Bloomsbury's Outsider (14 page)

Alix was striking: nearly six feet tall and stick-thin, she had what Frances Partridge described as a ‘Red Indian profile', together with bobbed thick dark hair and ‘level grey eyes'.
¹⁵
She also possessed a first-rate brain, was highly inquisitive and loved an argument. Like Bunny, she had received little in the way of formal education, until she attended Bedales, hardly the most formal of schools. Like Bunny, she had travelled to Russia. Alix had studied art at the Slade, but disliking this experience, read modern languages at Newnham College, Cambridge, completing her studies in 1914. She was Bunny's exact contemporary, and unusual, even among his circle of independent women, in eschewing any degree of dependency on men.

In his autobiography Bunny described their relationship as ‘half friendship, half love-affair'.
¹⁶
On his side, at least, it was more: he completely fell for Alix. She was initially put off from having a physical relationship with him, for he took her to Pond Place, where the squalor of his room so disgusted her that she refused to go there again. When entertaining his lovers in London, Bunny was forced to choose between the squalid room at Pond Place and Duncan's flea-infested studio in Fitzroy Street, where on one occasion Bunny killed thirty-six bugs. Perhaps for this reason, Alix preferred Bunny to join her at her mother's country house, Lord's Wood, near Marlow, in Buckinghamshire.
In response to Alix's first such invitation, Bunny drafted an emotional letter, attempting to explain his feelings for Duncan, and where she would fit into the scheme of things. Mostly it reveals Bunny's confused state of mind. It reads:

Duncan is very much in love with me, & if I don't say I am in love with him it is not because I feel less for him than he does for me. I love him & am absolutely dependent on his love. I have never been so happy in my life as in his society. It is the thing of the first importance – the air I breathe – But in spite of that I am starved don't laugh at me – it's ridiculous I know. I am starved partly by the war, as everybody is – & partly because none of the things I secondarily want are present.

I want something else […]. I have hunted for it of course – but there are not many people on the cards to supply it – or anxious to. Another man couldn't – & most women are absolutely impossible […]. But of course none of the things I've said are really what prepossess me in your favour. You do that partly [by] your looks, partly because I can tell you the truth, chiefly I think because you are the reverse of what is called feminine.
¹⁷

Did Bunny mean he was attracted by Alix's androgynous appearance? Or did he mean that he appreciated her forthright intellectualism? Bunny and Alix's love affair, if it could be so called, fell quickly into a pattern where she would arrange to meet Bunny and then change her mind. The chief problem was James, for she would drop everything in order to be with him.
Alix liked Bunny as a lover but wanted little more; however, her periodic hesitations and retreats fuelled Bunny's ardour, so that when they were together he was inclined to be too intense, whereas she wanted a light-hearted love affair, free from expectations. She told Bunny she wanted something ‘cheerful,
cheerful
,
cheerful
– & perhaps mildly exciting – & not in the least absorbing – &, if anything, a joke; but nice'.
¹⁸
In December 1917 she invited Bunny to Tidmarsh Mill, the home of Lytton Strachey and Carrington. It was not the warmest invitation, as Alix was clearly at a loose end with James otherwise engaged and was absolutely blunt about this fact. Bunny joined her there, a few days before Christmas, but, as he commented wryly in his journal, this was after she had ‘thrown me over twice and changed back at the last minute'.
¹⁹

Now passionately in love with Alix, Bunny was ready to jump when she summoned him. This level of uncertainty was terrible for Duncan, who needed time to prepare himself emotionally for Bunny's absences, and was anyway paralysed with jealousy. Believing Bunny was keeping things from him, Duncan took to prying into Bunny's letters, and even prised open a locked drawer in which they were kept. Alix, in turn, embellished her letters to Bunny with remarks designed to taunt Duncan, which only intensified his jealousy.

