Bloomsbury's Outsider (52 page)

The book contains themes common among Bunny's novels: homosexuality and the blurring of sexual boundaries; young women taking older men as lovers; women's entitlement to financial and sexual independence. But in one respect it differs considerably from his previous work. The blurb summarises the novel as a ‘light but far from frivolous story', perhaps because some of the ideas about human relationships therein derive from the sociologist Jacob Moreno. Bunny certainly lifted the word ‘telefactor' (the name he gives to Amadeo's invention) from this source. Moreover, Moreno's contention that the underlying and
surface structures of human society are mutually influential and cannot be detached from each other appears to have attracted Bunny, for it is one of the themes he develops in this book.
⁶

Bunny, who always saw himself as both scientist and novelist, would have enjoyed the idea that science can explain a deeper reality beneath superficial appearances, just as the novelist, in the words of St Clair de Beaumont, deals with ‘truths of the imagination'.
⁷
But in
Ulterior Motives
Bunny cleverly utilises Moreno's underlying and surface structures in a disquisition on morality which provides a socio-scientific rationale for his own double-standards in marriage. Alamein's uncle explains:

I am a scientist and I do not believe in sin. But I am telling you that there are two standards of value, or of behaviour. Each of them is equally necessary. Because they conflict we conceal most of our sexual lives and usually hide part of them from our sexual partners […]. But a double standard about sex is inevitable because the demands of the sex cells are irreconcilable with decent behaviour. And just as their existence as a separate form of human life is scarcely recognised, so their demands are unrecognised and misapprehended.
⁸

Bunny dedicated the book to Harold Hobson in ‘gratitude for a friendship begun in 1898'.

The novel also contains a sly dig at Michael Holroyd. Bunny had largely forgotten about the impending biography of Lytton
Strachey, but in June 1966 he went over to Frances Partridge's London flat to collect Holroyd's completed manuscript (volume one) left there by Duncan. This Bunny read over the next few days with growing alarm. He objected most to the ‘great mischief' he believed the published biography would cause. For Bunny maintained ‘the rule should be roughly that physical details be omitted' and that biographers ‘should not go into other people's love affairs'.
⁹
He was particularly concerned about how Lydia Lopokova and Geoffrey Keynes might feel in relation to revelations about Maynard's sexuality, and suggested that these revelations should be ‘translated into terms of intimate friendship'.
¹⁰

Bunny's overriding concern was that his friends, Duncan chief among them, would have their sexual lives and sexuality exposed. This was a real concern at a time – before the Sexual Offence Act of 1967 – when homosexual acts remained illegal. Robert Skidelsky, in his biography of Maynard Keynes, succinctly encapsulates the double-lives which homosexuals of the Bloomsbury generation had to maintain, especially if they were in the public eye: ‘Much in Keynes's life was coded, hidden from the prying outsider. His extreme reluctance to give interviews testifies to his self-protectiveness. He was not as he seemed, in appearance, habit or thought.'
¹¹
For the elderly gentlemen of Bloomsbury, it was a worrying prospect that their long-drawn shutters of secrecy would be thrown open. Duncan even feared arrest.
¹²

It was a difficult matter to confront, for it undermined Bloomsbury's belief in openness, although this openness was normally directed internally rather than towards a wider world. Bunny allowed the fictional St Clair to ventriloquise his concerns and those of much of Bloomsbury, about having their private lives revealed:

I have these old fashioned reticences. What I would like to tell my friends – for I conceal nothing – I would frankly dislike to see in print. In spite of all the enlightenment which has burst on us in these latter years, the old fashioned prejudices exist, I do not share them. But perhaps I am still a little afraid of them.
¹³

Bunny threw himself into the ‘Holroyd Question', firing off anxious letters to James Strachey and Duncan Grant. James admitted, grudgingly, that he found the biography ‘quite entertaining, and that in spite of the author's efforts, Lytton's character does […] begin to come through. And it can't be doubted that the young man has taken quite an immense amount of trouble.'
¹⁴
Duncan wrote to Holroyd, stating that he could not ‘help feeling very much averse to having my most private feelings of so long ago openly described', echoing Bunny's view that ‘the feelings of the living should be considered'. Although Duncan tried to be reasonable, to ‘take a more objective view', he quoted Bunny's opinion that despite changing attitudes, old-fashioned prejudice still prevailed.
¹⁵

