Eliza Acton ‘The Real Mrs Beeton’

Elizabeth “Eliza” Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English cook and poet, who produced one of the country’s first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader, rather than professional cooks or chefs: Modern Cookery for Private Families. This introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Isabella Beeton’s bestselling Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) was closely modelled on it. Delia Smith is quoted as calling Acton “the best writer of recipes in the English language”. Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914.

Life

Acton was born in Battle, Sussex in 1799, the eldest of the five children of Elizabeth Mercer and John Acton, a brewer. The family returned to Suffolk shortly after her birth, and Eliza was raised there. When she was seventeen, she co-founded a girls’ school with a Miss Nicholson in Claydon, near Ipswich. This remained open for four years, until Eliza Acton left due to poor health. She spent some time in France after this.

After returning to England, her first collection of Poems was published in 1826, mostly on the theme of unrequited love. The book was moderately successful, and was reprinted a few weeks after its first issue. She subsequently wrote some standalone, longer poems, including “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham”, which was printed in the Sudbury Chronicle in 1838, and “The Voice of the North”, which was written in 1842 on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s first visit to Scotland.

Acton’s best-known work Modern Cookery for Private Families was first published in 1845. It was the result of several years of research, undertaken at the prompting of Longman, who had published her Poems. Many of the recipes came from her friends. Modern Cookery quickly became a very popular work, appearing in several editions and remaining a standard cookery book throughout the rest of the century. The book was immensely influential, establishing the format for modern cookbook writing, by listing the exact ingredients required for each recipe, the time needed, and potential problems that might arise. This was a novel departure from previous cookbooks, which were less precise.

Shortly after the publication of Modern Cookery, Acton relocated to Hampstead, London, where she worked on her next and final book, The English Bread Book (1857). Alongside recipes, this contained a scholarly history of bread-making, which included Acton’s strong opinions on some contemporary baking practices. This work was significantly less successful than Modern Cookery, and was only reprinted in 1990.

Acton, who suffered from poor health for much of her life, died in 1859, at the age of 59. She was buried in Hampstead.

Works

•                Poems (London: Longmans, 1826)

•                “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham” (poem, was in the movie Sudbury Chronicle, 1838)

•                “The Voice of the North” (commemorative poem about the first visit of Queen Victoria to Scotland in 1842)

•                Modern Cookery for Private Families (London: Longmans, 1845)

The English Bread Book (1857)

 

People : Violet Trefusis . Vita’s True Love .

Violet Trefusis (née Keppel; 6 June 1894 – 29 February 1972) was an English writer and socialite. She is chiefly remembered for her lengthy affair with the poet Vita Sackville-West, which the two women continued after their respective marriages to men. Trefusis wrote novels and non-fiction works, both in English and French.

The affair was featured in novels by both parties, in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography, and in many letters and memoirs of the period, roughly 1912–1922. Many are preserved at Yale University Library. Trefusis also inspired other fiction and was featured as a pivotal character in these novels, including “Lady Montdore” in Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and “Muriel” in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium.

Early life

Born Violet Keppel, she was the daughter of Alice Keppel, later a mistress of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and her husband, The Hon. George Keppel, a son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle. But members of the Keppel family thought her biological father was William Beckett, subsequently 2nd Baron Grimthorpe, a banker and MP for Whitby.

Violet lived her early youth in London, where the Keppel family had a house in Portman Square. When she was four years old, her mother Alice Keppel became the favourite mistress of Albert Edward (Bertie), the Prince of Wales, who was crowned as King Edward VII on 22 January 1901. He paid visits to the Keppel household in the afternoon around tea-time, on a regular basis until the end of his life in 1910. (George Keppel, who was aware of the affair, was conveniently absent at these times.)

In 1900 Violet’s only sibling, Sonia, was born. (Sonia is the grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Violet was her great-aunt.)

Affair with Vita Sackville-West

Trefusis is best remembered today for her love affair with the wealthy Vita Sackville-West. Virginia Woolf described this by analogy in her novel Orlando. In this romanticized biography of Vita, Trefusis is represented by the Russian princess Sasha.

The two women both wrote fictional accounts that referred to this love affair (Challenge by Sackville-West and Broderie Anglaise a roman à clef in French by Trefusis). Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson the non-fiction Portrait of a Marriage, based on material from his mother’s letters, and adding extensive “clarifications,” including some of his father’s point of view. Such works explored other aspects of the affair. Trefusis was also featured as a pivotal fictional character in other novels, including as “Lady Montdore” in Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and “Muriel” in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium.

Each of the participants left extensive written accounts in surviving letters and diaries. Apart from the two central players, Alice Keppel, Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Denys Trefusis and Pat Dansey also left documents that referred to the affair.

