The major Bloomsbury figures were diverse in backgrounds, interests, and talents. Though friendship bound them together, they were individuals. Some were art critics or artists, others political and economic theorists; still others were novelists or literary critics. Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, and Leonard Woolf met as undergraduates in Cambridge. Lytton and Leonard were admitted to membership in the secret Cambridge discussion society known as the Apostles; Roger Fry and Desmond MacCarthy had also been Apostles. As women, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf were excluded from the Cambridge experience. Lytton, Clive, Vanessa, and Virginia came from upper-middle-class backgrounds, although Clive did not grow up in the sort of intellectual and cultural environment that the others did. Leonard was the only Jewish person in the group. Desmond McCarthy and David Garnett were both popular writers during their own time, though they might have been forgotten by the twenty-first century were they not connected to the Bloomsbury Group.

CLIVE BELL (1881-1964)

Arthur Clive Heward Bell is best known for his art criticism, for initially introducing the Bloomsbury Group to impressionist painters, and for developing the concept of “significant form.” He wrote on Paul Cézanne and other French painters and was attracted to all things French.

Clive did not have the intellectual and urban background of the other members of Bloomsbury, rather that of a country boy whose days were filled with hunting and fishing. He grew up in a Regency villa in Wiltshire that had been converted into a Tudor mansion with a baronial hall and a minstrel's gallery. The walls of the home were decorated with the stuffed heads of game animals. The family's wealth came from its ownership of a coal mine. The sensitivity to natural beauty that Clive acquired in his youth contributed to his life-long interest in art and aesthetics.

Clive went to King's College, Cambridge, in 1899. There he met Saxon Sydney-Turner, who introduced him to Leonard Woolf, Thoby Stephen, and Lytton Strachey. Bell later said that Thoby was his “first real friend”; they shared a love of the outdoors, hunting, and sports. Clive and his friends formed the Midnight Society, which met in Clive's rooms on Saturdays to read plays. Clive later regarded the Midnight Society as the beginning of the Bloomsbury Group. When Lytton and Leonard joined the secret discussion group the Apostles, to which Clive was not admitted, the Midnight Society came to an end.

Clive received his bachelor's degree in 1902 and, unlike his friends, had no interest in remaining in Cambridge. Offered a studentship in history by Trinity College, however, he decided to write a dissertation on British foreign policy at the Congress of Verona. He began his research at the Public Record Office in London, but soon realized he really needed to visit the French archives. In 1904 he left for Paris, a move that would drastically change his intellectual interests.

Clive was unfamiliar with Paris and was not fluent in French, so he stayed in a French pension run by a man and woman who served as parental figures to him. He received permission to enter the French archives but quickly lost interest in the Congress of Verona. Bored, he roamed around Paris and found himself going daily to the Louvre, the most significant art museum in the city. In the Louvre, Clive made a systematic study of the history of painting. In other galleries he sought out the works of the impressionists, the artistic movement that most interested him.

Two months after arriving in Paris, Clive remembered that he had a letter of introduction to a Cambridge graduate, Gerald Kelly, who was studying to become a painter. Gerald lived in the Latin Quarter, a section of Paris where artists and writers congregated. Clive and Gerald realized immediately they were kindred spirits, and began going each day for drinks at the Café de Versailles and later for dinner at the Chat Blanc. Gerald introduced Clive to two older painters, Roderick O'Conor and James Wilson Morrice, who were also Cambridge graduates. After meeting Gerald and his friends, Clive took lodgings on the Boulevard du Montparnasse to be closer to the center of intellectual and artistic culture. Roderick and James became Clive's principal mentors. Roderick had a fine collection of paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Rouault, and Paul Gauguin, and photographs of paintings by Cézanne. James took Clive to the galleries and taught him how the impressionists were trying to capture on canvas their emotional reaction to the visible universe.

After touring Italy, Thoby, Vanessa, Virginia, and their friend Violet Dickinson stopped off in Paris to see Clive. He escorted them to salons, art galleries, the sculptor Auguste Rodin's studio, and the Chat Blanc. This visit introduced Vanessa to the work of the impressionists, an influence that stayed with her for the rest of her life.

In 1905 Clive moved back to London, where Thoby had begun to hold his Thursday evening discussions at his and his sisters' home at 46 Gordon Square. That year Clive privately published a collection of poetry to which he, Leonard, Saxon, Lytton, and Walter Lamb contributed. Also that year he proposed to Vanessa and was rejected. She refused a second proposal in 1906; but after Thoby died of typhoid two days later, she accepted. They were married 7 February 1907. It was agreed that they would live at Gordon Square and Virginia and Adrian would move to nearby 29 Fitzroy Square.

The Bells' first child, Julian, was born in 1908. The infant's presence affected the couple's relationship. Clive did not like the disruption produced by a newborn, and he felt that the baby had replaced him as the center of his wife's attention. At the same time, Virginia was feeling the loss of her sister to marriage, and she and Clive became attracted to each other. Clive was simultaneously having an affair with Annie Raven-Hill, which began in 1899 and continued until 1914. The most significant liaison he had was with Mary Hutchinson from 1915 to 1927.

The Bells' second child, Quentin, was born in 1910. That same year the Bells became acquainted with Roger Fry, and Clive became an adamant defender and supporter of the first postimpressionist exhibition, which Roger organized. Vanessa began an affair with Roger, and by 1914 the Bells' marriage was effectively over. They never divorced, however.

As an art critic Clive is best known for his championing of contemporary French painting. His book Art (1914) presents a formalist theory of art in a lucid and accessible style. Though it has been claimed that Clive, unlike the other Cambridge alumni who were members of the Bloomsbury Group, was not influenced by philosopher G. E. Moore, Clive's theory of art includes one of Moore's crucial tenets: that aesthetic contemplation is good in itself, not because of the pleasure it produces.

In Art Clive coined the term “significant form,” which succinctly defines the Bloomsbury aesthetic. According to Clive, the formal qualities of art objects are more important in the production of aesthetic emotion than the subject matter. Clive's other studies of art and French culture include Since Cézanne (1922), Proust (1928), and An Account of French Painting (1931). He also wrote books on political issues, including Peace at Once (1915), On British Freedom (1923), and Warmongers (1938). Another important book is Civilization: An Essay (1928), which describes the role of culture in civilized life. Not surprisingly, it maintains that France has the most sophisticated culture in Europe.

ROGER FRY (1866-1934)

The oldest member of the Bloomsbury Group, Roger Eliot Fry was an art critic and painter who helped to introduce postimpressionism to Britain. Roger's painting, as Clive Bell noted in his memoir of Roger, suffered from too much academicism. Better known as a critic and lecturer than as a painter, Roger was able to impress on the uninitiated the value of art, from that of the ancient Greeks to modernism. His Vision and Design (1920) explains the importance of form in contemporary painting. This book, as well as his intellectual generosity to his friends, helped Clive and Vanessa articulate their own views on modern art—Clive through his criticism and Vanessa in her painting. It was Roger who brought the Bloomsbury Group to the appreciation of avant-garde visual art.

Vanessa first met Roger at one of Desmond MacCarthy's parties in 1905 or 1906. In 1909 she and Clive encountered him on a train returning to London from Cambridge. He talked about art with a breadth and enthusiasm that thrilled them. Unknown to the Bells, Roger was then going through a difficult period in his life; his wife, Helen Coombe Fry, was showing signs of mental instability. In 1910 she was institutionalized and would remain so for the rest of her life. In 1909 Roger had just returned from the United States, where he had been employed for the past several years as curator of painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In that capacity he had helped financier J. Pierpont Morgan establish a collection for the museum, and had traveled around the world with Morgan to collect pieces of art. Roger fell out with Morgan when he disagreed with Morgan's desire to keep some of the masterpieces for his private collection. In 1910 Vanessa invited Roger to attend the meetings of her Friday Club, at which visual artists talked about their work, in the Bells' home at 46 Gordon Square.

