The Bloomsbury Group as Villains
Vanessa and Virginia in the life of John Maynard Keynes
You don’t have to have bad guys in a novel, but it helps. Readers enjoy it, and it certainly propels the plot, to have somebody trying to foil the hero at every turn. It’s also fun to write: it’s often said the devil has the best lines.
If you are writing something based on real people, though, you may well feel twinges of guilt, as your villainous character sneers at your protagonist and throws metaphorical rocks at their happiness. What is the moral responsibility of the novelist? In my novel, Mr Keynes’ Revolution, about the historical figures John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova, the “villains” are mostly also real people: Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and other members of the famous Bloomsbury Group; as well as some of the officials and bankers who bedevilled Keynes’ professional life.
I don’t feel too badly about the bankers and officials. These were powerful people, who were pushing the policies responsible for so much suffering during the high-unemployment 1920s and 30s. Sir Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, enjoyed a comfortable life in his vast West End mansion, surrounded by his art collection, that is when he wasn’t holidaying in the South of France with the Governor of the Federal Reserve. Like Otto Niemeyer, the Treasury mandarin, he seems to have had no qualms about imposing a grinding austerity on the country.
When it comes to the Bloomsbury Group, especially Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, it’s different. Both were groundbreaking figures, who carved out new paths, in the face of the inevitable constraints that faced women trying to have artistic and literary careers in the the first half of the twentieth century. Both, at times, suffered terrible losses and mental anguish. Has my novel sold them short?
Vanessa Bell was for many years the closest woman friend of John Maynard Keynes (known as Maynard). Both were members of the literary and artistic Bloomsbury Group, and met originally in London in the years before the First World War. Vanessa (and her siblings) were breaking away from the conformity of Edwardian Kensington, opting out of the upper-middle class marriage market, and the stifling rounds of social calls, elaborate meals and dressing up, in favour of the illicit joys of cocoa, whisky and mixed company in louche Bloomsbury. Maynard was a Cambridge boy from a loving but rather stifling family, dipping his toe in the dangerous worlds of Bohemianism and homosexual love. They ended up sharing homes, both in London and the country, and when Vanessa, now Mrs Bell, fell in love with Duncan Grant — who had been Maynard’s lover, then became his closest friend — it drew her closer to Maynard.
Their shared farmhouse, Charleston, filled with Duncan and Vanessa’s art, became an idyllic refuge nestled in the Sussex Downs. Here Maynard wrote his provocative and bestselling Economic Consequences of the Peace, in the aftermath of the First World War. While Maynard provided gossip and money, Vanessa and Duncan gave him emotional support. All went horribly wrong, however, when Maynard’s new love, the dancer Lydia Lopokova, joined the mix.
Vanessa was a beast to Lydia. At the start of the relationship, she was writing to Maynard: “don’t marry her”. Lydia would give up dancing and be an expensive wife, she claimed. When Maynard moved Lydia into their shared Bloomsbury home, things only got worse. Lydia thought she had made a friend, but Vanessa did a lot of whinging behind her back, described her as a “parrokeet” then banned her from Charleston. Her dislike continued, relentlessly, for the rest of her life.
I can see Vanessa’s point. It’s not easy to have new person moving in, on negligible acquaintance, to share lodging and meals, especially when that person is an eccentric and extrovert ballerina. When the men in your life (current partner, Duncan, official husband Clive, and sons Julian and Quentin) sometimes show signs of finding her charming, it sticks in the craw. When your own partner is more interested in men than you, and you have found a consoling friendship with his supposedly homosexual friend, not only is it a shock when said friend falls heavily for a woman, it also highlights the painful lack in one’s own relationship. All these things are true.
But it is also true that Lydia was a generous-hearted and fascinating woman, and her offer of friendship was cruelly rejected by Vanessa and most of Bloomsbury. They mocked and belittled her. They also showed a complete disregard for Maynard’s happiness, when he had done so much (and continued to do much) to support them. It was clear that Maynard was in love, but they wanted the relationship to end. They tried to get him out of Charleston (successfully) and Bloomsbury (unsuccessfully). When Maynard and Lydia’s relationship moved towards marriage, Duncan was more concerned at being displaced in Maynard’s will, than in Maynard’s happiness.
