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Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

1:10

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me,

1:12

the radio for comedy podcast that takes history

1:14

seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a

1:16

public historian, author and broadcaster. And for our

1:18

100th episode, hooray, party poppers in the air,

1:21

we are firing up the You're Dead to

1:23

Me time machine and travelling back 100 years

1:26

to learn all about some extraordinary intellectuals

1:28

and creatives. The Bloomsbury Group. And

1:31

joining us for our very own You're Dead to Me centenary

1:33

are two very special guests. In

1:36

History Corner, she's a poet and academic at the

1:38

University of Glasgow, where she's a reader in

1:40

English literature. She's an expert on the life and

1:42

literature of Virginia Woolf and is general editor of

1:44

the Cambridge University Press edition of Woolf's works. It's

1:47

Dr Jane Goldman. Welcome, Jane. Thank you.

1:49

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank

1:51

you for inviting me. Lovely to have

1:53

you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian,

1:56

podcaster and writer. You'll have seen her loads

1:58

on the telly, on Mock the Week, live at

2:00

the Apollo and heard her loads on radio,

2:02

various comedy shows or on her podcasts out

2:04

like-minded friends and Big Kick Energy and you'll

2:06

definitely remember her from our episode about LGBTQ

2:09

history. It's a sensational Susie Ruffle. Welcome back

2:11

Susie. Hello, thank you for having me. Oh,

2:13

it's light to have you back. You're a

2:15

guest all the way on series one in

2:17

the mists of time and we loved having

2:19

you on and then we got a bit

2:21

stuck in trying to get you back in

2:23

because of like dates and things. Yes. But

2:26

you're here. We're here and I'm very excited.

2:28

And also our 100th episode. It

2:30

feels special. It feels very special. It

2:32

does indeed. You've worn a fedora, a

2:34

lip-dress, nothing gum. Yeah, as always, I'm

2:36

dressed as Virginia Woolf. I hate you,

2:38

I appreciate that. No, I'm being silly

2:41

but no, it's lovely to have you here and we found

2:43

out last time that you didn't love history at

2:45

school but actually you like history. Yes. What

2:48

do you know of the Bloomsbury group? Is that a history you've got

2:50

in your head? I found school very

2:52

hard and I probably mentioned this before.

2:54

I'm quite severely dyslexic and I think that just makes

2:56

all of school difficult. If you don't have

2:58

great teachers and sadly, I don't think all of my teachers are

3:00

great. But I do have a

3:02

general interest in history and what do I know

3:05

about the Bloomsbury group? I

3:07

know that it was in the first half of

3:09

the 1900s and they were a

3:11

group of sort of academics

3:13

and artists and people

3:16

that knew a lot about

3:18

stuff. I know that lots of them went

3:20

to Cambridge and the women were at King's.

3:22

Ah. Is

3:25

that a thing? And then I know that

3:27

Virginia Woolf had a sister who was an artist. I think they were both

3:29

in it. There were lots of people that

3:31

were having lots of different relationships.

3:34

I mean, it's a pretty good summary of the podcast, to be honest. Is

3:37

that fair? That's sort of all I know. I've never read

3:39

any of Virginia Woolf to my shame and I

3:41

watched a play called Inheritance that had something to do

3:43

with the M4 stuff. And that's it. That's everything. I

3:45

think that qualifies you. It's good that you

3:47

know about King's College because not a lot

3:50

of people know that Virginia Woolf actually went

3:52

to university. Yes. Because

3:54

she used to not mention it herself

3:56

very much. She liked to play up that she hadn't

3:59

had a formal education. So

4:01

the to so. And will

4:03

go may watch out there. And.

4:07

South Korean or. So.

4:14

Let's start the poor costs for the first

4:16

segment. this is the some what do you

4:18

know Mrs want how to go at guessing

4:20

what you are love listener might know about

4:22

a subject and I reckon you've heard of

4:25

brings regroup much with Susie mine who's much

4:27

as these it's and also sometimes when it's

4:29

blink reset and you may have heard of

4:31

couple of the members superstar novelist Virginia Woolf

4:33

author of the Ferries books including a Room

4:35

of One's Own, Mrs And Away perhaps the

4:37

most famous Culture and com com and mountains

4:39

in the movie be hours to for the

4:41

focus of the recent movie if he to

4:43

and Victoria. When about a love affair

4:46

with eat, it sucks less Susie doing

4:48

a memory face hasn't And perhaps you

4:50

know the novels of Enforcer or seen

4:52

one of his big or small screen

4:54

adaptations of Passage to India, Howards End,

4:56

A Room With A View. And if

4:58

you're a fan of progressive economics and

5:00

government investment hey, who isn't than you

5:02

know about John Maynard Keynes and Teams

5:05

in Economics. Ball. Not be

5:07

other members of the Bloomsbury group. and

5:09

what do we know about this could

5:11

areas group Who, according to the American

5:14

writer Dorothy Parker, lived in squares painted

5:16

in circles and loved in triangles. Let's

5:18

find out. right? This.

5:21

Is a hundred episode of your debts me will

5:23

vary just we thought it be fun to jump

5:25

back to Nineteen Twenty Four to go back a

5:27

hundred years. Then we realized that I see not

5:29

going away which is spell I sproles over three

5:31

decades and we'd end up spending the whole episode.

5:34

Disguise are we really want to do this but

5:36

we can't is not going to Twenty Fourth. So

5:38

it's been a plan which is doing the blues

5:40

regroup. Sorry but Susie, we're going to take you

5:42

to Nineteen Fifteen an hour. Cool London party. Yet

5:45

you know and I'd say it's oh I am.

5:47

Imagine you've been to plenty of cool on them

5:49

policies in the Twenty First century. Hey. Listen,

5:51

circumstances little. Fss. So what

5:54

are you imagining as a nineteen fifteen

5:56

to london party will is divide the

5:58

think. So. i'm saying Have you

6:00

seen that Stephen Fryfield bright young thing? Mm-hmm. Is

6:03

that kind of the vibe? Okay. I don't know if that's the

6:05

right period at all, but I feel like, would it be flappers?

6:07

No, is that the wrong period? Kind of, a bit early. 1915

6:10

is during the First World War. First World War.

6:13

A little bit before the flappers. Okay, so we're keeping the home fires

6:15

burning. We're crying. The Titanic's just

6:17

sunk. People are wearing those sorts of things.

6:20

People are talking about the unsinkable Molly

6:22

Brown. Rose is still alive. Jack's very

6:24

much dead. Oh. Is

6:26

that good? Is that good? Good guesses.

6:29

I mean, they're joining us. Yeah, great guesses, right? Jane, I'd say

6:31

it's a bit more raucous than that. Opium?

6:33

Oh, I mean, possibly. I mean, there's probably... Oh, they took

6:35

cocaine, but it was legal then, so... Yeah,

6:37

sure. Oh, they're kind of stale. Is that what they're saying? Yeah, I

6:39

mean, pretty much, we've just been pharmacies at the time. Jane,

6:42

this party was thrown by the brilliantly

6:44

named Lady Otheline Morell. It

6:46

sounds like a sort of Hunger Games character. So

6:50

this is 25th of March 1915, Lady Otheline

6:52

Morell's house. What is it about

6:54

this party that sums up the Bloomsbury group? Well,

6:57

partying for peace was what

6:59

Bloomsbury were into during

7:01

World War I. Otheline Morell

7:03

hosted weekly revels in her

7:06

Bloomsbury home against the

7:08

war, supporting conscientious

7:10

objectors and pacifists.

7:13

Writer Arnold Bennett's diary

7:16

entry for the 25th of March 1915 talks

7:20

about the festivities that began

7:22

with a radical art exhibition

7:25

before moving to the Morells, I quote,

7:28

gathering of an immense

7:30

reunion of art students, painters

7:33

and queer people, girls

7:36

in fancy male costume, queer

7:38

dancing, et cetera, fine

7:41

pictures, glorious drawings by

7:43

Picasso, excellent

7:45

impression of host and hostess.

