The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (10 page)

But she put on weight and was considered well enough to leave in mid-August. Accompanied by Miss Thomas – who seems to have been captivated by her patient – she went to Cornwall on a three-week walking convalescence. She was still unstable and liable to a ‘bad night', or a sudden flight of fantastic ideas, but insight and self-control were slowly returning. She wrote to Clive from Gurnards Head, ‘I feel a great mastery over the world. My conclusion upon marriage might interest you. So happy I am it seems a pity not to be happier.'
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A week later she joined the Bells at Studland. Despite a furious row there with Clive, provoked by him, she continued to improve and returned to London in October. Chastened by the breakdown and now conscious of the risk she was running, she heeded Dr Savage's warning that London life would soon unsettle her, and began searching for a country ‘refuge'. She found Little Talland House in Firle, near Lewes, and thus began her association with East Sussex and the Downs.

Chapter Seven

Gender and Sexuality

Quentin Bell was born on 19 August 1910. There were no complications but Vanessa was tired and depressed and glad of the customary month in bed, relieved that Virginia would be in Cornwall for most of the lying-in period. Throughout the pregnancy she had watched her sister slipping towards madness, comforting her one moment and having to defend herself against abuse and ‘uncontrolled passion' the next. Clive, although recognising that Virginia was ill, had done little to support his wife and relieve the pressure. His tolerance for stressful problems was low, and Vanessa's only ally in the struggle had been Dr Savage.

A month of rest and relative quiet gave Vanessa time to reflect on her current life. She saw it was unsatisfactory; she had too little time to paint, Clive did not provide the companionship and support she wanted, and, above all, the strain of Virginia was becoming almost unbearable. Much as she loved Virginia she could not continue to mother her at the cost of her own family and career. But she could see no solution and, characteristically, displaced her worries onto the new child, convinced he was failing to eat and losing weight. The doctors did not understand what lay behind her obsession and Clive, of course, was a broken reed, unable to bear Quentin's cries. Vanessa grew ever more miserable and distraught. It was at this low point that Roger Fry entered her life.

She had met him earlier in 1910. At the age of 44 he had also reached a crisis point in his life; his wife had developed schizophrenia, from which she would not recover, and he had recently resigned from his post as buyer to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Enormously energetic and enthusiastic and never at a loose end for long, Fry had arranged an exhibition of contemporary European art – including artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Cézanne, little known in England at that time – to be held in London at the Grafton Galleries. The first exhibition of Post-Impressionist paintings opened in November to a mixed chorus of abuse and praise and created an immediate sensation.

Both Bells, but particularly Clive, were involved in helping with the exhibition, and during that autumn Roger Fry was a frequent visitor to Gordon Square. One evening, when Clive was away and Vanessa and Roger were alone together, she discovered ‘something of his power of sympathy', and on a sudden impulse unburdened herself to him.
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The relief was enormous, and the effect long-reaching.

A growing intimacy and companionship with Fry, together with the excitement of the exhibition, temporarily lifted Vanessa's gloom:

that autumn … everything seemed springing to new life … all was a sizzle of excitement, new relationships, new ideas, different and intense emotions all seemed crowding into one's life. Perhaps I did not realise then how much Roger was at the centre of it all.
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Roger Fry fell in love at once. Vanessa moved more cautiously and at first would not admit to herself she loved Roger. That April she and Clive travelled to Turkey with him to look at Byzantine art. At Broussa Vanessa collapsed after a supposed miscarriage. In all probability, the conflicts and strain of the journey brought out lurking depression and, coinciding with premenstrual tension and heavy bleeding, released panic attacks. Breathless and hyperventilating, she was terrified and unable to move, but in no danger. Roger seems to have recognised this. He took charge and quickly calmed her and restored order.

Virginia was at home when she heard the news and, fearing the worst, hurried to Constantinople. There she found her sister prostrate but tranquil, being nursed by Roger and preparing to return home on the Orient Express.

