing her smile, which qualified everything she said. She seemed to appreciate a subject from both sides at once, and, unable to choose between them would laugh deprecatingly at herself, mischievously at others. Although inevitably she sometimes wounded, her irony arose from her affection and aimed at making others laugh at themselves. It was also a means of showing her love, particularly at moments when excessive seriousness seemed to be the only alternative.
Vanessa at Charleston, 1929
With intimate friends she seemed to ride the waves like a ship at anchor, but if from any quarter she felt menace in the air, she reacted strongly with an invincible mixture of prejudice and logic. It was when using both of these together that she was most ruthless, as well as most unanswerable. Such moods were rare, though most of her friends caught glimpses of them. She was extraordinarily self-controlled and, quite often simply bored by human preoccupations, she would return to her own world, just as compelling to her as that of her children.
It was this side of her nature which hurt and eventually cooled the ardour of Roger Fry, who fell passionately in love with her in 1910–11. After Quentin’s birth in August 1910, the relationship between Clive and Vanessa seems to have
deteriorated. He had never ceased to have extra-marital relations and when Quentin’s refusal to put on weight was causing Vanessa considerable anxiety, Clive offered her little support. It was then that Roger Fry, whom she had known for some time, showed a sympathetic understanding which, coming from a man, was new to her. Their friendship, already stimulated by a common excitement about the latest developments in art and his inauguration of the first Post-Impressionist Show in November of the same year, grew steadily more intimate. In 1911, together with Clive, they went to Turkey, where Vanessa became seriously ill. While Clive absented himself as much as possible from the sick-room, Roger revealed himself an expert, if unconventional nurse. On Vanessa’s recovery and their return to London, it was evident, at least to themselves, that they were very much in love.
It must have seemed to Vanessa as though she had found the ideal partner. Although heterosexual, Roger had a feminine dimension that prevented him from being either indifferent or a bully. He showed a capacity for enthusiasm which swept aside Vanessa’s hesitations. She was both amazed and amused by the unselfconsciousness with which he engaged in any new relationship or activity, and was touched by his effort to understand her feelings. Moreover, while he showed unlimited sympathy for the new art, his prestige as an expert introduced her to a part of the art world previously unknown to her, and allowed her to see pictures by old masters that would otherwise have remained inaccessible; as Roger talked of them she realised that his appreciation gained a special insight from the fact that he was a painter himself.
At the same time, Vanessa was a prey to intermittent but crippling bouts of lethargy lasting over a couple of years, suggesting that she suffered from a severe depression, different in effect but not perhaps unrelated to Virginia’s instability. Whatever their cause, these periods of forced inactivity and withdrawal certainly coloured her attitude to her love affair, which had begun with her as the victim and Roger as the knight errant, rescuing her from the dangers of inertia and despair; later, when she discovered that his very vitality exhausted her and that he demanded an attention she could not give, he became a prey to self-pity while she felt a growing indifference.
For a long time he continued to be in love while she, her interest already engaged elsewhere, attempted both to assuage his longing for her while denying him any real satisfaction. In the end Roger understood that perseverance was useless, and gave up his place in her affections to another artist and friend of both, Duncan Grant. The spirit in which Roger watched the development of this new relationship, though not without moments of jealousy, was remarkable for its generosity. With Roger, Vanessa had found too much excitement, sympathy and tenderness to cut him out of her life entirely; neither of them wanted such a thing – the sacrifice would have been disproportionate, and they had too much in common for it to be possible. For the rest of his life there remained between them the flavour of a past love affair, as though neither of them would ever quite admit that it was over.
Vanessa clung to Roger, Duncan, myself and Julian, and perhaps to a lesser degree Quentin – who had his own system of self-protection – like a limpet. An apparently strong, even self-sufficient character, when it came to love, she bent like a flower under the weight of a humble bee. It was her way of loving, actuated by as great a need to be loved as to love. When the moment came to separate, either from children or lover, in spite of all her good intentions, she was unable to recognise it; the stream of desire continued to be transmitted – like the messages of animals and insects – irresistibly. When someone she loved died, she was so disorientated that she fastened onto the nearest person who seemed to offer both safety and an echo of the one lost. Even when she ceased to be ‘in love’, she needed evidence of her power over the loved one. Clive and Roger both hovered nearby, compelled by her need, as later did Duncan. Luckily all were, in their different ways, equal to saving their skins.
