The Bloomsbury Group

At Charleston, Tilton and Rodmell

Vanessa Bell David 'Bunny' Garnett Duncan Grant (John) Maynard Keynes Quentin Bell Lydia Keynes Angelica Garnett Virginia Woolf Julian Bell Leonard Woolf Clive Bell Vanessa Bell 1879-1961

The eldest child of the Victorian man of letter Sir Leslie Stephen, she was at the centre of the group of friends known as 'Bloomsbury'. Her son Quentin described her as 'the firm pillar of our existence... sensible, practical, imperturbable, at times filled with a gentle gaiety, always morally and physically beautiful'.
From childhood intent on being a painter, she completed her artistic training at the Royal Academy Schools where she was taught by John Singer Sargent. In 1907 she married Clive Bell by whom she had two sons. Four years into the marriage she had a liberating affair with the critic and painter Roger Fry, with whom she was associated in setting up the Omega Workshops. This relationship had a decisive effect on her work as an artist, leading to a greater freedom in colour and composition, and the development of her talents as a decorator and designer. But the abiding love of Vanessa Bell's life for over fifty years was the painter Duncan Grant. Together they moved to Charleston in 1916 where two years later she gave birth to their daughter Angelica. The house remains as witness to their long and creative partnership.

Duncan Grant
1885-1978

It was through his cousin, Lytton Strachey, that Duncan Grant came into contact with Bloomsbury, where he found himself in kindred company with the artists Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry. Until his death at the age of ninety-three Duncan retained his innocent charm and perennial youthfulness. His daughter Angelica describes him as 'a man of instinct, [which] was what made him so different from the rest of Bloomsbury'.
Duncan Grant trained to be a painter in Paris; with Fry and Vanessa Bell he became a co-director of the Omega Workshops. He was a prolific artist who experimented in textiles, interior decoration, ceramics, murals, illustration and theatre design. It was he who in 1918 persuaded Maynard Keynes to extract government money for the purchase of paintings from the Degas sale, many of which are now in the National Gallery, London.
From 1914 Duncan lived and worked with Vanessa Bell, moving to Charleston with her and Bunny Garnett, where Angelica was born in 1918. Despite his homosexuality, he and Vanessa remained together for nearly fifty years.

Quentin Bell
1910-1996

The second of Vanessa Bell's three children, he described himself as 'pig in the middle'; his achievements were however to make him a respected figure in art and letters, achieving a rare distinction of University Professorships without ever having sat an examination. A modest and lovable man, he was a painter, potter, teacher and art historian; his many books include an acclaimed biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf. He was the first chairman of the Charleston Trust. He married Ann Olivier Popham in 1952; they had three children.

Angelica Garnett 1918-

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Vanessa Bell's daughter by Duncan Grant, she was born at Charleston on Christmas Day and raised as Clive Bell's child; she was not told of her true parentage until she was eighteen. She trained initially as an actress, but turned to painting and other arts (mosaic and sculpture). In 1942 she married David 'Bunny' Garnett, who had been living at Charleston when she was born; they had four daughters. Her autobiography, Deceived with Kindness is an exorcism of the ghosts of her Bloomsbury childhood, in which she writes of her early days at Charleston as 'a precarious paradise'. Angelica now lives in the south of France.

Julian Bell
1908-1937

A poet, the elder son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, he was an optimistic, argumentative and enthusiastic character. At Cambridge he associated with left-wing circles, and though opposed to Communism became friends with Anthony Blunt. In 1935 Julian Bell travelled to China to take up a post as Professor of English at the National University of Wuhan. He returned in 1937 to take part in the Spanish Civil War and was tragically killed while driving an ambulance six weeks after his arrival in Spain. 

Clive Bell
1881-1964

Born into a rich philistine family, he was educated at Cambridge where he met Thoby Stephen. He was to become an influential art critic, in the avant-garde of modern aesthetic theory. He worked closely with Roger Fry on the organisation of the two Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912; in 1914 he published his book Art in which he coined the term 'significant form'. In 1907 he married Vanessa Stephen; they had two children Julian and Quentin. Thereafter, although he and Vanessa remained friends, the marriage ceased to exist except in name. He had a number of affairs, the most enduring with Mary Hutchinson. Clive's personality contributed a worldly note to the bohemian atmosphere of Charleston, where he became a permanent resident in 1939.

