Vanessa and Her Sister

by Priya Parmar

  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.

  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.

  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.”

  Duncan, the beautiful, elusive cousin he loves. I can see how Duncan throws sparks with his clear, slim-boned loveliness but fail to understand how they could catch flame into love. Duncan is too remote for love.

  “The equilibrium is off,” Lytton said, pulling at the fraying blue damask of the armchair. “I fall, and he floats. It can only end with me hitting the ground with a very rough thump, and that is no fun if there is no one to pick you up, dust you off, and love you afterwards.”

  I did not answer, as what do I know of this?

  15 May 1906—46 Gordon Square

  The table is definitely now Virginia’s. She has had two of the legs sawn off and had it bolted to the wall of her sitting room. She is talking about having Mr Shaw, the carpente
r, come back for further improvements—something about inkpots and ledges. Thoby and Adrian came rushing in when they heard the sound of wood splitting, but they were too late.

  Violet refused to give up the price of the table, so Virginia sent her vegetables instead. Adrian, who enjoys fresh vegetables, is mollified. Thoby remains outraged—but then he doesn’t think much of vegetables and prefers cheese.

  Wednesday 30 May 1906—46 Gordon Square (early, sky still pink)

  There will be noise and friends and music and champagne and gifts and flowers and cake and dancing—later. Adrian will play, Thoby will sing, Virginia will kiss, Lytton will sparkle, Maynard will smoke, Saxon will watch, Clive will charm, Morgan will leave, and Desmond will laugh—but later. For now I am going to sit wrapped in my dressing gown, watch the sun light the trees in the square, and feel what it is to be twenty-seven years old.

  I have a wanderlust. This year I want to travel—Greece? The drums of marriage are sounding. We four must clasp hands and flee.

  LEMONADE SUMMER

  15 June 1906—46 Gordon Square

  “Enigmatic,” Clive said, reaching for his cigarette case. “That is the right word.”

  He offered me a cigarette. I shook my head.

  “Enigmatic?” I rolled the word round my mouth and then washed it down with iced mint tea. It was not a tasty word. “But I am not mysterious. I do not try to be. For that you must look to Virginia or Lytton.”

  “Mysterious is different. Mystery implies deceit. You are enigmatic because you only say what is absolutely true. Often contradictory, partial, incomplete, badly thought through, and thorny, but true.”

  His courtship has taken a turn for the bizarre.

  ENIGMATIC. I DO NOT know if I can be friends with that word. I am not sure what word I would prefer. Instead I would like the leeway to change my word randomly and without warning. Is that normal? Surely other women would be happy to live inside one full, sweet word? It is not that I do not like him, because I do. It is not that I do not like to be in his company, because I do. It is that once the choice is made, it cannot be unmade. The potential fulfilled. The who of my life will be defined. I know lots of women take lovers and reinvent the who, but I am not such a woman.

  Vanessa. Latin for “butterfly”—Father chose my name. Am I meant to change?

  19 June 1906—46 Gordon Square (warm but not hot)

  Oscar Wilde’s Salome opened to a small private audience last night. Saxon, Clive, Lytton, and Thoby all went to see it.

  “Think they’ll lift the ban after this?” Thoby asked, coming out of the garden door carrying three glasses of lemonade. We were in the garden enjoying the last of the summer afternoon.

  “The play is banned?” I asked, then regretted it, as everyone seemed to know that but me.

  “Yes, the beastly Lord Chamberlain banned it in the nineties. Dear Oscar never got to see it. He was already locked up by then and sending lovely limericks from Reading Gaol.” Lytton took a long drink of lemonade, getting bits of pulp wedged in his frizzy beard.

  I watched Lytton carefully. He was discussing a play written by a man who loved other men and went to prison for it. I sometimes forget how very close to a keening wind Lytton sails.

  Duncan has decided to spend the summer in London rather than return immediately to Paris. (Virginia suspects it is cheaper for him to stay with his parents in Hampstead than live la impoverished vie bohème in a Parisian garret.) Duncan will not see him alone, and so Lytton is running away to Cambridge. “Clever move,” Virginia said, when I told her about Lytton’s retreat. “Disappearing is the only way to make Duncan notice that he was ever there.”

  Saturday 30 June 1906—46 Gordon Square

  (summer evening butterflies everywhere)

  He asked me to go walking in the park, and I suggested the drawing room. He asked me if I would like champagne, and I asked for lemonade. He asked if I still loved roses, and I said I preferred peonies. He asked if I would like him to shut the window, and I asked him to open the door.

  He asked if I would marry him and I said no.

