by Peter Dally
Virginia’s depression was not incapacitating and there were days when she came alive and no longer felt ‘like a cow with her nose in the grass’. She read and wrote, and one day, ‘walking the down on the edge of the sea’, suddenly saw the outline of the novel she wanted to write.27 It was like a brilliant flash of light, illuminating the gloom and, with hindsight, perhaps a sign of lurking trouble, for Leslie’s death had coincided with springtime cyclothymic depression.
Virginia’s resentment was building up against Vanessa. Her sister’s dismissal of Leslie, her wish to forget their past, her gaiety and plans for the future upset her. She minded leaving Hyde Park Gate with all its associations and memories. She wanted everything preserved, and she kept thinking she would find Leslie at home on her return. Her sense of loss was becoming overwhelming: ‘I wonder how we go on as we do, as merry as grigs all day long,’ she complained.28
Virginia’s resentment was increased by Vanessa’s scolding for picking at food or going to bed too late, but at the same time she desperately wanted her sister’s affection; not even Violet Dickinson could replace her for long as mother-substitute.
From South Wales the Stephens travelled to Italy, reaching Venice on Easter Sunday. Virginia, who had not been further than Boulogne before, was excited and her spirits momentarily rose. Venice seemed an amusing and beautiful place, and she liked the people. But the respite was short-lived. Depression returned and she began to feel trapped and anxious, ‘like a Bird in a Cage’.29 They moved to Florence, where they were joined by Violet Dickinson. Virginia had been looking forward to the reunion, but her spirits failed to lift. She behaved badly, was dull and ‘tempersome’, and the atmosphere grew increasingly uneasy.
Virginia angrily watched Vanessa enjoying herself, exploring churches and palaces and enthusing over frescoes and pictures. Her resentment bubbled over in outbursts of temper. More alarmingly, towards the end of their stay in Florence, signs of paranoia began to appear:
Germans are brutes – there is a strange race that haunts hotels – gnome-like women who are creatures that come out in the dark. An hotel is a sort of black cave.30
Black humour perhaps, but it was inappropriate. Virginia was trapped in her own black cave. Travelling back to England they spent a few days in Paris, and joined a ‘real Bohemian café party’, which included Clive Bell and the painter Gerald Kelly, where they talked of ‘Art, sculpture and music until 11.30’.31 Vanessa was in her element. Virginia was over-stimulated and pushed one step nearer the abyss.
Virginia became manic two days after she returned home; wildly excited, three nurses were needed to control her. Anger against Vanessa poured out in torrents of abuse and violence, and her sister was forced to withdraw. Violet Dickinson came to the rescue and Virginia was taken from Hyde Park Gate to Violet’s country home, Welwyn, at Burnham Wood.
Virginia was difficult to control for about three months. She was deluded, and heard voices tempting her to ‘all kinds of wild things’.32 Birds sang to her in Greek. She believed Edward VII – who had been crowned in 1902, shortly before her father’s death – lurked beneath the bedroom window among the azaleas, shouting smutty words. Once she jumped from the first-floor bedroom window, landing harmlessly in the bushes, perhaps in response to ‘voices’ or while experiencing a panic attack. It was probably not a deliberate attempt on her life, although she had moments of intense despair.
Mania was succeeded by depression but by September Virginia was sufficiently in control of herself to join the family on holiday. As she recalled the angry scenes with Vanessa she became anxious, and clung to her sister, wanting to be told she was still loved. She wrote to Violet Dickinson, ‘I really think she is happy with me now.’ She pleaded to be allowed to return home for good and promised Vanessa there would be ‘no more disgusting scenes over food’.33 Vanessa was in the midst of moving to 46 Gordon Square and had just begun at the Slade School of Art, and she was not convinced of Virginia’s full recovery. Not until 6 January 1905, when Dr Savage pronounced her ‘cured’, was Virginia finally accepted back into the family.
Chapter Six
Vanessa’s Marriage – Virginia’s Instability
The Stephen children were at last on their own. Gerald had set himself up in a flat and, in the autumn of 1904, George married Lady Margaret Herbert.
Virginia’s breakdown had made Vanessa very aware of her sister’s vulnerability and the burden of responsibility that was now hers. She insisted Virginia follow Dr Savage’s advice to the letter: plenty of food and sleep, rest and quiet, hot chocolate and, if needed, mulled wine at bedtime. Combining the roles of loving sister and worried mother was not easy with someone like Virginia who, while demanding to be Vanessa’s child, simultaneously sought to dominate the relationship.