David 'Bunny' Garnett
1892-1981

A publisher, editor and the author of eighteen novels, of which the best known are Lady into Fox and Aspects of Love (since adapted as a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber). An explosive and passionate character, Bunny had an intense relationship with Duncan Grant at the time when they were both conscientious objectors during World War One, working on the neighbouring farm to Charleston. He was present at the birth of Vanessa Bell's daughter by Duncan, Angelica, and she was to become his second wife after the death of his first, Ray (the sister of Frances Partridge).
After this marriage disintegrated in the 1970's Bunny spent his old age in France, writing, cooking and bee-keeping.

(John) Maynard Keynes 1883-1946

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Keynes's contribution to economics is recognised worldwide through the theory that still bears his name. His Cambridge friendships brought him into 'Bloomsbury', where his impressive mind and conversational skills made him a welcome addition to the group. His close friendship with Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant extended to giving them both considerable financial assistance. During World War One Keynes was working at the Treasury, but spent weekends at Charleston; he was the Treasury's chief representative at the Paris Peace Conference but, disillusioned with the negotiations, he resigned and and retreated to Charleston where he wrote his celebrated polemic The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). In 1925 he married the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova and settled in the neighbourhood of Charleston. He spent much of his personal wealth on collecting books and pictures and financing the Cambridge Arts Theatre; he was also instrumental in setting up the Arts Council of Great Britain, of which he was the first chairman. In 1942 he was created Baron Keynes of Tilton.

Lydia Keynes 1892-1981

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Lydia Lopokova trained as a ballerina at the Imperial School of Ballet in St Petersburg; her appearance with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1918 took London by storm. Maynard Keynes became captivated by her childlike gaiety and idiosyncratic English, and after the failure of Diaghilev's company, arranged accommodation for her in Bloomsbury.
Four years later, in 1925, she became his wife, an event that upset the equilibrium of Vanessa Bell's and Duncan Grant's close friendship with Keynes. Despite this, the couple moved to Tilton, less than a mile from Charleston, where Lydia continued to live after her husband's death.

Virginia Woolf 1882-1941

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Now recognised as one of the most imaginative and creative writers of the twentieth century, she became a prominent figure on the London literary scene, where the originality of her writing and the brilliance of her conversation commanded both admiration and antagonism.
A Londoner, Sussex became her second home from 1910; she lived in Firle, at Asheham and finally at Rodmell. After her sister Vanessa settled in Sussex - at her encouragement - she and her husband Leonard were frequent visitors to Charleston which, with its bohemian domesticity and rabble of noisy children, came to represent to her much that she felt she lacked in her own life.
Outstanding among Virginia Woolf's novels are To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway and The Waves; she was also a prolific literary critic, diarist and correspondent. Her feminist polemic A Room of One's Own is regarded as a seminal work.
Virginia Woolf suffered periodic nervous breakdowns, and in 1941 drowned herself in the River Ouse near Rodmell.

Leonard Woolf
1880-1969

With his wife Virginia, Leonard Woolf 'discovered' Charleston in 1916. The Woolf's remained permanent country neighbours, both at Asheham and at their eventual home in Rodmell, in frequent contact with the inhabitants of Charleston.
A contemporary of Clive Bell and Lytton Strachey at Cambridge, Leonard worked in the Ceylon Civil Service for seven years; he gave this up to marry Virginia. Together they founded the Hogarth Press which published, among many others, Freud, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and Vita Sackville-West. Over the course of his long life Leonard was a literary editor and journalist, a political writer, active in promoting the League of Nations and on various Labour Party committees. He was also the author of five volumes of autobiography.
Before drowning herself, Virginia expressed her recognition of his stoical love in her farewell note to him: 'I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good.

The external link below goes to the Charleston website where you can find out more about the Bloomsbury Group, opening times and visiting Charleston, festivals and events, gallery, how to support them and more
www.charleston.org.uk/