Visitors to Charleston – the Sussex farmhouse famous for being the rural retreat of the Bloomsbury Group – are allocated a small group in which you independently visit the rooms of the house. Each room has a volunteer to tell you a little about the room and the people, and to answer any questions. My tour of four included three Bloomsbury group aficionados. I was the odd one out wearing walking boots.
I’m not very knowledgeable about the characters other than they’re divisive: pioneering artists dismantling the suffocating social norms they lived in; or privileged bohemians cosplaying as radical artists? The other thing I knew were the works of Virginia Woolf, but only because Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse were inflicted upon me at school. It wasn’t long before I gave myself away to my fellow tour members.
My faux pas? Incorrectly identifying the sitter in a painting. I was politely corrected and left out of any further discussions. This allowed time to observe other people touring the house, for many of whom the visit appeared to be inducing a quasi-religious experience. Perhaps this level of devotion was to be expected, I was visiting during Charleston’s annual Literary Festival.
Charleston Farm was home to two of the Bloomsbury Group’s leading lights, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, from 1916 to 1978. They arrived as conscientious objectors at the height of the First World War. Farming was a way to escape enlisting. Soon the circle of artists, writers and intellectuals who had emerged in the Bloomsbury home of Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf, found their way to Sussex.
To describe their lives as unconventional is an understatement. They fully rejected the strict rules and rigidity of the Victorian era. Gender equality, infidelity and free expression of sexuality at a time when homosexuality was still illegal and women did not get the same rights to vote as men until 1928, was shocking and scandalous. It’s no wonder they chose a house some distance from the nearest village as a retreat.
Vanessa Bell was married to Clive Bell, a friend of her brother. A few years later though, she fell in love and began an affair with Roger Fry. They had two children together. By 1916 that was over and Vanessa moved to Charleston with her friend and lover, Duncan Grant. This was despite the fact that Duncan was accompanied by his partner, David ‘Bunny’ Garnett, along with a maid, cook and nurse.
Vanessa and Duncan remained together for the rest of her life. They even had a daughter, Angelica. They all pretended Angelica was the daughter of Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell, who continued to support Vanessa financially throughout her life. The famed economist, John Maynard Keynes, was a regular at the house and a former lover of Duncan. Just keeping track of all this must have been tricky.
The real shocker came in 1942 when Duncan’s other former lover, David ‘Bunny’ Garnett, married their daughter Angelica. Somehow this bisexual bohemia worked. What local people thought of all these shenanigans is anyone’s guess. What you see today is a house faithfully preserved as it had been when Vanessa and Duncan first moved in. It wouldn’t be overstating it to describe it as a shrine for some.
The house was dilapidated when they first arrived, but soon they were painting every surface in the building – walls, doors, fireplaces and furniture – and the house filled with sculptures, ceramics and fabrics. It is a striking ensemble and a memorable place to visit. In the building you can’t avoid the art, whether painted on a door frame or hanging in a frame. Much of it looked a bit arts and crafts.
The Bloomsbury Group were a major influence on British art culture, but their own work is summed up in a review of a revival exhibition at the Tate in 1999. “Grand masters of Mediocrity” went the headline, albeit in the Daily Mail. That doesn’t seem to have effected their enduring popularity. When I left to continue my walk on the South Downs Way, the house had become a little too crowded with devotees.