7:48

That's what he says in his diary. Wow.

7:50

I mean, that sounds like quite the shindig.

7:52

Yeah, it really does. Now, Bloomsbury at that period,

7:55

obviously the thing with Bloomsbury now, it's sort of quite, it's

7:57

very out of market, it's quite geegee. Then, would it be a bit

7:59

of a surprise? have been... No, it was

8:01

a dump and it wasn't

8:03

the place for young ladies to really

8:05

live. Even though they were

8:07

all wealthy, right? They were all wealthy to

8:10

a degree. Yeah. Yeah. But none of them

8:12

were like, oh, I've got to get up

8:14

early because I'm cleaning someone's gas. No,

8:16

no. They didn't marry off by

8:18

a house of their own and

8:21

then reproduce the British Empire when

8:24

Virginia Woolfiner's siblings' father

8:27

died and they

8:29

got rid of... They left Hyde Park

8:31

Gate House, Posh House in Kensington, and

8:33

they moved to Bloomsbury and set up

8:35

flat chairs with their mates. Right. Yeah.

8:37

So that was radical to do that.

8:39

Yeah, of course. Yeah. But

8:42

Susie, there was a very important

8:44

lexicographical landmark in that diary

8:46

entry. Do you want to get what it was? We're

8:48

going to have to start with what lexicographical is. Let me

8:50

admit, in terms of linguistic heritage and history,

8:52

there was a word used in that diary

8:55

entry by Arnold Bennett that's really important to

8:57

dictionary writers. Do you know what the word

8:59

was? Was it queer?

9:01

Yeah, it was. Yeah. It's the first

9:03

ever use of that in published writing.

9:05

Right. To mean unusual.

9:08

No. To mean a

9:10

sexual orientation. But it had

9:13

been used as unusual before then. Yes. Yes.

9:15

Yeah. Yeah. But now it has

9:17

a particular sexual orientation which can't

9:19

be ignored. The Oxford English Dictionary

9:22

cites Arnold Bennett's term queer

9:25

in this diary entry as

9:27

the earliest published modern usage

9:30

of the word queer. And

9:32

Vanessa Bell, likewise, writes

9:35

of the queer effect

9:37

of these parties in a letter to one of

9:39

her pals. So imagine

9:42

Bertie Russell, that's Bertrand Russell,

9:44

the philosopher, dancing a hornpipe,

9:48

Augustus John and Arnold

9:50

Bennett, all the celebrities

9:52

of the day, looking as beautiful

9:54

as they could in clothes

9:56

seized from Ottoline's drawers.

10:00

And Ottoline herself at the head

10:02

of the troop of short-haired young

10:04

ladies from the Slade

10:06

prancing about. So

10:09

you're not wrong about the flapper vibe because

10:11

they all have the bobbed hair. But

10:14

also what's clear from Vanessa's

10:16

letter and Bennett's diary

10:18

entry is that

10:20

Bloomsbury was already synonymous with

10:23

queer and Bloomsbury and

10:25

sex were synonymous. There's

10:27

an amazing moment Virginia Woolf recalls

10:30

later in her memoir when

10:32

she's in Fitzroy Square living

10:35

with various pals and

10:37

Lytton Straitschy is lingering

10:39

at the doorway and he points

10:41

his finger at a stain on

10:43

Vanessa Bell's dress and

10:45

he inquired, �Semen?� Woolf

10:49

says, �With that one word,

10:52

all the barriers of reticence

10:54

and reserve went down. A

10:56

flood of the sacred fluid

10:59

seemed to overwhelm us. Sex

11:02

permeated our conversation.

11:05

And the word bugger was never

11:07

far from our lips.� Wow!

11:10

So Bloomsbury's become a

11:12

hotbed of experimental ways

11:15

of living, embracing

11:17

openness on everything, sexuality,

11:19

queer existence, polyamory, class

11:21

consciousness and they championed

11:24

at the same time

11:26

avant-garde European art and

11:28

their own Bloomsbury style of

11:30

art. So we know why they

11:33

call the Bloomsbury set because that's where they hang

11:35

out but later on they move out into other

11:37

homes of theirs. Charleston's perhaps the most famous one,

11:39

Jane? What else is there? Yeah, I mean

11:41

they always had a foothold in Bloomsbury but

11:44

the other places apart from Charleston Farmhouse which

11:46

you can go and visit today, the Woolf

11:49

lived at Monk's House in

11:51

Sussex, Litton's Straitshe had a

11:53

menage at Tidmarsh and then

11:55

Ham's Spray House, the

11:57

Morells had Darthington Manor

12:00

As well as a Bloomsbury

12:02

Gas and Roger Fry lifted

12:04

turbans. And then there's the outliers

12:07

V to suck the west. A

12:09

long born and Sissinghurst which is good.

12:11

A famous garden for beautiful garden says

12:13

he has slipped in a tower and

12:16

I'll did say i know you could

12:18

just as this lovely a grew up

12:20

near. that's how are pretty Turnesa a

12:23

very to my water domestic hasn't got

12:25

I celebrate yeah why not save was

12:27

a compensation really because some she wasn't

12:29

allowed to inherit know house because of

12:32

Primer Genesis Arms isn't It's the law

12:34

by which only the mail on best

12:36

born Nine Nine and terrorists. And

12:38

see was unfortunately of the wrong

12:40

gender. So. I think

12:43

in this town was little compensation for a

12:45

house that had three hundred the sixty five

12:47

rooms one for each day of the yeah.

12:51

I. Did it him at a yeah. I'm in

12:53

so many cousins The Spirit Nesmith I

12:55

see the during this episode we are

12:57

going to bombarding you with very complicated

12:59

past the relations between us and we

13:01

thought we'd actually help you navigate that

13:03

by printing off a kind of relationship

13:05

map. Yes I hope he's in front

13:07

of you. Arm or fantastic

13:10

persist in Muslim has put this together. It is

13:12

a set of l what style. As they

13:14

say, this is Emily Emily food. You're gonna sit

13:16

on the L word or so I have. A

13:19

lot more success as the I said that the

13:21

dynamics in common and send to tell him i'm

13:23

yeah thought so you could have names on there

13:25

are now they're related to each other. You can

13:27

see that it's is gonna get quite messy as

13:29

we go. Less this is your life raft. Look

13:31

down on this and you'll know where we are.

13:33

com be my life process sausage and he's ssssss

13:35

that well as I see it. you know. Look

13:37

at where, don't confront his and think

13:39

same. Okay, great. He definitely had an

13:42

ear lot of action for most of

13:44

the directions. Oh, I think so. Did

13:46

John Maynard Keynes? I'm sure this

13:48

is his semen. inquest oh gosh as

13:51

well as his son for know how i

13:53

could be wrong about that know though he

13:55

said the blue three group is based rumbling

13:57

free which i think is entirely fair lashes

13:59

Susie, you've already alluded to this, Cambridge. How

14:01

does Cambridge sort of predate

14:03

Lunesbury? Partly, it began at the

14:06

turn of the 20th century when

14:08

Toby Steven, Virginia Woolf and

14:10

Vanessa Bell's brother, went to Cambridge

14:12

University. At Cambridge,

14:15

Toby hung out with

14:17

a secret all-male elite

14:19

intellectual conversation group, the

14:21

Cambridge... Oh, God! They

14:23

couldn't think of anything worse. Go

14:26

on. Oh, no, you might be

14:28

pleasantly surprised. Fans of

14:30

philosopher G. E. Moore, and

14:33

he recommended the pleasures

14:36

of human intercourse and

14:39

the admiration of beautiful

14:41

objects. And I think some

14:43

of the Bloomsbury group took that

14:45

intercourse quite literally. Yes. The

14:47

members were Clive Bell,

14:50

Leonard Woolf, Lytton Straitschy,

14:52

Toby Steven, Adrian Steven,

14:55

E. M. Forster and John

14:57

Maynard Keynes. But they also

15:00

pulled in Lytton Straitschy's handsome

15:02

Scottish cousin, Duncan Grant, who was

15:05

at art college at the time.

