Canvas 39 - Charleston

Transcription

Hurstpierpoint College
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N E W S F R O M C H A R L E S TO N
Canvas
Hurst
SPRING 2014
ISSUE 39
Excellent education for girls and boys aged 4-18
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
A TASTE OF BLOOMSBURY
• CENTENARY PROJECT • BLOOMSBURY
MEMOIRS • GARDENING AT RODMELL
02
I N S I D E
C ONT ENT S
Voice from Charleston
T H I S
04
Looking for Inspiration: Sophie
Coryndon sums up what being
Associate Artist means to her
A Taste of Bloomsbury
I S S U E
11
Ariane Bankes meets Jans Ondaatje
Rolls, author of an irresistible new
book on Bloomsbury
A Perfect Continuity
Proud to support the 25th Charleston Festival
14
Having it all
16
Juliet Nicolson writes on Charleston in the May issue
‘Is Fashion Art?’
Editor-in Chief Justine Picardie in conversation
with Grayson Perry at the Charleston Festival on
Saturday 24 May 2014
Architectural historian Alan
Powers on the Centenary
Project
Jane Salvage relishes the joys of alleventing at the Charleston Festival
‘All Leonard’s Doing’
Virginia Woolf ’s Garden reviewed by
Christopher Woodward
Rich Pickings
18
Rupert Christiansen relishes a new
account of The Bloomsbury Group’s
Memoir Club
20
Our Supporters
CONTRIBUTORS
Sophie Coryndon has
recently been appointed
Charleston’s first Associate
Artist, after years of running
successful workshops.
Alan Powers is a lecturer
and writer in the field of
twentieth-century British art,
architecture and design. His
latest publication is Eric
Ravilious: Artist and Designer.
Jane Salvage was born
in Sussex and works as
an independent nursing
consultant and writer.
Christopher Woodward
is Director of the Garden
History Museum.
Rupert Christiansen is a
cultural historian and arts
journalist who writes regularly
for the Daily Telegraph and
author of I Know You Are Going
to be Happy.
Cover: Vanessa Bell, Still Life with Milk Jug and Eggs, Asheham, 1917. © Estate of Vanessa Bell,
courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Courtesy Sotheby’s Picture Library
Canvas • Issue 39 • Spring 2014 01
for Inspiration
Soon after, I began the Painted Furniture
workshops at Charleston. Every summer,
enthusiastic participants would arrive and
I would watch with trepidation as they
wrestled with increasingly large pieces
of dark brown varnished furniture. The
‘before and after’ never ceases to amaze
me. The House does the hard work,
inspiring at every turn, and the friendly
staff and guides contribute to the relaxed
atmosphere. Many are nervous when
they arrive, having not painted since
school, and it is astounding how many
people have been told that they can’t
draw. I get a huge buzz from watching
participants’ confidence grow and the
pride with which they take their piece of
Charleston home with them.
SOPHIE CORYNDON SUMS
UP WHAT BEING ASSOCIATE
ARTIST AT CHARLESTON
MEANS TO HER
I first became aware of Charleston
Farmhouse 20 years ago. I was working
in my father’s cabinet-making workshop
in Wiltshire when the art director of
a British feature film arrived to ask
if someone could fashion a range of
props. The film, Milk was set around
a downland dairy farm and the art
director’s vision for the interior was
based on Charleston. I was given
a dog-eared paint-spattered book
about Charleston and asked to paint
a cupboard ‘Charleston style’, then a
lamp. Next afternoon a bed turned up
and an invitation to ‘Charlestonize’ the
kitchen. And so it went on – I found
the colours and flowing, relaxed lines a
joy after wrestling with metal sculpture
for three years. The style was both
laid-back and dynamic. Once attuned
to the vocabulary of motifs and colours
it was exciting to watch as the dark
and predominantly brown farmhouse
transformed into a jewel-coloured
picture box. By the time we had finished
I was hooked, completely at ease with
the style and in awe of the way that
colour can transform our environment
and experience.
02 Canvas • Issue 39 • Spring 2014
By the end of the summer I had run
out of furniture to paint, so I stretched
up a large canvas and started to look
around for inspiration. By 2000 I had a
London gallery and a list of collectors
with a seemingly insatiable desire for
large flowers. My husband and I moved
to Brighton and on a downland walk we
decided on a whim to ask in the Firle
Estate office about cottages to rent.
A week later we were shown a large
other aspects of life at Charleston. I am
looking forward to working at Charleston
Festival this May, and welcoming people
to my Firle studio. It will be a wonderful
opportunity to show Charleston’s wider
legacy as an arts centre and inspiration
for the artists and writers, printers,
potters, poets and painters drawn to the
area, all accepting Charleston’s challenge
to live a more colourful life.
Sophie Coryndon will be giving two
Masterclasses this summer: a Painted
Furniture Effects Masterclass on Monday
9 June; and a Gilding Masterclass and
Studio Visit on Saturday 21 June.
Visit www.charleston.org.uk/whats-on
to book online.