Though older, Roger shared many attributes with the other members of the Bloomsbury Group. Like Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, and John Maynard Keynes, he was elected to the Apostles at Cambridge and graduated from King's College. He came from a strict Quaker background, with values that in many ways resembled those of the Clapham Sect forebears of Vasnessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, and E. M. Forster. Another quality he shared with the other members of the Bloomsbury Group was his refusal to accept the received ideas of either the Victorians or the Edwardians. First, he rejected his family's hopes that he pursue a career in science; he believed that he had fulfilled his father's wishes by taking a first in the science Tripos (an examination given at the end of one's study at Cambridge). Instead, he left school and chose art as his vocation. The younger generation of artists was attracted to him, for he was a rebel in his aesthetic tastes who was often accused by his contemporaries of being a charlatan. He said that he preferred the company of the young.

Roger's knowledge of art history was extraordinary: he studied and wrote on everything from the art of the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages to Greco-Roman vision to symbolism in Christian art to the work of Italian painter Giovanni Bellini (circa 1430-1516). His profound knowledge of older art gave him the authority to talk about the new. Virginia Woolf described how Roger's writing reflected his encyclopedic knowledge of art:

And so at last the books came one after another—the books on French art, and Flemish art and British art; the books on separate painters; the books on whole periods of art; the essays upon Persian art and Chinese art and Russian art; the pamphlets upon Architecture; upon Art and Psychology—all those books and essays and articles upon which his claim to be called the greatest critic of his time depends.¹

Roger became popular as a lecturer on art; he could fill Queen's Hall in London with an enthusiastic and rapt audience of people from all classes and backgrounds. His talent was to make the old masters come alive as he stood at his lectern showing slides and pointing out important features of their works. He received innumerable letters from people asking for information and advice.

Roger's intensity sometimes conveyed an impression that was the opposite of his kindly and generous nature. Clive Bell described his energy and strength of will as terrifying and said that “his enemies, and his friends too when they chanced to be his victims, called him ruthless and obstinate.”² Virginia Woolf also commented on this aspect of Roger's personality:

To others he seemed on the contrary only too ruthless, too dictatorial—a Hitler, a Mussolini, a Stalin. Absorbed in some idea, set upon some cause, he ignored feelings, he overrode objections. Everybody he assumed must share his own views and have the same ardour in carrying them out.

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Virginia's portrait makes it easier to understand, for example, Wyndham Lewis's response to Roger. Wyndham, an artist, writer, and, later, founder of the vorticist movement, was a member of Roger's Omega Workshops until the two men had a falling out when Wyndham accused Roger of taking important work from him. Wyndham may not have been as paranoid as history later portrayed him.

Roger founded the Omega Workshops in 1913 at 33 Fitzroy Square. Influenced by William Morris's arts and crafts movement, the workshops had as their purpose to enable young artists to make a living by decorating utilitarian objects such as lamps, rugs, screens, necklaces, umbrellas, furniture, and dresses. After several business disagreements, including the one between Roger and Wyndham, the Omega held its closing sale in July 1919.

Roger's most significant contribution to British culture and to the Bloomsbury Group was his organization of the first postimpressionist exhibition. He was converted to the cause of modern art by viewing some pieces by Paul Cézanne, whom he and Clive considered the father of postimpressionist painting. The Grafton Galleries, having no show planned for the autumn and winter of 1910 to 1911, offered the space to Roger. Roger hired Desmond MacCarthy as secretary of the exhibition, and he and Desmond traveled to Paris to collect pieces from French art dealers. They brought back to England thirty-seven paintings by Paul Gauguin, twenty-one by Cézanne, twenty by Vincent Van Gogh, eight by Edouard Manet, and smaller numbers by Henri Matisse, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Georges Rouault, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso. Titled “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” the exhibition was held at the Grafton Galleries from 8 November 1910 to 15 January 1911.

The exhibition was highly controversial. Many observers found the paintings radical, irreverent, and offensive. Some argued that the postimpressionists had thrown out all the skill developed by artists over the centuries; others argued that deliberate “primitivism” served no purpose. Still others believed these painters had no right to claim their creations were works of art at all. One critic said he would pay £5 to be allowed to put all the paintings on a bonfire. But the critics' attacks only made the public flock to the gallery to see what was causing the controversy. They bought the paintings, and the gallery, Roger, and Desmond made money. Roger's reputation among critics suffered, but he became a hero to young artists fascinated by the notion of “modernity.” Roger ceased to be an expert on art history and became a champion of modern art.

VANESSA BELL (1879-1961)

Vanessa Stephen Bell was the eldest child of Leslie and Julia Stephen. Though quite different in temperament, Vanessa and her sister Virginia had strong emotional ties that began in early childhood and lasted throughout their lives. These ties were manifested at times in fierce competition and at other times in intense identification and mutual support. Initially, their competition centered on their devotion to their brother Thoby; later, that dynamic repeated itself in their relationships with Clive Bell. Vanessa had a quiet, composed demeanor, but Virginia said she had “volcanoes underneath her sedate manner.” These “volcanoes” came out in her fearlessness in telling the truth. Unlike Virginia, she was maternal, taking care of her family after the deaths of her mother and her stepsister Stella Duckworth; nurturing her own children—Julian, Quentin, and Angelica; and mothering the Bloomsbury Group as a whole. On the other hand, she distanced herself emotionally from others, focusing on the visible surfaces of things—the raw material of painting—rather than on people. Even in the most intimate descriptions of Vanessa it is difficult to grasp her personality and essence—one never feels that one knows her.

As a teenager, Vanessa was able to escape the repressive Victorian environment of Hyde Park Gate by attending Arthur Cope's School of Art three afternoons a week. When the recently married Stella died in 1897, Vanessa replaced her as the “woman” of the house. Julia Stephen, Stella's mother and Vanessa's stepmother, had died two years earlier. Unlike Stella, who cowered before Leslie Stephen's temper tantrums, Vanessa stood stoic and silent through his regular tirades over the monthly household accounts. Though strong and determined not to break under her father's domineering personality, she must have suffered from his outbursts. Her daughter Angelica has described her later intermittent bouts of depression.

In 1900 Vanessa's half-brother, George Duckworth, who had taken on the responsibility of introducing the Stephen girls to “society,” took her to Paris, where she visited the Louvre for the first time. The next year she was accepted by the Painting School of the Royal Academy of Art. Leslie Stephen's death in 1904 marked Vanessa's escape from domestic responsibilities, and that year she, Virginia, Thoby, and their friend Violet Dickinson took a trip to Italy, where Vanessa immersed herself in the culture of Florence and Venice. On their way home the four stopped in Paris to see Clive Bell, who introduced them to many artists and took them to museums, galleries, and salons. This experience was Vanessa's first introduction to the postimpressionist painters who would become so important to her artistic life.

After her father's death, Vanessa found a new house at 46 Gordon Square for herself, Virginia, Thoby, and their brother Adrian, and she supervised the move from 22 Hyde Park Gate. Their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth decided to move out on their own. (Laura, the Stephens' mentally deficient half-sister, was institutionalized in 1890.) In a symbolic break with the Stephens' Victorian past, Vanessa sold all the dark, heavy furniture to Harrod's department store, got rid of the red velvet curtains, and created in the Gordon Square house a space that was open, light, and airy.

After the move Thoby began to hold his Thursday-evening gatherings to keep in touch with his Cambridge friends. In 1905 Vanessa founded the Friday Club, a disparate group of people who met to discuss art. One Friday, Pippa Strachey, Lytton's sister, introduced Vanessa to Duncan Grant. That same year Vanessa exhibited her first painting, a portrait of Lady Robert Cecil, at the Eighteenth Summer Exhibition of Works by Living Artists at the New Gallery.

