One of Vanessa’s principal pleasures, as always, was to go abroad. Anticipating what they called adventure, she and Duncan would pack up their painting things and go to Venice, Lucca, or Perugia in Italy, or to Auxerre or other small places in France where, installing themselves in some modest pensione or auberge, they would immediately set out to find a subject. There was no nonsense about absorbing the atmosphere or taking time to settle down: they started a sketch at once by church or riverbank, afterwards enjoying a sedentary evening in a café and supper eaten on the terrace, recounting in amused and rather exclusive accents the events of the day. Vanessa visibly relaxed in this atmosphere, enjoying from a chosen distance the warmth of the Italians or the vitality and common sense of the French. When I could, I joined them on these holidays. It was easier to talk to Vanessa abroad; freed from her usual commitments she was livelier, and a thousand small things distracted us from the problem of our own relationship.
Our deepest emotions were called out by the beauty that surrounded us. An October visit to Venice was crowned by a day spent in the autumnal timelessness of Torcello, and another crossing the lagoon to Chioggia, where after a day’s sketching we returned in the dark, mesmerised by the sails of the fishing boats caught in the lights of our small steamer, swelling like pale moths on the dark water. I remember another holiday on the Yonne at a small inn, the patron of which had been an active member of the resistance. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the English as well as a skilled raconteur, reminding me a little of Michel, and telling us story after story about blowing up trains or receiving parachutists in the woods at night. Through Bunny I knew something of General Buckmaster and had met one or two of the agents who had been dropped in France, and was therefore, with Duncan, genuinely interested; but Vanessa remained aloof, either from an intense dislike of war, or from an inability to sympathise with the active, extrovert side of life.
The last of these holidays was as late as 1960, when Vanessa and Duncan rented the Bussys’ house, La Souco, in Roquebrune near Mentone. This time they were not in a hotel but in a home from home, accompanied by Grace to do the cooking. I had last seen the house when I was seventeen, and it held for me potent memories of Dorothy Bussy, Lytton Strachey’s sister, hunched in an armchair reading, her straight grey hair falling over her spectacles, occasionally regarding me with a look of intelligent sympathy. Her husband, Simon, was like a little owl, fierce and stubborn. It was he who did the housekeeping, scolding the cook without mercy for such culinary faux pas as putting too much salt in the salad – I seem to remember that it was a fault she committed rather too often. Simon was taciturn but vital, concentrating on his painting in secrecy in his studio at the back of the house. He was now dead, and Duncan, Vanessa and I looked amongst the piles of his paintings, pastels and drawings disintegrating under the skylight. They were the record of a passionate but solitary nature; he had left behind him early works of imaginative grandeur which, shrinking gradually to smaller proportions, could at times be singularly sensitive and beautiful.
The saffron walls and white curtains, though shabbier, were unchanged, as were the innumerable paperbound books covering the walls of the staircase. Outside, the garden fell away to the sea far below in terraces dotted with olive, orange and lemon trees on which the fruit hung like small lanterns. The paths, though full of weeds, were bordered with miniature blue irises, and, looking upwards, one could see the cinnamon-coloured houses of the village against a violet sky.
We had a car, which Duncan drove with inspired irresponsibility into Mentone for lunch with Clive and Barbara Bagenal, who were as usual staying there for the winter; or else we went up into the hills to find a subject to paint. Vanessa no longer drove; she was becoming very stiff and slow with rheumatic knees, causing her considerable pain of which she never complained. She had become forgetful, failing uncharacteristically to order lunch or doing so twice over. More and more often she would nod off to sleep in her chair. Duncan was worried by these signs of failing powers, and, as was his way, became stubborn and crotchety; I often found myself in sudden disagreement with him about nothing, which dismayed Vanessa. None the less the mood was a happy one, enlivened by the sophisticated presence of Clive and Barbara and by the exquisite weather, which for the moment seemed as though it would continue for ever.