Familiar faces return year after year,
and every time I walk around the House
and Garden something new catches my
attention. Often it is the stories that the
guides at Charleston so expertly weave
around the painted furniture that spark
new ideas. Last summer the cockerel that
Duncan Grant painted for Vanessa Bell
to ‘wake her in the morning’ prompted
me to begin my own ‘Dawn Chorus’ (25
gilded panels of singing birds) and the dog
to ‘guard her at night’: our lurcher gazing
sentinel from his favourite lookout tree.
Photographs © Penelope Fewster 2014.
VOICE FROM CHARLESTON
Looking
house in the centre of Firle where, the
agent mentioned, Virginia Woolf had
lived briefly before moving to Rodmell.
We couldn’t believe our good fortune:
A growing family; a close and creative
community; a large farrowing barn for
a studio; Glyndebourne to our left
and Charleston to our right, a short
blackberry-laden stroll away.
My new role as Associate Artist offers
an exciting opportunity to be involved in
E S S AY
Taste
A
of Bloomsbury
ARIANE BANKES MEETS THE
AUTHOR OF AN IRRESISTIBLE
NEW BOOK ON BLOOMSBURY
Opposite: Dora Carrington, Eggs on a
Table, Tidmarsh Mill, c. 1924. Photo The
Bloomsbury Workshop
It was a sparkling, sunny day – one of
the very few during this deluge-driven
early spring – when I went to meet Jans
Ondaatje Rolls in her beautiful house on
Bosham Quay near Chichester. The tide
was high, and the terracotta walls and
rooves of Bosham village appeared to
rise straight out of the waters the other
side of the harbour. But Jans’ house
stood proud, its walled courtyard keeping
the lapping waters at bay, and the sun
poured through walls of glass into her
dining room.
I had come to talk to Jans about her
just-published The Bloomsbury Cookbook:
Recipes for Life, Love and Art, the fruit of
five years of painstaking research and an
ever-growing passion – not just for the
food she writes about, but for the people
who dwell amidst the pages, and the life
they lived. Jans was already the author
of two books on food when, on a visit
to Charleston in 2009, she realised that
although the Bloomsbury group had
been written about from almost every
angle, the one left relatively unexplored
was their relationship with food. ‘It
was in the kitchen at Charleston that I
realised that this was the way to make
any story of them personal, to get to
know them as I wanted to know them,’
she says. ‘Food was the forum, and their
dining tables were where they came
E S S AY
Dora Carrington Nude with Bird c.1926
together, where they argued and debated
and fell in love. They took an interest
in what they ate, too, and so much was
happening in the country at the time,
you know, sociologically, technologically
– things were changing. And of course
they were so influenced by France, by
what was happening there in terms of
Post-Impressionism, by the values and
tastes of French culture. When you think
how revolutionary Elizabeth David’s food
seemed in the 1950s, they were way, way
ahead of her in every way. The English
had their own small food revolution
in the 1920s and 1930s, but it wasn’t
foreign-influenced, it was just smaller
meals and better prepared ones. It was
the Bloomsbury group who were really
interested in food from abroad – it was
freer, it was passionate, it was sensual ...’.
Food, then, is the prism through which
Jans Ondaatje Rolls evokes the lives and
loves of this extraordinary circle. She has
mined their letters, diaries and novels,
their paintings and prints, and where
possible their cookery books for the food
and the recipes they lived their lives to.
She reproduces nearly 300 recipes here,
setting each in context with a quote, an
anecdote, and more often than not a
portrait or still-life to bring them vividly
to life. It is a feast of a book, beautiful
to look at, brimming with material but
skilfully structured into bite-sized morsels,
and written with zest and charm.
Inevitably, all the research that went
into it has fuelled a desire to collect
works by the people she wrote about.
Hanging opposite her dining table are
two exquisite small works by Carrington,
Eggs on a Table, Tidmarsh Mill and Soldiers
by a Stream, which was lent to the Crisis
of Brilliance show at Dulwich Picture
Gallery last year. ‘I love Carrington’s
work because she was strong, she was so
much herself,’ Jans explains. ‘She owed
nothing to anyone, always followed her
own instincts. She described food so
well in her letters, and used to promise
great feasts to all her friends – Lytton
Strachey, Gerald Brenan, Virginia Woolf
– to entice them over to Tidmarsh or
Ham Spray.’ Indeed, Jans quotes in her
book Carrington’s description of one
of her ‘epoch-making’ dinners: ‘The
dinner [celebrating Helen Anrep’s visit]
was indescribably grand. Epoch-making:
grapefruit, then a chicken covered with
fennel and tomato sauce, a risotto with
almonds, onions, and pimentos, followed
by sack cream, supported by Cafe Royal
red wine, perfectly warmed ...’. She
became one of the better cooks in the
circle, creating a perfect household for
Lytton to enjoy: her teas alone elicited
a mouth-watering description from
Gerald Brenan: ‘Tea was served in the
dining room – a wonderful spread with
farm butter, honey in the comb, homemade cakes and currant loaf, served in a
pink lustre tea service.’ Reverting to the
still life on her wall, Jans points out, ‘I
particularly like the bowl with the three
eggs in it. I think of it as the Tidmarsh
triptych: Lytton, Carrington and Ralph.’