While Bunny believed his relationship with Alix enhanced his love for Duncan, Duncan could only perceive Alix as a rival. His periodic outbursts and prolonged bouts of jealousy tested Bunny's patience to such an extent that on one occasion he lost
control and hit Duncan. And so their relationship adopted a pattern where Duncan's jealous outbursts were followed by contrition and remorse and Bunny's absences with Alix resulted in tender reconciliations. But these periods of calm could not be sustained. In late December they embarked on an even more elaborate
pas de deux
when almost simultaneously the two men began to confide in separate journals, confidences nevertheless designed to be secretly read by each other. Read together, these journals not only reveal their relationship from both points of view, but also form, as they were designed to, a silent dialogue between the two men, where emotions were batted back and forth like a ball across a table. But Bunny was also scratching away in another journal, one which he kept secret from Duncan.
²⁰

In January 1918 Bunny recorded (in the more public of his two diaries) that Duncan ‘seemed to make demands on my strength. He had a definite attitude of expectation, he would thrust forward the whole time his relation to me. I wanted to have nothing expected of me.'
²¹
The situation was becoming intolerable. Now, whenever Bunny planned to see Alix, Duncan became hysterical, on one occasion threatening suicide. While Bunny felt restless and tired and could see no way out, Duncan could not find a way through his jealousy. Vanessa wrote to Maynard, telling him ‘there have been such storms within for the last month or two', adding, ‘I don't think one can go on indefinitely with such constantly recurring crises'.
²²
Bunny also turned to Maynard, whom he knew understood Duncan better than
most. He had tried to talk to Vanessa, but thought that ‘women don't understand & can't understand the relation between two men'.
²³
The situation existed partly because Duncan could not understand the relation between a man and a woman.

It was probably at this time that Bunny vented his frustration in a poem entitled ‘Trouble':

What is the matter with this house

Where my poor heart would live at ease and sleep?

The spider weaves at peace, the silent mouse

Almost forgets his fears to play bo-peep

Behind the kitchen chairs. We are not thus,

We eat nor sleep, nor scarcely even live.

What is the matter with this house – or us?

What is there wanting? What offering must I give?
²⁴

Bunny began to think the only solution was to leave Charleston and go to Russia with the Quakers. Duncan, who could not countenance being abandoned, became increasingly unhinged, one morning springing upon Bunny and spitting at him. Bunny felt he had to leave in order to diffuse the situation, and because he could see that Vanessa was also adversely affected by the prevailing atmosphere. As he concluded in the final verse of ‘Trouble':

What is the matter? If we so ill together

Within its walls can live, let us walk out

And find in the hoarfrost and rough weather

A fireside for our hearts, – the wind a clout

Warmer than the cloak of love we tatter

And better than this house, where what's the matter?
²⁵

Bunny discussed the question of Russia with Robert Tatlock, an old friend from his period in France who had worked with the Quakers in Russia and was now in London. Returning to Charleston later than anticipated, Bunny found Duncan frantic, demanding to know who Bunny had slept with. They fought savagely, Bunny knocking down a shelf in the process. Afterwards they both began to cry, and ‘feeling indescribably happy' ‘lay locked in each others arms'.
²⁶
‘After living with me for three years' [sic] Bunny reflected, ‘Duncan hasn't yet discovered that […] I am perfectly happy with him, if I am sometimes allowed to have the distraction of an affair with someone else'.
²⁷
But scenes of this nature grew more frequent: lamps were overturned, slippers flung through doors and boots tossed into the hallway. Bunny and Duncan both recorded ghastly days in their diaries. Bunny recognised this had much to do with the strain of working on the farm, and whenever he could, retreated into watching his bees. Duncan could sometimes see the absurdity of the situation: ‘Alix in love with James & the self chosen wife of Bunny. Bunny living with me & a furious womaniser.'
²⁸
Duncan did not, however, record that there was another ingredient in this curious mix: not only was Vanessa in love with him, but they had been having sex in the hope of conceiving a child. Bunny knew about this. In May 1915 Vanessa had confided the matter to
him, and was glad she had done so, because, as she told him afterwards

you were so extraordinarily nice & I saw how generous & magnanimous a nature you have – & those are the most important qualities & the ones I care for most – You are not just pleased that people you like should be happy as most people are. You really mind when they're not & delight in it when they are. I think that's the most loveable quality any one can have.
²⁹