Vanessa did not mind playing mother to Virginia for, exasperating as it could be, her maternal instincts were strong. Virginia became ‘my own baby’, her ‘own beloved monkey’, rewarded with petting and grooming if ‘he’ behaved well. Virginia revelled in the baby talk and sensual play but protested when Vanessa insisted she lead a healthy lifestyle. She objected to the life of a semi-invalid but the memory of a mad Virginia screaming abuse at Vanessa was still frighteningly vivid to both.
Virginia began to have work published. Two articles had come out in November, and she now reviewed regularly and wrote articles for several publications, including the Times Literary Supplement. Already Virginia worked in a highly disciplined fashion, always reserving the mornings for work.
Early in 1905 she was persuaded to lecture on History and English Literature to working-class adults at Morley College; once a week, until the end of 1907, she taught a small group, mostly of women, with a mix of enthusiasm and amusement. The experience added a sense of achievement and increased her confidence, although it hardly broadened her social horizon: ‘One has to be so cheerful with the lower classes’, she wrote, ‘or they think one diseased’.1
Vanessa and Virginia led a full social life, with concerts and plays and the occasional party and dance, but for Virginia the most interesting event of the week was the Thursday evening ‘At Home’, started by Thoby to keep in touch with his old Cambridge friends. At these gatherings Virginia met young men of a type and class she had not encountered before, intellectuals for the most part who discussed art and literature, religion and love, far into the night. They were altogether different from the men of the conventional social world Virginia had met in the ballrooms of Belgravia.
She and Vanessa had been briefly introduced to some of Thoby’s friends during visits, carefully chaperoned, to his rooms at Cambridge. Now, in the freer air of Gordon Square, Virginia studied them and began to join in their discussions, her confidence increasing when she found she was listened to with respect. There was Clive Bell, Thoby’s closest friend. He was ‘an astonishing fellow … a sort of mixture between Shelley and a sporting country squire’. And Lytton Strachey, ‘the essence of culture … Exotic, extreme in every way … so long, so thin that his thigh bone was no thicker than Thoby’s arm … a prodigy of wit’. While Saxon Sydney Turner was ‘an absolute prodigy of learning … very silent and thin and odd … the most brilliant talker because he always spoke the truth’.2 Only Leonard Woolf among Thoby’s close friends was absent:
a Jew who trembled perpetually all over … so violent, so savage; he so despised the human race. One night he dreamt he was throttling a man and he dreamt with such violence that when he woke up, he had pulled his thumb out of joint.3
Woolf was absent because he was in Ceylon. The Stephen sisters had met him in Cambridge in 1902, and he had dined with them at Gordon Square, at Thoby’s invitation, shortly before sailing for Colombo in October 1904, but he was a dim memory to them. Virginia, still scarcely back to normal in 1904, had barely noticed him.
Thoby influenced both his sisters. He was a handsome, genial giant of well over six feet, and gave out an attractive sense of gentle strength and warmth. Friendly in manner, he was als
o unusually reserved and invariably hid his deeper feelings. Virginia remarked that sex seemed a taboo subject to him: she had no idea of his sexual preferences, and not once after they left the nursery did he kiss her or Vanessa. In their early childhood Thoby and Vanessa were very close and did everything together, but as Virginia developed she had competed vigorously for his attention and pushed Vanessa into the background.
Both sisters worshipped Thoby, as did many of his friends. Lytton Strachey’s admiration for him overflowed:
He has a wonderful and massive frame and a face hewn out of the living rock. His character is as splendid as his appearance and as wonderfully complete. In fact, he’s monolithic. But if it were not for his extraordinary sense of humour, he would hardly be of this world.4
Virginia and Vanessa felt protected by his presence. He provided a balance at Gordon Square. His high standards and disapproval of anything too unconventional ensured social boundaries. When he died in 1906 those boundaries became fluid, and nowhere more than in the field of sex. While Thoby lived, sex was never discussed; afterwards it was rarely absent. Many years after his death Thoby emerged from Virginia’s mind as the heroic Percival, worshipped by the characters in The Waves – all of whom were aspects of Virginia.