Even judged by their own code, Bloomsbury behaved badly. They weren’t supposed to be territorial about relationships: but Vanessa was exactly that. She resented the loss of Maynard as an emotional and financial crutch. They weren’t supposed to be bound by Victorian conventions . And yet the snobbery they showed towards Lydia often suggested otherwise, as they judged Lydia’s behaviour by shallow, superficial criteria. Lydia herself was far more genuinely spontaneous and heedless of social convention than liberated Bloomsbury.
Virginia Woolf, Vanessa’s sister, had a less intense friendship with Maynard. They had briefly shared a house in Bloomsbury — where Maynard’s brother, Geoffrey, saved Virginia’s life after she took an overdose — and the Woolfs published many of Maynard’s books. In the years before Virginia’s literary success, Maynard arranged a job for her husband, Leonard, as Arts Editor of his magazine, The Nation. Leonard was able to use this position not just for himself but to commission, and so keep afloat, many Bloomsbury friends.
Virginia’s attitude though, was often grudging. She described Maynard in her diaries as ‘like a gorged seal … sensual, brutal, unimaginative’. She belittled Lydia, whose life story and artistic success were worthy of admiration, imagining her as a rich, dull society matron. Perhaps one of her nastiest moments was when staying with the pair in the country. She related Lydia’s mortification with a spiteful glee, in a letter to a friend, when Lydia shocked the servants by throwing used sanitary towels into a fireplace. “Nobody can take her seriously”.
In her kinder moments, Virginia could be a great deal more generous about both. She appreciated Maynard’s intellect (“as far ahead of me as Shakespeare’s”) and Lydia’s vivacity, “like a lark soaring”. Her squeamishness about aspects of their physical being probably reflected her own deep-seated neuroses. Nevertheless, the well-documented nastiness, often in alliance with other Bloomsbury figures means that it’s impossible for her to appear in a story centring Lydia and Maynard as anything other than a villain.
Yet is it fair? Everyone in my novel is long gone (“In the long run, we’re all dead,” as Maynard famously and pertinently remarked) but for me these characters sometimes feel very much alive. And they can’t even answer back.
“A villain can also be a hero, and both portrayals may be valid”
There were other, better sides to Vanessa and Virginia, that cannot be done full justice in my novel: their deep dedication to art and literature, their many successful friendships, Vanessa’s lasting creation at Charleston of a glorious haven that so many loved to visit, and her devotion to her children. Luckily, all this is covered in a multitude of other places: in biographies, diaries, letters, works of fiction and nonfiction, and in television and film (The Hours being my favourite). The strange fact is that a villain can also be a hero, and both portrayals may be valid.
The truth is that Virginia and Vanessa have always had far more space for their stories than Maynard or Lydia. In the perennial fascination with Bloomsbury, they are the stars. Maynard’s work has been more significant than that of virtually any of his friends, but in fictional accounts of Bloomsbury he is pushed to the sidelines (as in the BBC series, Life In Squares). If you visit Charleston, the focus is on Vanessa and Duncan (although Maynard’s bedroom is part of the tour). Art is glamorous; economics, however revolutionary, is not. Lydia, who was both glamorous and fascinating, a celebrity in her lifetime as star of the famous Ballets Russes, has also been relatively neglected (although the subject of an excellent biography by Judith Mackrell) perhaps because dance is, of its nature, ephemeral.
Maynard and Lydia, in their own lifetimes, were faithful to their friends, and rarely carped, but perhaps it is not such an injustice if this novelist, using the material of their lives, takes some revenge on their behalf.
E.J. Barnes is the author of Mr Keynes’ Revolution.
Find out more at www.EJBarnesAuthor.com