She also gives a recipe for Ham Spray
Triangles (a curious combination of
ham and fish roe on triangles of toast,
courtesy of Frances Partridge) alluding
again to the ménage a trois that moved on
from the Mill House at Tidmarsh to Ham
Spray in Wiltshire in 1924.
We walk past another Carrington, a
drawing of the hills at Yegen (where
Gerald Brenan lived in Spain), into Jans’
writing room where there are three
shelves overflowing with books on
Bloomsbury accumulated for research,
and several Vanessa Bells on the walls: an
early and curiously androgenous seated
nude from c.1917, heavily indebted to
Cézanne (see p.9), above a lively sketch
of the Memoir Club (see p.19) and to
the right of the fireplace a portrait of
Noel Olivier. And my eye is caught by
a romantic small nude in a landscape:
another Carrington, painting her lover
Henrietta Bingham with a dove in her
hand (see left).
We talk over a delicious lunch that Jans
has prepared straight from the book:
Frances Partridge’s Hunter Chicken (in
memory of Clive Bell) along with her
aubergines provençales, Lydia Lopokova’s
stuffed tomatoes, a Forsterian salad
with Quentin Bell’s chapon seasoning,
asparagus spears (for Angelica), Grace
Higgens’ melba toast and, for pudding,
Mrs Harland’s fruit fool. Mrs Harland was
Maynard Keynes’ cook/housekeeper, and
made a mean fool, but as Jans points out,
although it was one of her lighter dishes
it would be unwise to attempt strenuous
exercise after consuming it. The book is
full of wry asides like this, and indeed it
is amazing to see how rich some of the
recipes were by modern standards, with
pints of cream and quantities of eggs, and
had the group not lived before the advent
of central heating, and taken a great deal
of exercise, we can only assume they
would all have been round as barrels.
Which brings me to Significant Form,
and the larger-than-life Clive Bell, who
exemplifed it. Jans quotes from Virginia
Woolf’s letter to Barbara Bagenal: ‘Clive
... has had to give up eating tea, because,
when Lady Lewis gave a party the other
night and Rosenthal played Chopin, a
waistcoat button burst and flew across
the room with such impetuosity that the
slow movement was entirely spoilt. The
humiliation – which would have killed
you or me – the room was crowded with
the elite of London – only brushed him
slightly – he won’t eat bread and butter
anymore; but his spirits are superb, and
he says that life grows more and more
enchanting, the fatter one gets.’ This droll
vision is accompanied by Grace Higgens’
recipe for chocolate jelly, chocolate being
one of Clive’s favourite things and no
doubt partly responsible for his everexpanding girth.
Jans admits she was particularly lucky
to have Frances Partridge’s and Helen
E S S AY
Anrep’s cookery books to draw upon,
as well as Grace’s. David Garnett was
another keen cook and good source
of recipes; he was particularly keen on
mushrooms and was always truffling
around trying to find new edible varieties,
not always with success. Having located
the recipes, Jans set about testing them,
which posed its own challenges. ‘It took
four and a half months of solid cooking,
and it wasn’t always easy to find the
ingredients. Mutton, for instance, where
do you get mutton these days?’ she asks.’I
eventually tracked down a butcher in
the East End, and Selfridges’ Food Halls
were good for the more obscure cuts
of meat, brains and so forth. For Lydia
Lopokova’s Oolia fish soup I went most
of the way, boiling the fish for hours till
they looked like rags, but I stopped at the
addition of caviare – I wouldn’t go that
far. And I balked at trying out her Black
Game recipe which involves burying a
black grouse in a sack for a fortnight
to tenderise the meat before digging
it up, plucking it, drawing it, stuffing it
with apples and chestnuts, and braising
it for several hours. That one defeated
me, I must admit – but it’s there in the
appendix if you want to try it yourself.’
Luckily there are reams of others, less
demanding and a lot more appetising, to
try out first.
Initially, with few recipes to choose
from, the links between recipes and text
were sometimes tenuous, but with the
discovery of further Bloomsbury sources
(like Angelica and David Garnett’s recipe
book) and her decision to supplement
these with recipes from contemporary
Opposite: Vanessa Bell, Seated Nude, c. 1916. ©
Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett.
cookbooks, better connections could be
made. Mrs Beeton supplies the recipe
for Thoby Stephen’s ‘Monolithic Birthday
Cake’ and Jans herself has conjured up
the ingredients for ‘Post-Impressionist
Beef’ among other idiosyncratic dishes,
and re-created the sumptuous six-course
dinner menu for the opening of the
Omega Workshops from cookbooks of
the time.
There was the question of balance
between members of the group to
consider, too. ‘I could have almost
written the whole book about Virginia
Woolf,’ she admits, ‘but of course I
had to edit a lot out to give everybody
else their due. There is so much about
food in all her novels, and she was so
acute about it in her letters and diaries.