Bunny oscillated between hoping the situation with Duncan would improve and thinking he had better go to Russia. One evening, when Barbara Hiles was staying at Charleston, Bunny went to wish her goodnight. She gave him a friendly kiss, and he returned to the room he shared with Duncan, to find him in a jealous fury. ‘Why', Bunny asked, had Duncan ‘become accustomed to treat me like this when he would be ashamed to behave so to Nessa'?
³⁰
The crises were escalating. When Bunny received a telegram from Tatlock summoning him to London, Duncan became extremely upset, believing Bunny would go to Russia. It transpired that Tatlock had recommended Bunny for work in
London
for the Friends'
Russian
Mission. However, Duncan accused Bunny of wanting to abandon him to the farm and again threatened suicide. Unable to take any more, Bunny collapsed in tears. He was physically and emotionally exhausted and felt that he and Duncan were ‘like devils chained together by
their tails', that he was enslaved to it all.
³¹

When Bunny felt that the world was ‘absolutely at its blackest, deadliest most hellish pitch', he learned that Edward had found a publisher for his abridgement of Gressent.
³²
Then Duncan was granted leave by the Central Tribunal to work half-days on the farm, giving him time to paint. Just as things seemed to be looking up, Alix informed Bunny that she was not remotely in love with him. Confronting Alix in London, Bunny found her steely and unfriendly. When she told Bunny that she felt ‘absolute indifference' to him, his wounded pride turned rapidly to anger. In a scene which he described vividly in his private journal, he caught Alix by the neck and threw her to the ground. After telling him not to be so stupid, she politely invited him to tea. As always, Bunny's anger turned to remorse, and feeling ashamed, he rushed away. He would never again let his anger with a woman turn physical. He might wound verbally and was always dextrous in argument, but he would never lash out like this. Consumed with regret, Bunny returned to Charleston, to be comforted by Duncan and to learn that Vanessa was expecting a baby. ‘Thinking about that', Bunny wrote in his journal, ‘has been the one outlet for a pure & good emotion I have had.'
³³

‘Never try to write, but above all never have anything to do with publishing or the book trade.' (Edward Garnett's advice to his son)
¹

When he received a letter enquiring whether he would be available to work with the Friends in Russia, Bunny felt mixed emotions. He wanted to go but worried about leaving Duncan working for Hecks. Bunny's dilemma was, however, short lived, as ‘Mr Secretary Balfour thought it undesirable that Mr Garnett should go to Russia at present & suggested that his name be omitted from the list'. Harry Norton thought the Garnetts' well-known terrorist sympathies influenced Balfour's decision, telling Bunny: ‘you or your mother have been too friendly with the Bolshies'.
²

In October 1918 Bunny wrote to Constance, ‘Relief – oh blessed
relief. They have almost stopped fighting & I can't help believing that one will be able to live happily again occupied with decent things & not, as seemed probable a few weeks ago always be fighting with one's fellows for things that are conceded everywhere but in wars & nightmares.' This statement could equally have applied to Bunny's domestic situation, although in recent months the atmosphere had improved at Charleston, Bunny and Duncan united in caring for Vanessa's wellbeing and keeping matters as tranquil as possible. On the back of a letter to Edward, Bunny scribbled possible names for the baby, including Bulgaria, Havana, Lucretia, Linolia, Titania, Cornelia, Perdita, Leda, Angelica and Lesbia.
³
Evidently he did not contemplate the birth of a boy.

Meanwhile, Bunny was enthused by the success of Lytton Strachey's biographical essays
Eminent Victorians
, which had become an overnight sensation. ‘It is amusing', he commented, ‘to have a real booming success among our circle'.
⁴
He was enraged, however, when he read Edward Marsh's Memoir of Rupert Brooke, published as an introduction to Brooke's
Collected Poems
. Bunny disliked the way Marsh white-washed his subject, absenting Brooke's homosexual friends (notably James Strachey and Duncan Grant) and most of the women with whom Brooke had love affairs. Bunny hated what he considered to be false hero-worship, the way Brooke had been turned into a hero and martyr.