On their return to England, Duncan and Vanessa continued every fortnight to spend two or three nights in London at Percy Street, where they now had Saxon Sydney-Turner’s old rooms. One night they gave a dinner party for a couple of old friends, when Vanessa fell into a dead faint and could not be brought round. Duncan called the ambulance from the Middlesex Hospital. Once there, she revived and immediately protested that she was perfectly well, insisting on going home at once. Characteristically, she decided to say nothing to me, and I only knew of the incident from Michel Saint-Denis after her death.
In the winter of 1960 she became seriously ill in Percy Street with pneumonia. The flat was inconveniently placed at the top of the house and suddenly seemed poorly equipped and squalid. When the worst was over and Vanessa was a little stronger, she was driven down to Charleston. Clearing up after her departure, I was shocked by the dirty sheets, the dust on furniture and floors, the filth in the kitchen. It brought home to me Vanessa’s age and her growing incapacity, disguised so far by her determined independence: later I realised that this was a happy state of affairs rather than otherwise, since it implied that she had remained in command very nearly until the end.
In the spring of 1961 Clive was ill in the London Clinic. Late one afternoon he telephoned me at Hilton: Vanessa had again developed pneumonia and was not expected to live through the night. I took the first train from Huntingdon, crossed London in a taxi, and just caught the train to Lewes. Although it had been obvious for some time that Vanessa was failing, the thought that she might die was unbelievable, terrible and at the same time inadmissibly exhilarating. Like the disappearance of some familiar monument, her absence would reveal a new perspective in which I might be able to find freedom. It was thus that my thoughts ran, or rather burst to the surface like bubbles from a stagnant pool, as I sat in the train.
Taking a taxi from the station, I arrived at Charleston to find Duncan and Quentin in a state of shock, though perfectly calm. Duncan, in whose eyes there were tears, took me to Vanessa’s ground-floor bedroom, which looked onto the garden: she had died only an hour before. She was lying on her bed, white but austerely beautiful. Duncan suggested that I should do a drawing of her – but of this I was quite incapable. He did one himself, which I still have.
I was puzzled by the fact that I had not even known that Vanessa was unwell. Why had not Duncan, instead of Clive, telephoned me? The more I thought of it the more stunned and the more excluded I felt, especially when I realised that her illness had lasted for about ten days. My eldest daughter, then eighteen, and Quentin’s son Julian had both been there, only sent away the very day I arrived. Possibly no one had realised how close Vanessa was to death. Quentin apologised for having said nothing; there had apparently been some mistake. But no real explanation was forthcoming, and I accepted, too easily, a failure that hurt me deeply.
Vanessa was buried in Firle churchyard, her only mourners Duncan, Quentin, myself, and Grace and her husband, Walter. There is now a stone there giving her dates: 1879–1961. Oddly enough, it was difficult to believe she was eighty-one, in spite of the fact that she had always seemed such an elderly mother. So unalterable had she always appeared that I could not imagine the world without her, especially that private world of her own which she had created as a refuge from outsiders and as a haven for her family – the world in which she had nurtured us all both to our confusion and our delight.
I stayed on at Charleston; already my relations with Duncan were becoming more intimate. He was, I believe, very miserable, but did not talk much about Vanessa. One day after his death, on looking through some drawings, I found a small piece of paper dated June 3rd, 1961, written in his u
nmistakable handwriting.
After lunch I suddenly became aware that I am now ‘on my own’ for better or worse.
Exactly what I mean? I can only guess by using the word ‘deference’ that is what I always felt with V. I do not mean the suggestion of flattery which the word has, but I always did defer to her opinions and feelings. Now henceforth I think I shall always defer to her opinions, I know or can guess so often what they would be – but her feelings no longer exist, so in that respect I feel I am alone. D.G.
The transparency of this small document is for me like a testimony to the quality of their relationship; its ingenuousness is touching, reminding me of an offering, not to Vanessa herself so much as to the gods, of fresh herbs picked at dawn. These feelings were struggling to express themselves during those long days spent in the studio, before he started to work again. One evening Clive arrived back from the nursing home and, sitting exhausted in his downstairs book-room after the journey, gave way to a greater emotion than I had ever seen him show before. The world for him would be an infinitely poorer place without Vanessa, and Charleston itself without her was but a pale reflection of what it had been. Until Duncan regained his balance we all lived in suspension. No outward habits were changed, but the raison d’être of the old ones had vanished.