15:07

So these are our fancy nerds. Sure. And

15:09

they're all having a good time. They are

15:12

a member of this secret organisation called the

15:14

Cambridge Apostles. Quite obscure. And on the 5th

15:16

of May 1901, they wrestled with the eternal

15:19

question, Susie. The big one we've

15:21

all asked. Yeah. Are crocodiles the

15:23

best of animals? No. I'm

15:25

pleased you've had the chat and I'm pleased you've invited

15:28

me in for it. Now, can I ask a quick

15:30

question? Would all of these men have been... I'm not

15:32

suggesting they were elitists, but they would all have been

15:34

from wealth to a degree. So go to Cambridge at

15:36

that time. Short answer, yes.

15:38

They would all expect sort

15:40

of positions of administration in

15:42

the empire, and lots of

15:44

them went to Eton and

15:46

Cambridge and came from... But

15:48

some of them were also

15:50

anti-imperialists, right? Yeah. It's referred

15:52

to as the Bloomsbury Fraction

15:54

by Raymond Williams. The idea

15:56

that some of the elite

15:58

turns against itself. So a

16:00

lot of Virginia Woolf's work is about looking

16:03

at how people are inducted into a

16:05

system that they know is wrong. I'm

16:08

surprised that you picked out, are

16:10

crocodiles the best of animals? Because

16:13

the Apostles' paper that sticks in

16:15

my mind is the one by

16:17

Lytton Straitschy who tried

16:19

to define civilization. And

16:21

he said the height of civilization would

16:24

be when we could f

16:26

and bugger publicly in the

16:28

streets. And

16:31

that's the height of civilization. The height

16:33

of civilization. He makes a point that

16:35

the top echelon of civilization would be

16:37

the Borde class. He would

16:39

absolutely love Leather Weekend in Berlin with you

16:41

in my large. He would. He'd

16:43

love it just for him. The two great questions then.

16:46

Are crocodiles great and should we be bunking in the

16:48

streets? I mean the crocodile question is the kind of

16:50

thing I would debate with my four year old daughter.

16:53

Sure. The other one less so.

16:55

And actually quite right actually. Quite right. So

16:57

we've introduced Toby Steven. I'll be honest

16:59

Jane. I've never heard of him but

17:01

the older brother of Virginia and Vanessa

17:04

who are the Stevens right there. The Steven

17:06

sisters because they're not yet wolf. Yeah well

17:09

poor Toby died. Yeah. Young.

17:12

He died in 1906 after going on a Greek

17:14

holiday and he caught typhoid. But

17:16

he's responsible for moving himself and

17:18

his siblings out to Bloomsbury from

17:21

the posh house that they'd lived

17:23

in. It's there

17:25

that Toby began hosting Thursday

17:27

evenings to keep up conversation

17:30

or intercourse with his Cambridge

17:32

friends. And this

17:34

was radical because now it included

17:37

women with a radical openness

17:39

and no taboos to the

17:41

conversation. So then his

17:43

sister Vanessa began the Friday Club

17:45

in 1905 focusing

17:48

on visual art but covering all

17:50

the same loose topics as well.

17:53

These two groups do form

17:55

Bloomsbury's roots. But Greg

17:57

you have to pay attention to the day.

18:02

1910. Virginia Woolf said on or

18:04

about December 1910 human character changed.

18:07

And in 1910, I would

18:09

say it's the formative Bloomsbury moment when

18:11

the artist critic who also went

18:14

to Cambridge, but not at the

18:16

same time, Roger Fry, met

18:19

some Bloomsbury's randomly on

18:21

a train and involved

18:23

them in his shocking post-impressionist

18:26

exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London. Yeah.

18:28

When we say Bloomsbury, they call themselves the

18:30

Blooms Berries as inner fruit, which is rather

18:32

cute. We refer to them, I guess, as

18:34

Blooms Berries. Sure. That's all right. So the

18:37

Thursday Club and the Friday Club, it's not

18:39

the most original. I mean, these are brilliant

18:41

intellectuals, not the best names. No,

18:43

but there is sort of an honesty and simplicity,

18:45

I think. No, I'm interested in Roger Fry, though.

18:48

What was he doing that was so sort of

18:50

outrageous? Was it sort of rude pictures? Basically,

18:53

he brought to

18:55

Britain for the first time,

18:57

Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, all

18:59

of them dead, Manet, but truly

19:02

shocking to the British audience. And

19:04

he put on this big show and everybody

19:06

was outraged. I mean, things that we now

19:09

think of as quite chocolate boxy

19:11

paintings, you know, think of Gauguin,

19:13

think of Van Gogh. People

19:16

horrified. Why? Because it wasn't

19:18

straightforward. I think the shock of the new,

19:20

isn't it? The shock of the new, but

19:22

we'll get to that in my nuance window.

19:25

Oh, stay tuned for the

19:27

nuance window. I guess we should

19:29

start with the writers, because that's

19:31

the Thursday gang. Have you heard of

19:33

E.M. Forster? I have. Yeah. Because that

19:36

play The Inheritance. That play is

19:38

set during the AIDS epidemic. So I knew that

19:40

he was a writer, but I know that he

19:42

was gay. Yeah. Did he write about India? Did

19:44

he travel a lot to India? Yeah,

19:46

that's it. That's a

19:48

good summary. Jane, do you want to give us a bit more detail?

19:50

Well, he was born in London in 1879 and

19:53

he was baptized Edward

19:56

Morgan Forster, avoiding

19:58

being baptized. Henry because

20:00

his dad accidentally gave his own name

20:02

to the vicar. I

20:04

love that. At Cambridge, Forster

20:07

was massively influenced by the

20:09

openly gay and feminist Edward

20:12

Carpenter, who is the author of

20:14

many things, including a book called

20:16

The Intermediate Sex. Forster

20:19

too was gay, stationed in

20:21

Egypt with the British Red Cross

20:23

in World War One. He

20:25

had his first sexual encounter. I mean,

20:28

how do researchers know this? His

20:31

long passionate affair with Mohammed

20:33

El-Adal, an Egyptian tram

20:35

conductor, made him feel, I

20:38

quote, a grown up man. Mohammed

20:41

died of consumption in 1922. But

20:45

the greatest love of E.M.

20:47

Forster's life was Bob Buckingham,

20:49

a burly young

20:51

policeman, whom he met in 1930. And

20:56

despite Buckingham's marriage, at which

20:58

Forster was a witness, their

21:01

relationship flourished for years. Yeah. He also

21:03

wrote quite an impressive line this, I

21:05

should have been a more famous writer

21:07

if I had written or rather published

21:09

more, but sex prevented the latter. Ha!

21:12

Sounds like he was just too busy

21:14

getting his end away. And, you know,

21:16

fair enough. Oh, you're writing a book. Well,

21:19

yeah, sure. Sure, I mean, I've got

21:21

loads of time to write it, if I want to. Was

21:24

he writing about queer stuff or was it

21:26

like coded? No, so this is a great question,

21:28

Susie. This is coded. But there

21:30

is a very famous important book of

21:32

his called, is it Morris or Maurice?

21:34

Maurice. Yeah. So basically, he published

21:36

between 1905 and 1910 four novels. And

21:42

Mohammed, he inspired the later

21:44

book, A Passage to India of 1924. This

21:48

is his Egyptian pal and lover.

21:50

So but he finished this book, Maurice,

21:53

in 1914. However,

21:55

it was only published posthumously a

21:58

year after he died in 1914. 1971

22:01

because it's about a gay relationship with what

22:04

he called an Imperative

22:06

happy ending so

22:08

Forster wrote about this I

22:10

was determined that in fiction Anyway,

22:13

two men should fall in love

22:15

and remain in it for the

22:18

ever and ever that fiction allows

22:20

So he wrote it in 1914 and he

22:23

had to wait until Homosexuality became

22:25

legalized. Yeah, or it was published and

22:27

he died by then we'd get such

22:29

a trope of the Berry

22:31

your gaze trope where? LGBTQ stories

22:33

often end with tragedy. Yeah, and he was sort

22:35

of saying it's imperative that this one is happy

22:38

ever after And that's something that still happens now.

