Virginia, remembered by Vanessa Bell as a prodigious child who charmed the grown-ups into laughter and whose appearance was that of ‘a sweet pea of a special flame colour’, studied Latin, French and History at home under Julia’s guidance, and suffered the boredom of piano lessons as well as the torture of Leslie’s mathematics tuition. Vanessa was luckier – from 1896 she studied drawing at Arthur Cope’s School of Art three times a week. Virginia would stay at home alone, studying her Greek, writing her diary, borrowing books from Leslie’s extensive library of literary classics, or experimenting with her writing style. When Vanessa was not at her art class, the sisters often spent mornings companionably closeted away in a little glass room off the back of the drawing-room, almost entirely made up of windows and perfect for quiet writing and painting.
This period of calm was not to last. After Stella’s death, the pattern of weekdays changed immediately and for the worst. Vanessa was expected to take her dead half-sister’s place as the female head of the household, organizing the servants each morning and reporting details of every penny spent back to Leslie (who liked to proclaim that his family were on the brink of being sent to the Workhouse; in reality they were quite well off). This Vanessa reluctantly did, but without the compliant submissiveness that had proved so damaging to Stella. Virginia recalled that her sister ‘stood before him like a stone’, mute, glaring and angry, realizing now the effect that her father’s harshness had had on the two women whose footsteps she had filled – and who now lay dead.
In the wake of Stella’s death, it also fell to Vanessa to provide support to another anguished mourner – Jack Hills. He grieved openly and often, whilst Vanessa sat in patient sympathy by his side. At first she complained to Virginia about Jack’s treatment of Stella; looking for someone to blame for her death, they found plenty of reasons to do so, but suddenly and catastrophically for Virginia, the complaints stopped and Woolf’s thoughts began to fall on deaf ears as she realized that Vanessa was showing all the signs of falling in love with Jack. He appeared to be in love with her, too – after all, he was highly sexed and lonely, and Vanessa possessed a strong physical resemblance to his dead wife. The relationship was quickly destroyed by the Duckworth brothers before it got any further (in those days it was illegal to marry the widower of your deceased sister), but it left a tension between Virginia and Vanessa that took some time to heal and did not help Virginia’s fragile state of mind.
In the meantime, a new threat to their ordered lives arose: George Duckworth, who had an independent income, a job as private secretary to Austin Chamberlain, and a string of invitations to balls and parties, decided that his reputation would be improved further still if he were to attend such events with a beautiful, motherless half-sister on his arm. In 1897, he started to introduce Vanessa, aged eighteen years old, into society, but without much success, for, as Virginia had known for years, ‘what was inside Vanessa did not altogether correspond with what was outside’. Vanessa had certainly inherited the legendary Pattle beauty from Julia and Stella, but it had manifested itself in a less ethereal, more statuesque way. She looked a vision of loveliness in her white dress and blue enamel brooch, yet underneath she resented the forced pomp of these occasions with some vigour, longing only for her paints and easel. Virginia, too, was attracting admiring glances wherever she went, a fact that she acknowledged with easy vanity:
Vanessa might have been a famous beauty. I, though far more intermittent, irregular and ill-kempt than she was, had more of the average of good looks.
After a year or so of dragging Vanessa to these events, George gave up on her and started to try and persuade Virginia to attend in her place, putting incredible pressure on the nervous, unwilling teenager by telling her that unless she accompanied him he would be forced to hire a ‘whore’ for the evening. Virginia attended several events with little more success than her sister had – remembering that Vanessa had been frustratingly silent at the dinner table, she endeavoured to earn George’s praise by waxing lyrical on a good many subjects, mostly unprompted. The society ladies tittered and George was furious. He scolded her all the way home, bemoaning his bad luck at having such a badly brought-up girl for a sister. To make matters worse, he had started to creep into her bedroom late at night, flinging himself upon the bed and proclaiming love. This he did to Vanessa as well, but whether his treatment of the Stephen girls could be described as abuse is a controversial matter, which still encourages considerable debate even today. It is certainly true that in later years when the girls wrote to George, they still used terms of great affection, and they even went on holiday with both Duckworth brothers; unlikely behaviour from the victims of any serious sexual abuse. There is no doubt, though, that at the time, this intimidating and suffocating conduct caused distress to the highly private Stephen girls, both of them reserved in their affections and taught to repress emotion in front of their father, and mourning the mother and half-sister who might, had they lived, have afforded them some protection.