EPILOGUE
Short as it is, this book has taken me seven years to write. To a professional author this must seem ridiculous, but to me it represents nothing so much as an emergence from the dark into the light.
In fact I was beginning to burst the bonds many years before Frank Hallman suggested that I should write a book. I owe my eventual emancipation from Bunny’s domination to a chance contact with the works of Karen Horney, a Freudian psychologist. Something in me responded to her writing, and I was conscious that I had found one of the keys to freedom, although, still suffering from timidity, my progress was erratic and ill-informed. Later, I was galvanised by one of my daughters, who not only had her own problems but a very clear idea of what she wanted. Her crisis had a deep emotional impact and brought me to life – it also taught me much; but I have learnt precious lessons from all my children.
At about the same time that I made up my mind to leave Bunny, I, like Vanessa, had to have a mastectomy. It was a devastating experience, and I knew then what she must have suffered. If I mention it now, it is only to say that I am convinced it was a result more of my unhealthy state of mind than of my body. Luckily for me, it seems to have been in the nature of a warning, which even then I was beginning to heed.
It is generally believed that to understand all is to forgive all, but apart from the fact that it is impossible to understand everything, to talk of forgiveness smacks too much of superiority. Understanding is enough – if one can achieve it – but there is no doubt it comes and goes. There are moments when I feel hard done by, and others when I recognise that Vanessa meant me no harm. It was a sin of omission; and although those are the sins that have the worst effect, they are the ones which must – there is no way of avoiding the word – be forgiven. Writing this book has in itself made me try to understand, and I can say now, with untold relief, that I am more able to see Vanessa through other people’s eyes.
Not long ago I was sorting out the family photographs, nearly all taken by Vanessa. I thought I knew them well enough and that the job would be merely mechanical, but I found it highly emotive and disturbing, particularly in relation to my book. What had I said? What picture had I drawn and how true was it? How did it compare with this assembly of black-and-white images stuck to the page, rather like the keys of an old piano whose notes tinkle suggestively in the stale air of memory? Their message is one of happiness and enjoyment: they convey so much better than the written word the moments of vitality that have receded, leaving in their wake a world of shadows.
To me no one appears more shadowy than myself, or more questionably portrayed in my book. I was not completely solitary, lonely and withdrawn. On the contrary, I was often full of high spirits, I teased others as they teased me, I danced and laughed. I was given pleasure and I returned it, but there remained the hidden side of myself.
I now see my childhood as a precarious paradise, slung like a cradle over a cloud, but none the less full of delight. And yet it seems to me that one’s maturity should be a better time than one’s childhood, however wonderful that may have been. Mine has only just begun. Although retarded by some thirty years or more, it is still worth having, but in the effort to gain it I may have painted Vanessa in darker colours than she merited, having no doubt distorted her for my own purposes. In the nature of things, however, an autobiography cannot pretend to be objective. I have tried to describe my own ghosts, and, in doing so, to exorcise them.