By this time, Clive Bell had returned to London from Paris and frequently attended the Thursday soirees. In August 1905 he proposed to Vanessa, who immediately rejected him. When Thoby died of typhoid in October of the following year, after returning from a trip to Greece, Clive proposed again. She once again refused; but two days later she changed her mind. They were married in 1907 and took over the Gordon Square house, while Adrian and Virginia moved to a home of their own at 29 Fitzroy Square. The Thursday evenings alternated between the two residences. In 1907 and 1908 Vanessa exhibited with the New English Art Club, the Allied Artists Association, and the Friday Club.

The Bells' marriage was unconventional even by today's standards. Both had affairs, but they remained married for the rest of their lives. After the birth of their first child, Julian Thoby, in 1908, she began to withdraw from Clive and gave all her attention to the baby. Clive had little interest in or patience with the infant and left his wife to herself. A notorious womanizer, he began a flirtation with Virginia, who also felt abandoned by her sister.

The Bells' second child, Quentin, who later became one of the most important biographers of Bloomsbury Group members, was born in 1910. Vanessa was concerned because he failed to put on weight at first; she received little support from Clive. It was at the time that she became reacquainted with Roger Fry. She not only admired him as a critic but also found him sensitive and empathetic to her concerns about her child.

In 1911 the Bells, Roger Fry, and H. T. J. Norton went on a holiday to Turkey. Vanessa did not realize she was pregnant until she suffered a miscarriage in Turkey. Clive was unable to cope with the situation, but Roger proved to be competent in the crisis. He nursed her back to health, and they spent many hours painting side by side while Clive and Norton toured the sights. Attracted by Roger's nurturing and fatherly qualities, Vanessa began an affair with him that continued until she became involved with Duncan Grant in 1913. Roger remained passionate about her throughout his life, but was willing to be her friend and confidante rather than her lover.

Vanessa's relationship with Duncan gives Bloomsbury's detractors much of the fuel for their claims about the group's immorality and lack of respect for social mores. Duncan was primarily homosexual; he began an affair with Vanessa's brother Adrian in 1910, and the two men moved in together. When Adrian married Karin Costelloe in 1914, Duncan began to return Vanessa's affections. Soon afterward, he became involved with David Garnett. Establishing a pattern that lasted the rest of her life, Vanessa became close to David because he was her connection to Duncan.

During World War I, Vanessa, Duncan, David, and the Bells' sons moved to Charleston, a farmhouse near Firle, Sussex, where the men fulfilled their military obligations as conscientious objectors by working as farmers. Vanessa lived there for the rest of her life. Vanessa and Duncan had a physical relationship off and on for several years, but for the most part they were companions who shared a love of painting. In December 1918 their daughter Angelica was born. Clive claimed paternity, and Angelica did not learn that Duncan was her father until she was seventeen. In 1942 Angelica married David Garnett. The incestuous quality of the Bloomsbury relationships is difficult for both their detractors and many of their admirers to understand and accept.

Virginia Woolf had seen Charleston while walking on the Sussex Downs in 1916 and had told her sister about it. Almost immediately after moving in, Vanessa and Duncan began decorating the house, and over the next several decades it became an artwork itself, a living example of the decorative arts popularized by the Omega Workshops. The house became a popular place of respite for the Bloomsbury Group, and Lytton Strachey and J. M. Keynes were regular visitors. Clive moved there from London in 1939 and lived with Vanessa and Duncan until Vanessa's death in 1961, and then with Duncan until Clive's own death in 1964. Duncan remained until he died in 1978. When Duncan died, the house contained 2,000 artworks, including paintings, murals, decorated furniture, ceramics, and textiles. The house was restored by the Charleston trust between 1986 and 1992, and was then opened to the public.

Vanessa Bell has never been considered a genius as a painter, but she was preoccupied with art as a young girl and became deeply involved with the most avant-garde art movement of her time: postimpressionism. She was always attracted to men who could educate her about art, and her relationships with Clive, Roger, and Duncan all affected her aesthetic sense. Clive initially introduced her to French art and artists, taking her as a tourist to museums and salons. Her attraction to Roger grew out of her admiration for his taste, intellect, and vast knowledge of art history. She did not think highly of his painting, however, and he knew it. Duncan allowed her to experience her art viscerally, without intellectualizing. She was an artist, not a critic; but no matter how much encouragement she had, she always felt insecure about her painting.

The first postimpressionist exhibition, mounted by Roger in 1910, had a liberating effect on Vanessa. During the decade that followed she was close to Roger, and under his influence she produced designs and developed expertise as a decorator. Her paintings Asheham and Nosegay were included in 1912 in Roger's second postimpressionist exhibition. In 1914 she and Duncan joined Roger as co-directors of the Omega Workshops. Vanessa also contributed cover designs for books published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press. Under the influence of Matisse, Cézanne, Gauguin, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, Vanessa's work became notable for its stark colors and blunt shapings. Mary Ann Caws writes that Vanessa's art, “largely about echoes and flat surfaces and new coloring, is as much about reflection as about its real subject, or better, that is its real subject.”³

Outwardly steady, quiet, and focused, Vanessa Bell was passionate both as an artist and as a lover. With her marriage and children she appeared to be the most conventional member of the Bloomsbury Group, but she was also the most radical, opening herself to various possibilities in love and art. She oversaw the group in the beginning and watched its influence spread throughout almost five decades until her death. Probably one of the most underrated members of the group, she brought the visual arts to every aspect of her life and helped bring together some of the most influential figures of her time.

DUNCAN GRANT (1885-1978)

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was the youngest member of Old Bloomsbury and outlived all the others. He was in love, at various times, with both male and female Bloomsbury figures, and they valued his sweet personality and good looks; D. H. Lawrence, on the other hand, found him taciturn, warned David Garnett to keep away from him, and satirized him in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) as Duncan Forbes. Unlike the other male figures of the Bloomsbury Group, Duncan Grant did not attend a university. Possibly the most talented painter the group produced, he communicated through images, textures, colors, and shapes rather than through words.

Duncan was Lytton Strachey's cousin; his father was Lytton's mother's younger brother. The father was a military officer who served in India, and Duncan's earliest memories, according to Leon Edel, “were of temples, palaces, bazaars, processions, the magic and squalor of Kiplingesque India.”⁴ His childhood exposure to the vibrant colors, sounds, and smells of Indian culture made a lasting impression on him and influenced his artistic style. Every couple of years the family returned to Scotland, where Duncan was born, and scenes of the Scottish countryside are reflected in his work, as well.

As a child, Duncan was not academically inclined. He was sent to Hillbrow Preparatory School, and then entered St. Paul's school in London in 1899 to study science and history. He was helpless in mathematics; Lytton and J. M. Keynes later made fun of him because he did not know his multiplication tables. He took easily to art from the very beginning, however. At St. Paul's he won a prize for painting. When his parents returned to India his aunt—Lytton's mother—persuaded them to leave Duncan with her. In the Strachey household he was surrounded by intelligence and creativity and was allowed to follow his own interests. He painted, participated in family theatricals, and listened to music.

Simon Bussy, a painter who was married to Lytton's sister Dorothy, encouraged Duncan in his painting and taught him the discipline of his craft. In 1902 Grant enrolled at the Westminster School of Art. He was an undistinguished student but was inspired in 1904 when his mother took him to Florence and introduced him to Italian art. His aunt then gave him money to spend a few months in Paris; there, at Simon's suggestion, he studied with the French painter Jacque-Emile Blanche, who had connections with some of the most prominent artists of the time. In Paris, Duncan spent his mornings in Blanche's studio and his afternoons in the Louvre copying classic paintings. While in France he met the Stephen sisters and Clive Bell for the first time. He also met the future vorticist and Bloomsbury detractor Wyndham Lewis. They instantly disliked each other: Duncan could not abide Wyndham's belligerence, and Wyndham objected to Duncan's homosexuality.