In 1902, the daily routine at Hyde Park Gate changed once more when Leslie was diagnosed with cancer of the intestine. Vanessa, who had withdrawn almost totally from her demanding, overbearing father, was unaffected save for a profound sense of relief that her own suffering might soon be over. She had always been closer to Julia, never understanding Leslie’s gruff affection for his children. In turn, Leslie could see too much of Julia’s beauty in Vanessa’s appearance, which caused him great pain. Vanessa withdrew from her father’s sickbed, spending as much time as she could painting at the Slade School, where Pre-Raphaelitism had been by now forgotten; William Rothenstein recalled that during this time, Vanessa ‘looked as though she might have walked among the fair women of Burne-Jones’s Golden Stair; but she spoke with the voice of Gauguin’.
It was left to Virginia to become her father’s only close companion during the two years of his illness until he died. Although the family hired nurses to see to Leslie’s medical needs, Virginia spent a large part of each day sitting with him, recording his daily decline in letters to her friend Violet Dickinson. Vanessa was absent most of the time, studying at art college or visiting friends, attending only when her presence was absolutely necessary. Thoby and Adrian were away at university; George and Gerald were busy with their work in the City.
After a difficult and painful last few weeks, Leslie finally died on 22 February 1904. Vanessa was overcome with a sense of relief and release, and threw her energies into organizing the dramatic family move from Hyde Park Gate to less respectable Bloomsbury. A few days after Leslie’s funeral, the family holidayed in Pembrokeshire and then Paris, where Vanessa first encountered Clive Bell at the studio of Rodin. ‘Ginia’, her father’s favourite, initially seemed to be coping well with his death, but then she suffered a complete breakdown, which lasted from May to September. She was taken care of by Violet Dickinson and a series of nurses at Violet’s home in Welwyn while Vanessa arranged furniture at 46 Gordon Square, the new house in Bloomsbury. As she slowly recovered, Virginia returned to her family and lived amicably with Vanessa, Adrian and Thoby (George and Gerald had decided to live separately) for two further years. Without the repressive atmosphere at Hyde Park Gate hanging over them any longer, the sisters revelled in the comparative freedom of their new life; friends came round and stayed late, meals were not punctual, and Virginia had her own room at the top of the house, where she wrote and read without interruption. But the happiness, as so often, was not to last; after a family holiday to Greece in September 1906, both Vanessa and Thoby returned home seriously ill. Vanessa slowly recovered, but Thoby did not, and died of typhoid. The death of this sturdy, handsome elder brother was to be only half the double-blow to Virginia’s fragile state of mind because two days later Clive Bell proposed to Vanessa for a second time – and was accepted.
Virginia’s duplicity of nature, fuelled by fear and insecurity, started to show at about this time. Although she professed to be pleased about her sister’s engagement, an
d wrote to Madge Vaughan that Vanessa appeared ‘wonderfully happy, and it is beautiful to see her’, privately she felt betrayed enough to confide her true feelings in a letter to Violet Dickinson, cruelly comparing Clive to her beloved dead family:
When I think of father and Thoby and then see that funny little creature twitching his pink skin and jerking out his little spasm of laughter I wonder what odd freak there is in Nessa’s eyesight.
Gradually she began to accept Clive, realizing that he could be a stimulating correspondent and important ‘sounding-board’ for her own early fiction, in particular The Voyage Out, which was the first novel that she was beginning to work on. Vanessa continued to live at 46 Gordon Square after her marriage, whilst Virginia and Adrian set up home together round the corner at 29 Fitzroy Square. Leslie, Julia, Stella and Thoby had all died over the last eleven years; Vanessa had married: the original Stephen family unit was now reduced to the two youngest members living together awkwardly, with little in common. Their incompatibility as housemates resulted in physical fights, and the walls were splattered with butter stains as a result.