  He did not respond to my no but stood by the mantelpiece quietly considering me. I felt self-conscious: of my hair, upswept but untidy, with long waved tendrils escaping over my shoulders; of my dress, a sprigged green muslin I am fond of, but the lace on the right sleeve is smeared with grey oil paint; of my cheeks—a rubbed fresh pink, as always when I am with him. But now when he looks at me, I feel beautiful. It is not a familiar sensation. This time he had no speech and did not kneel. Instead, a conversation.

  “So today it is no,” he said, setting down his glass.

  “Tomorrow it will also be no.”

  “Yes, but it is still today,” he said, looking at me with his new peculiar, concentrated calm. “Now shall we walk?” he asked, crossing to the door.

  Our business over, we resumed the day. I was outfoxed. I do not understand the shift in footing: I feel translucent to his bold brushstroke. When did this happen? The signal must have come from me. I must have given ground somewhere in the invisible air between us. Twenty-seven. Should I be so cavalier with marriage proposals?

  And—I have spent the spring planting seeds of Greece and perhaps even Asia in the family imagination and it is time to pick the fruit. Thoby thinks travelling this autumn would be “splendid,” and when I asked about Greece, he said, “Why not?” Wherever Thoby goes, we all want to follow.

  Later (very late, everyone asleep)

  No? No. No? No. Really? Clive wants me to write a letter to explain my no. He is right. It is no longer a single straight-syllabled word solidly built and painted in the primary colours of conviction. Instead it is a tumbledown cottage of a word, furnished in curiosity and thatched in doubt.

  1 July 1906—46 Gordon Square

  I have written a letter to Mr Bell. I tried for decorum but am better suited to honesty. Every time I try for Elinor Dashwood, I wind up as Marianne. I decided to tell him only things that are true:

  That I like him better than any man not in my own family.

  That he ought to go away for a year to make me miss him as I am too selfish and lazy to understand my own feelings if he stays here.

  That I can not marry him now.

  Quick—send it, Nessa, before common sense returns.

  TELLING THE WHOLE BALD, messy, unflattering truth suits me, whether it leaves me enigmatic or not. Easy to remember and unnecessary to defend—one coat of thick, pure paint.

  69 LANCASTER GATE

  LONDON W.

  2 July 1906

  Dear Woolf,

  It is July, and after the hard, brilliant whites and rioting fuchsias of the south of France, England’s gentle rained-on summer seems unimpressive. But then our rain must be a teardrop trifle next to the fearsome monsoons of the east. Can’t fathom a monsoon. It seems biblical in its indecent lack of moderation. It isn’t the volume of the rain but the punctuality. From this month to that month, I shall be wet. Oh my dear, no.

  What is my news, you asked in your last letter? My news is grim. Duncan has returned to London and taken refuge with his family in Hampstead (yes, near to my family in Hampstead—torture), and so I am taking refuge with Maynard. It is not really a practical solution as it only further muddles a muddle. Desmond is moving to the country with his épouse. It is the end, my petal, the end.

  In happier news: the Gothic family are on the march. The newest plan is Greece in the autumn and then perhaps on to Constantinople. Vanessa has such a determination to live—I admire it. Unfortunately my determination is only to love—and that never ends well, does it?

  Yours,

  Lytton

  5 July 1906—46 Gordon Square (in the garden, hot—finally!)

  Off to Eton, and what Virginia refers to as “the Cornish wedding” on Tuesday. I am pleased for Desmond and terrified of his bride. She is permanent. She is not someone one must suffer as a dinner companion and then escape. She has our Desmond forever.

&nbs
p; Saturday 7 July 1906—46 Gordon Square (in the garden square)

  “He really loves you, you know.” Lytton was sitting on the worn park bench beside me.

  “Yes, so he says,” I said. I did not know how much Lytton knew.

  “No, Nessa. He really loves you. And this is not how Clive usually loves.”

  I was startled. It had not occurred to me that Clive had loved elsewhere. I felt a forward jolt of jealousy. How complacent of me to assume I stood alone.

  “Not how he usually loves?” I asked, kicking the sandy gravel of the path and scuffing my shoe.

  “No. Clive usually loves in character, not as himself.”

  “Character? I keep repeating you—forgive me.”

  “Yes, he plays the urbane, genial host of a vaguely intellectual dinner party. Haven’t you noticed?”

  No, I hadn’t noticed. The Clive I know is limned by sincerity. It is bone deep.

  Monday 9 July 1906—46 Gordon Square (hot!)

  Shopping again all morning. I asked Virginia to come with me, as I am buying travelling clothes for her as well, but she refused.

  “I want you to dress me, Nessa. I will like the clothes so much more if you choose them.” Exasperating.