Lytton, who was also homosexual, found Duncan's sweetness and good looks irresistible from the beginning. But Duncan found Lytton heavy-handed, sentimental, and overbearing in his affections. While in Paris, Duncan met John Maynard Keynes, Lytton's friend from Cambridge, in Paris, and they became lovers. Lytton was crushed when he found out, but he never gave up friends in this kind of situation. For many years Duncan and John shared homes and traveled together. John, who was becoming quite rich, put together an art collection with Duncan's help.

When they took rooms at 21 Fitzroy Square in 1909, Duncan and John became the neighbors of Virginia and Adrian Stephen. It was at this time that John became a member of the Bloomsbury Group. In 1911 Duncan, John, Adrian, and Virginia moved into a house at 38 Brunswick Square; they were soon joined by Leonard Woolf, who had just returned from Ceylon. In 1913 Duncan accompanied Roger Fry and Clive and Vanessa Bell on a trip to Italy. At this time the passion of Vanessa's affair with Roger was dwindling, and she was attracted to Duncan; Duncan, however, was involved with Vanessa's brother Adrian. But in 1914 Adrian married Karin Costelloe, and Duncan began to reciprocate Vanessa's feelings. In 1915 Duncan became involved with David Garnett. The following year Vanessa, Duncan, David, and Vanessa's two sons moved to Charleston so that the men could fulfill their military obligations as conscientious objectors by doing farm work.

Vanessa and Duncan decided to have a child, and their daughter Angelica was born Christmas Day 1918. Duncan was not interested in fatherhood, so Clive claimed paternity and gave the child his name. Angelica was not told that she was Duncan's child until she was seventeen. She grew up to marry David Garnett, Duncan's former lover.

Duncan and Vanessa were bonded not so much by sex or parenthood as by their passion for art. They influenced each other not through intellectual discussions about art but through the hours they spent together silently painting. Raymond Mortimer writes of their collaboration that Vanessa

has collaborated with Grant in so many of his decorations that when writing about his work the critic must also consider hers. It is sometimes assumed that she is, as it were, his pupil. Certainly there are conspicuous similarities between Vanessa Bell's work and Duncan Grant's, and often they have painted simultaneously from the same model. Yet it seems to me clear that the influence has been not one-sided but reciprocal. Careful comparison suggests moreover that, though they share many tastes, they are quite unlike in temperament.⁵

Vanessa always felt insecure about her art in relation to Duncan's; her letters to Roger when he was suffering from his breakup with her express her need for reassurance. Her work was not, however, of lower quality than Duncan's. They shared an interest in postimpressionism and the arts and crafts movement, and these origins echo in their work.

In many ways Duncan was the most independent of the group, associating with artists and writers from various backgrounds. For example, he had an affectionate and dedicated relationship with Lady Ottoline Morrell, who was often the object of gossip among other members of Bloomsbury. Duncan left little writing by which to learn about him, but he was a productive artist and it is from his painting that viewers get to know his sensibility. He survived all of the other Bloomsbury Group members, dying in 1978 at age ninety-three.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946)

John Maynard Keynes, the leading British economist of the twentieth century, remains the most widely known member of the Bloomsbury Group. Unlike the others, he was “all Cambridge.” His father, John Neville Keynes, a logician and economist, was an eminent don at Pembroke College; his mother, Florence Ada Brown Keynes, was involved in local politics and became a justice of the peace, an alderman, and, finally, mayor of Cambridge—all during an era when women were expected to stay at home. University and local politics were always part of the Keynes household. John was always close to his parents, and after he left home he corresponded with them regularly and in lengthy detail. He inherited his father's sense of logic and rationalism, which, he believed, saved him from the aesthetic ardor that was popular at Cambridge during his years there.

John entered King's College in 1902. Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf had already heard of his strong and disciplined mind, and they dropped by his rooms for a visit. It was unusual for the Apostles to invite freshmen to join their organization, but in February 1903 John was elected a member. There he found intellectual peers, including philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell and others of the new Cambridge generation.

In London, John first took a house on Gower Street, with Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield as tenants. In 1911 he took a house with Duncan Grant (with whom he was having an affair) and Adrian and Virginia Woolf at 38 Brunswick Square. In 1916 Keynes moved to 46 Gordon Square, after Clive and Vanessa Bell moved to Charleston. Gordon Square became his home for the rest of his life. The influence of his Bohemian and artistic friends was great.

John's famous essay “My Early Beliefs” is recognized as one of the best accounts of Bloomsbury's days at Cambridge, and in this essay he describes the influence of G. E. Moore on the group. “My Early Beliefs” was written in response to a paper written by David Garnett recalling D. H. Lawrence, and was initially read to the Memoir Club in 1938. In it John begins with a recollection of his meeting D. H. Lawrence in Bertrand Russell's rooms at Cambridge, a meeting Lawrence described in a letter to David Garnett in horrific terms. Lawrence had written to David that he must free himself from “these beetles.” John found Lawrence's responses “incomplete and unfair,” but noted they were not “usually baseless.” John's contribution to the Memoir Club was to “introduce for once, mental and spiritual, instead of sexual, adventures, to try and recall the principal impacts on one's virgin mind and to wonder how it has all turned out, and whether one still holds by that youthful religion.”⁶ That youthful religion was the philosophy of G. E. Moore.

It was during World War I that John achieved his status as a economic genius. He was asked to join the British Treasury and was brought in at the beginning of 1915 to write memoranda for the Chancellor's advisors. In a short time he became the Treasury's expert on inter-Allied loans, and he invented a much admired system of controls that the United States copied. In 1917 John moved into a special division at the center of the inter-Allied economic effort. After the armistice in November 1918 he was named principal representative of the British Treasury at the 1919 Peace Conference with the power to speak for the chancellor. He also served on the Supreme Economic Council.

John's work at the Treasury kept him in London and in closer contact with the Bloomsbury circle. Though deeply respected, he was not always liked by his friends. Some of this might be attributed to their envy of his success and position. Virginia Woolf never surrendered to his charm, but had to acknowledge his ardor about history and humanity. Leonard Woolf also disliked John at moments in their friendship, and he felt John had Bloomsbury's early history wrong in his “My Early Beliefs.” However, Leonard may have easily been influenced by Lytton Strachey, whose reasons for disliking John were pettier. John was bisexual, and Lytton was initially attracted to him. Lytton was infatuated with his cousin Duncan Grant, but it was John who won the Duncan's affections. Lytton felt betrayed by John; later, however, he wrote to John that they must always be friends, no matter what. John was increasingly drawing public attention too, at a time when Lytton was struggling to make a name for himself.

The most searing difference between John and his friends remained on a political level. The Bloomsbury members, who were pacifists during the war, challenged his position—if he was a pacifist, should not he resign from the Treasury? These conversations frustrated him and he had to use his diplomatic skills with his friends. He was privy to information that the others were not, and since this information was confidential he could not use it to defend himself. His answer to their challenges was, “We are in it now and we must go through with it; there is really no practical alternative.” Many of his friends were critical of his worldliness and unabashed capitalism. However, he did use his position and power to testify at the trials for Lytton's and Duncan's conscientious objector trials.

John absolved himself in two ways. First, Duncan knew that knew that some paintings owned by Degas were going to be auctioned in Paris, and he recognized immediately that Britain should bid for the pictures. With his power of persuasion, John obtained a government allocation of £20,000 to buy the paintings for the National Gallery. Not only did he buy for the gallery, he also bought Cézanne's Apples for himself. The second incident by which he absolved himself was through the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). This polemic contained the satire and irony that marks the Bloomsbury Group. Just as Lytton had raged against Victorian Christianity, imperialism, and public school education in Eminent Victorians (1918), John's portraits of U.S. President Wilson and Georges Clemenceau of France paralleled Lytton's indictments, and both books had powerful and political consequences.

