Saturday Essay: The Rich Ain't What They Used To Be
The Bloomsbury Group and the Death of Beauty
Charleston House
Like many English people of a certain type - let’s call them ‘culturally aspirational’ - I am fascinated by the Bloomsbury Group, that radical group of aesthetes, intellectuals and writers including Virginia Woolf, Duncan and Vanessa Bell, E.M. Forster and Maynard Keynes. They were also associated with Virginia Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville West, who was married to the writer, diplomat and architect Harold Nicolson.
They were on my mind because this week I paid a visit to Vita and Harold’s house and garden - or perhaps ‘castle’ and grounds is a better description - at Sissinghurst in Kent. For a writer, it was pure literary pornography. The vast library, the writing room that Vita practically lived in within the castle tower, ( see below ) and Harold’s writing room overlooking the gardens that they themselves designed. I am also a frequent visitor to Charleston House (see picture at top of thread), where Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf held court with other members of the set - having fantastically clever conversations no doubt and having same sex relations with anyone who was up for it, quite the innovation in the early part of the 20th century.
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