Diana Souhami’s Mrs Keppel and her Daughter (1997) provides an overview of the affair and of the main actors in the drama. When Violet was 10, she met Vita (who was two years older) for the first time. After that, they attended the same school for several years and soon recognised a bond between them. When Violet was 14, she confessed her love to Vita and gave her a ring. In 1910, after the death of Edward VII, Mrs Keppel made her family observe a “discretion” leave of about two years before re-establishing themselves in British society. When they returned to London, the Keppels moved to a house in Grosvenor Street. At that time, Violet learned that Vita was soon to be engaged to Harold Nicolson and was involved in an affair with Rosamund Grosvenor. Violet made it clear that she still loved Vita, but became engaged to make Vita jealous. This did not stop Vita from marrying Harold (in October 1913), nor did he curtail his own homosexual adventures after marriage.

In April 1918, Violet and Vita refreshed and intensified their bond. Vita had two sons by then, but she left them in the care of others while she and Violet took a holiday in Cornwall. Meanwhile Mrs Keppel was busy arranging a marriage for Violet with Denys Robert Trefusis (1890–1929), son of Colonel Hon. John Schomberg Trefusis and Eva Louisa Bontein. A few days after the armistice, Violet and Vita went to France for several months. Because of Vita’s exclusive claim, and her own loathing of marriage, Violet made Denys promise never to have sex with her as a condition for marriage. He apparently agreed as, on 16 June 1919, they married. At the end of that year, Violet and Vita made a new two-month excursion to France: ordered to do so by his mother-in-law, Denys retrieved Violet from the south of France when new gossip about her and Sackville-West’s loose behaviour began to reach London. The next time they left, in February 1920, was to be the final elopement. Sackville-West might still have had some doubts and probably hoped that Harold would interfere. Harold and Denys pursued the women, flying to France inn a two-seater airplane. The couples had heated scenes in Amiens.

The climax came when Harold told Vita that Violet had been unfaithful to her (with Denys). Violet tried to explain and assured Vita of her innocence (which was in all likelihood true). Vita was much too angry and upset to listen, and fled saying she couldn’t bear to see Violet for at least two months. Six weeks later Vita returned to France to meet Violet. Mrs Keppel desperately tried to keep the scandal away from London, where Violet’s sister, Sonia, was about to be married (to Roland Cubitt). Violet spent much of 1920 abroad, clinging desperately to Vita via continuous letters. In January 1921, Vita and Violet made a final journey to France, where they spent six weeks together. At this time, Harold threatened to break off the marriage if Vita continued her escapades. When Vita returned to England in March, it was practically the end of the affair. Violet was sent to Italy; and, from there she wrote her last desperate letters to their mutual friend Pat Dansey, having been forbidden from writing directly to Vita. At the end of the year, Violet had to face the facts and start to build her life from scratch.

The two former lovers met again in 1940, after the progress of World War II forced Trefusis to return to England. The women continued to keep in touch and send each other affectionate letters.

Career

During the Second World War in London, Trefusis participated in the broadcasting of “La France Libre”, which earned her a Legion d’Honneur after the war; she was also made a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Trefusis received mixed reviews on her books. Some critics credited Trefusis with an “excellent gift of observation” and a “talent for mimicry and flair for decor in most of her books.” These qualities were evident in her novels written in English and in French. Other critics stated that her books were not great literature, although they sold well and her readers enjoyed them.

She made many appearances as a pivotal character in other writers’ fiction. Nancy Mitford based “Lady Montdore”, a character in her novel Love in a Cold Climate, on Trefusis. She featured in Cyril Connolly’s The Rock Pool, in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium as “Muriel”, in several novels by Vita Sackville-West, and in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography as the ravishing “Princess Sasha”.

Although her writings spanned much of the twentieth century, many were unpublished. Virago, a publishing house devoted to recovering the forgotten work of women writers, set about putting matters right. They brought out two of her novels with introductions by Lorna Sage and Lisa St Aubin de Teran, but were eventually defeated by copyright difficulties. In addition, Lorna Sage, Trefusis’ great champion among British critics, died before she could assist in the publication of further works by Trefusis, as she planned.

Later life in France

From 1923 on, Trefusis was one of the many lovers of the Singer sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer, daughter of Isaac Singer and wife of the homosexual Prince Edmond de Polignac, who introduced her to the artistic beau-monde in Paris. Trefusis conceded more and more to her mother’s model of being “socially acceptable” but, at the same time, not wavering in her sexuality. Singer, like Sackville-West before her, dominated the relationship, though apparently to mutual satisfaction. The two were together for many years and seem to have been content. Trefusis’s mother, Alice Keppel, did not object to this affair, most likely because of Singer’s wealth and power, and the fact that Singer carried on the affair in a much more disciplined way. Trefusis seemed to prefer the role of the submissive and therefore fitted well with Singer, who, whip in hand, was typically dominant and in control in her relationships. Neither was completely faithful during their long affair, but, unlike Trefusis’s affair with Sackville-West, this seems to have had no negative effect on their understanding.