John's participation in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference is one of the most fascinating aspects of his biography. John sat at inner meetings with world leaders, notably President Wilson, Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and English Prime Minister David Lloyd George. John gives detailed portraits of these figures in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He saw Clemenceau as desiring only the protection of France and the punishment of Germany. President Wilson was a huge disappointment to him, surprisingly slow and bewildered. Lloyd George's priorities were expediency and politics. Ultimately, John could not accept the premises of the peace treaty and its goal to wreak revenge on Germany. He knew that the terms of the treaty would eventually lead to another war. In a significant and personal gesture, he resigned and returned to England. He was no longer a civil servant.

In 1925 John married Lydia Lopokova, a dancer with the Russian Ballet. His marriage settled a new cloud over his relations with Bloomsbury. They pleaded with him not to marry her. Vanessa and others could not tolerate Lydia—she was a chatter box, dim witted, and unconventional (which they liked), but lacked reason and logic. Though John participated in homosexual relationships, he was ultimately bisexual, and his marriage to Lydia did him good. As Noel Annan describes the relationship, “Marriage for Keynes meant relaxation and support. … [Lopokova] in turn did everything for him, chose his shirts and ties, and after his coronary defended him against friends and colleagues who would have exhausted him.”⁷ Lydia saved him, made him preserve his strength. Unfortunately, it was his marriage that hurt his intimate relation with Bloomsbury.

John published a book almost every year. One can see the influence of Bloomsbury on his writing style, his economic theory, and his dedication to the arts. His writing style is literary and accessible. His economic theory is driven by a kind of humanism, and his contribution to economic development still has impact today. A rational and logical man throughout his life, J. M. Keynes's accomplishments illustrate that the impact of Bloomsbury reaches far beyond the boundaries of an isolated and intimate group of friends.

LYTTON STRACHEY (1880-1932)

Tall, bearded, long-haired, and frail, Giles Lytton Strachey was probably the most eccentric of all the Bloomsbury members. His nine brothers and sisters and his parents, Sir Richard and Lady Jane Maria Strachey, were all recognized for their remarkable intellectual talents. A sickly and non-athletic boy, who very early on was aware of his attraction to other men, in 1899 Lytton went to Trinity College, where he met future Bloomsbury members Leonard Woolf, Thoby Stephen, Clive Bell, and Saxon Sydney-Turner. He became close friends with Leonard, was a member of the Midnight Club, and was elected to the Apostles in 1902. He was influential in giving the Apostles its homosexual character through the creed of “higher sodomy,” a creed that did not necessarily encourage physical contact between men, but stressed the spiritual love between them.

Throughout his lifetime Lytton was frustrated in love, though he had a unique companionship with Dora Carrington for fifteen years. Slower to come into his own than other members of Bloomsbury, he published Eminent Victorians in 1918 and it became an immediate sensation. His other notable biographies include Queen Victoria (1921) and Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928). In the end he had greater popular appeal than the rest of the Bloomsbury Group.

Lytton was raised in a household dominated by women. His essay “69 Lancaster Gate” describes the Victorian world of his home and pays particular attention to his mother, Maria. While his older brothers were away serving the empire and his elderly father (who was sixty-three when he was born) was retired in his rooms, Lady Strachey gave Lytton his early education. He regarded his mother with both admiration and contempt. His ambivalent feelings toward his mother affected his portraits of women, especially mothers, in his biographies. Life with his mother was eased by the presence of his unmarried sisters—Philippa, Pernel, and Marjorie—who were representative of the “New Women” who eschewed marriage to pursue higher education, professional employment, and service to the suffrage campaign. With the absence of husbands, they devoted their “wifely” devotion to their brother Lytton.

Against his mother's plan, Lytton entered Cambridge instead of Oxford. As a member of the Apostles he was influenced and reared on the philosophy of G. E. Moore. He and Leonard recruited J. M. Keynes, who was three years younger, as an Apostle. After Clive and Leonard moved into the world, Lytton remained in Cambridge. His plan was to remain in the academic world, though in 1902 he received a second in his historical Tripos, an inadequate grade for his aspirations. It looked as though his only option would be to return to his mother's domain at Lancaster Gate.

In 1903 he applied for a civil service job in the education department, but here again he failed. He then decided to write a book-length dissertation on the Strachey family hero, Warren Hastings. His goal was to vindicate himself while he vindicated Hastings. The Cambridge examiners were factual and dispassionate and they read with a critical eye. In the end, Lytton failed again. However, these examiners gave Lytton a valuable lesson in the writing of history. He had quoted too many passages from his documents and had therefore blocked the storyline of his history. He therefore learned to emphasize summary, brevity, and relevance. However, at that time, this failure forced Lytton back to Lancaster Gate, where he fell into lethargy and depression.

While at Cambridge, and after his contemporaries had left, Lytton developed a relationship with John, who was younger than he. Lytton admired his fellow Apostle for his keen mind, and he confided his loves to John. Lytton could not accept and understand John's practical and rational approach toward life, and he would later feel betrayed by John, who would reach out for what he wanted with less romanticism. During this time, Lytton found it difficult to tolerate John's clarity about his interests in economics and direction in life. The greatest difference between them was over Duncan Grant, Lytton's cousin. Duncan was a handsome, personable, and talented artist. In love with his cousin, Lytton would confide his desires to John. Duncan found Lytton's emotionalism difficult to tolerate and eventually turned to John himself. John told Lytton of this liaison and Lytton became resentful and depressed. However, true to the Apostles' dictum and valuing of friendship, Lytton was able to change his resentment into a guarded affection that lasted throughout his life.

During World War I, Lytton lived at Garsington as a conscientious objector, writing pamphlets for the No-Conscription Fellowship, an organization that encouraged men to refuse war service. In 1915 he met the young painter Dora Carrington while visiting Asheham. His relationship with Carrington developed into one of the most profound in his life. Carrington, as she called herself, had an androgynous look, with golden bobbed hair, bright blue eyes, and a saucy manner. He accepted her boyish style, and in a moment of delight when on a walk with her, he forgot her sex and kissed her. Carrington vowed her revenge, and that night snuck into his bedroom with a pair of scissors in her hand. Her intention was to snip off his long beard while he was sleeping, but as she drew near he opened his eyes and silently looked at her. Guilt and contrition made her crawl away, though that quick glance made her realize she could love him. The story of this older homosexual and the perky boy-girl from the Slade School of Art has been described in detail by Michael Holroyd in his biography of Lytton. In 1917 Lytton and Carrington moved to Tidmarsh, where Carrington's painting came second to her desire to take care of her mentor. Though Carrington eventually married Ralph Partridge, Lytton remained dependent on her for the rest of his life. A short time after Lytton died, Carrington killed herself.

Lytton's breakthrough work was Eminent Victorians. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Lytton created a new kind of biography; he was the first practitioner of “psycho-biography.” In his portraits of Cardinal Manning, General Gordon, Thomas Arnold, and Florence Nightingale, he criticized church and state and the military, and portrayed women with hard-minded toughness. His satire and character descriptions have been compared to J. M. Keynes's portraits of the participants at the Paris Peace Conference. The public responded well to his sketches of their Victorian fathers and mothers, and Eminent Victorians had seven printings in one year. Lytton basked in his new-found fame and participated in high society as money poured in. He wrote his own brand of satiric biography and published two other significant works, Elizabeth and Essex and Queen Victoria.