Nobody thinks of her as particularly
domesticated, and of course she had
Nellie Boxall to do all the cooking until
1934, though they drove one another
mad, in a way – but actually, with Virginia
you really feel you’re there, tasting the
food yourself, as Forster once pointed
out. She often wrote about the food
she was “dishing up” (even if she hadn’t
cooked it herself), most of it simple and
good, except “an odious pudding called
Canary with a mop of bright red jam
on its head”, which I felt duty-bound
to try out too.’ She points out that
because of Virginia’s ongoing problems
with Nellie and other servants, she
was more acutely aware of the shifting
demarcations between the social classes
than Vanessa, who was to a certain
extent sheltered from it by her relatively
untroubled relationship with Grace, as
much as her more reclusive life.
Jans also talks about the way in which she
organised the material. ‘Often, comments
seemed completely insignificant when
POWERS ON THE CENTENARY
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Roger Fry, Still Life with Chocolate Cake, c. 1912. Photo The Bloomsbury Workshop
for Lydia Lokopova; under ‘Freedom
Pie’ Vanessa Bell’s tribute to Lytton
Strachey’s liberating influence; under
‘Raie au Beurre Noir’ Duncan Grant’s
vision of his future, aged seventeen ...
and so it goes on. It must be the first
book on Bloomsbury literally to whet
the appetite, and you can prop it by the
stove and knock up Duncan’s Blanquette,
Vita’s Magnificent Strasbourg Pie, or even
Vanessa’s Loving Cup while you absorb
yourself in the lives of their originators.
you read them in the context of the
whole letter, but for me they were the
ones that jumped out, they were the ones
that told me what was really happening. It
was as if they were highlighted in orange
ink. I would copy them, cut them all out,
arrange them on the bed, and work out
how to arrange them into a pattern. As
you know, the book runs chronologically
from ‘Before Bloomsbury’ through the war
and the group’s brightest years, exploring
novelty at home and abroad, to their
offspring and legacy today. Originally, I
planned it as a cookery book with sections
on Soups, Salads, etc., but it didn’t hang
together. Now you can read it as a story, a
history of the group and their circle.’
All royalties have been generously
donated to the Charleston Trust, so this
feast of a book will, happily for all, help to
sustain Charleston itself.
You certainly can, and much of it in
their own words, illustrated by their
own hand. That is the delight of it:
plunge in at any point, and under the
heading ‘A Bloomsbury Stew’ you will
find Maynard Keynes’ declaration of love
The Bloomsbury Cookbook, Recipes for Life, Love
and Art is published by Thames & Hudson at
£24.95. Jans Ondaatje Rolls will be speaking
at the Charleston Festival on Saturday 24
May at 12pm.Tickets available at 01273 709
709 www.brightonticketshop.com..
Many visitors to Charleston will be at
least peripherally aware of the twosided courtyard of barns facing it across
the farm road, painted by Duncan
Grant on several occasions. When the
barns became too small to be useful
for the machinery of modern farming,
the opportunity arose to adapt them
and add further structures in order
to accommodate the expanding range
of needs of the Trust – back-of-house
activities including the storage and
conservation of the Angelica Garnett
Gift plus better staff offices, and more
facilities for visitors: a gallery for
temporary exhibitions, an expanded
shop, and a larger seasonal café.
In July 2010, Canvas showed the early
stages of thinking from the winning
competition submission by Jamie Fobert
Architects, a small London practice with
a major reputation for sensitive art and
commercial spaces, working with the
conservation specialists, Julian Harrap
Architects. This was the first time
architects of major reputation were
poised to make a mark at Charleston.
Given the radical innovations of the
Bloomsbury group in literature, art and
economics, one might have expected
them to have adopted the white flatroofed style of the 1920s, but the scant
evidence of their engagement with
building of any kind reveals that Roger
Fry built his own house at Guildford to
his own design in a simplified Georgian
style in 1909, while Maynard Keynes in
the early 1930s commissioned George
Kennedy, best known for the Royal
Photos © Jamie Fobert Architects.
E S S AY
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN ALAN
F E AT U R E
Perfect
AContinuity
Entrance view
F E AT U R E
Geographical Society extension, to
design the Arts Theatre in Cambridge,
a quiet, unassertive building with no
obvious style references and hardly any
street presence at all. These qualities
of decorum seem right for Charleston,
as they do for another Fobert project,
the extension of the domestic spaces of
art display at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge,
or in the recent reworking of Benjamin
Britten’s Red House at Aldeburgh. English
artists and intellectuals could rarely afford
to put up more than glorified sheds, as
Hawkins Brown understood when they
created new buildings in the grounds of
Henry Moore’s home and workplace,
Hoglands at Perry Green, Hertfordshire
in the late 1990s.
to structure facing it. While early designs
showed three steps ascending from the
road to the barn entrance, the ground
is now intended to be levelled, with
the idea that a temporary structure can
be raised for seasonal events, with the
flanking barns offering break out and
foyer spaces for it.