After the shock of not living with Vanessa for the first time in her life, Virginia began to adjust gradually to her new home and circumstances. After all, she saw almost as much of her sister as she did before, and on the rare days when she didn’t, letters flowed backwards and forwards between the two instead. A variety of nicknames, left over from their childhood at Hyde Park Gate, crept back into Virginia’s letters, most of them referring to animals: ‘Ape’, ‘Honeybee’, ‘Beast’ or ‘Tawny’. In these letters, Virginia openly craved the maternal and sometimes erotic affection that she had come to rely on, instructing Clive to ‘kiss my old Tawny, on all her private places – kiss her eyes, and her neck socket’.
Virginia, envious of her sister’s newfound married happiness, also began to court favour and affection from Clive. A flirtation between the two sprang up in Cornwall, when Vanessa was too wrapped up in her first baby, Julian, to pay much attention to anyone else. Clive, flattered, and feeling shut out by his wife, reciprocated with passion and longed to make the flirtation physical; Virginia, existing cerebrally and intellectually, was happier to draw the line at long, stimulating walks and clever letters. She hung anxiously and appreciatively on his words of criticism about her The Voyage Out, which she planned to ask Gerald Duckworth to publish.
Vanessa inevitably became aware of the growing closeness between her husband and her sister, but because she had, for so long, been trained not to display unnecessary emotion, she turned a blind eye to it and kept her letters to Virginia light-hearted and playful. Underneath her calm exterior lurked hurt and depression, brought about by the two people she loved and trusted the most. It must have seemed an unfair payback for all the years she had loved and cared for Virginia at Hyde Park Gate. In addition to this stressful situation, Clive had already been unfaithful from the very start of the marriage, and in 1914 took up with Mary Hutchinson, an affair that lasted until 1927. It is therefore unsurprising that Vanessa planned to base her entire life around motherhood and painting, the only two occupations where she remained relatively in control.
In 1912, at the age of thirty, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, her ‘penniless Jew’; in reality, he was a hardworking writer and politician who had been friends with Adrian and Thoby Stephen at university. Vanessa thoroughly approved of Leonard as a match for her sister, doubtless feeling some relief at the thought of not being Virginia’s primary caregiver any longer. Her feelings were justified almost immediately, for Virginia’s health was deteriorating badly. She and Leonard had set up in rooms just off Fleet Street, where they attempted to get into a writing routine, but after a disastrous holiday at the Plough Inn in Holford, Virginia was brought back to Adrian’s rooms at Brunswick Square, where she attempted, for the second time, to take her own life, this time by overdosing on the sleeping draught, Veronal. She was saved, but remained seriously ill, and the lodgings at Cliffords Inn were obviously not suitable any longer. Letters from, the anguished, helpless Vanessa, at Asheham or Gordon Square, arrived on Leonard’s mat:
I have had your letter this morning telling me about the violence. I can’t help hoping it was only due to the sleeping draught but of course it is very depressing. How I wish I could help.
Both Vanessa and Leonard were concerned that the possibility of Virginia becoming pregnant could exacerbate her mental illness; Vanessa admitted that she had been ‘coming to think that on the whole she [Virginia] could plunge into a new and unknown state of affairs when she starts a baby’.
Virginia’s nightmarish descent into madness continued, lasting on and off until 1915, when Leonard found, leased and prepared a new home, Hogarth House in Richmond, installing four nurses. During this time she was violent, manic, depressed and anorexic. She often didn’t recognize Leonard, or physically attacked him. Finally, slowly, she began to recover. Leonard bought a printing press to give his wife an enjoyable hobby, which would allow her a break from writing for an hour or two each day. By 1916, Virginia was finally able to settle into the routine from which she was hardly to deviate again for the rest of her life: writing in the morning, revising or walking in the afternoon, reading in the evenings.
Vanessa had remained in constant touch throughout this difficult period, writing letters and visiting regularly. After all, in 1911, when Vanessa had suffered a miscarriage and severe depression herself, Virginia had provided the support and love that her elder sister had needed.
