Bloomsbury's Outsider (16 page)

In May 1919 Bunny found his foothold at Charleston firmly undermined. He was used to coming and going, but one weekend he turned up to find he was not welcome. The house was full of
guests, and to make matters worse Bunny discovered the painter Edward Wolfe in Duncan's bed. The muddle arose because Duncan had sent Bunny a telegram to The Cearne, stating that the house would be full, but inviting him over once the guests had gone. Instead of forwarding the telegram, Constance sent Bunny a cryptic message which he misinterpreted as an invitation for the weekend. The chilly welcome and the presence of Wolfe combined to wound Bunny's pride and make him feel cuckolded. In tears, he told Duncan he never wanted to see him or come to Charleston again.

That night he slept in the paddock and then spent the weekend walking the Downs. On Monday, after Vanessa and her guests departed, Bunny enjoyed a happy day with Duncan and sat for his portrait. In his diary, Bunny recorded a ‘confession', in which he admitted: ‘I am an awful character', ‘always attracted by something or other […]. When he has something he wants he throws it away to run after something else.' ‘If I were a decent character', he reflected, ‘I should now be doing Science & married to Ruth.'
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It is true that Bunny usually assumed the grass to be greener elsewhere, although he persuaded himself at this time that ‘The thing which makes me happy is working hard, & being with someone who loves me & whom I love'.
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By July, Bunny had set about the business of obtaining a bookshop in earnest. The main problem was lack of capital, but Bunny hoped Frankie's father might be prevailed upon. Augustine Birrell was no fool and he asked Maynard Keynes whether he thought Bunny and Frankie had any business ability. Knowing they hadn't, Maynard conceived a plan. He thought Birrell
might be convinced if the venture included a third partner, one with extensive business experience. And so he called upon C.K. Ogden, who in 1916 had founded the highly successful
Cambridge Magazine
, and was looking for bookshop premises in London which would extend his business profile. In return, Ogden would allow the shop's proprietors free advertising in the magazine, but the shop would trade under the name ‘Cambridge Magazine'. Frankie, still in France, was aghast at the prospective involvement of Ogden, whom he disliked intensely. The only option, as far as Bunny and Frankie were concerned, was to manoeuvre Maynard into changing his mind seemingly of his own accord, and for Maynard to consequently advise Birrell that the Cambridge Magazine proposal was not viable. ‘Take any steps you can', Frankie wrote to Bunny from France, ‘to put a
fait accompli
forward. But for God's sake avoid committing us to anything.'
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Bunny identified Ogden's tendency to make increasingly grandiose demands on his own terms, and decided to exploit this, by appearing to be a complete idiot and leading Ogden on step by step. The first measure was for Bunny to ‘forget' to turn up for his initial meeting with Ogden. The second was to write to Maynard, after a meeting had finally taken place, seeming to approve of Ogden, while damning him with faint praise. To this end, Bunny wrote to Maynard: ‘The advantage of association with Ogden is in free advertisement, but while we are of benefit to him in this way I think it is rather doubtful how much value his advertisement of us would be. He spoke as if he was anxious to form other connections of the same sort with London
booksellers as well as with us. That would destroy his value to us.'
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To Constance Bunny wrote jokingly: ‘I am developing into rather a sharp business man – I imagine in the strong silent American style.'
³²

Bunny's campaign worked: as he anticipated, Ogden's demands became so ridiculous as to be untenable. On 14 September Maynard wrote to Ogden informing him that he, Bunny and Frankie jointly ‘came to the conclusion that in the circumstances it would be no good at present trying to pursue further the project'. ‘Birrell & Garnett', he added, ‘will therefore go ahead, I expect independently.'
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As Ogden went on to abandon the Cambridge Magazine for a career as a psychologist, it was probably as well. Duncan commented to Bunny: ‘It will be splendid if you become a real writer won't it with a book shop to fall back on.'
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The situation worked out well in respect of Augustine Birrell's contribution too, for he put in £1,000. Although Bunny estimated they would need £2000 a year for two years, the start-up capital amounted to Birrell senior's £1,000 together with £200 from Constance and £100 from Edward.