As the Fobert-Harrap scheme for
Charleston has been developing over
the past four years, it has settled into a
more finely tuned understanding of the
spirit of the place and of the needs of
the organisation. The L shape of the two
barns remains the dominant element,
and the opportunity is being taken to
reinstate those parts lost over time,
including the granary wing that originally
provided a third side to the courtyard,
now intended for education, and a lean-
The original scheme showed a newly
built second L shape completing the
space beyond the barns. Many functions
will come beneath its quirkily angled
roof, due to be made of sheets of
Corten steel, a material beloved alike by
architects and sculptors such as Richard
Serra and Anthony Gormley. Originally
devised for freight trucks on American
railways, it rusts naturally in a strong
orange, and does not need painting. The
orange echoes the matching brightness
of the roof tiles on the house and the
lichen on the existing barn buildings. The
new structure will include the necessary
lavatories plus the the collection store for
Above: Arrival panorama
Right: Courtyard View
The idea of seasonal variations has also
informed the location of the café in the
western arm of the barns, where a steel
frame replaced timber after the fire.
The chairs and tables can be moved or
altered with the seasons and the space
made available for indoor events, and the
kitchen is housed in a lower-roofed ‘pod’
attached to the side.
the artworks that make up the Angelica
Garnett Gift, and the new gallery. The
roof extends inwards over the yard on
one side, supported on timber posts,
providing outdoor shelter suggestive of
a monastic cloister. The ridge line of the
roof is angled rather than horizontal, for
reasons that include the need to provide
height at one end for a bat space where
the colony currently living in the barns
can be rehomed.
In the gallery space, three linked but
distinct rooms will be made, in tune with
the domestic scale of the farmhouse.
These rooms can flow into each other,
or alternatively, partitions can be
introduced for smaller shows.
These changes planned for Charleston’s
centenary in 2016 will include a
rerouting of cars to the north of the
house, and enlarged but discreet car
parking. The view of the house on
arrival will therefore change, as visitors
walk round the end of the garden
to start their visit, unbothered by
traffic and better able to take in the
relationship of the different parts.
It is a wonderful way to take Charleston
into another stage of its life-cycle, in
perfect continuity with what has gone
before. For more information and updates
visit www.charleston.org.uk/centenary
Jamie Fobert will be speaking at
Charleston Festival at 1pm on Friday
16th March, tickets available at 01273
709 709 www.brightonticketshop.com
All
it
JANE SALVAGE RELISHES THE
JOYS OF ALL-EVENTING AT THE
CHARLESTON FESTIVAL
If you think all-eventing is just for
horses, think again! The select but
growing band of Charleston Festival
all-eventers seek neither rosettes nor
trophies, but pleasure, companionship
and philosophy. Our rewards are
many - although attending every single
event at the Festival may sometimes
require the chutzpah of show-jumping,
the discipline of dressage and the
stamina of cross-country.
Most readers of Canvas need no
introduction to the Festival’s delights,
but all-eventing seems a well-kept
secret. My friends and I have been
attending for a long time as Friends
of Charleston, and for the past few
years as all-eventers. The many joys
of occasional events are not only
multiplied but also synergized by
coming to all of them. Our select
band welcomes newcomers, and what
better year to start than 2014, the
Festival’s 25th anniversary?
Every year artistic director Diana Reich
tunes into the zeitgeist to put together
an astonishing programme of which
the whole is always much more than
the sum of its many excellent parts. Its
stellar speakers are bang on or ahead
of the curve on the arts and current
affairs across the globe. Creativity swirls
around a few key themes which, while
never too rigid, create a structure of
feeling and thinking that enables much
cross-fertilisation over the nine days.
Last year’s highlights for me included
Tom Keneally on nurses in World War
I, Stephanie Flanders’ tour de force on
economics, and Alex Jennings’ flawless
readings from Auden to commemorate
Benjamin Britten, whose music
reverberated through the Sussex dusk –
I’m sure the sheep enjoyed it.
The camaraderie is another big draw.
Many all-eventers come every year
and become friends, greeting each
other happily from our reserved seats.
There’s always a talking point with your
neighbour. Speakers and staff seem like
friends too. Feeling part of the scenery,
as well as the intimate scale of the
Festival, makes it easier to sidle up to an
author and start a conversation. In fact
we all-eventers provide a kind of social
glue that probably helps with the huge
challenges of feeding, watering, directing
and pleasing the crowds.
There are practical advantages. Booking
for the whole programme is better
value, with those front-row seats,
discounted tickets, reserved parking and
a drinks reception. Above all, though,
it’s an experience to be treasured on
many different levels. It gives us soul
and brain food for the whole year –
not just in the pile of alluring books
we buy, whose authors we heard and
whose signatures adorn the flyleaf, but
in memories, connections, knowledge
and inspiration. Surely this is the
Bloomsbury spirit at its best.
With thanks to my fellow all-eventers
Stevie Holland and Rosalynde Lowe.
Sometimes the sessions you fancy
least turn out the most exciting and
take you down a new path. Surprising
connections and echoes enrich most
sessions, especially when speakers make
explicit connections with Bloomsbury
history and values. These run like a
golden thread through the colourful
Festival tapestry, not only in the
presentations but also in the aesthetic
appeal of the House, Gardens, marquees
Photographs © Axel Hesslenberg 2013
BEHIND THE SCENES
Having
and South Downs – not forgetting
tea, cake and Harvey’s beer. Even the
weather joins in. One year the garden
will be in bud, the next in full bloom.