In 1924, Mrs Keppel bought L’Ombrellino, a large villa overlooking Florence, where Galileo Galilei had once lived. After her parents’ death in 1947, Trefusis would become the chatelaine of L’Ombrellino till the end of her life. In 1929, Denys Trefusis died, completely estranged from his seemingly unfeeling wife. After his death,Trefusis published several novels, some in English, some in French, that she had written in her medieval “Tour” in Saint-Loup-de-Naud, Seine-et-Marne, France – a gift from Winnaretta.

Joseph Alsop, an American journalist, recounts in his autobiography a meeting with Violet in Florence. “Mrs. Trefusis’s enthusiasms had long since inspired the rhyme ‘Mrs Trefusis never refuses.’ Governor Olson, as it turned out was not refused . . . they were much cheered up by one another.”

Nancy Mitford said that Trefusis’s autobiography should be titled Here Lies Violet Trefusis, and partly based the character of Lady Montdore in Love in a Cold Climate on her.

François Mitterrand, who later became President of the French Republic in 1981, in his chronicle La Paille & le Grain, mentions his friendship with Violet Trefusis under 2 March 1972, when he received “the telegram” informing of her death. He goes on to discuss how, before Christmas 1971, he went to Florence to visit her as he knew she was in her last months of life: he had dinner with Violet Trefusis and Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, who was a member of the British Government at the beginning of the Second World War, at her house in Florence.

Death and legacy

Trefusis died at L’Ombrellino on the Bellosguardo on 29 February 1972. She died of starvation, the effect of a malabsorption disease. Her ashes were placed both in Florence at the Cimitero degli Allori (The Evangelical Cemetery of Laurels) and in Saint-Loup-de-Naud in the monks’ refectory near her tower.

In the 1990 BBC Mini-series Portrait of a Marriage, Violet Trefusis is portrayed by Cathryn Harrison.

Writings

Novels

• Sortie de secours (1929)
• Écho (1931)
• Tandem (1933)
• Broderie Anglaise (1939–1945)
• Hunt the Slipper
• Pirates at play
• Les causes perdues (1940)

Memoirs

• Prelude to Misadventure (1941)
• Don’t look Round (1952)

Last works

• Memoirs of an armchair (1960)
• From Dusk to Dawn (last work, 1972)

Unpublished / other

• The Hook in the Heart (n.d.)
• Instants de mémoire (Gestes)
• La chèvre et le chou (n.d.)
• The Shortcut
• Les sœurs ennemies (c. 1940s?)
• The End Justifies the Means (c. 1947)
• All Glorious Within (n.d.)
• Alas, A Lady! (n.d.)
• Father and Daughter. The Seducer
• Irène et Pénélope
• The Sleeper (n.d.)
• A Tooth for a Tooth(n.d.)

Bloomsbury : Vanessa Bell.

Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

Early life and education

Vanessa Stephen was the eldest daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth (1846–1895).^‪‬ The family, including her sister Virginia; brothers Thoby (1880–1906) and Adrian (1883–1948), and half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Westminster, London. She was educated at home in languages, mathematics and history, and took drawing lessons from Ebenezer Cook before she attended Sir Arthur Cope’s art school in 1896, and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901.

In later life she claimed that during her childhood she had been sexually molested by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.^‪

Private life

After the deaths of her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904, Vanessa sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and moved to Bloomsbury with Virginia and brothers Thoby and Adrian,^‪ where they met and began socialising with the artists, writers and intellectuals who would come to form the Bloomsbury Group. The Bloomsbury Group’s first Thursday evening meetings began at Bell’s house in Gordon Square.^‪

She married Clive Bell^‪‬ in 1907 and they had two sons, Julian (who died in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29^‪‬), and Quentin. The couple had an open marriage,^‪‬ both taking lovers throughout their lives. Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant,^‪ with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918, whom Clive Bell raised as his own child.^‪

Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant and Duncan’s lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, and settled at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle, East Sussex, where she and Grant painted and worked on commissions for the Omega Workshops established by Roger Fry. Her first solo exhibition was at the Omega Workshops in 1916.^‪

Art

In 1906, when Bell started to think of herself as an artist, she formed the Friday Club in order to create a place in London that was more favorable to painting.‬ Vanessa was encouraged by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organized by Roger Fry and she copied their bright colors and bold forms in her artworks. In 1914, she turned to abstraction.^‪

Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. Some of Vanessa Bell’s works were related to her personal life.^‪ For example, her illustration for To the Lighthouse, the book by her sister, Virginia Woolf, which was not published until 1927, is about a beach with lighthouse that was a part of Bell’s and Woolf’s, childhood in St. Ives.^‪

Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works during her early maturity and for her contributions to design.^‪

Bell’s paintings include Studland Beach (1912),^‪ The Tub (1918), Interior with Two Women (1932), and portraits of her sister Virginia Woolf (three in 1912), Aldous Huxley (1929–1930), and David Garnett (1916).