Anxious about how he would be represented in Holroyd's second volume, Bunny wrote to James, asking to see it. Having given luncheon, in London, to the Canadian scholar, S.P. Rosenbaum, another chronicler of Bloomsbury, Bunny headed down to Lord's Wood, in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, the home of James and Alix Strachey. There he stayed up until the early hours reading Holroyd's manuscript, afterwards noting in his diary ‘ending of 2nd vol – Good'.
¹⁶
Even so, Bunny had what Frances Partridge described as a ‘heated conversation' with her on the subject. She could not understand his views in the light of his own published memoirs. Bunny retorted that ‘I've made it a rule not to make revelations about people who are still alive, or have relatives alive who would mind'. Frances regretted not raising the question of his own lengthy quotations from Ray's ‘intensely private and personal letters'.
¹⁷

Holroyd honourably took Bloomsbury's concerns into consideration, writing in more general terms of feelings ‘of great friendship rather than love'. But he refused to accept Bunny's view that his book would ‘harden people's reaction against homosexuality', explaining that ‘if Lytton's homosexual loves were treated not slyly or sensationally, but with openness and truth, using what was emotionally significant just as one would in describing a heterosexual love, then this would only have the effect of increasing tolerance'.
¹⁸
It would be another year before Holroyd's first volume was published, and after this flurry of concern, the furore temporarily died down.

Bunny's life was running more smoothly than for some time.
Not only had Angelica returned to him, at least at weekends, but Rosemary Peto had adopted the habit of joining him for lunch on Moby Dick. Despite letters protesting that the affair must end as she disliked being disloyal to her partner, Renee Fedden, Rosemary regularly returned for more. Angelica dropped Bunny a note, telling him ‘
I love
you – and my chief feeling is one of
thankfulness
that it has been possible for me to come back to you – & gratitude that you have made it so easy'.
¹⁹
Angelica's return meant everything for it restored family life to Hilton. As Bunny gleefully informed Sylvia: ‘My daughters arrive today: the garden is full of peas, globe artichokes, spinach, strawberries and raspberries starting. Angelica busy bottling fruit. Hive bursting with honey.'
²⁰
It was his idea of paradise.

In August The Cearne was sold. Bunny had given it to Amaryllis, and although he felt she should be free to do as she wanted, it was a terrible wrench. He spent a miserable couple of days clearing the attics of thousands of books. It was as though he was sweeping the house of memories. Although tenanted since Constance's death, the house had belonged to him, a symbol of his childhood and his parents' singular lives. Amaryllis had no childhood memories of The Cearne and had never lived there. Bunny regretted giving it to her, especially as she used the proceeds to buy a house near Angelica. ‘Islington', Frances Partridge noted dryly, ‘is now Bunny's idea of hell'.
²¹

On 11 November he left for his annual lecture tour in the US. Unusually he felt happy to depart: Duncan had recently exuded warmth and intimacy and there was the delightful
prospect of Angelica joining him in the New Year. From New York he made his customary pilgrimage to Carson McCullers at Nyack, but this was a saddening experience as she was now bedridden, though working on her autobiography. She died the following September.

Bunny's itinerary included additional universities, beginning with Vassar, where he lectured on Bloomsbury. From there he headed to Cornell, speaking about H.G. Wells and tutoring individual students. He met the novelist Alison Lurie, whose then husband, Jonathan Peale Bishop, taught there: it was the beginning of a gentle literary friendship. Having been invited to Cornell by Arthur Mizener, an academic working on a biography of Ford Madox Ford, Bunny was able to give him one of Ford's letters, which he had discovered lodged in the attic at The Cearne.