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Action Française, 124
Acton, Barbara (a cousin), 59
Acton, Lorna (née Bell; Clive’s sister), 56–7, 59
Acton, Thomas (a cousin), 59
Aldermaston (Berkshire), 5, 7
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 95
Anghilanti, Elise (cook), 69
Anrep, Helen, 100, 104–5
Arlen, Michael, 83
Asheham (house, Sussex), 28, 39
Bagenal, Barbara, 170
Bagenal, Judith, 71–2
Baggs, Miss (teacher), 81
Bassano, Princess, 115
‘Beetle’ (Carr; school friend), 82–4, 86, 88
Bell, Mr & Mrs William (Clive’s parents), 37–8, 55–61
Bell, Clive: marriage to Vanessa, 25–6, 140–1; relations with Virginia Woolf, 26–8; marriage breakdown, 26, 31; support for Vanessa, 33; and Vanessa’s children, 37–8; at Gordon Square, 52; visits to parents, 57; as countryman, 61, 140; rejects AG’s enquiry about sex, 65; on Ethel Grant, 66; at La Bergère, 67; portraits of, 91, 98; relations with Vanessa, 92; life at Charleston, 92, 99; appearance, 92; and death of Roger Fry, 104; in Italy, 115; and AG’s sexual education, 122; in Fitzroy Square, 131; as AG’s ‘second father’, 136–9; character and style, 139–41; relations with Duncan Grant, 141–2; and Eribert, 149; and death of Vanessa, 170–2
Bell, Cory (Clive’s brother), 60
Bell, Dorothy see Honey, Dorothy
Bell, Julian (AG’s half-brother): born, 26, 28; and AG’s birth, 39; on childhood, 41; games, 45; on dew-ponds, 47; manner in home, 53; at Seend, 59; in Cassis, 73; intellectual interests, 77; portraits, 91, 120; poetry, 96; letters from Helen Anrep, 100; and Virginia & Leonard Woolf, 106, 110; takes job in China, 118–19, 121, 131; relations with mother, 119; personality, 119, 121; relations with AG, 121–3, 131, 162; political views, 123; in Spanish Civil War, 131; death, 132–3
Bell, Julian (Quentin’s son), 171
Bell, Lorna see Acton, Lorna
Bell, Quentin (AG’s half-brother): final visit to Duncan Grant, 9; at Duncan Grant’s funeral, 10; on Clive-Vanessa marriage, 27; born, 28, 31; and birth of AG, 39; on childhood, 41; games, 45; manner in home, 53; at Seend, 59; at La Bergère, 67; education, 77–8; and Virginia & Leonard Woolf, 106, 110–11; trip to Italy, 115–16; political interests, 131; as half-brother, 134; and AG’s wedding, 158; and mother’s illness, 160; and mother’s death, 171
Bell, Vanessa (née Stephen; AG’s mother): relations with AG, 2–3, 5, 11–13, 42, 121, 129, 159, 163–4; death, 2, 171–2; appearance, 12, 60, 90, 130, 167; letters, 12–13; personality and character, 15, 19, 29, 31, 33, 109, 163–4; family background and upbringing, 16–19, 21; housekeeping for father, 18; relations with Virginia Woolf, 19–23, 27, 107–8, 111; portraits of, 20, 30, 79, 91, 165; Virginia Woolf creates character for, 22–3; early love for Jack Hills, 23, 25–6; studies art, 24; marriage to Clive, 25–6, 140–1; and Clive’s relations with Virginia Woolf, 26–8; relations with Duncan Grant, 28, 32–5, 39, 94–5, 129–30, 164–6, 172; humour, 29, 31;
relations with Roger
Bell, Vanessa – cont. Fry, 31–2, 103; depressions, 32; and love, 33; children, 37; nickname, 42–3; and AG’s childhood, 42, 46, 48–50, 65, 75; and Charleston garden, 45; at Gordon Square, 48; decorates Virginia Woolf’s London home, 53; relations with Clive’s parents, 56–8; unconventionality and dress, 60, 84–5, 130, 167; and AG’s illness, 62–3; and La Bergère, 67–9; love of France, 69; and AG’s schooling, 77–8, 80, 86; music, 87; life at Charleston, 90–3; paintings and views on art, 94–7, 103, 164–6; reading, 96; practicality, 101; and death of Roger Fry, 104–5; and Virginia Woolf’s imagination, 106; in Italy, 115–18; and Julian’s absence in China, 118–19, 131; virginal quality, 122; in Fitzroy Street, 127–8; and Julian’s death, 132–3, 164; tells AG of parentage, 134–7; and David Garnett’s courtship of AG, 147–8, 152, 154–6, 158; and Virginia Woolf’s death, 151; and AG’s marriage, 158; cancer, 160, 175; ‘The Tub’ (painting), 165; relations with grandchildren, 166–7; later travels abroad, 168–70; rheumatism and illnesses, 170–1
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