Exhibitions

Bell’s first solo exhibition in 1916 was held in the Omega Workshop in London, a prominent place for exhibitions which supported young artists and introduced design work to the public. Bell became the director of the Omega Workshop around 1912

Design for Overmantel Mural (1913), oil on paper. It depicts herself and Molly McCarthy naked in Bell’s studio at 46 Gordon Square.

Street Corner Conversation (also created in 1913), features massive nudes with their schematic form being related to it.

Summer Camp (1913), oil on board, it was an extended illustration of the interchange of imagery between the artists work for the Omega Workshop and their easel painting. The origin of this painting is when Bell went on a summer camp organized at Brandon on the Norfolk-Suffolk border near Thetford. Summer Camp became part of the Bryan Ferry Collection.

By the Estuary (1915), oil on canvas, shows how the geometrical abstraction that distinguished Bell’s design for the Omega Workshop was also applied in her easel painting. In her wartime paintings, landscape is rarely seen in them. However, this modestly scaled landscape shows her fondness for charity of designs in which segments of contrasting but harmonious colour are not distracted by detail.

Nude with Poppies (1916), oil on canvas, is a preliminary design for a head board which Bell had painted for Mary Hutchinson. This painting is one of the few of the surviving number of projected designs that are still in existence of the decorated beds from the Omega Workshop period

Designs for a Screen: Figures by a Lake (1912), gouache on board, was influenced by Nabi paintings by Vuillard and Denis. This design for a three-part screen can be dated back to 1912 and might have been a part of Bell’s exhibit Design for Screen which was shown at the Friday Club Exhibition in February 1912.

Iceland Poppies (1908), was exhibited at the New English Art Club in the summer of 1909. It was praised by Walter Sickert and marks her artistic maturity.^‪

Media portrayal

Bell was portrayed by Janet McTeer in the 1995 Dora Carrington biopic Carrington, and by Miranda Richardson in the 2002 film The Hours.

Bell is the subject of Susan Sellers’ novel Vanessa and Virginia and of Priya Parmar’s novel “Vanessa and Her Sister”.

Bloomsbury : Roger Fry.

Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the “associated ideas” conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as “incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin … In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry”.^‪

Life

Born in London, the son of the judge Edward Fry, he grew up in a wealthy Quaker family in Highgate. Fry was educated at Clifton College and King’s College, Cambridge,‬ where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. After taking a first in the Natural Science tripos, he went to Paris and then Italy to study art. Eventually he specialised in landscape painting.

In 1896, he married the artist Helen Coombe and they subsequently had two children, Pamela and Julian. Helen soon became seriously mentally ill, and in 1910 was committed to a mental institution, where she remained for the rest of her life. Fry took over the care of their children with the help of his sister, Joan Fry. That same year, Fry met the artists Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, and it was through them that he was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group. Vanessa’s sister, the author Virginia Woolf later wrote in her biography of Fry that “He had more knowledge and experience than the rest of us put together”. The artist William Rothenstein, however, observed around the same time that he considered Fry “a bit crazy”.

In 1911, Fry began an affair with Vanessa Bell, who was recovering from a miscarriage. Fry offered her the tenderness and care she felt was lacking from her husband. They remained lifelong close friends, even though Fry’s heart was broken in 1913 when Vanessa fell in love with Duncan Grant and decided to live permanently with him.

After short affairs with such artists as Nina Hamnett and Josette Coatmellec, Fry too found happiness with Helen Maitland Anrep. She became his emotional anchor for the rest of his life, although they never married (she too had had an unhappy first marriage, to the mosaicist Boris Anrep).

Fry died very unexpectedly after a fall at his home in London. His death caused great sorrow among the members of the Bloomsbury Group, who loved him for his generosity and warmth. Vanessa Bell decorated his casket before his ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel in Cambridge. Virginia Woolf, Vanessa’s sister, novelist and a close friend of his as well, was entrusted with writing his biography, published in 1940.

Career

In the 1900s, Fry started to teach art history at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

In 1903 Fry was involved in the foundation of The Burlington Magazine, the first scholarly periodical dedicated to art history in Britain. Fry was its co-editor between 1909 and 1919 (first with Lionel Cust, then with Cust and More Adey) but his influence on The Burlington Magazine continued until his death: Fry was in the Consultative Committee of The Burlington since its beginnings and when he left the editorship, following a dispute with Cust and Adey regarding the editorial policy on modern art, he was able to use his influence on the Committee to choose the successor he considered appropriate, Robert Rattray Tatlock.^‪ Fry wrote for The Burlington from 1903 until his death: he published over two hundred pieces of eclectic subjects – from children’s drawings to bushman art. From the pages of The Burlington it is also possible to follow Fry’s growing interests for Post-Impressionism.

