Last week I wrote this post about a trip to Virginia Woolf's home in Rodmell and almost included this photo of Woolf with her niece, Angelica Bell:
I'd seen a copy of it in Virginia Woolf's writing room and was immediately struck by the image. Apart from being beautifully composed, Angelica is very striking, with a pretty but rather solemn, adolescent face. Apparently she found life in the Bloomsbury Group a bit of a bore when she was young, as there were no other children to play with.During the visit, I wondered if Angelica was still alive, but after looking at the date of the photo it seemed rather unlikely. The next day, I wrote the blog post and in the end, decided not to use the photo, as there were already more than enough images. Then I forgot all about Angelica Bell.
But today, during a quiet moment this afternoon, I looked up Angelica Bell on Wikipedia and discovered that when I was looking at her photo in the garden she knew so well, she was still alive. Horray! The link with the Bloomsburys, TS Eliot, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Keynes wasn't comletely severed.
But then I read on and discovered that sadly, Bell died the following day at the age of 93, just as I was deciding not to include a photo of her in my post. As Dame Edna would say, that's spooky.
Angelica, left, in CharlestonIt's too late in the evening for a potted biography of Angelica Bell's bizarre life, but if you don't know how she discovered that her father wasn't her father and ended up marrying his lover, becoming Mrs Anglica Garnett, click here for the Wikipedia entry or here or here for an obituary.
You won't regret it.
That is, indeed, spooky. I'll follow your links when I get a spare minute or two.
ReplyDeleteI met her once, very briefly, when I worked at Chatto & Windus. Was too awestruck to remember anything of the conversation.
ReplyDeleteAnother spooky Bloomsbury moment: when I went to work there I was part of a change of regime (along with fearsome Virago Carmen Callil). While poking around the offices, which were more redolent of the 40s than the early 80s, I found a Gladstone bag on top of a tall cupboard, covered with dust. It turned out to contain a vast archive of Hogarth Press contracts, signed by all the Bloomsburyites you can think of. On closer inspection the bag bore the initials VW...
For about a nanosecond I contemplated taking it into 'protective custody', since it had obviously been overlooked when the Hogarth files went to the archive at Reading, but common sense prevailed.
Wow! What a wonderful find. I'm not surprised that you were tempted to 'look after' the bag - I felt like that when I discovered a 1590 Bible.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading about her!
ReplyDeleteI remember looking Arthur Miller up on 'findagrave.com', discovering his absence, googling him and then excitedly texting my friend to tell her that Arthur Miller was still alive. His death was reported the next morning and I felt strangely responsible. Then I remembered how annoyed my mum would get when people would insist that it had only rained because they had hung their washing out, and I felt better. :o)
Your mum was right. It's vanity to think otherwise (and a bit of a burden too - I don't want to be the Grim Reaper of the blogosphere).
ReplyDeleteBut even if we eschew any superstitious notions, coincdences can still be unsettling.
you might like this: www.woolfonline.com/?q=node/323
ReplyDeleteyes, rather spooky and fascinating as are the contracts bag and arthur miller stories. plus i didnt know about findagrave.com.
ReplyDeleteWhy are the Bloomsbury folks so endlessly fascinating?
the closest i have come to anything concrete re: Bloomsbury was seeing a painting for sale in Taos, NM by Dorothy ??? I forget her name now, who was a friend of DH Lawrence which is why she was in Taos I guess. The woman with the earhorn. Some of the sideline people fascinate the most such as Dora Carrington.
zmkc - I can't get the link to work. I'll try again later.
ReplyDeleteSuki - I think we generally put famous people in a box (I'm not taking about findagrave.com) that's related to a specific era and location, so it's disconcerting when they stray outside their zone. Can you imagine finding Jack Kerouac in an English village, or Dorothy L Sayers on the fruit machines in Las Vegas?
It's equally unsettling when you discover that X is still alive when you've always associated them with a distant period (I remember being shocked to see photos of Christopher Isherwood still alive and well in the 1980s).
But I love the way lives overlap. When I was very young, I met a man born in 1872 who, in turn, probably met someone born in the 18th century!
Better than the Wiki, or either of the obits -- although the Guardian has a good one -- read Angelica's memoir Deceived with Kindness.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I love about your postings. I always learn something new about the world at large. Thanks for sharing. xoxox
ReplyDelete'findagrave.com' was just one of the many websites that was more interesting than my studies! I also got really into televised snooker during my university years and probably listened to about ten hours of sports on the radio every week. I graduated, but I always knew the academic life was not for me :o)
ReplyDeleteI can't get it to work now either - it's the sweetest little picture, which I saw just after reading this, of Virginia Woolf as a very small girl, acting as a very earnest wicket keeper in a cricket match, possibly with her brother.
ReplyDeleteThis link might work:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37i.htm
It looks straight out of E Nesbit
ReplyDeleteWhat AJ said. Deceived with Kindness is a compelling book.
ReplyDeleteI'll have a look at 'Deceived by Kindness' - thanks for the recommendation.
ReplyDeletezmkc - What a touching photo of Woolf, with her little sparrow legs and tiny shoes. Thanks for taking to the trouble to find the right link.