Bloomsbury's Outsider (21 page)

Bunny couldn't get used to the idea of a house of his own, because he had always lived in other people's houses. In anticipation of their finally living together under their own roof, Bunny wrote to Ray, telling her he loved her. ‘I love you most tenderly and I want to be with you and for us to understand & love each other […]. You will never find anyone you love as much as me; I shall never find anyone I love as much as you. Why,' he added, ‘do we poison one another?'
¹³
The ‘poison', as Bunny called it, arose from their differing attitudes to marriage. Bunny expected Ray to understand that she was the most important woman in his life, but that he needed the diversion of other love affairs. Ray wanted constancy.

As they possessed next to no furniture, Bunny purchased items from local sale rooms, but even so acknowledged that some rooms would need to remain empty, as he was broke. But he relished the quiet and tranquillity of Hilton, with ‘Only the tap tap of the smith's hammer ringing on the anvil almost whenever
one listens for it'.
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Vanessa and Duncan viewed the house, Tommy helped Bunny move in, and Edward came to visit, declaring that he was ‘simply delighted with Hilton House. It has a rare personality & charm.'
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Hilton seemed an odd choice of location, far from Sussex or Kent with their proximity to London, Constance and Charleston. But Bunny remained conscious of his parents' position as ‘outsiders' and wanted to live in a village where he and his family could participate in village life. Moreover, the bleak, flat fenland area surrounding Hilton had the kind of challenging appeal which Bunny always loved. He preferred countryside which did not relinquish its charms too easily, where beauty was offered slowly if you were prepared to seek it. Hilton was close to Cambridge, where Bunny had many friends and Ray had a brother, Horace, and near enough to London to travel there quickly and easily. It was also far enough from London for Bunny to feel that he could, if need be, maintain city life and country life in entirely separate compartments.

Bunny did not exaggerate when he told Sylvia he had fallen in love with a house; his love for Hilton Hall would endure, and he soon came to love it the way he loved The Cearne. Like his parents, he was not a believer in luxury, and although the house gradually acquired more furniture, it remained cold, draughty and Spartan. Gerald Brenan informed Carrington that he admired the house, ‘but rather shuddered at its discomfort'.
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Bunny and Ray were generous and hospitable hosts providing delicious meals and plenty of wine, but they never seemed to
remedy the chill which issued from the stone floors and penetrated every corner. According to Frances Partridge, ‘The vast beamed fireplaces in the drawing-room and dining-room gave out virtually no heat at all from their log fires in winter, even at close range. That was the snag – Hilton was the coldest house I have ever spent a night in.'
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Over the years Hilton was embellished with many beautiful things including paintings by Duncan and Vanessa. Tommy's sculpted head of Henrietta Bingham was soon joined by those of Duncan, Lytton Strachey, Julia Strachey and Virginia Woolf, a gallery of friends who gazed silently upon the residents of Hilton Hall.

Early in 1925 Ray wrote from Hilton to Sylvia Townsend Warner, reporting that:

Bunny is roaming round now looking & imagining what this place will be like in 20 years time. He has planted all the little apples in the orchard, the cherries & the peaches & the quince. We have planted a nut hedge […] & apples on espaliers by the lawn – a walnut! & today a tiny Mulberry not 4 ft high but with a Mulberry curve in its stalk. We considered carefully which way it would curve to look best in 100 years time from the drawing room window.
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The garden was the recipient of all the love and attention which Bunny could lavish upon it. Having ‘fallen in love with working on the land' at Wissett, Bunny's love affair continued at Hilton.
He planted the fruit and vegetables he wanted to eat – globe artichokes,
haricots verts
, aubergines and courgettes – vegetables which he had earlier promoted in his version of Gressent. He and Ray liked the kinds of dishes which Elizabeth David would champion twenty-five years later – largely French and Mediterranean. Bunny enjoyed not only the fruits of his labour, but also physical engagement with the earth. He loved to be outdoors and relished feeling his strength as he dug, raked and hoed the soil. He approached his garden scientifically, understanding the importance of compost and manure, of soil, light, water and air. But it was also a place where he could be part of the changing seasons, observing the natural world around him. Very soon he and Ray acquired chickens and ducks, and of course Bunny lost little time in making Hilton a home for bees. Now dividing his working life between the Nonesuch Press and writing, the garden provided an outlet for his physical energy.