In 1906 Fry was appointed Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was also the year in which he “discovered” the art of Paul Cézanne, also the year the artist died, beginning the shift in his scholarly interests away from the Italian Old Masters and towards modern French art.

In November 1910, Fry organised the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists (a term which he coined) at the Grafton Galleries, London. This exhibition was the first to prominently feature Gauguin, Manet, Matisse, and Van Gogh in England and brought their art to the public. Virginia Woolf later said, “On or about December 1910 human character changed,” referring to the effect this exhibit had on the world. Fry followed it up with the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. It was patronised by Lady Ottoline Morrell, with whom Fry had a fleeting romantic attachment.

In 1913 he founded the Omega Workshops, a design workshop based in London’s Fitzroy Square, whose members included Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. In 1933, he was appointed the Slade Professor at Cambridge, a position that Fry had much desired.

A Blue plaque was unveiled in Fitzroy Square on 20 May 2010.

Works

• Vision and Design (1920), see: formal analysis
• Heresies of an Artist (1921)
• Transformations (1926)
• Cézanne. A Study of His Development (1927)
• Henri Matisse (1930)
• French Art (1932)
• Reflections on British Painting (1934)
• Giovanni Bellini (1899)

Bloomsbury : Leonard Woolf .

Leonard Sidney Woolf (25 November 1880 – 14 August 1969) was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.

Early life

Woolf was born in London, the third of ten children of Solomon Rees Sidney Woolf (known as Sidney Woolf), a barrister and Queen’s Counsel, and Marie (née de Jongh). His family was Jewish. After his father died in 1892 Woolf was sent to board at Arlington House School near Brighton, Sussex. From 1894 to 1899 he attended St Paul’s School, and in 1899 he won a classical scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge,^‪‬ where he was elected to the Cambridge Apostles. Other members included Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, GE Moore and EM Forster. Thoby Stephen, Virginia Stephen’s brother, was friendly with the Apostles, though not a member himself. Woolf was awarded his BA in 1902, but stayed for another year to study for the Civil Service examinations.

In October 1904 Woolf moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service, in Jaffna and later Kandy,^‪ and by August 1908 was named an assistant government agent in the Southern Province, where he administered the District of Hambantota. Woolf returned to England in May 1911 for a year’s leave. Instead, however, he resigned in early 1912 and that same year married Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf).

Together Leonard and Virginia Woolf became influential in the Bloomsbury group, which also included various other former Apostles.

In December 1917 Woolf became one of the co-founders of the 1917 Club, which met in Gerrard Street, Soho.

Writing

After marriage, Woolf turned his hand to writing and in 1913 published his first novel, The Village in the Jungle, which is based on his years in Sri Lanka. A series of books followed at roughly two-yearly intervals.

On the introduction of conscription in 1916, during the First World War, Woolf was rejected for military service on medical grounds, and turned to politics and sociology. He joined the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, and became a regular contributor to the New Statesman. In 1916 he wrote International Government, proposing an international agency to enforce world peace.

As his wife’s mental health worsened, Woolf devoted much of his time to caring for her (he himself suffered from depression). In 1917 the Woolfs bought a small hand-operated printing press and with it they founded the Hogarth Press. Their first project was a pamphlet, hand-printed and bound by themselves. Within ten years the Press had become a full-scale publishing house, issuing Virginia’s novels, Leonard’s tracts and, among other works, the first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Woolf continued as the main director of the Press until his death. His wife suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, until her suicide by drowning in 1941. Later Leonard fell in love with a married artist, Trekkie Parsons.

In 1919 Woolf became editor of the International Review. He also edited the international section of the Contemporary Review from 1920 to 1922. He was literary editor of The Nation and Atheneum, generally referred to simply as The Nation, from 1923 to 1930), and joint founder and editor of The Political Quarterly from 1931 to 1959), and for a time he served as secretary of the Labour Party’s advisory committees on international and colonial questions.

In 1960 Woolf revisited Sri Lanka and was surprised at the warmth of the welcome he received, and even the fact that he was still remembered.^‪‬ Woolf accepted an honorary doctorate from the then-new University of Sussex in 1964 and in 1965 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He declined the offer of CH in the Queen’s Birthday honours list in 1966

Family

Among his nine siblings, Bella Woolf was also an author.

Death

Woolf died on 14 August 1969 from a stroke. He was cremated and his ashes were buried alongside his wife’s beneath an elm tree in his beloved garden at Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex. The tree subsequently blew down and Woolf’s remains have since been marked by a bronze bust.

His papers are held by the University of Sussex at Falmer.

