Vanessa and Her Sister (38 page)

“I do not think it is meant to be,” Roger said, looking at Virginia.

7 May 1910—46 Gordon Square (early)

The king is dead! Clive just came in to tell me.

The Prince of Wales told the king that his horse, The Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park. And the king responded, “I am very glad.” His last words. He died late last night.

Friday 20 May 1910—46 Gordon Square (day of the Royal Funeral)

In the end, we went.
Everyone
went. We stood near Hyde Park Corner and watched the funeral procession. All his children were there, and every crowned head in Europe. They look alike—but then they all had the same grandmother, so I suppose they
would
look alike. The older generation are moustachioed and dignified (Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas of Russia both have magnificent moustaches), and the younger
set, like the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duke of Aosta, were dapper and bright. The children (all shouldering hefty names like Prince Heinrich something something of Prussia) marched along without complaining. The dowager queen and all the ladies rode in carriages and were harder to see.

The whole day made me feel sentimental about the old king. We dined at Ottoline’s later, and everyone was telling royal anecdotes. There were all the predictable old threads of gossip—Lillie Langtry and Alice Keppel—but there were other, less salacious stories I had never heard. Ottoline (who is distantly related to the royal family— I suppose you can see it with that extraordinary chin of hers) says that Bertie was a genuinely affectionate father, holding his children when they were first born and taking time to play with them as they grew up. Apparently he was devastated when his youngest son, John, died after only one day. He insisted on placing him in the tiny casket himself and by all accounts was openly weeping at the funeral. That made me like him very much.

23 May 1910

Dear Woolf
,

Cambridge is wrapped in black. The colleges all sport huge mourning wreaths over the doors. The Edwardian era was brief but poignant. That sentence made me feel one hundred years old. I do not like change at all, but it feels as though it is afoot. My apologies, terrible form to complain while the nation mourns, but what to do? My health has faded, away like spring fog. Virginia is headed straight for Bedlam, Vanessa is pregnant, Clive is an amoral pig, Duncan is being evasive, Maynard is a revoltingly successful new don, Desmond is procreating, my sister Dorothy is annoyed with me, Henry Lamb is entangled with Ottoline, and I find all of England dissatisfying today. Complaining is the only answer. Could you possibly come home sooner?

With love
,

Lytton
     

P.S
. Virginia will surely be fully recovered by the time you return.

30 May 1910—46 Gordon Square (hot and fuggy— all the windows thrown open)

“
Post
-Impressionist?” I asked Roger, who was sitting in Lytton’s basket chair by the tall window.

“Yes!” he said, looking at me over his sketchbook. We were alone in the drawing room. Clive had gone out on one of his unexplained errands and would collect Virginia, who was joining us for supper, on his way back. Virginia has been dining with us most evenings. It makes more sense while her mood is so precarious and her madness looms. Lytton was expected soon and would also stay for supper, as would Desmond, who would be late as always. Julian was napping, and Roger was taking advantage of this small pocket of stillness to do some studies for a portrait of me. When I suggested he wait until after Clarissa’s birth, he flatly refused and said, “But you are so perfectly
you
right now. Why wait?” I could not argue with such tangled, kind logic.

“But what does it mean,
Post-
Impressionist?” I asked. “Obviously it is the school of thinking that comes after the Impressionists, but what does that mean? What do they believe?” I sat forward, ruining Roger’s composition. I have grown unafraid of looking silly in front of this man. I do not mind the stamp of ignorance, as I know he could never feel contempt. It is not within his spectrum of emotions. It is a relief to show myself to be brazenly uneducated with Roger. He never makes me feel stupid. Instead, he is consistently delighted in my questions and
answers them all with somersaulting excitement rather than condescension. Strangely, I have grown self-conscious in front of Clive and am afraid of looking foolish when he is watching. It is not that Clive would criticise me, but I know he compares me to Virginia. Her clear mind against my illogical sentiment. Just as Father used to do. Sad, when Clive used to make me feel so free.

“Yes, that is just what it is,” Roger said, his eyes crinkling as he spoke. “It is the work of the Fauves but so much more than that. These artists—Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Derain, Matisse, Van Gogh, Seurat, Picasso—they do not care for
replication
. If distorting a subject’s features will reveal the artist’s sensibility, so be it. They do not need to prove that they can accurately reflect what a subject
looks
like. Not for a still life, nor a landscape, nor a portrait. Instead they show us what a subject
feels
like to them. It is so personal. So courageous. It is remarkable.”

“Manet does not care for replication?” I asked. I had seen his wonderful
Olympia
and
Gare St-Lazare
again the last time Clive and I were in Paris.

“Manet is the starting point,” Roger said. “The departure from Impressionism to all that has come later. I chose Manet because he was one of the very first to reject Impressionism. It was his own school of thinking, and he turned away from it. And so we are calling the exhibition ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists.’ ”

“It was the only name we could think of,” Desmond said lightly as he walked into the room. He was early—surprising. “Roger wanted to call it Expressionism, but that sounded … what did I say it sounded, Roger?”

“You said it sounded unimportant,” Roger said.