The Nonesuch Press had moved from its crepuscular basement on Gerrard Street to more spacious premises. Profits had been sufficient to allow Vera to purchase a substantial and graceful property, a former eighteenth century coffee house at 16 Great James Street, around the corner from Great Ormond Street, bordering Bloomsbury. The main office was on the ground floor, where Bunny also had a small office. Francis and Vera (now married) had adjoining offices on the first floor. A ‘war widow', Mrs Stephens, was taken on as secretary, and two young women worked in the office as well. Bunny usually came in for a couple of days a week, conveniently spending the night in one of the spare bedrooms above the offices, returning to Hilton the evening of the second day. But he took Nonesuch work home, reading manuscripts, deciding which authors to bring back into print, corresponding with editors and working
on the prospectuses through which he and his partners marketed their books.

That first autumn at Hilton, Bunny was working on a new novel,
The Sailor's Return
. Edward had read the book, in draft, but Bunny felt his father had neither grasped what he was trying to achieve, nor understood the importance of the tone in which the book was written. ‘The effect at present', Edward reported, ‘is a bit too much as though it had been run into a mould.'
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Bunny found it difficult to contradict Edward, venturing that his story was ‘better than you think', adding, lamely, ‘who knows you may like it better when you see it next'.
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But Bunny did not wish to be deflected from his artistic purpose; he wanted his story to remain cast in the narrative form of his own devising. And so he took the manuscript along to Ebury Street in London's Belgravia, to the home of the writer George Moore, who had earlier pronounced
Lady into Fox
a masterpiece.

Bunny had met Moore in 1924 when Moore approached the Nonesuch Press with a proposal to compile and edit an anthology of verse, in which he would propound his theories regarding the essence of
Pure Poetry
, the anthology's title. Initially Francis and Vera opposed the idea, but Bunny thought Moore's name would enhance the Nonesuch list. Francis, however, disliked Moore on personal grounds, and eventually only conceded to the publication on condition that Bunny would be responsible for all dealings with the author. Then in his seventies, Moore was formal in bearing, a gentleman of the nineteenth century who fastidiously observed social niceties and adhered to established routines. Attuned to such archaisms, Bunny was able to respond
with due
politesse
, always addressing Moore as ‘Mr Moore' and careful to flatter this egotistical individual. Thus the two men established a cordial and formal friendship built upon the subject of books.

Perhaps Bunny turned to Moore specifically because he knew Edward didn't rate Moore's work. In contrast, Constance considered
The Mummer's Wife
and
Esther Waters
‘among the greatest realistic novels in English', although she thought his work overall inconsistent, and liked to quote her father-in-law's dictum that Moore was ‘a bit of a goose and a bit of a genius'.
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It was odd that Bunny had not been put off by Moore's procrastination over his poetry book. Moore revised repeatedly, neither satisfied with what he had written nor the poems he had selected. Even when the book was being printed, he submitted additional paragraphs then changed his mind.

Bunny should have delivered his complete manuscript to Prentice in January 1925. Although he had finished the book, he wasn't happy with the result. He had already re-written it once, but still felt it was ‘a question of grouting the rubble in the piers'. Unfortunately Knopf had anticipated announcing the novel in his Spring List, and Bunny worried that he would be annoyed about the delay. He also worried that one of his main characters might be of dubious acceptability to his American publisher: ‘I have broken it to him', Bunny informed Prentice, ‘that Tulip is a negress'.
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Hopeful that Moore might be able to help grout the rubble in his manuscript, in early March 1925 Bunny dined with him at Ebury Street. This set the pattern for subsequent meals, in which
the menu invariably consisted of whiting (a fish Bunny detested) followed by miniscule mutton cutlets and potato, and then fruit tart; all washed down with a single diminutive glass of sauternes. If Bunny disliked Edward's minute dissections of his text, it is hard to understand how he endured those of George Moore. It was as though in turning his back on his father's critical judgement, Bunny jumped from the frying pan into the fire. For Moore not only pedantically questioned individual words, but constantly changed his mind about the words he questioned. He disliked the novel's ‘dismal' ending, and even when the English edition was in print, tried to persuade Bunny to alter it for the French translation. All this continued until Bunny finished writing the book towards the end of May. Between times, he dutifully journeyed back and forth to Ebury Street, suffering the whiting and the procrastination, the criticisms only slightly sweetened by the sauternes.