Duncan Grant was a cousin of the Stracheys, whom Vanessa had known well all her life. His world was therefore much closer to hers than either Clive’s or Roger’s, although, like that of the Stracheys, it had a strong Anglo-Indian flavour. Duncan’s father had spent his professional life in India, and Duncan lived with his parents there and in Burma until he was seven. His parents staying on, he then lived with the Stracheys, and went to various schools in England, where he shone with a fitful brightness almost entirely dependent on whether or not the art master was equal to his job. Like Vanessa, Duncan decided early in life that all he wanted to do was to paint, an ambition encouraged by his grandmother, Lady Strachey. He went to Paris for a year, from where he returned to enter the London art scene. He was a homosexual with bisexual leanings, though at what age he realised this is not clear – perhaps he had always known it. On the surface he seemed singularly candid and uncomplicated, with an unselfconscious charm that had an almost hypnotic effect on those who knew him. It was his capacity to forget himself and to remain the same under almost any circumstances, allied to an instinctive acceptance of the other person, which won for him the affection of all kinds of people. They realised that here was that very rare thing, a man almost without preconceptions, someone who has not made up his mind beforehand what to think. He was profoundly convinced that every living creature, even a mouse or an insect, had a right to its own point of view.
Duncan, c. 1916
He was a sympathetic companion, beautiful rather than handsome and extraordinarily sensitive to the prevailing atmosphere. Albeit a cousin of the Stracheys, he was neither highly educated nor literary, in Vanessa’s understanding of the term, and in consequence she did not find him threatening. In his presence, even more than in that of the intellectual Roger, Vanessa could feel at ease. Neither did she have the reservations about Duncan’s painting that she had about Roger’s, which created – and continued to create – a barrier between them. With Duncan she knew that the slightest allusion to aesthetics or the process of painting would be understood and appreciated, while at the same time she need not be over-serious. In addition, Duncan’s emotional demands appeared easy to satisfy. Merely observing him, laughing at their friends and working together seemed to Vanessa sufficient happiness.
None the less, had it been possible to lead a normal social life, their relationship might not have continued. But it was wartime and Duncan, as a conscientious objector, was forced to live in the country and work on the land. No one better than Vanessa could have given him the moral support he needed. First at Wissett in Suffolk and then at Charleston, they succeeded in creating a life that seemed like an idyll snatched from the horror that surrounded them, and Vanessa found herself a role which exactly suited her, that of mother-housekeeper and presiding genius as well as artist. Lack of food, comfort and intelligent servants was not enough to destroy their optimism, to which the existence of two lively boys added its own special quality. For Vanessa, now about thirty-eight, association with someone six years younger than herself must have brought with it a feeling of renewal, although in time it became clear that Duncan felt she was asking for something he could not give.
Both in the house at Suffolk and afterwards at Charleston, Vanessa found she had to share Duncan with David Garnett who, younger even than Duncan, had allowed himself to be seduced. Duncan was very much in love, and Vanessa saw that if she was to keep Duncan in her life she would have to accept not only David but many others. One might imagine that such a situation would be difficult if not painful for all three – and perhaps it was. But Vanessa knew exactly what she wanted. She persuaded Duncan to give her a child, prepared to take the responsibility on herself provided he remained close to her. For her he was a genius, his offspring destined to be exceptional.
2
A Child at Charleston
I was born on December 25th, 1918, a date which to Vanessa seemed auspicious, and which, later, she taught me to associate with the unusual, as though the accident of being born on Christmas Day was a virtue of my own. Whether her feelings owed their origin to the fact that it was t
he first Christmas after the war, the first Christmas of peace, or just because it was a festival which still possessed a certain magic even for unbelievers, I don’t know. Or was it that, my origins being unsanctioned by marriage, I was thought to need good luck, or even that, as the child of a union she considered remarkable, I shone with a special aura?
Presumably it was with his approval that Vanessa and Clive decided to ignore the fact that Duncan was my father. It was arranged between them that Duncan, on my arrival in this world, was to telegraph Clive’s parents, Mr and Mrs Bell, in Clive’s name. They, innocent and conventional, would never suspect, it was supposed, that I was not their grandchild. Clive was anxious to avoid the inexplicable which was not so much that his wife had been unfaithful to him – and he to her – but that this made little difference to the amity of their relations.
Clive and Vanessa must have made the decision together in a spirit that, lightheartedly, they imagined unconventional – for that is the way it was later presented to me. But parents and parents-in-law have always been misled about such things: given the freedom that Bloomsbury supposed it had won for itself, it is, on the contrary, the conventionality of the deception that is surprising. It was characteristic, however, of Clive’s urbanity and Vanessa’s tact: if it was unnecessary to say anything, why say it? No doubt she had other reasons, which probably had more to do with Duncan than with Clive or his family. For Vanessa, Duncan was almost an adolescent – if one reads the letters he wrote to her at this time, such an assessment seems justified. When, many years later, she came to tell me of my parentage, she offered Duncan’s youth as an excuse for his behaviour, the only sign as far as I remember that she was aware of anything wrong. He was at that time thirty-three or thirty-four. She thought of him as, above all, an artist; to see him as a father seemed unreal, and perhaps unnecessary, since she herself felt equal to being both father and mother. Duncan’s own feelings are unknown to me.
Deceived With Kindness Page 4