Vanessa's depression lasted over two years. The emotional conflicts which had released the ‘black Stephen madness', required time for resolution. During this period she came to love Roger passionately. She leant heavily on him, relying on his judgement and understanding, and put herself into his care. She trusted him implicitly and allowed herself to love him. The emotional turmoil eased and she released herself from Clive. For as long as possible she kept the affair hidden and the marital break-up, never total, was gradual.

Clive reacted predictably to Roger's intrusion with jealous outbursts and demands that Roger stay away from Gordon Square, but his attempts to regain Vanessa's affection were wasted. She wanted her marriage to continue, for conventional and financial reasons, but only on an asexual basis. She wanted Clive to remain a husband in name and to stay within the family circle, but nothing more. She succeeded. The Bells never divorced.

Virginia was quick to detect what was happening, and regarded the relationship with surprise and some disapproval at first. Her first thought was that once again she had lost her sister, for Vanessa had become more reserved, partly because of depression but also for fear of Virginia influencing Roger. But this time Vanessa had no cause for alarm. Roger's attachment as unassailable.

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Virginia's interest in Clive waned steadily, although his continued for her, but they remained close friends. Throughout the summer of 1911 she was restless and her behaviour erratic, moving between depression and hypomanic excess. Vanessa no longer attempted to watch over her and Virginia was left with no protector. She bathed naked in the Cam with Rupert Brooke (it was an innocent outing), and fraternised with the ‘Neo-Pagans', squabbled with Adrian and contemplated living away from him. She finished the seventh or eighth draft of her novel. She seemed to be going nowhere. She was ‘29 and unmarried – a failure'.
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Virginia's gender was not in doubt. She felt herself to be an attractive woman. She might play with the idea of androgyny but she could not imagine being ‘more than half a man', as Katherine Mansfield did,
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nor did she desire to put on male dress. On the other hand she was sexually attracted to women. She could appreciate male beauty and enjoy a chance touch, but any hint of sexual interest brought down the shutters.

Her first real crush in adolescence had been on the older Madge Vaughan – echoed in Clarissa Dalloway's memories of Sally Seton – and that had been followed by her need for a maternal protector and a sensual relationship.

Vanessa's marriage made Virginia examine her sexuality. No man attracted her physically, apart perhaps from Clive, although she liked male company and preferred the male mind. Several men between 1908 and 1911 were interested in marrying her, but the only one acceptable as a husband had been Lytton Strachey, a confirmed homosexual, suitable because he was ‘the perfect female friend'.
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Men lacked the gentleness and sensitivity of women, in Virginia's opinion. A man always wanted power, however gentle and understanding he might be on the surface, and a husband would try to dominate his wife. Sexual intercourse lay at the centre of the marital struggle, and must end in a wife being subjugated and humiliated. The prospect terrified Virginia. If she could not be in control, sex was unacceptable. It was not the physical act of penetration, but the psychological effect of being overcome and defenceless that was so horrifying. Perhaps the fear originated in her half-brother Gerald's fumbling explorations in childhood, but the cause surely lay much deeper; perhaps partly genetic, partly the confusing relationships in early childhood.

Virginia wanted to be married. She hated the idea of living alone. She wanted a marriage that was ‘a tremendous living thing … not dead and easy'.
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She wanted an equal partnership, a companionable husband, strong and understanding enough to be mother and father to her, who loved her yet did not make sexual demands, who watched over her and yet allowed her freedom. The choice of husband was limited.

Chapter Eight

Leonard Woolf and Courtship

Leonard Woolf was born on 15 November 1880 into a liberal Jewish family, the third of nine children and the second of six boys. His father had come from a background of East End tailors to become a successful barrister. His mother was a de Jong, Dutch Jews who had established themselves in London in the middle of the last century.