Moore's involvement alarmed Edward. ‘I hope to goodness', he declared, ‘you will not catch his
manner
', adding dismissively, ‘This is all very well for his writing & for people who like it. But if you caught his manner it would be a reflection of something reflected.'
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Thenceforward it was Edward who read Bunny's manuscripts, for having experienced the mentoring of Moore, Bunny felt comparatively at ease under his father's affectionate scrutiny and more confident in his own powers of judgement. Even so, Bunny dedicated the book to Moore, perhaps as an act of deference rather than gratitude.

The Sailor's Return
was an unusually brave book for its time, as its subject was inter-racial marriage and the prejudice which ensued. The plot is simple: set in the nineteenth century, it
revolves around an English sailor, William Targett, who finds himself marooned in Africa, where he falls in love with a young African princess, Tulip. He marries her, they have a son, Sambo, and when the child is three years old, Targett brings his family to England. They settle in Dorset in a village called Maiden Newbarrow, closely based on East Chaldon, where Targett becomes publican of the local inn, The Sailor's Return.
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Tulip's dowry, in the form of gold and jewels, allows Targett to rent the inn and buy fine clothes for his wife.

From the outset, Tulip and Sambo meet with hostility, not only from the locals, but also from Targett's sister, Lucy. Various efforts are made to hound Tulip and Sambo from Maiden Newbarrow, but these are thwarted by Targett's loving protection. Eventually he is set upon by a local carrier and his henchman, and dies from his wounds. The ‘dismal' ending, to which Moore referred, finds Tulip fleeing to Southampton in an effort to obtain a passage to Africa for herself and Sambo; only Sambo can be taken aboard; Tulip returns to Maiden Newbarrow, where she becomes skivvy to the new publican. Ironically, she is now accepted in the village, for she has become invisible, and wearing rags rather than fine clothes, no longer presents a threat by muddying the waters of race and class. In the eyes of this fictional community, she finally occupies her rightful position as a serf or slave. As for Sambo, there is no resolution: the reader remains ignorant of his fate.

By means of Bunny's now customary simple, direct and lucid prose, he distanced himself from his text, like a scientist looking
through a microscope to reveal the complexity of the specimen beneath. At the same time, he consciously approached the craft of fiction ‘as a painter & not as a writer should work'.
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He always acknowledged that those years with Duncan and Vanessa in the First World War had a formative effect on his writing. ‘All writers', he said, ‘have a great deal to learn from painters, for painting is a purer art than story-telling.'
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By this he meant that he liked to see the story unfold visually before him. ‘It takes time for the images to solidify', he wrote later, adding, ‘I may not say whether a donkey on the beach is light grey or chocolate but I have to know it myself'.
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If Edward worried that Bunny was confining himself to a formula, he need not have done. Although the directness and immediacy of the prose remained, conferring a style which was becoming identifiably that of David Garnett, the subject matter was a complete departure from his two previous works of serious fiction. As Bunny told Lytton Strachey, it was ‘a big canvas, drawn
entirely
from the imagination'.
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Moreover, although some reviewers perplexingly failed to identify any moral core to the story (perhaps a sign of the times), the theme reflected Bunny's belief in the personal rights of freedom and free will. He didn't underline any particular message, expecting his readers to make up their own minds, but the message is not hard to discern, and chimes with Bloomsbury's emphasis on the priorities of personal relationships. In choosing Tulip, Targett exercised
his right to make his own choices in love irrespective of the mores of a wider society.
The Sailor's Return
underlines this dichotomy between private and public morality. Bunny believed that whereas individual morality could be employed in relation to oneself and to the outside world, ‘The community has no morals, it only has power which it uses with greater or less expediency & intelligence or stupidity'.
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