You can begin the Festival in a heat
wave, lolling in the long grass under an
apple tree with a glass of fizz, and end it
wearing your wellies in a creaking tent
that seems determined to shake free
and fly over Firle Beacon, all-eventers
clinging tightly to the guy ropes.
REVIEW
Virginia didn’t care but, of course, she
loved gardens and flowers, and that
Hebridean garden is inspired by the
garden of childhood holidays at St
Ives described in A Sketch of the Past, a
memoir which is the glassy, bottomless
spring of all memoirs of childhood. In
January 1939 she went to meet the
exiled Sigmund Freud at Hampstead,
immediately after the RHS Fair for
‘greenhouse and hardy spring plants’. He
gave her a narcissus. Is a narcissus just a
narcissus, even in a sharp January?
All
Leonard’s
Doing
CHRISTOPHER WOODWARD
IS INTRIGUED BY A NEW
LOOK AT THE WOOLFS’
GARDEN AT RODMELL
Virginia Woolf’s Garden
by Caroline Zoob
Jacqui Small Publishers, £30
Virginia Woolf is the worst gardener in
history to have a book devoted to her
garden. Luckily, it’s a surprising book which
opens a new window onto the lives of
Virginia and Leonard at Monk’s House,
Rodmell, a village ‘dropped beneath the
[Sussex] Downs’. Caroline Zoob lived at
Monk’s House as tenant of the National
Trust for ten years, and tells the story
of how she discovered the garden – and
Leonard’s and Virginia’s gardening lives
– through her hands-on restoration,
handsomely documented by Caroline
Arber’s photographs and juxtaposed with
black and white images from photographic
albums of the Bloomsbury group.
The Woolfs bought the weather-boarded
eighteenth-century house as a weekend
retreat in 1919. Two years later the toolhouse was converted to a writing room
with a view of the water meadows. In the
loft upstairs Leonard clumped around
storing apples, shaking distemper onto
Virginia’s paper.
The garden made out of the undergrowth
was, of course, Leonard’s, who loved
roses and zinnias, topiary and fish ponds,
and pruning apple trees with open, rolledup cuffs after a London week as editor
and publisher. This book also shines a light
on country garden-making in its time,
such as the preference for millstones a la
Jekyll laid in the new paths.
There could be a comic story in the
National Trust’s instructions to its tenants
at Monk’s House to garden ‘in the style of
Bloomsbury’, and a list of recommended
plants: ‘With one exception these were
orange’.Virginia herself admired the beds
as a kind of ‘chintz’, which Zoob recreates
in her own planting. It is her wish to
venture deeper into the Woolfs’ spirit that
gives the book its strength, humour, and
sadness. After Virginia’s death Leonard
joined the National Cactus and Succulent
Society, and continued to build the
conservatory she would have hated. At
his death in 1969 the University of Sussex
– who acquired the site – disposed of his
cacti – a sad and poignant moment.
But this is on the whole a happy book,
showing how one person can create a
garden which is alive from day to day at
the same time as enshrining the spirit of
the past.There’s a lovely moment when
the books which Virginia bound by hand
when she was sick are returned to the
house: ‘I could not resist brushing my bare
thumb gently over her distinctive writing
on the spine labels, before arranging them
in a painted bookcase.’
Signed copies available in the shop or online
at www.charleston.org.uk
‘All Leonard’s doing’, wrote Virginia,
but what is a surprise – and a chuckle –
is just how little she did. In twenty
years of letters, her lover Vita SackvilleWest – who in posterity, by contrast,
became gardener first, writer second
– only once ever referred to plants. And
that was to say that she wouldn’t trust
Virginia with a gift of plants to Leonard,
as they’d surely die en route. A Times
reviewer of one novel puzzled at the
basket of roses cut during a Lincolnshire
December in Night and Day. I had always
been too afraid to question the flowers
on the Scottish island location of To the
Lighthouse, but a braver contemporary
critic wondered aloud if there are
dahlias, or carnations, or elms, under the
sky of the Hebrides.
REVIEW
Rich
Pickings
RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN
RELISHES AN ACCOUNT OF
THE MEMOIR CLUB
S.P. Rosenbaum and James M. Haule,
The Bloomsbury Group Memoir Club,
Palgrave MacMillan, £20
Everyone with a serious interest
in Bloomsbury is indebted to the
American scholar S.P. Rosenbaum,
whose research into the group were
published over forty years in a series
of lucidly expressed and meticulously
impartial books and articles. At his
death in 2012, he left incomplete a
further study: sensitively edited by
James M. Haule, this has now been
published as a slim volume of great
fascination.
Its focus is The Memoir Club, an
informal institution at the very heart
of the group’s culture. Between 1920
and 1964, its dozen or so members –
including, before the Second World
War, the Woolfs, the Bells, the
MacCarthys, Duncan Grant, Maynard
Keynes, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey
and E.M. Forster – met sporadically
a total of about sixty times, with a
major unexplained hiatus between
1922 and 1928. On each evening
occasion, a couple of newly
composed essays or sketches of a
personal or reminiscent nature were
read aloud, in some sort of rotation,
usually after dinner in a restaurant.