In many ways Lytton's life and work are quintessential Bloomsbury. He placed high value on love, though often the love he gave out was unrequited. Friendship sustained him, even through periods of intense insecurity and envy for the other members who reached success before he did. His work contains the irony and wit that became so important to Bloomsbury conversation, and Eminent Victorians was an explicit attack on the generation from which Bloomsbury was so determined to separate themselves. If Bloomsbury as a group is difficult to define, one thing is definite—it could not have existed without the eccentric and brilliant figure of Lytton Strachey.

LEONARD WOOLF (1880-1969)

Leonard Sidney Woolf was an outsider. Of Jewish descent, Leonard was born in Kensington, the second child (of ten) of Sidney Woolf, also born in London, and Marie de Jongh Woolf, of Dutch birth. Leonard's grandfather Benjamin was a tailor by trade but managed to prosper. He moved his family to Tavistock Square and, as Leonard later wrote, “educated his sons out of their class.” Benjamin's son Sidney became a solicitor, then barrister, and a Queen's Council. Sidney and Marie left the more traditional Hebrew culture of their ancestors. Sidney never stopped working and raised his family in affluence. He died suddenly when Leonard was eleven and left the family with a great deal of debt. The family moved from their comfortable middle-class home to an ugly Victorian house in working-class Putney. This descent from affluence to poverty would forever affect Leonard.

Leonard's mother Marie was determined that he should continue in school. He was sent to Brighton to attend Arlington House preparatory school from 1890 to 1894. There he learned to play cricket and got a solid grounding in Greek and Latin. He then received a scholarship to St. Paul's school in London, where he acquired a belief in sane rules, precepts, and discipline. He learned to be moral and ethical, and developed into a serious and determined youth. At nineteen he sat for the scholarship examination at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In Cambridge Leonard met Saxon Sydney-Turner, Clive Bell, and Lytton Strachey. Lytton introduced him to Thoby Stephen. Together they formed the Midnight Society in 1900. Leonard, Lytton, and Saxon were elected to the secret Apostles society the same year. Cambridge became for Leonard an illumination of experience. He later described his Cambridge years as some of his happiest and some of his most miserable. With his friends his shared three passions: a passion for friendship, a passion for literature and art, and a passion for what they called “truth.”

After leaving Cambridge, Leonard and his friends took different directions. Lytton stayed on to write his thesis, Clive took off for Paris, and Thoby studied for the law examination. Leonard failed to gain first-class honors on the second part of the Tripos and decided to take his civil service exam. Always good at examinations, he did not study for this exam as he should have. He failed to do well enough to receive a domestic appointment and thus entered the Ceylon Service in 1904. A member of imperial power, Leonard learned to despise imperialism and colonization, and after his return to England in 1911 he devoted himself to his political writings and committee work.

Leonard was first assigned to Jaffna in northern Ceylon, a flat desert area. It was difficult for him to adjust himself to the life of a young white sahib. In Jaffna he won the respect of those for whom and with whom he worked. He also received deference from the natives, and with this came an increasing sense of authority. For a Jewish boy from lower-class Putney, this kind of authority was difficult. He was then transferred to the mountain villages of Kandy, and finally to the jungles of Hambantota. He tried to deal justly with the natives but was stern and harsh; he did not believe in capital punishment and found his responsibilities at times difficult to take, though he never outwardly shuddered. What saved him was his air of humility and his humanity. He spent many hours dealing with the natives and their issues, disputes, and concerns. Later he would document his experience in his novel The Village in the Jungle (1913) and the short-story collection Stories of the East (1921).

Leonard's six and a half years in Ceylon came to an end early in 1911, when he took official leave of his position. A little more than a month after he returned to England, he went to dine in Gordon Square with the recently married Clive and Vanessa Bell. There he reconnected with Virginia Stephen, Duncan Grant, and Walter Lamb. He immediately noticed the change that had overcome Bloomsbury—there was a sense of intimacy and complete freedom of thought and speech. He was not yet one of Virginia's suitors, but he felt himself moved by her beauty and ethereal quality. Lytton in some ways played cupid, having written to Leonard in Ceylon about Virginia's qualities—her brilliance, creativity, and discontent.

Leonard and Virginia had only met four times when she invited him to her house in the country. Early in September 1911 he paid his visit, with Marjorie Strachey as the other guest. They took long walks on the Downs and talked intimately far into the night; they were cautious with each other, especially after Lytton's attempts at matchmaker. They continued to spend time with each other, and Virginia eventually asked Leonard to occupy the empty rooms at the top of 38 Brunswick Square, the house she shared with her brother Adrian. Just after he moved into his new home in December 1912, he began to keep a journal of their relationship. Leonard's leave from Ceylon was shrinking, and he had to decide whether or not to leave the Ceylon Service for good.

Leonard proposed marriage to Virginia a little more than a month after moving into Brunswick Square. She asked for more time, and a month later agreed to marry him. Virginia found the idea of marrying a Jew difficult, and her announcements to her friends read as confessions and apologies. Leonard took Virginia to meet his mother Maria in Putney. The working-class Jewish household was very foreign to Virginia and she found it unappealing. Leonard writes about these class differences in The Wise Virgins: A Story of Words, Opinions, and a Few Emotions (1914), which fictionally treats a young Jew who falls in love with the daughter of a well-established Victorian intellectual. Though an unsettling decision for Virginia, she and Leonard were married 10 August 1912 at the St. Pancras Registry. Marie was not invited. Leonard would become for Virginia her parents and siblings, doctor and nurse, and intellectual and literary mentor.

After his marriage, Leonard worked with Margaret Vaughan in the East End of London, and it was then that he began his conversion to socialism. He also became involved with the Women's Cooperative Guild and began to write for the Co-operative News. He later became involved in the Fabian movement. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, founders and leaders of the Fabian movement, put Leonard to work writing two reports that were published as International Government: Two Reports (1916), and with that Leonard's career as a political writer was begun. In those reports Leonard outlines the function of what would later become the League of Nations. Many books on the same internationalist lines quickly followed, including: The Framework of a Lasting Peace (1917; with Leonard as editor), The Future of Constantinople (1917), Mandates and Empire (1920), and Empire and Commerce in Africa: A Study in Economic Imperialism (1920). During the post-war years he wrote for the New Statesman and was literary editor for the Nation.

Leonard's relationship with Virginia has been widely discussed. Virginia twice tried to commit suicide before her marriage. Though Leonard was aware of Virginia's sensitive temperament, no one informed him of the depths of her illness. When they returned from their honeymoon, Virginia showed signs of high stress and symptoms of a breakdown. She experienced periods of euphoric excitement followed by descents into dissociation, hallucination, and abstention from food, often lapsing into a catatonic state. After consulting doctors about Virginia's long term-prospects, Leonard decided they would not have children. This decision stayed with Virginia for the rest of her life.

Though affectionate and tender with each other, neither Leonard nor Virginia appreciated sex. Theirs was a marriage of minds, and Leonard found one of his purposes in life to take care of Virginia and to make sure she did not fall over the emotional precipice. Leonard ultimately learned Virginia's symptoms and established a way of life for both of them, a life that made for deep harmony and creation in their marriage.

Leonard and Virginia lived at Hogarth House in Richmond, to which they moved shortly after the war. In 1917 Leonard installed on the dining room table several cases of type and a hand press. This press was viewed as a kind of therapy for Virginia, who, surrounded by words and letters, could work with her hands. Initially the Woolfs published hand-sewn and hand-set brochures, but eventually the amateur Hogarth Press became a serious business enterprise, publishing many modernist writers. T. S. Eliot submitted his early poetry, and Virginia set The Wasteland by hand. Hogarth Press published Katherine Mansfield's The Prelude and the first English translation of Sigmund Freud's collected works. James Joyce came to them with Ulysses, but the Woolfs decided not to publish it because printers found the book too full of profanity. The press earned little money, especially after publishing Virginia's own novels—a luxury for Virginia, since with her own press she did not have to worry about the demands and suggestions of another editor. Leonard became her only editor.

