Vanessa and Her Sister (13 page)

20 January 1906—46 Gordon Square

Thoby’s friends now collect here most evenings rather than just on Thursdays. One can walk into our drawing room and find any assortment of guests milling about after supper.

This evening Virginia had just returned from teaching her class and was still wearing her slouchy Delft blue hat when she launched headlong into the discussion of the new book about Byron’s incestuous affair. “Incredible that they did it! Marvellous. Great gumption,” Virginia said.

“And he knows for certain?” I turned to Desmond, who was sitting on the green chintz sofa. “Irene Noel would know. What was Byron, her great-uncle?”

“We don’t need to ask Irene. She doesn’t like to talk about family history,” Thoby said.

“Lord Lovelace is Byron’s grandson. He wouldn’t have written it if it
weren’t true.” Desmond shrugged. “Anyway, Lovelace’s book is not about Byron’s whole life, just the separation from Lady B. and his affair with Augusta.”

“Augusta was his whole sister or half-sister? Half, wasn’t it? That makes it better, surely?” said Morgan from the doorway. He was late, as usual.

“Does half make it better? Does it need improving?” asked Virginia, relighting her cigarette. “
Manfred
makes it plain that they knew they were up to no good but went ahead. But it was love. If they’d had any courage, they would have gone out and faced everyone down.”

“How awful, to feel that way about a sister,” I said to no one in particular.

“Is it?” Virginia countered. “He could have loathed his sister—that would be worse.”

No, I thought. That would not be worse.

Thursday 25 January 1906—46 Gordon Square (icy)

Virginia’s 24th birthday today. She insisted on collecting her customary one hundred birthday kisses.
Trying
. Thobs got fed up after three and refused to donate any more to the cause. Affection is so much easier to give when it is not owed.

Saturday 3 February 1906—46 Gordon Square

Desmond is engaged! He is going to marry Miss Molly (or Mary?) Warre-Cornish, the daughter of the Vice Provost of Eton. Virginia says she is a crisp sort of a person. Will this change everything? Is this when it begins to happen? Will we singular Stephens become an anomaly? Will we become extinct? In the last years I have felt of a set, a breed—young, adventurous, artistic—unmarried. Outside our set, I am a spinster.

Desmond gave a talk this week at the Friday Club about his friend Mr Roger Fry’s stance against Impressionism. Desmond agrees with
him that it is not necessarily bad so much as it is
over
. If Mr Fry were not in America, I would ask Desmond to invite him.

Later

“Exciting,” Clive said, tapping his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray.

“Exciting, yes, but so sudden,” I said, discomfited by the subject.

“Takes daring for Desmond to lurch into it so suddenly.”

“Does it?” I asked, trying not to read his comment as criticism.

“Yes. To trust like that? Extraordinary courage,” Clive said quietly.

Yes. That is true. It takes courage.

Still later (writing in bed)

If there is courage, there must be risk. If there is risk, there must be doubt. If there is doubt, it is better to wait. But to wait at this age requires courage.

Friday 20 April 1906—21 Granby Road, Harrowgate

I included all of Snow’s address (where I have been since yesterday) as I think it is a marvellous address. It sounds exactly like a bumpy country road—which is what it is. It is also cold, dark, damp, and cosy. We talk
of paint, brushes, texture, light, and colour the way engineers talk of iron, belts, and bolts. The unrestrained fluency of a common language.

25 April 1906—46 Gordon Square

Back in London to a heap of post—nearly all bills that just sat on the hall table gathering dust while I was gone. One would think—no, actually, with Thoby, Adrian, and Virginia, one would not think.

Saturday 5 May 1906—46 Gordon Square (end of a long day)

Virginia asked Violet for a table. Such an innocuous sentence, but what a rumpus it has caused. It is apparently a particular favourite of Violet’s and a valuable antique to boot. Virginia just thundered in to tea at Violet’s one afternoon and told her that she would quite like to have it. Mother would be so distressed. Thoby and Adrian are appalled—“One simply does not go about asking for other people’s things, Ginia!”—and I am now resigned. I was unsettled at first, wary as I am for any signs of imbalance or incongruity in Virginia, but seeing that it was just one of her peculiar moments of directness at work, I relaxed. Violet was an utter dear and had the table delivered the next day. Virginia is planning to have two of the legs sawn off, which makes the gift quite irreversible.

And
—Virginia, after listening to a stinging lecture from Thobs, has written twice today, pestering poor Violet for the price of the table.

And and
—Desmond is bringing Miss Warre-Cornish this Thursday. He says she is not nervous—how extraordinary. She ought to be.

W
INSOR AND
N
EWTON
L
TD
.: Art Suppliers 37–40 Rathbone Place, London W.

BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY QUEEN ALEXANDRA

9 May 1906

T
O
B
E
D
ELIVERED TO:
Miss Vanessa Stephen, 46 Gordon Sq.

Class III Fugitive Colours (Oil): Retail 4d each

“Jaune Brilliant” (1 tube)

“Monochrome Tint, Cool No. 1” (1 tube)

“Sap Green” (1 tube)

“Mauve No. 2” (1 tube)

Total:
2s/2d

Thursday 10 May 1906—46 Gordon Square (late)

It was an awkward evening.