22:40

Hmm. There's a cliche of killing

22:42

off lesbians. Mmm So

22:45

let's move on to my favorites purely because

22:47

he's a historian listen to Straykie.

22:49

He's very waspish and witty Jane Can you

22:51

tell us more about that? Listen straight cheap,

22:53

please? Giles lit and

22:56

straight cheap born London 1880

22:59

to lieutenant general sir Richard

23:02

straight cheap and Jane

23:04

Maria a prominent suffragist

23:07

So kind of military but also

23:09

liberal feminist. Yes, interesting Is that

23:12

dad's in the army? Yes, and

23:14

mum's like, you know votes are

23:16

women. It's it's like a Mary

23:19

Poppins movie Anyway, most famous book

23:21

which caused the scandal was eminent

23:23

Victorians And it's still viewed today

23:26

as groundbreaking work because of its

23:28

modernist approach to biography and

23:30

in this collection of satirical irreverent

23:33

portraits of four prominent

23:35

Victorians Cardinal Manning

23:38

Florence Nightingale Thomas Arnold

23:41

and General

23:43

Gordon Straychie

23:45

with great flair and

23:47

wit challenged traditional

23:49

hagiographic Depictions

23:52

of historical figures so it

23:54

wasn't all praising fat generals

23:56

on horses. It was actually

23:59

humanizing them And a critical

24:01

look. Yeah. And a very critical and

24:03

satirical because, you know, this is what

24:05

this generation's inherited. This Victorian values which

24:08

have sent them very

24:10

shortly into war. So

24:12

likewise, he also did a biography

24:15

of Queen Victoria, which certainly

24:17

demystifies and humanizes her. It's

24:20

worth reading, actually. It's quite shocking. It's

24:22

for the time subversive. I mean,

24:24

now you'd be like, ooh, but at the time it was the

24:27

Queen. Shade. He was gay,

24:29

right? How unusual. Another person

24:32

we have to talk about

24:34

is John Maynard Keynes. And

24:40

your relationship map, Susie, you will probably see

24:42

there's quite a lot going on between John

24:44

Maynard Keynes, Lydon Straitschy and Duncan Grant. The

24:47

three of them. Yeah, he's quite busy. Yeah.

24:50

And let's not forget, this is the man that

24:52

went on to found the British Arts Council. You

24:55

know, he's a very eminent person as

24:57

well as a great economist. Yes,

24:59

it is a great shagger. I

25:02

wouldn't know personally, but manifestly was. Anyway,

25:08

that was not Lydon Straitschy's only

25:10

love triangle. At Cambridge,

25:13

Lydon Straitschy had a scene with

25:15

John Maynard Keynes and

25:17

others before falling for your

25:20

Shane Duncan Grant. According

25:23

to Keynes, a Straitschy called

25:25

Grant the full moon of heaven.

25:29

Keynes replied anyone

25:31

could fall in love with Duncan if he

25:33

wanted to. And by

25:35

1907, this had actually happened. Keynes

25:38

and Grant began a secretive affair

25:41

and Straitschy was heartbroken by

25:43

Grant's choosing Keynes over him.

25:48

Straitschy was in another love

25:50

triangle involving, this is maybe

25:52

some daddy issues here, involving

25:54

a young military officer called

25:56

Ralph Partridge and the

25:58

artist Dora Carrington. who was

26:01

Straitschy's lifelong close platonic

26:03

friend. Now Ralph Partridge

26:05

and Dora Carrington fell in love

26:08

and they got married in 1921.

26:10

Litton Straitschy paid for

26:12

the wedding. And despite

26:14

Carrington's unrequited desire for

26:16

Litton Straitschy and Straitschy's

26:19

unrequited desire for Partridge,

26:21

all three of them

26:24

honeymooned together. And then

26:26

they lived together for many

26:28

years in Hamsprey House, all

26:30

of them taking more lovers

26:33

outside their menage. And

26:35

Litton Straitschy, get this, he

26:37

and his last lover

26:40

Roger Senhouse experimented with

26:42

crucifixion sex. Yeah,

26:45

I mean, not I've experienced anything like this,

26:47

but I sort of like, certainly when you're

26:50

a young queer person, it's ever so reassuring when

26:53

you read stuff about people where you know that

26:55

you've been here before, people like you have been

26:57

here before. And you know, you would look at

26:59

this and go, Oh, how modern? It's like a

27:02

century ago. Yeah, 100 years ago. Yeah, it's wild. But it's

27:06

also there's something sort of so unapologetically

27:09

honest about it that you go, it's good

27:11

to see you. It is like there's a

27:13

dark shadow in history, which is

27:16

the Victorian era, which was hypocritically

27:19

very sexualized culture, but pretended not to

27:21

be. Yeah. Why was Queen Victoria such

27:23

a prude? She wasn't. I mean, this

27:26

is the thing Queen Victoria loves sex,

27:28

you know, she was just documented. She

27:30

fancied the pants off her husband. And

27:32

yeah, nine kids gave her erotic art.

27:35

They were deeply erotic people. But this

27:37

idea that Victorians has proved it's more

27:39

of an Edwardian idea that sort of

27:42

retroactively applied. But the Victorians invented

27:44

modern pornography, they were Randy. So

27:47

Bloomsbury are rebelling against some of the hypocrisy.

27:49

It's not that sex isn't happening, it's just

27:51

that they're being honest about it. Yeah, I

27:53

thought they might be having a bit more than other people. I

27:55

think they they're having a bit more. We

27:57

don't want people. Yeah. But

28:00

we've mentioned John Maynard Keynes, so he is this

28:02

sort of great genius economist. Jane, do you want

28:04

to give us sort of a brief press here?

28:06

OK. Born in 1883, he was

28:09

educated at Eaton and Cambridge,

28:12

an economics maths genius, whom

28:14

is school banned from maths

28:16

competitions because it was unfair

28:18

on the other kids? They

28:21

did that to my mum at school, no, because

28:23

she was such a fast runner. Oh. She wasn't

28:25

allowed to be in the running races with the

28:27

girls, she beat them all too easily. She used

28:29

to have to race the boys. Really? She'll beat

28:31

them. Wow. Do you know how Margaret Thatcher hated

28:34

John Keynes? Because he stood for

28:36

a certain kind of economics. Well,

28:38

he was very rebellious early on in his career.

28:41

In 1915, he began work

28:43

at the Treasury, but he

28:45

resigned and discussed from his position

28:48

after the post-war Versailles Treaty, when

28:50

the Allies got together to carve

28:52

up the spoils and try and

28:54

get reparations from Germany. And

28:57

he was so shocked by how greedy and

28:59

stupid they all were that

29:01

he resigned and he predicted

29:03

that their settlement would cause

29:05

another catastrophic world war. Well,

29:07

he wasn't wrong. In

29:10

1925, he married the

29:12

famous Ballet-Rousse ballerina, Russian

29:15

ballerina, Lydia Lopokova. His

29:18

major work, General Theory of

29:21

Employment, Interest and Money, brilliant.

29:25

Challenged classical economic theories

29:28

arguing for government intervention

29:31

as necessary to stabilize

29:33

economies during recessions. It

29:35

had a profound impact on economic

29:38

thought and policy until

29:40

about 1979, when Margaret

29:42

Thatcher came in and supposedly burned a

29:44

copy of Keynes on Downing

29:47

Street Steps. That's probably not true, but

29:49

people say it's a good story. Let

29:52

me just get this right. He would have

29:54

been all for sort of nationalized stuff. He

30:00

thinks that there's more to life, you

30:02

know, going back to those Cambridge conversations.

