All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Some Chinese Echoes at Charleston, Bloomsbury’s Sussex Retreat

Posted: May 25th, 2021 | No Comments »

In 1916, the painter Vanessa Bell and her friend and lover Duncan Grant moved to Charleston in East Sussex along with Duncan’s partner David Garnett. It was the height of the First World War and, as conscientious objectors, Garnett and Grant needed to find farm work to avoid conscription. Maynard Keynes lived at Charleston for considerable periods as did Lytton Strachey. Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry were frequent visitors. Inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists, the artists decorated the walls, doors and furniture at Charleston. Julian Bell, the son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, famouly went to China in 1935 to teach at Wuhan University and scandalously had an affair with Ling Shu Hua, the wife  of  Professor Chen, the head of his department. After China Julian went to Spain and was killed driving an ambulance in the Civil War.

There are a few echoes of China and Julian at Charleston…which is now open again to visitors and managed by the National Trust….

portrait – Julian Bell Writing by Duncan Grant, painted around 1928
the portrait is above Vanessa’s bed – here preserved almost exactly as the room was when she died in 1961
Chinese dragon incense stick holder – brought home from China by Julian, a gift or from a Bloomsbury antique store?
bookshelf in Duncan Grant’s studio with a photograph of Nijinsky
And you can see a copy of Letters from John Chinaman and Other Essays by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (who was close to the Bloomsbury Group) firest published in 1901.

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