The tone was customarily droll and
uninhibited, with an emphasis on what
Rosenbaum (in an uncharacteristic
slip into academic jargon) describes as
‘performative’ delivery, replete with
hints, asides, quips, arcane allusions
and in-jokes. Here was Bloomsbury
functioning as an élite, exclusively
addressing itself in something
tantamount to a coded language. Or
to put it more simply: there were
things you could say – obscenities,
slanders, mockeries – to a coterie
of friends, which could not be safely
committed to print.
Rosenbaum is particularly interested
in exploring the roots of this
phenomenon, tracing its structural
formation through other Bloomsbury
clubs focused on play-reading,
novel writing and even the Russian
Revolution, as well as the more
rigorous rituals of the Cambridge
Apostles. He also examines the
intellectual influences on the writing
of the memoirs, from Montaigne’s
essays in sceptical humanism through
to Leslie Stephen’s Dictionary of
National Biography, Anne Thackeray
Ritchie’s recollections and the
gay debunking of Strachey’s Eminent
Victorians.
uproarious account of his voluptuous
affair with the insatiable Mrs Raven Hill.
Unfortunately, the record is far from
complete. The Memoir Club kept no
log book or archive, and all evidence
of some forty of the talks has been
irretrievably lost. Rosenbaum has,
however, doggedly tracked down the
remainder, some of which remained
in manuscript, others of which were
subsequently polished up and found
their way into print.
More serious fare was offered by
Keynes’ ‘Dr Melchior: A Defeated
Enemy’ which offers historically
valuable insight into the negotiations
surrounding the Treaty of Versailles,
and Forster’s sly and unexpected ‘My
Books and I’, which is tantamount to an
aesthetic credo (‘the process of writing
is something sacred and mysterious’).
Most would probably be best classified
as higher gossip - notable examples
being Virginia Woolf’s ‘22 Hyde Park
Gate’, in which she first broached
(possibly fancifully) the abusive
behaviour of her half-brothers George
and Gerald Duckworth, or Clive Bell’s
Alas, Rosenbaum’s fatal illness meant
that the book cuts off abruptly, leaving
everything later than 1928 tantalisingly
undiscussed: rich pickings remain for
Ph.D students to feast on, though
the latter will be hard pushed to
match Rosenbaum’s elegant prose and
authoritative erudition.
Vanessa Bell, Original Study for The Memoir Club, c.1943 © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy
Henrietta Garnett.
OUR SUPPORTERS
THE CHARLESTON TRUST IS GRATEFUL TO THE FOLLOWING
FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT
Our Patron, HRH The Duchess
of Cornwall
Friends of Charleston
Centenary Project Funders
Heritage Lottery Fund
The Monument Trust
The Wolfson Foundation
Arts Council England
Sir Siegmund Warburg
Voluntary Settlement
The Rausing Family
The Foyle Foundation
The Ashley Family
Foundation
The John Paul Getty Jnr
Charitable Trust
The Elizabeth Cayzer
Charitable Trust
The Sackler Trust
South Downs National
Park Authority
The Michael Marks
Charitable Trust
The Robert Gavron
Charitable Trust
The Bernard Sunley
Charitable Foundation
Mr and Mrs Philip and
Psiche Hughes
Mrs Virginia Nicholson
Mrs Hilary Newiss
Mr I. Askew
Mr A.H. Duberly
Mrs Andrea Darch
Mrs S. Wiggs
Mrs M. P. Cattermole
Mr & Mrs Webb
Mrs B Gwinnell
Mrs V Stapylton-Smith
Mrs Jeanne Reed
Michael Chowen
Lord and Lady Renton
Mr and Mrs Schonberg
Corporate Supporters:
We are particularly grateful
to the three Silver Anniversary
Sponsors of this year’s 25th
Charleston Festival:
EFG Private Bank
Rathfinny Wine Estate
The University of Sussex
And the following corporate
members for their support
throughout the year:
Australia & New Zealand
Festival of Literature & Arts
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The Bloomsbury Workshop
The Charlotte Street Hotel
Christopher Farr
Cuckmere Buses
Great Walstead School
Gorringes
Martin D. Johnson Antiques
& Interiors
Knill James
Pelham House
Sussex Country Gardener
University of Chichester
Trusts & Foundations:
The John Coates Charitable
Foundation
The John S. Cohen Foundation
The Garrick Charitable Trust
The Bryan Guinness
Charitable Trust
The Alan Evans Memorial Trust
The Cuthbert Horn Trust
The Ondaatje Foundation
Old Possum’s Practical Trust
The Pilgrim Trust
The Sigrid Rausing Trust