30:04

Pleasure, beautiful things, everybody deserves

30:07

that. And that economics

30:09

is a fiction and you can

30:11

intervene and restructure. He basically

30:14

believes government is there for a purpose to

30:16

serve the people. Well I mean,

30:18

it seems like a wild idea given our character with

30:20

it. Yeah, okay. Yeah,

30:22

Kingsley was incredibly clever, but he's also

30:24

got this sort of artsy, polyamorous

30:27

life where he's sort of hanging out with

30:29

artists and thinkers and writers and Russian ballet

30:31

dancers and wives. He's a sexy nerd. He's

30:33

a sexy nerd, is what he is. He

30:35

found the words. Sexy nerds.

30:38

Yep. So there we go. All

30:40

the nerds listening, carrying their arms. All nerds

30:42

are sexy, no? Yeah, sure. Ryan

30:47

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price

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to amazon.com/ad-free true crime to catch

31:31

up on the latest episodes without

31:34

the ads. Can

31:42

we have a punnet of Bloomsbury's who

31:44

do art, please, Jane? Okay.

31:46

Let's start with Vanessa Stevens, sister of

31:48

Virginia, born 1879, studied at Arthur Cope

31:53

School of Art from 1896, also

31:57

attended King's College London like

31:59

a sister. for a while, and

32:01

the Royal Academy School from 1901. Three

32:05

years after moving to Bloomsbury with

32:08

her siblings, she married her brother's

32:10

friend, the art critic Clive Bell,

32:13

who doesn't seem to have been bisexual, unusually,

32:17

and they got married in 1907. Clive was a huge Francophile

32:23

and he went on to have a lifelong

32:25

friendship with Picasso. You

32:27

know, so they were very well connected

32:29

with all the major European artists. And

32:31

would those artists have been massive at

32:33

that point? Yes. They weren't artists that

32:35

got more difficult post-death.

32:37

They were superstars by then.

32:40

And Clive Bell's book, Art

32:42

of 1913, became,

32:45

and it's still in print, the

32:47

classic defence of modern art, and

32:49

he coined this term, significant form.

32:52

It's this sort of democratic concept

32:54

of art, where everything

32:57

from a high renaissance painting

32:59

to a vase made by a Chinese

33:01

peasant is art because it partakes

33:03

of significant form, i.e. it's gorgeous

33:05

to look at in some way.

33:08

And this is a radical defence. He

33:10

also published a pamphlet in 1915 called

33:14

Peace at Once, and

33:17

this was seized, prosecuted,

33:19

and burnt by the

33:21

authorities. Vanessa, initially

33:23

inspired by New English Art,

33:26

had her head turned by

33:28

the 1910 Post-Impressionist Exhibition, which

33:31

was showing continental works by

33:33

Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh,

33:36

all by then dead, but absolutely

33:39

shocking to the British public and

33:41

the critics. And

33:43

they were shown alongside living

33:45

modern French artists. Her own

33:47

avant-garde paintings and collages were

33:50

then shown in the second

33:52

Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. Vanessa

33:55

Bell showed work alongside

33:58

other Bloomsbury's Grant,

34:00

Roger Fry and Wyndham Lewis

34:03

who was originally in Bloomsbury but

34:05

fell out with them over the

34:07

Ideal Home Exhibition and then

34:09

wrote really nasty things about them. The

34:13

Ideal Home Exhibition nowadays is where you go to

34:15

buy tin openers and sort of... Back then it

34:17

was like the cutting edge of thinking

34:22

about domestic aesthetics.

34:24

Vanessa Bell's artwork became

34:26

increasingly bold and experimental

34:29

and she's actually credited after

34:32

Frantisek Kupka with

34:34

one of the earliest totally

34:36

abstract paintings in Europe. Honestly

34:39

you can see her abstract collages

34:41

they're just bold bright colour

34:43

geometric design. Amazing. And people would have

34:45

been kind of stunned by them in

34:47

a way. Yes, fun or very angry.

34:50

Yeah because they would have thought visit

34:52

an art because I can't see a

34:54

picture in it. Yeah exactly. And would

34:57

it be more about what it made you feel?

35:01

Exactly. Rather than oh that's the house. Vanessa

35:04

Bell is obviously an unconventional

35:06

person in terms of her

35:08

art. She's also gonna have

35:11

an unconventional marriage because that's what they do.

35:13

Yeah. And the marriage would collide. You said

35:15

he's not bisexual. Yeah well both of

35:17

them were very randy obviously. They had

35:19

two sons, Julian and Quentin.

35:24

Meanwhile I think when Vanessa

35:26

was very heavily into early

35:29

motherhood Clive had a

35:31

very serious flirtation with her sister

35:33

Virginia. Oh no. He was soon

35:36

off with other women. The Bells

35:39

remained married but both

35:41

had significant relationships with other

35:43

people. Clive travelled between

35:45

Britain and France all the time

35:47

often with his lover Mary Hutchinson.

35:50

In 1913 Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell

35:54

and Duncan Grant founded the

35:56

Omega workshops based in Fitzroy

35:59

Square. Artists could exhibit and

36:01

sell their works in this space,

36:03

which was designed to explore new

36:06

forms and media including

36:08

tarting up old furniture.

36:10

Vanessa and Duncan experimented

36:13

there with textiles, pottery,

36:15

furniture and kinetic art.

36:19

So Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell

36:21

have a relationship, break up and

36:23

then found a workshop together. Could

36:25

you... Can you imagine

36:27

setting up with an X? It's gotta be pretty

36:29

chill. They will be selling much as it will

36:31

be arguing a lot. Vanessa

36:35

Bell not only having relationship with Fry,

36:37

not only setting up the Omega workshops,

36:39

she also was involved with Duncan Grant

36:41

who was of course... Who wasn't? Who

36:44

was also involved with Keynes and Lytton

36:46

Straitsky. But what was Duncan Grant's story?

36:48

You said he's the cousin of Lytton

36:51

Straitsky. Yeah, and he's Scottish. He

36:54

was born in Rosy Mercus up

36:56

in the northeast of Scotland. He

36:59

was born in 1885. He spent

37:01

his childhood in India and Myanmar

37:03

because of his general father. And

37:06

in 1899 he was sent

37:08

to St Paul's school and

37:10

he stayed with his cousins, the Straitshys.

37:13

Lady Straitshy, his aunt, convinced

37:15

Grant's parents to let him

37:17

transfer to Westminster School of

37:19

Art. After his

37:22

brief affair with Lytton Straitshy and

37:24

more serious relationship with Maynard

37:26

Keynes, he had a

37:28

scene with Vanessa's brother, Adrian,

37:31

who incidentally became a

37:33

major expert on psychoanalysis.

37:36

His sister, Virginia, then published

37:38

the first translations of Freud

37:40

into English. Oh wow. So,

37:43

you know, they were... Quite the family, isn't it?

37:45

It's quite a family. So, later in Vanessa and

37:47

Virginia. Yeah, so anyway. Jane, when you say a

37:49

scene, they're not acting together. What's a scene? Well,

37:52

this is just my shorthand for

37:54

people who are having sexual

37:57

liaisons of more than one night.

38:00

Okay, a fling. Yeah, a fling

38:02

maybe. Lovely. I mean, Vanessa Bell

38:04

has a daughter. Oh,

38:07

yeah, with Duncan Grant and she's called Angelica Bell.

38:10

Yeah, not the BBC, see

38:12

the children presenter. She's lovely.

38:14

Yeah. Angelica Bell, who's raised

38:16

as Clive's daughter, even though

38:18

it's Duncan's daughter. That's right. And she didn't know

38:20

until she was, I think 18, the

38:23

real father was. But meanwhile,

38:26

Vanessa and Duncan are decorating

38:28

the house with all their amazing

38:30

artworks and textiles and ceramic

38:32

designs. And now it's this

38:34

major centre of artistic expression

38:37

and experimentation. But

38:39

also, we've since discovered this big

38:41

stash of Grant's more queer erotic

38:44

art. And he's now known as

38:46

a queer artist of some import.

38:49

And he left a substantial body

38:51

of work exploring queer sexuality,

38:54

i.e. loads of male nudes.

38:56

Sure. All stashed under the

38:58

bed. Yeah. Okay,

39:01

so we've mentioned the Stephen siblings,

39:03

Toby, Vanessa, Adrian, who, of

39:05

course, are sister to Virginia.