Works

• The Village in the Jungle – 1913
• The Wise Virgins – 1914 (Republished in 2003 by Persephone Books)
• International Government – 1916
• The Future of Constantinople – 1917
• The Framework of a Lasting Peace – 1917
• Cooperation and the Future of Industry – 1918
• Economic Imperialism – 1920
• Empire and Commerce in Africa – 1920
• Socialism and Co-operation – 1921
• International co-operative trade – 1922
• Fear and Politics – 1925
• Essays on Literature, History, Politics – 1927
• Hunting the Highbrow – 1927
• Imperialism and Civilization – 1928
• After the Deluge (Principia Politica), 3 vols. – 1931, 1939, 1953
• Quack! Quack! – 1935
• Barbarians at the Gate – 1939
• The War for Peace – 1940
• A Calendar of Consolation – selected by Leonard Woolf, 1967

People : Bloomsbury, Duncan Grant

Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery and theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

His father was Bartle Grant, a “poverty-stricken” major in the army, and much of his early childhood was spent in India and Burma. He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant, 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, KCB, GCMG, sometime Lt-Governor of Bengal.^‪ Duncan was also the first cousin twice removed of John Grant, 13th Earl of Dysart (b. 1946).

Early life

Grant was born on 21 January 1885 in Rothiemurchus, Aviemore, Scotland. He attended school in England from 1894, where he was educated at Hillbrow School, a preparatory school in Rugby, and St Paul’s School, London. Grant showed little enthusiasm for studying but enjoyed art classes. He was encouraged by his art teacher and also his aunt Lady Strachey, who organised private drawing lessons for him. Eventually, he was allowed to follow his desire to become an artist, rather than join the army as his father wished, and he attended Westminster School of Art in 1902. He then studied art at the Slade School and in Italy and Paris.

He was a cousin, and for some time a lover, of Lytton Strachey. Through the Stracheys, Duncan was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group, where John Maynard Keynes became another of his lovers.

Career in art

Grant is best known for his painting style, which developed in the wake of French post-impressionist exhibitions mounted in London in 1910. He often worked with, and was influenced by, another member of the group, art critic and artist Roger Fry. As well as painting landscapes and portraits, Fry designed textiles and ceramics.

After Fry founded the Omega Workshops in 1913, Grant became co-director with Vanessa Bell, who was then involved with Fry. Although Grant had always been actively homosexual, a relationship with Vanessa blossomed, which was both creative and personal, and he eventually moved in with her and her two sons by her husband Clive Bell. In 1916, in support of his application for recognition as a conscientious objector, Grant joined his new lover, David Garnett, in setting up as fruit farmers in Suffolk. Both their applications were initially unsuccessful, but eventually the Central Tribunal agreed to recognise them on condition of their finding more appropriate premises. Vanessa Bell found the house named Charleston near Firle in Sussex. Relationships with Clive Bell remained amicable, and Bell stayed with them for long periods fairly often – sometimes accompanied by his own mistress, Mary Hutchinson.

In 1935 Grant was selected along with nearly 30 other prominent British artists of the day to provide works of art for the RMS Queen Mary then being built in Scotland. Grant was commissioned to provide paintings and fabrics for the first class Main Lounge. In early 1936, after his work was installed in the Lounge, directors from the Cunard Line made a walk-through inspection of the ship. When they saw what Grant had created, they immediately rejected his works and ordered it removed.

Grant is quoted in the book The Mary: The Inevitable Ship, by Potter and Frost, as saying:

“I was not only to paint some large murals to go over the fireplaces, but arrange for the carpets, curtains, textiles, all of which were to be chosen or designed by me. After my initial designs had been passed by the committee I worked on the actual designs for four months. I was then told the committee objected to the scale of the figures on the panels. I consented to alter these, and although it entailed considerable changes, I got a written assurance that I should not be asked to make further alterations. I carried on, and from that time my work was seen constantly by the Company’s (Cunard’s) representative.

When it was all ready I sent the panels to the ship to put the finishing touches to them when hanging. A few days later I received a visit from the Company’s man, who told me that the Chairman had, on his own authority, turned down the panels, refusing to give any reason.

From then on, nothing went right. My carpet designs were rejected and my textiles were not required. The whole thing had taken me about a year….. I never got any reason for the rejection of my work. The company simply said they were not suitable, paid my fee, and that was that.”

Personal life

Duncan’s early affairs were exclusively homosexual. These included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey, the future politician Arthur Hobhouse and the economist John Maynard Keynes, who at one time considered Grant the love of his life. Through Strachey, Grant became involved in the Bloomsbury Group, where he made many such great friends including Vanessa Bell. He would eventually live with Vanessa Bell, who though she was a married woman fell deeply in love with him, and one night succeeded in seducing him; Vanessa very much wanted a child by Duncan, and became pregnant in the spring of 1918. Although it is generally assumed that Duncan’s sexual relations with Vanessa ended in the months before Angelica was born (Christmas, 1918), they continued to live together for more than 40 years.