The Reed Foundation
The Royal Oak Foundation
The Barbara Whatmore
Charitable Trust
The Omega Group:
Mr Robert Archer
Ms Jane Ashley
Mrs Ariane Bankes
Mrs Anne Olivier Bell
Mrs Nicola Beauman
Ms Pippa Berry
Mrs Rosalind Bowlby
Mr and Mrs Tony Bradshaw
Dr. Neil Brener
Mrs Thalia Brotherton-Ratcliffe
Ms Sarah Caplin
Mrs Anthea Carver
The Hon. Elizabeth Cayzer
Mrs Sarah Chappatte
Mr Rupert Christiansen
Mr and Mrs Gerald
& Simone Davidson
Mr and Mrs Robert Elliott
Professor Michael Farthing
& Dr Alison McLean
Ms Judy Goldhill
Ms Sarah Griffin
Ms Pippa Harris
Dr Patsy Hickman
Ms Geri Hollingworth
Mr Harry Hyman
Mr Costas and Mrs Evi Kaplanis
Mr and Mrs Tim & Kit Kemp
Mr Dean Malone &
Dr Richard Purvis
Mrs Jenny Newhouse
Mr and Mrs Nigel &
Joanna Newton
Mr William and
Mrs Virginia Nicholson
Mrs Hilary Newiss
Ms Cate Olson and
Mr Nash Robbins
Sir Christopher and Lady Ondaatje
Ms Sigrid Rausing and
Mr Eric Abraham
Mrs Jans Ondaatje Rolls
Mrs Sarah Phillips
Mrs Peggy Post
Dr Charles Saumarez Smith
Mrs Helen Scott
Mrs Anne Sebba
Mrs Claire Singers &
Mr Phil Manzanera
Mrs Sue Stewart
Mrs Mary-Rose Thompson
Mrs Jenny Thorneycroft
Mr and Mrs Roland and
Margaret Williams
Mrs Nira Wright
Individuals, including those
who kindly donated to the Big
Give Christmas Challenge:
Mr Gordon P. Anderson
Mr and Mrs William Bardel
Mr and Mrs Robin & Polly Bexter
Mrs Anthea Carver
Mrs Mary Cattermole
Mrs Sarah Chappatte
Mrs Julie Dickson
Mr Barry Eigen
Mrs Sally Elliott
Miss Deborah Gage
Ben Duncan and the late
Dick Chapman
Ms Jo-Anne Greene
Mrs Sarah Griffin
Ms Pippa Harris
Mr David Herbert
Miss J. Hett
Mrs M.F. Hett, in memorium
Dr Patsy Hickman
Mr Edward P. McCracken,
in memoriam
Dr Alison McLean &
Professor Michael Farthing
Ms Maire McQueeney
Mrs Jane Miles
Mr Rych Mills
Mrs Hilary Newiss
Mr and Mrs Nigel &
Joanna Newton
Mr and Mrs William &
Virginia Nicholson
Mrs Jans Ondaatje Rolls
Hans and Märit Rausing
Dame Theresa Sackler
Mr and Mrs Schönberg
Mrs Judtih Sheard
Mrs Claire Singers
Mr Morton I. Sosland
Mrs.Vivien Stapylton-Smith
Sir Hugh & Lady Catherine
Stevenson
Mrs Sara Stonor
Mr John Thomson
Mr & Mrs Colin and
Laura Towns
Mr & Mrs Kevan and
Prudence Watts
Mrs Z Webb
Mrs Nira Wright
Mrs N Wynne
Sir Siegmund Warburg’s
Voluntary Settlement
…And a number of generous
individuals and organisations
who wish to remain anonymous
Generous support
provided by:
Caffyns Land Rover
City Books
Four Colman Getty
Harvey & Son
Much Ado Books
The Royal Academy
A full list of our supporters is also available on our website at
www.charleston.org.uk. If you would like to support the work
of The Charleston Trust, please visit the Support Us page on
our website or contact Susie Tempest, Fundraising Manager,
on 01323 811 161 or email: [email protected].
Opening Hours
Charleston is open in 2014 from
26 March – 2 November
Wednesdays to Saturdays: 1pm – 6pm
(12 – 6pm July, August and September),
last entry 5pm.
Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays:
1pm – 5.30pm, last entry 4.30pm.
The Shop and Café open one hour
before the House.
Pre-booked groups can visit the House in
the mornings on Wednesdays to Saturdays.
Email [email protected]
Contact Details
Charleston, Firle, Lewes,
East Sussex, BN8 6LL
Visitor Information: 01323 811265
Administration: 01323 811626
Fax: 01323 811628
Website: www.charleston.org.uk
E-mail: [email protected]
Full details of events, staff and
trustees are available on the website,
www.charleston.org.uk
CHARLESTON
C E N T E N A RY P RO J E C T
The Charleston Centenary Project will restore the adjacent historic barns, construct new
spaces in a hidden courtyard, create a new, safer access road, returning the farmyard to its
appearance in the 1950s, and carry out essential work to our administration buildings. Once
finished, we will continue to bring the art and values of Charleston to a new and wider
audience, but in comfort and more economically. The Project will cost £7 million. We
have already raised £4.5million with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a
number of foundations and individuals. That leaves £2.5 million to raise.
Please contact Emma Knight, Head of Development, at [email protected] or
01323 815141 for more details, or visit our website.
www.charleston.org.uk/centenary

Canvas 39 - Charleston

Transcription

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