“No, I do not agree,” Miss Warre-Cornish said clearly. Her fearless diction was startling.

“Do
not
agree?” Thoby repeated.

“But surely, Miss Warre-Cornish, a writer, for example, must
transform
his medium? Just as anyone striving for excellence must transform his field? Miss Warre-Cornish, how can there be excellence without
progress
?” Maynard said, tugging on his moustache. Miss Mary, or Molly, or whatever, Warre-Cornish had not yet invited anyone to discard her great double-barrelled bear of a surname, and it was distracting Maynard from his argument.

“Mr Keynes, a writer can succeed by conforming to the constraints of a medium without challenging the parameters. Success can be measured by how well a writer meets certain requirements rather than dismantles them.”

Lytton snickered. Saxon’s head swung back and forth, following the
exchange as if watching a tennis match he had no interest in joining. Desmond did not fly to his fiancée’s rescue. But then she hardly seemed to require rescuing and did not look to him for reassurance anyway. Desmond did not seem at all concerned that his intended had upended a core tenet of our revolutionary faith.

“Miss Warre-Cornish,” Maynard said, regrouping, “I just do not understand such
passivity
.”

She shrugged, ignoring the taunt.

“But surely an
artist
, any artist, must challenge all boundaries? They
must
, don’t you agree?” Adrian spluttered.

“Why?” Miss Warre-Cornish said. “Why would others care what boundaries are broken in
this
house?”

Lytton stifled a giggle. Saxon blinked in surprise. Virginia kept her face carefully blank. Maynard sat back, stumped. I honestly do not think it had ever occurred to him—to any of us—that what we did was unimportant.

POST CARD

This Space to Be Used for Correspondence

11 May 1906

Dearest Woolf
,
Do you know? Of course you do. MacCarthy must have cabled and insisted you return for his grisly nuptials. She is prickly. Not porcupine prickly but snapdragon prickly. That makes no sense. Dommage. She envies Vanessa. She hankers after her calm and her centrality. Nessa bore her brutal sidelong assault with the ease of a wave. I do not know how I shall ever like her, and I miss dear Desmond already. As I miss you.

Yours,
Lytton

 
PS:
I am going to Paris with Maynard, but my heart goes rambling for Duncan. What a good sentence. You do keep my scribbles, don’t you?

À:
Mr Leonard Woolf
Asst. Gov’t Agent
Jaffna, CEYLON

SERIES 3: BLUEBELLS IN HYDE PARK

12 May 1906—46 Gordon Square

I spent the afternoon hat shopping with George’s wife, Margaret. As sisters-in-law go, I think we did quite well. Two hats later (one with feathers and one without) we went to Fortnum’s for tea, gossip, and cake.

“Does she mean to start arguments?” Turning to the waiter, Margaret ordered petits fours. “Six, I should think, Nessa? Can you manage three?” She went on to order them before I answered.

“I am not sure. She clearly views us as a self-satisfied clique and means to tip the boat rather than beg entry. A courageous move, but it will certainly set Virginia against her.” The cakes arrived on a small gold-etched plate. “Thoby and Adrian won’t notice, and Lytton is already having huge fun with the disruption.” I chose the pink cake with the white flower.

“You are not an easy group, I will say that,” Margaret said. “And you do give off a sense of being very pleased with yourselves. No, not easy in the least.”

I knew just what she meant. Seeing us as an outsider would—we must seem like closed, arrogant ranks.

Later (home and wet—it started raining)

Thinking about us. What we look like. Is there really a
we
? There is a Stephen we, but a larger we? Yes, I think there is. And we are a surprising company. For all our confidence, only Morgan has
done
anything of any note in the outside world. The rest of us are still living on the borrowed fuel of potential and so far have not left deep footprints. But together we carry a brackish air of importance. As if we are doing something worthy in the world. Maybe how we live our lives is the grand experiment? Mixing company, throwing out customs, using first names, waiting to marry, ignoring the rules, and choosing what to care about. Is that why we matter? Or perhaps Miss Warre-Cornish is right and we do not matter in the least.

Even later

Lytton. So finely sketched in groups, he can crumple and blur in singular company. I think I prefer the more fractured, muddled Lytton to the clear, quick, brilliant Lytton. He, Thoby, and Virginia went walking in the park, and I stayed home to paint in well-lit quiet. I have been working on a layered seascape and have only just discovered that there must be figures in order for the composition to have meaning. Annoying. I am considering figures but not faces, as faces always prove troublesome. I think they alienate rather than connect. But how to manage it? Perhaps to define expression and character through the set of the shoulders or the droop of the neck? Virginia’s mood rests in the tilt of her head and the tempo of her hands. The key lies somewhere in how we recognise a figure from a distance. In any case, Lytton returned early from their walk.

“I saw him,” he said flatly. “Duncan. We dined at Mon Plaisir in Monmouth Street and then went home separately—disaster. He swears it is over with us.”