39:08

So I think Virginia Woolf is probably

39:11

the most famous blooms berry, I think.

39:15

You're a Virginia Woolf scholar, I think you probably

39:17

agree with me. I've dedicated my life for knowing

39:19

her sentences. They're absolutely

39:22

gorgeous. Okay, just wonderful. The

39:25

most important word that Virginia Woolf

39:27

put into print was but that's

39:29

how she starts a room of one's

39:32

own. Yeah, but so

39:34

you're entering a conversation. It's

39:36

going to be contradicted. We're all

39:38

grown ups in the room. We

39:40

can live with honesty and contradiction.

39:42

She writes in this thing, not

39:44

stream of consciousness, but free and

39:46

direct discourse, which is so slippery,

39:49

that when you start reading the sentence, there

39:51

are so many different ways you could read

39:53

it, that actually they read you.

39:56

Like, for example, Mrs. Dalloway

39:58

said she would buy the

40:00

flowers herself. Who's saying that?

40:03

Well depending on who

40:05

you think saying it you know it

40:07

shows your politics. Can't get into that

40:09

now but that's I phone up my

40:12

friends sometimes in New York and

40:14

go my god I've just discovered she did,

40:16

she said this! So

40:19

tell us about her then, she's one of the Stephen family

40:22

of course. Yeah her dad's Leslie Stephen

40:24

founding editor of the Dictionary of

40:26

National Biography and he came

40:28

from a long line of important social

40:30

reformers and abolitionists. Wolf

40:33

herself called them the quacking Quakers

40:36

but one of them her aunt actually

40:39

left her a small legacy which enabled

40:41

her to have an independent life a

40:44

few hundred pounds a year and that's the

40:46

argument of a Room of One's own which

40:48

is if women are going to be writers

40:50

if we're going to get somebody to rival

40:52

Shakespeare then we need money you know

40:54

it's a materialist argument about the

40:56

production of culture. So

40:59

both her father and mother Julia

41:01

was a famous beauty

41:03

and she posed for pre-Raphaelite

41:06

drawings and things. Now

41:08

they both had children from previous marriages

41:10

and then they had these other kids. Virginia

41:13

Wolf was homeschooled as a child and

41:15

then she attended as you rightly said

41:17

King's College London the ladies department 1897

41:20

to 1901. She was deeply

41:22

traumatized by her mother's shockingly

41:27

early death in 1895

41:30

and then just as she's getting over that

41:33

the woman who took over as the

41:35

maternal figure her half sister Stella she

41:38

died in 1897. Then her father died in 1904 but

41:45

that doesn't seem to have upset her

41:47

quite the same. However

41:49

she had two half brothers the

41:52

Duckworth brothers and they bullied and

41:55

sexually harassed her. Following

41:57

Toby's death so death after

42:00

death after death, you know, she's having these,

42:02

but she sort of hammer blows when

42:04

she's just emerging as a young person.

42:07

After Toby's death and Vanessa's

42:09

marriage, Virginia and Adrienne moved

42:12

to 29 Fitzroy Square, and

42:14

it was there that Virginia

42:16

began her first novel and

42:19

they entertained Bloomsbury Friends. Quite

42:21

a traumatic childhood for her, not,

42:23

you know, and I think Wolf

42:25

is kind of known for being someone who

42:27

had mental health issues. Yeah,

42:30

I mean, it's safe to say that had

42:32

she been alive now, she'd be someone that might

42:35

be considered to have something like bipolar. I

42:38

don't like to put dead people on

42:40

the couch and show up nose, but

42:42

all we know is that she had

42:44

four mental health episodes in her life

42:46

that were major and she needed to

42:48

go into a nursing home. Right. She tried

42:51

to kill herself twice. And

42:53

then in 1941, she did kill herself. Virginia

42:56

married Leonard Wolf. And

42:58

he was from a Jewish

43:01

family father was a lawyer, he

43:03

became a civil servant, you know,

43:05

sort of classic empire man. Yeah,

43:07

Leonard first met Virginia in 1903.

43:09

But then he was often salon

43:11

Sri Lanka. And he's quite

43:14

he's an interesting guy, because he's sort of a socialist,

43:16

he's quite radical, getting involved in other

43:18

literature and printing and the wasteland, I think

43:20

he helps out doesn't he, Jane? Yeah, well,

43:22

they got married in 1912. But

43:25

not before little straight

43:27

she had proposed to Virginia Wolf.

43:29

And then overnight with the proposal,

43:32

because they absolutely adored each other.

43:34

But you know, it's never going

43:37

to fly. So then he persuaded

43:39

Leonard to propose to Virginia. So

43:41

he did the little proposed and

43:44

then next morning went, sorry, sorry,

43:46

actually, yeah, something like that. Leonard

43:48

and Virginia in 1917 founded

43:51

their own press called the

43:53

Hogarth Press. They did hand printed books,

43:55

as he said, including Virginia Wolf

43:57

set the type for T.S. Eliot's The

44:00

Wasteland when it was published. Oh wow,

44:02

she's the typesetter. Yeah, she personally was

44:04

the typesetter. As importantly,

44:06

she helped Leonard with his

44:08

most important anti-imperialist work, which

44:10

is called Empire and Commerce

44:12

in Africa, published in 1920.

44:14

Now, she confessed to received

44:20

ingrained and continuing antisemitism

44:22

and snobbery, and she

44:25

said later, how I

44:27

hated marrying a Jew.

44:30

What a snob I was. But

44:32

by 1935, considering

44:35

a trip to Germany, which they actually

44:37

took in 1938, the two of them

44:39

went to Hitler's Germany. Anyway,

44:41

in 1935, she notes, our

44:44

Jewishness is said to be a

44:46

danger for us. And people say

44:48

we might be unpopular as we

44:50

are Jews. So see

44:52

the difference. Yeah. So yes, she

44:54

was born an antisemite, but

44:57

maybe she changes her there's a

44:59

lot of antisemitic utterances

45:01

in her diaries and letters, however. Yeah,

45:04

and they had a happy marriage. A very

45:06

long and happy marriage. However,

45:08

newlywed Virginia complained to her

45:11

sister about the quality of

45:13

her orgasm with a man.

45:16

And Leonard kept

45:19

meticulous records of her menstrual

45:21

cycle, kept records of everything.

45:23

Sure. And they were

45:25

advised against children because of Virginia

45:27

Woolf mental health episodes. And

45:30

she once confessed feeling no

45:32

physical attraction to him. However,

45:34

she also defined herself as

45:36

a kind of attracted to

45:38

men and women, including

45:41

once she said about a later girlfriend

45:43

that she she felt desire for Ethel

45:45

Smythe suffragist composer,

45:48

and Leonard and her own

45:50

sister. Wow. Oh, she

45:53

said all that. Yeah, because I think Virginia Woolf

45:55

is often publicly described by

45:57

people as sort of neurotic and

45:59

sexless. Which actually really

46:01

is not true of her youth. Do

46:04

you want to guess what the nickname that

46:06

Virginia was given by her sister? It was

46:08

an animalistic nickname. She had a bit of

46:10

a dog. Like a birdie dog. The

46:13

nickname was Goat. Greatest of

46:15

all time. Goat as in Billy Goat, as

46:17

in Horny, Randy. She would chat

46:19

people up on the train. Women on the train. I

46:22

mean, good for her. I think,

46:24

listen. I love a

46:26

journey on a train. Right. And, you know, I'm

46:28

a notorious lesbian. So, you know, I support

46:30

all those things. That is your hip-hop name.

46:33

Yeah, a notorious lesbian. Do look

46:35

out for my new LP that I'm dropping. Her

46:38

sister said young women weren't safe on

46:40

trains with Billy Goat. I

46:42

mean, safe makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. I was going

46:44

to say. The unsafe makes me feel... I

46:47

don't love the unsafe. Yes. But I do...

46:49

All of a sudden it gets a bit

46:51

more uncomfortable. I don't mind her chatting women

46:53

up, but let's make sure that everyone's safe.