On 20 November Bunny flew to Toronto where he lectured at Massey College at the invitation of S.P. Rosenbaum. His feet barely touched the ground before he was off again, this time to Chicago, where he was met by Frances Hamill, who drove him to her family estate in Illinois. Bunny was particularly taken with her garage door: ‘you press a button in the car & the door opens & you drive in'.
²²
From there he took a train to Carbondale, where he dined with Harry and Beatrice Moore, before flying to San Francisco en route to lecture at Stanford. On 5 December Bunny arrived at Davis, California. Angelica wrote telling him she felt nothing but admiration for his stamina. With a gap to fill between lecturing at Davis in early December and at Texas in mid-January, Bunny arranged to stay at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, San Cristobal. Apart from one or two meals with Dorothy
Brett, who lived nearby, Bunny remained alone, surrounded by snow, pines and silence. He missed his home and family, writing wistfully to Angelica, ‘How I wish I could put my nose out at Hilton & look for the first primrose'.
²³

At the end of December Bunny flew to Los Angeles to meet the film-maker Jean Renoir, who wanted to film
Aspects of Love
. The project was hampered by financial considerations and both Renoir and Bunny feared the story would need to be modified to suit American casting. For these reasons they agreed the film should be made in France and Italy with English and French actors. Bunny thought the detour to LA worthwhile just to have met Renoir. While there, he dined with his old friend Elsa Lanchester who now resembled an ‘intelligent & kindly Pekinese'. Julie Andrews rang up, but Bunny was out at the time. His chief excitement, however, was the prospect of being with Angelica, to whom he wrote on 4 January 1967, saying how wonderful it was ‘to think that tomorrow you will be in New York – on the same continent'.
²⁴

From New York Angelica wrote telling Bunny she was thoroughly enjoying herself. Duncan's former lover, George Bergen, had taken her under his wing, and was ‘devoting himself entirely to my entertainment'.
²⁵
A week later Angelica and Bunny were reunited at Austin, Texas. Their Mexican holiday was generally successful and Bunny relished showing Angelica the places to
which he had travelled two years previously. When they returned to England on 16 February, Bunny had been away for three months.

After what seemed a honeymoon period things began to cool again. As Bunny told Sylvia, ‘I am alone with William and cook our meals. And when I am not alone with him the house is full at week-ends and I dispense drinks.'
²⁶
Bunny wrote Angelica a poem: ‘Summer does not come / Wind breaks branches, cancels the sun / […] Clouds cover you, you are swept away / All warmth cancelled and gone for good.'
²⁷
His self-pity did not last, as there was a more pressing cause for concern: Angelica had a lump in her breast. ‘I am to my own surprise not frightfully worried', she said, ‘So you must try not to be either'.
²⁸
It seemed like a cruel repetition. Bunny could not sleep for worry, but was a little reassured when Noel Olivier told him that treatment had improved considerably since Ray's time.

In August Angelica was admitted to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, where she underwent two operations, the second the removal of her ovaries to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence of the tumour. As Bunny told Sylvia, ‘I think and hope they have done what ought to have been done when the same thing happened to Ray'.
²⁹
Angelica was in hospital for two weeks, and Bunny visited every day for the first, travelling up from Hilton and back again. To Bunny's consternation, Angelica decided to convalesce at Charleston where Grace Higgens would care for her. It was partly an instinctive desire to return to her childhood
home, but it was also a means of evading what she considered to be Bunny's ‘over-emotionalism'.
³⁰
Bunny was distraught and Angelica eventually capitulated to his pleas to look after her. In the event she told Leonard Woolf, Bunny had in fact ‘restrained himself & has fed me deliciously & I have myself improved considerably'.
³¹
She made such progress that on 1 September she left, with Duncan and Nerissa, for St Martin-de-Vers.

Bunny took part in a BBC radio broadcast about Virginia Woolf and in a BBC television panel game,
Take It or Leave It
, a literary quiz chaired by Robert Robinson. In respect of the latter, Bunny confessed to appearing much to his disadvantage, hindered, no doubt, by his habit of punctuating his sentences with long pauses in search of an appropriate word. On 17 September he set off for St Martin-de-Vers where he coincided with Angelica and Nerissa for just a week, before they left. Alone, he devoted much of his time to collecting sloes and mushrooms. In early October his solitude was interrupted by Alison Lurie who stopped for a couple of days, as arranged. They got on well, ‘in a charming professional way', talking about their families, writers and writing.
³²