As much as Virginia loved Hogarth House, she preferred the active life of London. Leonard and she bought 52 Tavistock Square, which had four stories and a basement. The press went into the basement, and there Leonard had a number of assistants, including Ralph Partridge, Carrington's husband; George Rylands; and later John Lehmann.

In 1920 Leonard ran for parliament as the candidate for the Seven Universities Democratic Association and lost. He was appointed secretary to the Labor Party Advisory Committee on Imperial Questions in 1924 and continued in that position for many years afterward. In the late 1930s Leonard wrote After the Deluge, his first volume of essays; and Quack, Quack!, a political satire. In 1936 he helped set up the Association for Intellectual Liberty.

With the advent of World War II, Leonard stored gasoline in the garage at Monk's House for his and Virginia's suicide in the case of a Nazi invasion. He published The War for Peace and The Future of International Government in 1940, believing more than ever in the League of Nations concept as the only way to ensure future peace.

On March 28, 1941, Leonard found one of two suicide notes Virginia left before drowning herself. In the note she wrote how grateful she was to him, that she felt she would never recover from her madness, and that she could not allow him to spend the rest of his life taking care of her. After her death, Leonard found himself increasingly occupied with overseeing Virginia's writing estate. He edited many of her essays and stories including, The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays (1942), A Haunted House, and Other Short Stories (1943), The Moment, and Other Essays (1947), The Captain's Death Bed, and Other Essays (1950), A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1953), and with James Strachey a selection of letters between Virginia and Lytton Strachey (1956). Leonard found that no library in England was interested in Virginia's papers, so he arranged for most of them to go to the New York Public Library's Berg Collection. He devoted the end of his life to writing his autobiography: Sowing: An Autobiography of the Years 1880-1904 (1960), Growing: An Autobiography of the Years 1904-1911 (1961), Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911-1918 (1965), Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (1967), The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969 (1969).

Though Leonard Woolf's reputation does not seem to transcend the Bloomsbury Group, we may be assured that Bloomsbury could not have existed without him. One of the original Cambridge Apostles, married to the daughter of Leslie Stephen, living through all stages of the group until he was one of the last surviving members, Leonard was a man whose intellect, rationality, and sensitivity to oppressed and exploited people marked him as a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His recording of his friends and their history in his autobiography is a significant source of information about this fascinating group.

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941)

Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf has arguably had the broadest cultural impact of any of the Bloomsbury members. There is a virtual “industry” of writing on her life and work that has spawned a Virginia Woolf Society, newsletter, and annual journal. She is one of those writers whose reputation precedes them—even persons who have never read her work have probably heard of her. Some people are merely fascinated by her biography, her mental illness, suicide attempts, and final success at suicide. Others view her as a feminist icon, the “mother of feminism” in the twentieth century, because of A Room of One's Own (1929). Scholars of the novel find her one of the most important innovators of the modern novel and its representation of psychological process.

Born January 25, 1882, at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Virginia was the daughter of Leslie and Julia Stephen. It was the second marriage for each parent; Leslie brought one daughter, Laura, to the marriage, and Julia brought two sons, George and Herbert, and one daughter, Stella. Together Leslie and Julia had four children, Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian. It was a huge and bustling family, which filled Hyde Park Gate. Virginia writes in “Old Bloomsbury” of its heavy Victorian character and the oppression it seemed to exert on her view of the world. It was not only the red and black decor that weighed so on her spirit, but the traumas that occurred there during Virginia's childhood that caused her to have such a dark vision.

Virginia's home was in many ways typically late Victorian, except that it was often filled with noted artists and writers who were her parents' guests. Virginia's writing ability was recognized early on with the “Hyde Park Gate News,” which the Stephen children put together about the goings on in the Stephen household. She and her sister Vanessa were not sent to school, but were educated at home, first by Julia, and then by tutors after Julia's death. Leslie, though radical for a Victorian, did not want his daughters sent to a university. On the other hand, he gave Virginia free run of his large library, and it was with this freedom that Virginia began her self-education with the help of Leslie himself. Each summer the family would go to St. Ives in Cornwall, where the days would be spent taking long walks, reading, and playing cricket in the garden. Virginia's To the Lighthouse (1927) represented these days in her life.

However, it was also during these years at Hyde Park Gate that Virginia experienced her most significant traumas. The first and most central was the death of her mother Julia. In many ways typically Victorian, Julia spent much of her time caring for and nursing others, from family to friends. Julia endlessly looked after the needs of Leslie, a demanding Victorian patriarch, and their eight children. She took care of the sick in London and St. Ives. Critics have argued that Clarissa Dalloway in Virginia's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse are modeled on Julia. However, unlike these fictional characters, Julia died at age forty-nine from influenza. Virginia herself saw her mother's death as a result of her pure exhaustion and “the greatest disaster that could have happened.”⁸ Virginia was thirteen when her mother died and it was then that she experienced her first nervous breakdown.

After Julia's death, Stella, Julia's daughter from her first marriage, took over her mother's role, taking care of her younger brothers and sisters and looking after the needs of Leslie. Leslie became more difficult after Julia's death. He was prone to fits, melodrama, and self-pity. He relied heavily on Stella to maintain the maternal role in the family and therefore delayed her marriage to Jack Hills. Stella's marriage to Jack in 1897 was short-lived; she died three months after the marriage. It was another shock for the young Virginia. Vanessa was quickly thrust into the mother's role, and though she did oversee the day-to-day workings of Hyde Park Gate, she refused to respond to Leslie's demands. Vanessa and Virginia became increasingly close, bonded by the desire to escape their repressive Victorian environment.

Leslie became ill in 1900, and in 1904, when Virginia was twenty-two, he died of cancer. That spring Virginia, Vanessa, and Violet Dickenson (a friend of Julia's) traveled to Italy and Paris. When they returned, Virginia had another breakdown and spent three months at Violet's home recovering. It was there that Virginia made her first attempt at suicide, throwing herself out of a second story window. It was during Virginia's absence from Hyde Park Gate that Vanessa made plans to move to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury. Much to the dismay of family and friends, Virginia, Vanessa, Thoby, and Adrian moved to a most unfashionable district in London; however, it was in Bloomsbury that the Stephen sisters finally broke from the constraints of their Victorian past.

The year 1905 was the beginning of a new life for Virginia. She began to teach at Morley College, a school for the working-class. Thoby began inviting his Cambridge friends for open-house “Thursday evenings,” at which they continued many of the conversations they had begun as Apostles. It was at this time that Virginia began to make the acquaintance of Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, and Saxon Sydney-Turner. By 1906 Virginia had settled into a life as a writer, penning anonymous reviews for such publications as the Times Literary Supplement.

In fall 1906, Virginia went to Greece with Vanessa and Violet and there met up with her brothers. Vanessa became ill and Virginia remained with her in Italy while Thoby and Adrian returned home. When the sisters returned home they found Thoby seriously ill. Thoby's illness was misdiagnosed, and on November 20 he died of typhoid. This was a serious blow to Virginia and Vanessa. Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa agreed to marry Clive Bell. Virginia and Adrian began to look for a new house and in April 1907 they moved to 29 Fitzroy Square. Gordon Square and Fitzroy Square shared and continued the tradition of the “Thursday evenings.” Vanessa gave birth to Julian Bell in 1908, an event that put a further distance between the two sisters.

Though Virginia felt troubled by what she perceived as a loss of intimacy with Vanessa, she developed firm friendships with the Cambridge men. E. M. Forster and Desmond MacCarthy—older Apostles—and Duncan Grant, Lytton's cousin, also became part of the Thursday evening group. In 1909, on a whim, Lytton proposed to Virginia, but overnight they both realized they made a mistake. Her security with her new friends and the freedom she experienced are reflected in her participation in the Dreadnought Hoax. The friends perpetrated a hoax on the British Navy by posing as the emperor of Abyssinia and his retinue and managed to get a guided tour of the navy's most sacred warship, the HMS Dreadnought.