46:55

So she's openly saying I'm attracted to women.

46:58

And her earliest love was this

47:00

woman, Violet Dickinson, who

47:02

she had this intense relationship with. And

47:04

in her letters to Violet, one

47:07

thing that she says is, get this, the

47:10

astonishing depths, the

47:12

hot volcano depths, your

47:15

finger has stirred in

47:17

sparrowy. I mean, what else can

47:19

that... No, I mean, I think that we all know.

47:21

We all know what that is. And it is. I don't

47:24

know where sparrowy is, actually. Sparrowy is... Well, it

47:26

means sparrow, but I think she must be

47:28

citing catullus, because catullus called lesbians

47:30

pet sparrow wasn't really a bird,

47:33

if you get my... Right, Susie.

47:37

Anyway, her best most well-known

47:40

love affair began in 1925 with the aristocrat

47:44

and author Vita Sackville West. Yes.

47:47

I mean... What do you know, Susie? Just that

47:49

she was part of this gang, and that they were

47:51

together for years and years and years, maybe until one

47:53

of their deaths, that they had this

47:55

sort of... Yeah, they had. The courage of sorts,

47:57

but not, because obviously women couldn't do

47:59

that. Well, she was married to

48:01

Harold Nicholson. So they had a husband. Well,

48:04

Harold Nicholson was bisexual and he had affairs with men as

48:06

well. So both of them were

48:08

having affairs with other people. Yeah. So it

48:10

was a notorious open marriage. And

48:13

Virginia Woolf didn't rate her

48:15

poetry but loved her long legs.

48:20

Let me quote you this. This is brilliant. Virginia

48:22

Woolf said, I like

48:24

her and being with her and

48:26

the splendor. She shines in the

48:29

grocer's shop in seven Oaks with

48:31

a candlelit radiance stalking

48:33

on legs like beach

48:36

trees, pink glowing, grape

48:38

clustered, pearl hung. The

48:42

politically reactionary Vita and

48:44

Harold, however, cannot

48:46

be seen therefore as core Bloomsbury's,

48:49

but they're certainly really important. Yeah.

48:52

And, you know, Virginia Woolf countered next

48:55

to Leonard and Vanessa, Vita

48:57

was her closest person.

48:59

Yeah. Yeah. And we've also

49:02

got this making an old

49:04

dedicated to Vita called Orlando. Right.

49:07

Have you heard of Orlando? I've heard of Orlando. What

49:09

do you know? That it's a bit lessee. Yeah,

49:13

it is broadly lessee. Okay.

49:16

Full title, Orlando, a biography.

49:19

Nineteen twenty eight. It's Woolf's

49:21

brilliant queer love letter to

49:23

Vita Sackville West. Remember,

49:26

I told you Vita couldn't inherit. No. So

49:29

this is rewriting as if she inherits now. Okay.

49:32

So and Vita poses

49:34

for some of the illustrations in it. So

49:37

Vita Sackville West is

49:39

revisited as Orlando and

49:41

it's the life of this cross-dressing

49:44

polyamorous Elizabethan noble man. Yeah.

49:47

And he doesn't age or die, but

49:49

he wakes up one day as a

49:52

woman in Constantinople in

49:54

the 18th century. And

49:57

then she continues the

49:59

life. of cross-dressing

50:01

polyamory as a woman

50:03

into the 20th century and on the

50:05

last page it says October 1928,

50:08

the day the book is published. My

50:11

favorite sentence in this book, it's

50:13

only four words, the

50:15

Queen had come. Now

50:19

how did she get that into

50:21

print when the same year, 1928,

50:24

D.H. Lawrence's racy

50:26

Lady Chatterley's lover

50:29

and Radcliffe Hall's koi

50:32

lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness

50:34

were both banned for obscenity. I

50:37

mean you've read The Well of Loneliness,

50:39

you'll know it says something like, and

50:42

that night they were not parted. Yes.

50:45

And that's as hot as it

50:47

gets. That was banned for obscenity

50:49

but somehow, although it fell on

50:51

the census table, Orlander was not

50:54

banned for obscenity. Virginia Woolf was

50:56

also called to the trial, the

50:58

obscenity trial, to speak on

51:01

behalf of Radcliffe Hall. So

51:03

you know she tried to defend this queer novel, which

51:05

is a very brave thing to do. Did they

51:08

publish their own works? They have

51:10

a publishing hand? Yes, that's right,

51:12

the whole goth press. So once

51:14

Virginia Woolf was able to take

51:16

hold of the means of production,

51:18

then she had the freedom. So

51:20

with Jacob's room, Mrs. Dalloway, To

51:23

the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between

51:25

the Acts, they were all published

51:27

by the Hogarth Press, and that

51:29

way she has control. A publishing

51:31

house of one's own? Yes, exactly. Then

51:34

they published All Their Maids, but

51:36

then they also published, I mean the

51:38

major works of fright for the

51:40

first time in English, Gertrude Stein, you

51:42

name it, they published extreme right-wing

51:44

people, they published extreme left-wing people, they

51:47

wanted this culture

51:49

of let's get it all out

51:51

there and talk about it, read

51:53

about it. She also published two

51:56

major feminist manifestos, which should be on your

51:58

reading list, A Room of One's Own in 1990. 1929

52:00

and three guineas

52:02

1938. Several volumes

52:04

worth of essays and short stories

52:07

and her posthumously published masses

52:10

of volumes of letters and

52:12

diaries, they're riveting reading, riveting.

52:15

So and as well as you know their radical

52:17

love lives as well as their

52:20

radical art, they're also radical thinkers

52:22

Susie, they were, they supported Roland

52:24

Penrose's showing of Guernica, the Picasso

52:26

painting in London, they opposed fascism

52:29

and Nazism. The son of Clive and Vanessa

52:31

was killed serving as an ambulance driver in

52:33

Spain during the Spanish Civil

52:35

War. They were in support of the

52:38

general strike in 1926. They are progressive

52:40

on the left. But there

52:42

is a bit of a butt coming up. Have

52:44

you ever heard the story of the Drednought hoax?

52:47

Have you ever heard of the Drednought hoax?

52:49

It's quite a complex story but I think

52:51

we would call it problematic in modern parlance

52:53

Jane. We certainly would. This also happened

52:55

in 1910, key year for

52:57

so many people and it's

53:00

the most famous example of

53:02

Bloomsbury's unthinking racism. So this

53:04

was a hoax perpetrated on

53:06

the British Navy in 1910

53:09

by millionaire prankster Horace Cole.

53:11

You can Google it, you

53:13

see the photograph. So what

53:15

he did was he enlisted

53:17

Bloomsbury's Adrian Stephen, Virginia Stephen,

53:19

Duncan Grant and Anthony Boxson

53:21

and he got them to

53:23

masquerade as the Emperor

53:25

of Abyssinia, which is modern

53:28

day Ethiopia. So they

53:30

convinced the Admiralty to

53:32

give them a formal tour

53:34

of the Navy's most secret

53:37

warship, the HMS Drednought. And

53:39

then next day sent photos to

53:42

the press exposing the scandalous

53:44

breach of security. Now,

53:47

in some ways it's a politically

53:49

subversive hoax but it's energetically debated

53:51

today as to what the hell

53:53

they meant by it and we

53:56

can't ignore the fact that Virginia

53:58

Woolf blacked up and as

54:00

an Abyssinian prince is

54:03

not her finest hour. Susie, what's your take

54:05

on that one? Well, it's not great.

54:07

No. I don't know

54:09

what the take's gonna be other than that. No.

54:12

Whole books have been written about it. You

54:14

could argue, oh, it's radically political. You know,

54:17

they're exposing the racism of the Navy by

54:19

themselves doing this masquerade. But I think

54:21

that's a bit of a stretch to

54:24

say that. Yeah. Young

54:26

people messing about. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,

54:29

I'm not gonna apologize for it or pretend it didn't

54:31

happen. It did happen. You

54:33

look at the pictures, not great. Yeah,

54:36

not really defending that. All right, so we've

54:38

met the Blooms Berries, as they call themselves.