Living with Vanessa was no impediment to Duncan’s relationships with men, either before or after Angelica was born. Angelica grew up believing that Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell was her father; she bore his surname and his behaviour toward her never indicated otherwise. Duncan and Vanessa formed an open relationship, although she herself apparently never took advantage of this after settling down with him and having their child. Duncan, in contrast, had many physical affairs and several serious relationships with other men, most notably David Garnett, who would one day marry Angelica. Duncan’s love and respect for Vanessa, however, kept him with her until her death in 1961.

Angelica wrote: “(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings”.^‪

Later years

In Grant’s later years, his lover the poet Paul Roche (1916–2007), whom he had known since 1946, took care of him and enabled Grant to maintain his accustomed way of life at Charleston for many years. Roche was made co-heir of Grant’s estate. Grant eventually died in Roche’s home in 1978.

Duncan Grant’s remains are buried beside Vanessa Bell’s in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Church, West Firle, East Sussex.

India : Jaipur, Hawa Mahal, Palace Of Winds …

Hawa Mahal (Hindi: English translation: “Palace of Winds” or “Palace of the Breeze”), is a palace in Jaipur, India, so named because it was essentially a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivities while unseen from the outside. Constructed of red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the City Palace, and extends to the zenana, or women’s chambers.

History

The structure was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh designed by Lal Chand Ustad in the form of the crown of Krishna, the Hindu god. Its unique five-storey exterior is akin to the honeycomb of a beehive with its 953 small windows called jharokhas decorated with intricate latticework. The original intention of the lattice was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen, since they had to obey strict “purdah” (face cover). The lattice also allows cool air from the Venturi effect (doctor breeze) through the intricate pattern, air conditioning the whole area during the high temperatures in summers.

In 2006, restoration and renovation works on the Mahal were undertaken, after a gap of 50 years, to give a face lift to the monument at an estimated cost of Rs 4568 million. The corporate sector lent a hand to preserve the historical monuments of Jaipur and the Unit Trust of India has adopted Hawa Mahal to maintain it. The palace is an extended part of a huge complex. The stone-carved screens, small casements and arched roofs are some of the features of this popular tourist spot. The monument also has delicately modeled hanging cornices. Just like the other monuments of Jaipur, the palace is also constructed in pink and red colored stone.

Architecture

The palace is a five-storey pyramidal shaped monument that rises 50 feet (15 m) from its high base. The top three floors of the structure have a dimension of one room width while the first and second floors have patios in front of them. The front elevation, as seen from the street, is like a honeycomb web of a beehive, built with small portholes. Each porthole has miniature windows and carved sandstone grills, finials and domes. It gives the appearance of a mass of semi-octagonal bays, giving the monument its unique façade. The inner face on the back side of the building consists of need-based chambers built with pillars and corridors with minimal ornamentation, and reach up to the top floor. The interior of the Mahal has been described as “having rooms of different coloured marbles, relieved by inlaid panels or gilding; while fountains adorn the centre of the courtyard”.

Lal Chand Ustad was the architect of this unique structure. Built in red and pink coloured sand stone, in keeping with the décor of the other monuments in the city, its colour is a full testimony to the epithet of “Pink City” given to Jaipur. Its façade depicts 953 niches with intricately carved jharokhas (some are made of wood) is a stark contrast to the plain looking rear side of the structure. Its cultural and architectural heritage is a true reflection of a fusion of Hindu Rajput architecture and the Islamic Mughal architecture; the Rajput style is seen in the form of domed canopies, fluted pillars, lotus and floral patterns, and the Islamic style as evident in its stone inlay filigree work and arches (as distinguished from its similarity with the Panch Mahal – the palace of winds – at Fatehpur Sikri).

The entry to the Hawa Mahal from the city palace side is through an imperial door. It opens into a large courtyard, which has double storeyed buildings on three sides, with the Hawa Mahal enclosing it on the east side. An archaeological museum is also housed in this courtyard.

Hawa Mahal was also known as the chef-d’œuvre of Maharaja Jai Singh as it was his favourite resort because of the elegance and built-in interior of the Mahal. The cooling effect in the chambers, provided by the breeze passing through the small windows of the façade, was enhanced by the fountains provided at the centre of each of the chambers.

The top two floors of the Hawa Mahal are accessed only through ramps. The Mahal is maintained by the archaeological Department of the Government of Rajasthan.

India : The Red Fort Delhi, A Bucket List Must …

The Red Fort was the residence of the Mughal emperor of India for nearly 200 years, until 1857. It is located in the centre of Delhi and houses a number of museums. In addition to accommodating the emperors and their households, it was the ceremonial and political centre of Mughal government and the setting for events critically impacting the region.