In 1911 Virginia was reintroduced to Leonard Woolf when he dropped by Vanessa's one day after dinner. He had just returned from his years in Ceylon, where he had been since 1904. Virginia invited him to come for the weekend to Little Talland House, which she rented for herself. By November, Leonard had moved into 38 Brunswick Square with Virginia, Adrian, John Maynard Keynes, and Duncan Grant as roommates. After a brief courtship, Leonard resigned from the Colonial Service and proposed to Virginia, who initially declined. She felt no physical attraction toward him and wished to continue seeing him as a friend. However, by August 1912 Virginia had changed her mind and the two were married.

By the end of 1912 Virginia was becoming troubled by severe headaches. Leonard initially had no idea of the seriousness of Virginia's breakdowns. After her headaches she would usually suffer from blackouts, a complex relation to food that involved monitoring her eating and drinking. She sometimes heard voices, birds singing in Greek, or Edward VII muttering foul language in the bushes. Leonard's usual method of dealing with Virginia during these times was to keep her away from people and work and to make sure she rested as much as possible. A couple months after their marriage, Virginia, after having seen doctors and living under the care of her friend Katherine Cox, tried to commit suicide through an overdose of Veronal, a sedative. In 1915 she published her first novel, The Voyage Out. Her third breakdown after the completion of the novel would begin a pattern for her—completion of a novel meant the onset of tremendous emotional exhaustion.

After Virginia's recovery from her third major breakdown, she and Leonard moved to London and lived in Hogarth House. There they began Hogarth Press, while Virginia wrote reviews for various periodicals and began work on her second novel, Night and Day. In 1924 the couple moved from Hogarth House to 52 Tavistock Square and then in 1939 to 37 Mecklenburgh Square. They also bought Monk's House in the village of Rodmell, Sussex, where they spent most of their summers. In 1920 Virginia began to articulate her vision of the novel in her essay “Modern Novels,” which she published in the Times Literary Supplement. She began to publish all her work with Hogarth Press beginning in 1921 with Monday or Tuesday.

In 1922 Virginia met Vita Sackville-West and they began an affair that lasted until 1928. Vita, married to Harold Nicolson, was a known “Sapphist” or lesbian. She was a poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, and gardener. Virginia was attracted to her aristocratic ease as well as her looks. As their relationship developed, Hogarth Press began to publish Vita's work. Vita was a popular writer during her time, and her thirteen books with Hogarth proved to be very lucrative. Virginia envied Vita's productivity, but their friendship grew into love and then passion. Leonard was aware of this relationship but it did not seem to concern him. The affair was most intense between 1925 and 1928, though in 1928 Virginia became aware that Vita was involved with Mary Campbell.

Virginia wrote her mock-biography Orlando (1928) for Vita as a farewell and a seduction. The biography is modeled on Vita and is about a young writer who begins as a man in the Renaissance, only to change sexes in the eighteenth century and continue on as a woman in the twentieth century. Though the intense period of Virginia and Vita's relationship waned in 1928, their friendship continued until 1935.

Virginia cemented her reputation as a novelist during the 1920s. In 1922, the same year Eliot's The Wasteland and Joyce's Ulysses were published, Virginia published her first experimental novel, Jacob's Room. Jacob, who exists in the memories of the other characters, is very much like Virginia's brother Thoby. From 1923 to 1933 she also wrote her treatise on modern fiction, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924); her frequently read novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927); Orlando; her famous feminist document, A Room of One's Own (1929); and what some consider her greatest novel, The Waves (1931).

During the 1930s both the artistic and political climate in England began to change. Virginia was introduced to a group of young writers, including Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden, and Christopher Isherwood. Virginia's essays “Letter to a Young Poet” (1932) and “The Leaning Tower” (1940) were written with these writers in mind as her audience. The 1930s saw the ascendancy of fascism as well as the increasing power of Hitler on the eve of World War II. Virginia began to keep clippings that would form her most political book, Three Guineas (1938). She came very close to another nervous breakdown in 1936, and in 1937 her nephew Julian Bell was killed in the Spanish Civil War. Two of her close Bloomsbury friends also died around this time—Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry.

When World War II began, the Woolfs spent more time at Monk's House, moving there permanently after their home in London was bombed. Leonard placed gasoline in their garage with which to commit suicide in the case that Hitler took over. In 1941 Virginia was at work on a novel she was calling Pointz Hall, which was posthumously published as Between the Acts (1941). Preoccupied with the issues of the war, she increasingly felt a sense of isolation and a lack of audience. She felt she was going mad again. On March 24, 1941 she left two notes, one for Vanessa and one for Leonard and then walked to the banks of the river Ouse, where she put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself.

Virginia Woolf's inner life and work is probably the most intriguing of all the Bloomsbury members. All agreed she was a genius, especially Leonard who devoted his life to taking care of her so she could work. She leaves a massive legacy of novels, essays, letters, and diaries that tell us a great deal about her thoughts and writing process, along with her family and Bloomsbury friends.

DAVID GARNETT (1892-1981)

David “Bunny” Garnett was one of the younger members of the Bloomsbury Group. He did not start associating with them until 1914. His grandfather Richard was an author and head of the British Museum Reading Room. His father Edward Garnett was a publisher's reader who discovered and encouraged such authors as Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence. It was through David that Lawrence was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group. David's mother Constance was the first English translator of Tolstoy, Chekov, and other Russian authors. David became a novelist, bookstore owner, and partner in a publishing firm.

He was a friend of Adrian Stephen's, who introduced David to Virginia Woolf in 1910. As a conscientious objector he served for a time with a Quaker Relief Unit in France, but in 1916 he moved to Charleston, where he and Duncan Grant worked on a nearby farm while living with Vanessa Bell. David, Duncan, and Vanessa formed one of the many triangular relationships within the Bloomsbury Group. David and Duncan were lovers, and Vanessa, wanting to be close to Duncan, took care of many of the domestic duties. David married Ray Marshall in 1921; Ray died in 1940. Vanessa and Duncan had a daughter, Angelica, on Christmas Day 1918. Clive Bell took responsibility for Angelica's paternity until she was seventeen. In 1942 Angelica married David Garnett and they had four children. They separated in the 1960s. Angelica has written a retrospect of her experience.

Though David's novels are rarely read in the twenty-first century, he was very popular during his own time. His third book, Lady into Fox (1922), won two prestigious awards, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthorndon Prize. It is a story of Mrs. Tebrick, a woman who becomes a fox, leaves her husband, and goes to live in the woods. He wrote seven other novels, most of which were praised for the clarity of their prose style. He also wrote four volumes of memoirs: The Golden Echo (1953), Flowers of the Forest (1955), The Familiar Faces (1962), and Great Friends: Portraits of Seventeen Writers (1979). These memoirs furnish many anecdotes and insights concerning the British literary scene over a number of decades.

Notes

1. Virginia Woolf, “Roger Fry,” in The Bloomsbury Group, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), p. 132.

2. Clive Bell, “Roger Fry,” in The Bloomsbury Group, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), p. 153.

3. Mary Ann Caws, Women of Bloomsbury (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 114.

4. Leon Edel, Bloomsbury: A House of Lions (London: The Hogarth Press, 1979), p. 143.

5. Raymond Mortimer, “Duncan Grant,” in The Bloomsbury Group, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), pp. 236-7.

6. J. M. Keynes, “My Early Beliefs,” in The Bloomsbury Group, ed. S. P. Rosenbaum (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), pp. 51-2.

7. Noel Annan, “Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group,” Biography 22 (1999): 27.

8. Virginia Woolf, “Reminiscences,” in Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, edited and introduced by Jeanne Schulkind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 40.