Frankie remained in France, leaving Bunny to find suitable premises, but it proved impossible to find a shop at an affordable rent. Bunny therefore took a large ground floor front room at 19 Taviton Street, off Gordon Square. The building was in the hands of Margaret Bulley, a friend of Frankie's, and she let rooms to friends who lived there on a communal basis. Birrell & Garnett
first opened its doors in late 1919 or early 1920. Although the shop was in a reasonably good location within Bloomsbury, it was not in the best position to attract the casual passer-by, and would have benefited from a closer proximity to other bookshops like Mudie and Probsthain. Frances Partridge, who later worked as the shop's assistant, recalled that the clientele was ‘limited almost entirely to friends, and friends of friends, and were for the most part denizens of Bloomsbury, both physically and spiritually'.
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Other similarly bookish clients included Joseph Conrad, who submitted one of the first orders, the artist John Singer Sargent and the poet Walter de la Mare. E.M. Forster was one of their best customers, responsible for two large orders: one from the state of Hyderabad for educational books, and the other to equip Palestine with terrestrial globes. Birrell & Garnett triumphed, too, when they were able to supply Bertrand Russell with all the books for his expedition to China in 1920, from existing stock.

In selecting their stock, Messrs Birrell and Garnett favoured eighteenth-century French and English literature, everything published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press and anything written by their friends. Frankie was particularly knowledgeable about the latest French literature, and of course Bunny promoted Russian literature, in his mother's translations. Their stock was bolstered by sets from their respective fathers' libraries, and in one coup they discovered that first editions of Henry James were still in print, issued a catalogue, and were deluged with orders from America. In many respects it was hard work. Bunny attended auctions of second-hand books, travelling backwards and forward to country sales. Catalogues had to be drawn up and issued, orders packaged, parcels sent. For all their
inexperience, Birrell & Garnett gradually established a reputation as serious booksellers.
The Bookman
commented that:

It is a business which deals for the most part in old books, but the firm does not disdain new books of distinguished literary quality, and its catalogues are already such as to make one read them with respect […]. One can tell the caliber of the partners by the quality of the notes which accompany the titles of the books which figure in their lists.
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As Augustine Birrell feared, neither Bunny nor Frankie were natural businessmen. Frankie found it embarrassing to sell books for profit. According to Bunny, he would exclaim, ‘ “I cheated him quite successfully,” after selling a second-hand book much below its real value but for more than we had paid for it'.
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Early on, when Bunny sold a copy of Shelley's
Revolt of Islam
for £4, the customer returned it, pointing out that it had been inscribed by the author and offering to sell it back at the purchase price. Bunny was too proud to accept, but he learnt a lesson. He sometimes found himself doing the lion's share of work. Frankie would disappear to Paris, ostensibly on a book-buying expedition, but also to meet a lover who lived there. But Frankie's charm and affability contributed much to the unique character of Birrell & Garnett. Bunny generously attributed the shop's popularity to him:

He had a quick sympathy and eager enthusiasm and was always able to help any customer in difficulties. But, most
important of all, he charmed almost everyone who came into the shop so that they wanted to come again. What did it matter that his fingers made paw marks on the books? Or that he would do up his fly-buttons in the middle of a conversation about Gide, or scratch himself very thoroughly in intimate places of his anatomy, standing on one leg to do so more freely […]. It was Frankie's personality which enabled us to keep the shop going and pay ourselves a pittance of three pounds a week each.
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Frances Partridge found Frankie a less benign presence, ‘standing in the centre of the room like a fierce Aberdeen terrier, with an abrupt bark of “Yes? What d'you want?” ' She added that ‘manners were not his forte […]. The result was that any casual customer attracted by the window display was quickly frightened away.'
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Bunny, on the other hand, was sometimes too shy to serve a customer, his natural reserve in the face of strangers causing him to scurry behind the book shelves, or to force his nose more firmly between the pages of a book. Both partners spent as much time as possible reading the stock, Frankie casually flicking his cigarette ash here and there and prizing open uncut pages with a clumsy thumb. What they enjoyed most was ‘always meeting interesting people' and the continuous ‘good talk'.
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It became quite a meeting place in Bloomsbury, a hub where friends could meet, flop down on a sofa and discuss the latest literary sensation; as Frances Partridge commented, it was ‘a centre for friendliness and conversation'.
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‘The bride […] was a more than ordinarily beautiful and agreeable woman […]. In manner she was reserved almost to shyness, but perfectly self-possessed, and perfectly well-bred.'
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A respectable businessman by day, in the evenings Bunny still frequented London's Bohemia. Lytton Strachey commented that Bunny looked peaky – that he had been ‘sitting up too late o'nights'.
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He spent one night wandering the streets with Betty May, followed by a policeman. She remained as lovely and enigmatic as ever, although Bunny detected a new darkness around her eyes. A few weeks later he was surprised to be introduced to her husband, a man who had apparently reformed her and turned her into a housewife. ‘For some reason', Bunny told Lytton, ‘it squeezed my heart with pity far more to see her sober & settled than it had done when she had been lying about drugged & drunk.'
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By May 1920 the shop was doing relatively well and Bunny was living above it, having taken one of the rooms. The household comprised Margaret Bulley, Bunny's Quaker friend Robert Tatlock (now editor of
The Burlington Magazine
), the novelist Ethel Sedgwick and an artist Cecily Hey (like Carrington, known by her surname). Residents had individual rooms and shared a sitting room. The establishment was presided over by a housekeeper, Mrs Speechley, who lived in the basement with the latest in a line of ailing husbands.

It was at this time that Bunny became better acquainted with Theadora Fordham, the daughter of former neighbours of the Garnetts at both Hampstead and Limpsfield. He had last seen Thea in 1914, when aged seventeen, she had surprised him at The Cearne by bestowing upon him ‘two vehement child's kisses'.
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Now twenty-three, she was, according to Bunny, ‘a wild creature; at moments fierce, at others confiding'.
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She was a home student at Oxford, where she played lacrosse for the university. But she wasn't a jolly-hockey-sticks sort of girl. Rather, she was sensitive, troubled and undecided about which direction life might take. She was also kindly and intelligent: someone said of her ‘a crust shared with Thea would have a flavour'.
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In the vacations, Thea lived with her parents in a Georgian house on Well Walk, Hampstead. She invited Bunny to visit her there, ‘because the view from my bedroom is marvellous'.
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But like Alix Sargant-Florence, Thea blew hot and cold, frequently muddling dates, missing assignations
or changing arrangements. ‘My dear', she began a letter in April 1920, ‘I really want to write you a long letter & tell you about every thing I feel about us – but I seem to be in such a completely undecided state of mind that what I may say tonight will probably be quite different to what I might say tomorrow.' Partly she worried that Bunny, now twenty-eight and five years her senior, was too much a man of the world for someone of her relatively sheltered upbringing. ‘Remember', she wrote to him, ‘you are talking to a child & that your world is quite new to her.'
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Thea was not the only person occupying Bunny's thoughts. A young artist, Rachel Alice Marshall, had moved into Taviton Street, and he could not help but enjoy her humour and sense of fun. Moreover she was a joy to tease. Known as ‘Ray', she was oddly beautiful, olive-skinned, with high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a mobile mouth and bobbed brown hair. Her body was lithe, with muscular, shapely legs conditioned by the long country hikes she enjoyed. Bunny thought her a ‘woodland creature'
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. She was the girl with whom he had danced a decade earlier at Crosby Hall. Bunny was delighted when Ray invited him for a weekend walk on the Downs near Chichester, along with Tatlock and Hey. On his return, he decided he was in love with her, recording in his diary in September 1920: ‘Rachel has come to attract me more and more.' The attraction was so compelling that Bunny found himself uncharacteristically drawn into ‘domestication', ‘guilty of all sorts of horrors – cocoa […] outings of the household to theatres etc', which he considered unnatural ‘to an individualist like myself'.
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