Virginia was content that their lives continued unchanged indefinitely. She had material and emotional security and enough freedom to expand herself. Her peace of mind was broken one afternoon in 1905 when Vanessa, ‘stretching her arms above her head with a gesture that was at once reluctant and yielding, said, “… Of course, I can see that we shall all marry. It’s bound to happen.”’ Virginia’s anxiety was immediately aroused and a black cloud gathered on the horizon. She sensed a fresh loss, ‘a horrible necessity impending over us; a fate would descend and snatch us apart, just as we had achieved freedom and happiness’.5
Virginia’s own marriage appeared remote, almost absurd. None of Thoby’s friends attracted her physically. Secretly, she considered marriage to be ‘a very low-down affair’, linked to high society, and ‘if one practised it’ it would be ‘with young men who had been in the Eton Eleven and dressed for dinner’.6
Clive Bell first proposed to Vanessa in July 1905, and was politely turned down. She wanted no immediate change. Her work was going well and that April her portrait of Lord Robert Cecil’s wife had been exhibited at the New Gallery, which led to further commissions. In the summer she founded the Friday Club, where artists could meet to discuss and exhibit their work. Marriage would interrupt and impede her ambitions. Besides, she still needed to watch over Virginia.
Clive proposed again a year later. This time Vanessa’s refusal was firmer but scarcely final, for even while saying ‘no’ she told him she liked him better than any other man. Her confusing behaviour suggests her own confusion in the summer of 1906. At heart she was beginning to want marriage; she was 27 and emotionally ready, and she found Clive attractive and their interests were alike. She now believed marriage to him could help rather than hinder her painting, but she still hesitated because she feared the effect on Virginia and her sister’s ability to fend for herself. Virginia was beginning to lead a more independent life, but there were still occasions when she became ‘absolutely out of touch with reality’, and Vanessa had to take ‘her baby’ in hand.7
She was beginning to feel the strain. She was much better balanced than Virginia, but she too was genetically predisposed to the Stephen family depression. That September, when all four Stephens, accompanied by Violet Dickinson, set off on holiday to Greece, Vanessa was already clinically depressed. Thoby and Adrian went on ahead, while Vanessa, Virginia and Violet Dickinson travelled by train to Brindisi and thence to Patras by boat. The two groups met up at Olympia.
Vanessa became increasingly unwell and unable to cope with the journey, and spent much of the time resting. When she reached Athens she collapsed, and it took a fortnight’s rest and four glasses of champagne a day before she was well enough to be carried on to a boat bound for Constantinople and the Orient Express. When she arrived home she found Thoby, who had returned a week earlier, seriously ill in bed with typhoid fever – at first mistaken for malaria. She was put to bed at once and not allowed to see him. She was still there when Thoby died from the disease on the 20 November.
Thoby’s death shocked Vanessa back into life. In the course of depression underlying conflicts often resolve themselves. The mind clears and a firm decision presents itself, ready-made as it were. So it was with Vanessa. Two days after her brother’s death she agreed to marry Clive Bell. Two weeks later she was well enough to stay with a friend in the country, happier than she had been for a long time. She and Clive were married in St Pancras Register Office on 7 February 1907.
Virginia dealt with the loss of Thoby and Vanessa’s marriage surprisingly well. She was deeply upset by Thoby’s death, but her distress was offset by the shock of the announcement of Vanessa’s engagement. She alternated between anger and despair. She desperately wanted to be mothered but there was no one to hand. Violet Dickinson had also developed typhoid and was seriously ill at home in bed.
Virginia now began an elaborate correspondence with her, pretending that Thoby was alive and making good progress, sending daily accounts of his doings. ‘Thoby is going on splendidly. He is very cross with his nurses because they won’t give him mutton chops and beer’ (25 November). ‘He asks daily after you … and how many spots you had and what your tem is’ (29 November). The ‘game’ continued for almost a month, until Violet read of Thoby’s death in the National Review.
We had to do it [Virginia explained]. I never knew till this happened how I should turn to you and want you with me when no one else could help. This is quite true, my beloved Violet, and I must write it down for once. I think of you as one of the people … who make it worthwhile to live and be happy.8
Virginia’s fabrication was both the desire to keep Thoby alive, holding back his death with her pen, and an obtuse way of wishing for Violet’s full recovery; for at that time of loss Violet seemed her only comforter. In a revealing letter, written halfway through the hoax, Virginia wrote:
My plan is to treat you as a detached spirit; maybe your body has typhoid; that is immaterial (you will be glad to hear). I address the immortal part and shooting words of fire into the upper aer [sic] which spirits inhabit. They pierce you like lightning, quicken your soul; whereas, if I said How have you slept. and What food are you taking, you would sink into your nerves and arteries and your gross pads of flesh, and perhaps your flame might snuff and die there. Who knows?9
Over the next months Virginia was tense and irritable. She had difficulty in sleeping, ‘and drugs are worst of all’, she told Violet.10 She raged against those family well-wishers who told her it was time for her to follow her sister’s example and marry: ‘Is it crude human nature bursting out? I call it disgusting.’