Leonard was always dismissive of his mother, claiming without justification, ‘she loved me … less than any of the eight others',
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and he believed he was his father's favourite son, possessing his father's mental gifts and marked out to succeed. These lifelong beliefs, together with his provocative and hurtful behaviour to his mother, suggest, at the least, unresolved childhood conflicts, which may have contributed to his melancholic and solitary nature.

His father's sudden death, when Leonard was 11, plunged the family overnight from wealth into relative penury and a change of lifestyle. His mother Marie Woolf, acting decisively, moved away from their prosperous home in South Kensington to a smaller suburban one in Putney, and decided to spend her available capital on educating her sons. She calculated that, provide some won scholarships, the money would just last out until the eldest were in a position to support the family.

Leonard possessed a huge capacity for work and a determination to succeed. At school he swept the board academically. He won a scholarship to St Paul's and, from there an Exhibition to Trinity College at Cambridge University. He was by nature an intellectual, but he was also an all-round sportsman; as a result, instead of the bullying usually meted out to swots, he gained a measure of popularity. Nor did he encounter any personal anti-Semitism, a remarkable escape given the widespread prejudice of the period and a tribute to his charm and the ‘carapace' he erected. Yet his popularity at school was not accompanied by any close friendships and he brought no school acquaintances home. He was proud of being a Jew and very conscious of belonging to that race, but from his teens he seems to have felt ashamed of the habits and settings of his home. From early on he looked upon himself as an outsider, and even in the body of his family he felt himself to be different, a critical yet uneasy observer, never fitting in, always criticising his mother's ‘dream world of rosy sentimentality', upsetting her and disturbing himself in the process.

Cambridge determined the direction of Leonard's life. There he discovered an exciting new world of the intellect and the company of like-minded friends. For the first time in his life he felt himself to be one of a group, accepted and on the inside. They included the men who went up to Cambridge in 1899 with him: Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Virginia's brother Thoby Stephen, Saxon Sydney Turner; as well as Maynard Keynes – who began at King's College three years later – and a number of dons.

Leonard and his friends tirelessly debated and railed against what they saw as hypocritical Victorian standards and beliefs. They were all atheists in search of honesty and truth, ‘arrogant, supercilious, cynical, sarcastic'. Leonard, Strachey and Saxon Sydney Turner would walk at night through the cloisters to listen to the nightingales and return, arm-in-arm, chanting Swinburne, prior to meeting in one or other's rooms to debate weighty moral issues.

It was a joyful time and academic work took second place. Leonard worked but ceased to ‘swot', no longer driven to achieve the top-ranking place. He suddenly grew up and rejected many of the values and standards of his family, replacing them with those of his Cambridge friends. He abandoned Judaism in his last year at school – as all the Woolf children did in time, to their mother's disappointment – and during his first undergraduate year proclaimed himself an atheist, utterly opposed to any organised religion.

Quite suddenly, in his second year, Leonard was devastated by a profound sense of emptiness; his life seemed pointless and he began questioning his existence. He could ‘find no place for and no explanation of my life or my mind in this fantastic universe'… ‘Doubt came upon me black as Hell.'
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Faced with an existential crisis, he became depressed and, for the only time in his life, self-pitying.

Leonard was an usually self-contained man, but throughout his life he needed an example and a cause to centre himself on. Prior to Cambridge he had his idealised father, who ‘worked so hard and so continually', and ‘whose code of personal conduct [was] terrific'.
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Leonard had worked flat out at his prep school and St Paul's to succeed and win an Exhibition because it was what his father would have done and, like him, he was ‘something of a Puritan'. When he abandoned Judaism he was also discarding an idealised part of his father, and signalling the need for a new ideal, a belief or philosophy from someone he could revere and who might give him a clear sense of direction. His friends stimulated and delighted him, and gave him a newfound sense of intimacy, almost of family, helping to bring Leonard's familiar world to an end. But none was able to help him in his mental struggle or even to understand the problem. He turned to his elder sister Bella, but her advice to ‘follow the light and do the right' was unilluminating to someone already groping in the dark.
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