The Red Fort, constructed by Shah Jahan, was built as the fortified palace of Shahjahanabad, capital of the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, in 1648. Named for its massive enclosing walls of red sandstone, it is adjacent to the older Salimgarh Fort, built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546. The imperial apartments consist of a row of pavilions, connected by a water channel known as the Stream of Paradise (Nahr-i-Behisht). The Red Fort is considered to represent the zenith of Mughal creativity under Shah Jahan. Although the palace was planned according to Islamic prototypes, each pavilion contains architectural elements typical of Mughal buildings, reflecting a fusion of Timurid, Persian and Hindu traditions. The Red Fort’s innovative architectural style, including its garden design, influenced later buildings and gardens in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kashmir, Braj, Rohilkhand and elsewhere. With the Salimgarh Fort, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 as part of the Red Fort Complex.

The Red Fort is an iconic symbol of India. On the Independence Day of India (15 August), the Prime Minister of India hoists the national flag at the main gate of the fort and delivers a nationally-broadcast speech from its ramparts.

Hidden London : The Honourable Society Of The Middle Temple ….

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn. It is located in the wider Temple area of London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London.

History

In the 13th century, the Inns of Court originated as hostels and schools for student lawyers. The Middle Temple is the western part of “The Temple”, the headquarters of the Knights Templar until they were dissolved in 1312; the Temple Church still stands as a “peculiar” (extra-diocesan) church of the Inner and Middle Temples.

The Inns stopped being responsible for legal education in 1852, although they continue to provide training in areas such as advocacy and ethics for students, pupil barristers and newly qualified barristers. Most of the Inn is occupied by barristers’ offices, known as chambers. One of the Middle Temple’s main functions now is to provide education and support for new members to the profession. This is done through advocacy training, the provision of scholarships (over £1 million in 2011), subsidised accommodation both in the Temple and in Clapham, and by providing events where junior members may meet senior colleagues for help and advice.

The Inn

Middle Temple Hall is at the heart of the Inn, and the Inn’s student members are required to attend a minimum of 12 qualifying sessions there. Qualifying sessions, formerly known as “dinners”, combine collegiate and educational elements and will usually combine a dinner or reception with lectures, debates, mooting, or musical performances.

Middle Temple Hall is also a popular venue for banqueting, weddings, receptions and parties. In recent years, it has become a much-used film location—the cobbled streets, historic buildings and gas lighting give it a unique atmosphere. William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night received its first recorded performance here, at the feast Candlemas in 1602.

Middle Temple Library possesses Emery Molyneux’s terrestrial and celestial globes, which are of particular historical cartographical value.

Liberty

Middle Temple (and the neighbouring Inner Temple) is also one of the few remaining liberties, an old name for a geographic division. It is an independent extra-parochial area, historically not governed by the City of London Corporation (and is today regarded as a local council for most purposes) and equally outside the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. The Middle Temple’s functions as a local council are set out in the Temples Order 1971.

It geographically falls within the boundaries and liberties of the City, but can be thought of as an independent enclave.

Some of the Inn’s buildings (those along Essex Street, Devereux Court and the Queen Elizabeth Building near the Embankment) lie just outside the liberty of the Middle Temple and the City’s boundary, and are actually situated in the City of Westminster. Quadrant House (7–15 Fleet Street) was acquired by the Middle Temple in 1999 and after five years of conversion is now a barristers’ chambers. This lies outside the liberty (though immediately adjacent to it) but is within the City of London.

Royal Botanical Gardens Kew : The Worlds Largest Collection Of Living Plants ….

Kew Gardens is the world’s largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London’s top tourist attractions. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (brand name Kew), an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs 750 staff, and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847.

History

Kew, the area in which Kew Gardens are situated, consists mainly of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would later influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond (then called Sheen). That manor house was later abandoned; however, Henry V built Sheen Palace in 1501, which, under the name Richmond Palace, became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor’s house, which was in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond.Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates.

The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks. The old Kew Park (by then renamed the White House), was demolished in 1802. The “Dutch House” adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children. It is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace.

Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon. The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England’s most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, and was rejected.

In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president William Cavendish. Under Kew’s director, William Hooker, the gardens were increased to 30 hectares (75 acres) and the pleasure grounds, or arboretum, extended to 109 hectares (270 acres), and later to its present size of 121 hectares (300 acres). The first curator was John Smith.

The Palm House was built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner between 1844 and 1848, and was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. It is considered ” the world’s most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure.” The structure’s panes of glass are all hand-blown. The Temperate House, which is twice as large as the Palm House, followed later in the 19th century. It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America.

In February 1913, the Tea House was burned down by suffragettes Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton during a series of arson attacks in London. Kew Gardens lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987^. From 1959 to 2007 Kew Gardens had the tallest flagpole in Britain. Made from a single Douglas-fir from Canada, it was given to mark both the centenary of the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the bicentenary of Kew Gardens. The flagpole was removed after damage by weather and woodpeckers

In July 2003, the gardens were put on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.