At Vanessa’s register office wedding she was ‘numb and dumb’, and ten days later she still could not realise what had happened. Much of her anger was displaced on to Clive.
When I think of Father and Thoby and then see that funny little creature twitching his pink skin and jerking out his little spasms of laughter I wonder what odd freak there is in Nessa’s eyesight.12
She felt lost when Vanessa decided Virginia and Adrian must leave 46 Gordon Square to the Bells and find a place of their own.
Virginia’s ill humour was enhanced by the ‘spring melancholia’ but as this receded and her mood improved her attitude began to change. By April she had found a house for herself and Adrian in Fitzroy Square and begun to acknowledge Vanessa’s happiness in marriage. Two months later she decided Vanessa ‘might marry twenty Clives and still be the most delightful creature in the world. And I like him better too.’13
Vanessa went out of her way, just as Stella had done, to make Virginia feel welcome and as much loved. They met almost daily, shared their experiences and laughed and delighted in each other’s company. Vanessa needed the stimulation and
humour of her sister as much as Virginia her affection. Much as she loved Clive, Vanessa missed Virginia. ‘Don’t starve or do anything foolish’, she warned, adding wistfully, ‘you aren’t at all to be trusted and I see quite plainly that you’ll have to take up your abode with me again before very long.’14
Vanessa’s sexual awakening had a striking effect on her looks and behaviour. She became noticeably bawdy, often shocking more conventional acquaintances, as though she needed to assert her new-found sexuality. Perhaps subconsciously she also wanted to trumpet her superiority to Virginia and emphasise she had come into her own. Virginia was amused and apparently unembarrassed, but neither she nor Vanessa discussed their sexual lives. Virginia did not ask Vanessa about her honeymoon and whether sex was pleasant or painful. Details of sexual intercourse did not really interest her; indeed her physical libido was never very strong and she looked at sex from a largely intellectual standpoint. She could sometimes be outrageously vulgar but lacked the bawdy humour of Vanessa.
* * *
Thoby’s death brought the sisters closer to his friends. Formality was discarded and everyone became on Christian name terms. Lytton Strachey circulated a collection of indecent poems among the group. Gossip became the major topic of conversation, along with sex. No one was invited to Gordon Square or Fitzroy Square unless they were Bloomsbury material: intellectual, literary, radical, amusing, and preferably scatological.
Strachey became an intimate of both sisters. Vanessa thought the world of him: ‘He came after Thoby’s death, and was such an inexpressible help … we loved him very much.’ However, it was with Virginia that he was particularly close. Both were witty and clever, and equally malicious when together, intellectual, widely read and ambitious. They found each other uncommonly sympathetic; as she later told Vita Sackville-West, ‘We fitted like gloves.’15
Virginia admired Lytton but feared his tongue and went out of her way to impress. She liked the speed and agility of his mind: ‘It is an exquisite symphony his nature when all the violins get playing … so deep, so fantastic.’16 Like her he was thin-skinned and often out of step with the rest of the world, and he confided his unhappiness to her, talked freely of his homosexual affairs, and discussed his work. She based the character of St John Hirst in The Voyage Out on him. ‘I envy everyone,’ Hirst declares. ‘I can’t endure people who do things better than I do.’17 Nor could Virginia and their rivalry added to the attraction between them. The attraction was almost entirely intellectual and held little or no sexuality but by 1909 Vanessa, wanting to see Virginia married and ‘out of her hair’, was telling her sister that Lytton would make a good husband. Lytton’s long affair with Duncan Grant had just ended and in the course of sharing his grief with Vanessa, he may have hinted at the possibility of marriage to Virginia and received some encouragement. Whatever the reasons, Lytton proposed to Virginia who, to his horror, immediately accepted. There was a flurry of excuses, Virginia gracefully agreed to his withdrawing the proposal, and their relationship continued, undisturbed.