54:41

What are your sort of overarching feelings, having bombarded

54:43

you with all this information before we get to

54:45

the nuance window? Well, just that they

54:48

were sort of massive change

54:50

makers. Mm. That they, that,

54:52

you know, a lot of what they did

54:54

influenced where we are today. Certainly a

54:56

lot of their sort of free thinking

54:59

and unapologetic queerness

55:02

is certainly something that needs to be sort of

55:04

celebrated and feels enormously hopeful. But,

55:07

you know, when you look at

55:09

people throughout history, you also

55:11

have to accept things about them that you don't

55:13

like as well. I mean,

55:15

they did support the Republican cause in the

55:17

Spanish Civil War, you know,

55:20

and they were Fabian and

55:22

Labour parties, socialists, liberals,

55:25

and feminists. And,

55:27

yeah, I'm sure, you know, a huge part of

55:29

the feminist movement as well, and, you know, women's

55:31

writing to be taken so seriously. We've

55:33

done all sorts of lives, and Susie, you've been

55:35

staring at your relationship chart all the way through.

55:37

Yes, I have. I've been trying to work it

55:39

out. I still haven't made head nor tail of

55:41

it. The nuance window! The nuance window!

55:48

It is time we get to our nuance window.

55:50

This is where, part of the show where Susie

55:52

and I relax in Lady Morrell's salon with our

55:54

pianola. Well, Dr. Jane tells us something

55:56

we need to know about the Bloomsbury Group, so

55:59

my stopwatch is ready. Jane, you have two

56:01

minutes, take it away please. But

56:03

you may say, what

56:06

happened in December 1910 to

56:09

make Virginia Woolf say

56:11

on or about December

56:13

1910 human character changed?

56:16

New King? Government crisis

56:18

over Irish Home Rule? On

56:21

Fire Night was Bloomsbury's in

56:24

1910. Post-Impressionism's explosion

56:27

of colour got

56:30

rid of chiaroscuro,

56:33

art's old binary casting of

56:35

dark and shade. Now

56:38

it's fireworks, this new

56:40

prismatic chiaroscuro, this

56:42

violent rapture of colour. Bloomsbury's

56:45

stops the seeing in binary,

56:47

light, dark, white, black, male,

56:50

female, master, slave.

56:52

Bloomsbury's vibrating prismatics

56:55

is a new queer way of seeing.

56:58

In 1910, outraged critics feared

57:01

this art would Gogonise

57:03

the European landscape,

57:06

Gogonise the Aryan race. These

57:09

are quotes. This unpatriotic

57:12

campaign of anarchism, evil

57:14

plague, sickening aberrations, mania

57:18

for painting flesh with

57:20

mud, making Eve's fair

57:22

daughters look unwashed. Now,

57:26

outside on the streets comes

57:28

Black Friday, November 1910. Thousands

57:31

of suffragettes, purple,

57:34

white, green, peaceful

57:36

women demonstrators met

57:39

with police brutality and

57:41

mass arrest. Virginia

57:43

Woolf attended their Albert Hall

57:45

rally, November

57:48

1910. Woolf's 1940

57:51

essay, Thoughts of

57:53

Peace in an Air Raid,

57:56

says it all. Thank

57:58

you. A

58:01

piece is perhaps the watchword. We think of the

58:03

art, we think of the writing, but perhaps it's

58:05

the politics that was the animating

58:07

principle. Quite a series of

58:10

lives. Yes, fascinating people. So there

58:12

we go, the Bloomsbury group. Almost a sort of Venn diagram

58:14

of groups. So what do you know now? It's

58:22

time now for our quiz. This is So What Do

58:24

You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Susie

58:27

to see how much she has learned. We have,

58:29

honestly, so much information has come

58:31

your way. Last time, Matt,

58:33

you got nine out of ten. Oh, I won't do that well

58:35

this time. Let's be very careful. Have some

58:37

confidence. I've got ten questions for you. Good.

58:41

Are you ready? No. The let's go's. You're

58:43

staring straight ahead like... Yeah, I'm confident. This

58:45

is how I concentrate. Okay, all right, great,

58:47

good. Here we go. Question one. American writer

58:50

Dorothy Parker famously said the Bloomsbury group lived

58:52

in squares, painted in circles and loved in

58:54

which shape? Very

58:56

good. Question two. Brother to Vanessa

58:58

and Virginia, which founder of the

59:01

Bloomsbury group died tragically young? Toby.

59:03

It was Toby. Very good. Question

59:05

three. Why did economist John Maynard

59:07

Keynes and historian Lytton Straitschy fall

59:10

out? Because did

59:12

he love him? Yeah, they were in love

59:14

with another man. No, one of them

59:16

is in love with Duncan? Yeah, they were both in love

59:18

with Duncan. Yeah, absolutely. Well done. That's right. Question

59:21

four. Which Bloomsbury member wrote the novels

59:23

Passage to India and the important gay

59:25

novel Marie? E. M. Foster. Very good.

59:28

Question five, Susie. What was the name

59:30

of the publishing press founded by Virginia

59:32

and Leonard Wolf? Hogarth. Very

59:35

good. Yes. Question six.

59:37

Who was Angelica Bell? She was a

59:39

daughter of Clive and Vanessa. And

59:42

Duncan too, yeah. And Duncan Fitzgerald, of course, the

59:44

secret dad. That's it, yeah. Well done. And

59:47

question seven. What was the animalistic

59:49

nickname given to Virginia Wolf by

59:51

her sister? The goat. The

59:53

goat, absolutely. Question eight. According to

59:55

the Oxford English Dictionary, which word was first used

59:57

in print in modern English to describe a Bloomsbury

59:59

part? in 1915. Queer. Yeah

1:00:01

it was. Question 9, can you

1:00:03

name two written works by Virginia

1:00:06

Woolf? Yes, a Rue of One's Aimee and a Land

1:00:08

Aimee. Okay, question 10, this for a

1:00:10

perfect score. So if you're up for it. Oh,

1:00:12

it's exciting. Go on. What was the Dreadnought hoax?

1:00:15

The Dreadnought hoax was when?

1:00:18

Your friend and mine, Virginia Woolf, blacked

1:00:22

up, which none of us are happy about, but that's what

1:00:24

happened, and she got onto a

1:00:26

warship because of a millionaire's prank.

1:00:29

Very good. 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10.

1:00:31

10 out of 10. That's it.

1:00:33

There you go. You're an expert. That's it.

1:00:36

Give me one as a series regular. Exactly. I'm a

1:00:38

historian. Doctorate in the Post. Yes, my doctorate in

1:00:40

the Post. I should get a degree first, but yeah. Amazing. Well

1:00:43

done, Susie. Thank you, Jane. There

1:00:45

we go. A perfect score. And listen to us after

1:00:47

today's episode. You want more from Susie? You

1:00:50

will have to scroll down in the app all the

1:00:52

way back, about 95 episodes probably,

1:00:54

but it is there. If you want

1:00:56

to find out more about the arts and culture in the early 20th

1:00:58

century, we've got an episode on the Harlem Renaissance, which

1:01:01

is really fun as well. Remember, if you've enjoyed the

1:01:03

podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends,

1:01:05

subscribe to You're Dead To Me on BBC Sound so you

1:01:07

never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a

1:01:09

huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We

1:01:12

had the fantastic Dr Jane Goldman from the University of

1:01:14

Glasgow. Thank you, Jane. Thank

1:01:16

you. It's been an absolute pleasure and

1:01:18

an education. And

1:01:20

in comedy corner, we had the superb Susie Ruffell.

1:01:22

Thank you, Susie. Thank you for having me. I've

1:01:24

learned a lot and now I've got a very

1:01:26

big reading list. And to you lovely listener, join

1:01:28

me next time as we drop in on another

1:01:30

historical group of go-getters. But for now, I must

1:01:32

go and debate crocodiles with my four-year-old. Bye! Thank

1:01:57

you. Hello,

1:02:13

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