“
You
could think of?” I was confused. I turned to Desmond. “Are you in on this as well? I thought you were just going along to Paris to round up paintings.”

“Roger asked me to be the secretary for the exhibition. He seems to think I have a head for business. He is mistaken, of course.”

“I am not mistaken,” Roger said cheerfully. “You managed to get the Grafton Galleries a twenty per cent commission on sales when previously they have only ever managed eleven. Remarkable. Nessa!” he said, refocusing on his sketch, “stay just there. Lean back a bit. Yes! That’s wonderful!”

But I could not stay there. It was uncomfortable, and I had to twist to speak to Desmond. Roger put down his sketchbook and selected a cake from the tray of pastries.

“Twenty per cent? Desmond, how did you manage twenty per cent?” I asked.

“Roger sent me into the meetings with the dealers, and I was totally unprepared. When they asked how much the gallery wanted in commission, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was right. I asked for twenty, and they agreed. But the whole thing will fail, and I doubt any of the paintings will sell, so it hardly matters. But for the moment, I feel unexpectedly shrewd.”

I looked over at Roger, but he seemed perfectly comfortable hearing his exhibition described as a failure. He was enjoying his cake and getting crumbs all over his jacket. Roger always manages to look dishevelled. Clive says he can make the best clothes look awful, but I don’t agree. I like his broken-in, rumpled look.

“You
really
don’t think it will be a success?” I ventured.

“Oh no,” Roger answered, his good humour unaffected. “The English public will
hate
it. The English artists will hate it, and I am sure it will be a commercial disaster. But it is the beginning of something. Something
important.
And that is what matters.”

And
—I decided this morning that my seaside bathers will wear hats. The sand has become very clean. Flat. Uniform. The water is in the upper-right corner.

31 May 1910—46 Gordon Square

We’ve had another argument about Lytton. Clive came home and found Lytton, Virginia, and me in the garden drinking lemonade. I was pleased
that Virginia was sounding more like herself. She has been so shaky and off-pitch in the last few months. Clive stood in the doorway but refused to come outside. When everyone left, I confronted him, but all he did was shout at me about “that damned effeminate bugger.” His petty jealousy over Virginia’s friendship with Lytton is absurd.

TWICKENHAM

1 June 1910—46 Gordon Square (sunny)

V
irginia broke a plate this morning. We were planning to go to the gallery space for the Friday Club exhibition (it is next week, and
none
of the paintings are ready to be hung), and she stopped in to Gordon Square to collect me. Sophie and Maud, worrying that Miss Ginia was looking too thin, insisted she eat some breakfast.

Apparently she was standing at the sideboard, looking out the window, when the plate dropped from her hand. It smashed at her feet, but she did not seem to notice. Maud called for me to come down and then swept up the hunks of china, but Virginia did not move. I found Virginia talking to herself in the dining room.

“Virginia?”

Nothing.

“Virginia?” I said again, putting my hand lightly on her arm.

“Is someone in the garden, Nessa?” she asked without lifting her eyes from the window.

“No one is out there,” I said, gently tugging her arm, trying to draw her towards Thoby’s study. We still call it that. I knew Virginia would feel safe surrounded by Thoby’s things.

“No!” Virginia said sharply.

I went to get Clive.

Six pm

Clive came, and together we got Virginia upstairs to her old room. I tucked her into one of my nightgowns and bundled her into bed. We debated sending for the doctor. By now Virginia was sitting up in bed chatting with Adrian, who had come straight over when he received my note. She seemed better. In the dining room I had felt her resting on a knife’s edge. Now she seemed easier in herself.

Virginia has been veering towards a breakdown all this spring. The danger lives in the small details: the way she waits a fraction too late before she responds to a question; the way she repeats herself without knowing it; the way her voice slides uphill when she speaks; the way she eats less and walks more; the way her face is mapped in blueish circles and sharp bones; the way she locks her hands together in her lap while on the omnibus; the way she is not writing.

It is not all the time, not every day, but it is enough to worry. The worry begins to grind and churn, and I watch her, vigilant, waiting for the moment when the boat capsizes in the dark.

Ten pm

Duncan, Saxon, and Adrian just left. We all sat up with Virginia. Maud brought cocoa and sandwiches and we had a sickroom picnic. Adrian and Duncan left first, and finally Clive took Saxon downstairs to let Virginia rest. I straightened the bedclothes around her and put the books she had requested from Thoby’s study on the nightstand.

“Well,” she said, sitting back on the pillows, “what do you think of the grand passion?”

“What?” I asked, startled. There are so many grand passions passing through the house this spring. “Which one?”

“Duncan and Adrian! Haven’t you noticed Adrian keeps talking about buggers?” Virginia said, rolling out the vowels in the word.

“Duncan and Adrian? Are they … oh god.” I had not noticed.
“Does Lytton know?” Lytton is half infatuated with George Mallory and half with Henry Lamb, but still mostly in love with Duncan.

“I do not think
anyone
knows yet. I only know because I caught Duncan creeping down the stairs at five in the morning yesterday,” Virginia said, pulling the covers up around her. “Hasn’t Adrian spoken to you about inverts yet? He has been on about buggers all month.”