Soon after Virginia’s recovery, Vanessa and her two boys, Julian and Quentin, moved with Clive and Duncan Grant to Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, which they decorated with extraordinary care and originality. Vanessa began to establish herself as a professional painter, exhibiting at the Omega and New Movement in Art shows during 1917. Virginia had published The Voyage Out and was in the process of writing Night and Day. Both sisters were strong and positive at this stage in their lives. They kept a watchful eye on each other’s achievements, scared of one becoming more successful than the other, but they also commenced a joint project: Vanessa was to illustrate Virginia’s Kew Gardens for the Hogarth Press. Virginia was delighted when she saw her sister’s woodcuts, although she continued to compare herself unfavourably with Vanessa:
I think the book will be a great success – owing to you; and my vision comes out much as I had it, so I suppose, in spite of everything, God made our brains upon the same lines, only leaving out 2 or 3 pieces in mine.
In July 1919, Virginia and Leonard purchased Monk’s House, Rodmell, a country retreat that was to remain their weekend and holiday home together until Virginia’s death. From here, Virginia would walk or cycle across the South Downs to Charleston in time for tea with the Bell family. The two sisters had settled into their respective lives; Vanessa had stoically accepted that the new love of her life, Duncan Grant, had reverted back to homosexuality after fathering her daughter, Angelica. Vanessa was becoming an expert at hiding her disappointment, so instead she took pleasure in painting companionably by Duncan’s side, a practice that they continued for another forty years.
On the surface at least, Vanessa and Virginia appeared to have much in common. As a result of the rigid routines that had been imposed on them at Hyde Park Gate, both of them cared little for convention, formality or the elaborate Edwardian dress of the time. Indeed Virginia had a dread of changing rooms in dress shops, and Vanessa preferred to wear painter’s overalls. Both women were committed to their chosen form of art, although Virginia was becoming more successful than her sister, who had after all to share her energies between painting and motherhood. The two women were still extremely beautiful in their late thirties and they continued to take some comfort from having inherited Julia Stephen’s polite, Victorian tea table manner (Vanessa masked her true emotions behind it, whereas Virginia appreciated the dignity that it allowed, but resented the way it restricted her writing). Both women enjoyed and appreciated the solitude and beauty of the Englis
h countryside, drawing upon it for inspiration. They each lived with a much-loved, sympathetic partner – Vanessa with Duncan, Virginia with Leonard – and Virginia was an adored aunt to the Bell children. They shared many unique and lifelong friendships, including those with Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Desmond McCarthy and Dora Carrington.
Despite their unbreakable bond of closeness, there were also some profound differences between the sisters and their attitudes to life, and these caused many tensions and resentments to occur. Whereas Vanessa’s natural instinct was to look to the future and protect and cherish her own children, Virginia did not have strong maternal urges and, adhering to the past, still counted herself as one of Vanessa’s children, writing in 1918 just after the birth of Angelica:
Think what an interest all her ways will be – much more than a boy’s – though I admit there’s a good deal to be said for the firstborn (by which I mean, of course, darling B.)
‘B’, of course, was ‘Billy Goat’ – Virginia’s childhood nickname.
Vanessa was robust, earthy and Madonna-like in her appearance. Around her, chaos reigned supreme at Charleston, but she remained the resolute, matriarchal anchor in the centre, soothing, calming and organizing. She was resolutely practical, having inherited this trait from Julia, and took naturally to ordering servants around (although she was not above doing her own cooking, and often would make scones in the kitchen). She was ruthless when it came to employing the right sort of help at Charleston, hiring and firing a number of ‘helps’ in quick succession, finally settling upon Grace Higgens, a cook who helped look after the children and who eventually stayed for forty years. It was a sign of Vanessa’s calmness and capability in her home environment that Grace could never find a disloyal word to say about her or any of her ‘Bloomsbury’ friends. Virginia, in contrast, was never to master the employer/servant relationship properly. Her two hired helps, Nellie and Lottie, drove her to distraction, and vice versa, over a period of eighteen years. They constantly caused conflict, resigned and then came crawling back; Virginia was not assertive enough to refuse them and so the pair would move back in, only for the trouble to start up all over again.
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