Tweeting From Beyond

So I got sick and had to take antibiotics for nearly two weeks, and I hated it.  It made me puny and sickly, not to mention it was sweltering.  But all is well, about two more days before I can have a tall gin and tonic.  In the mean time...

I recently followed and was followed back on Twitter by Vita Sackville-West.  Let me say it is hard enough for me to work, write, keep up two blog, Lucindaville and Cookbook Of The Day, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.  So to find out that Vita Sackville-West is able to tweet beyond the grave makes me feel woefully inadequate.

Vita Sackville-West is one of those people I would put on that list of 10-people-you-could-have-dinner-with. Bloomsbury is like Harry Potter for grown-ups.  We wait for each new book, we scrutinize the movies, we relish any peripheral new reference.  There was a wave of new Bloomsbury attention recently.

The venerable BBC is unveiling a new drama, Life in Squares.  It will look at the early life and career of the Bloomsbury gang, focusing on the orbit of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen. It is chocked full of British talent. That is James Norton (Grantchester and Happy Valley) in the center as Duncan Grant. In anticipation of the new series, The Guardian has published their list of the 10 best Bloomsbury moments.

In addition, The Guardian, has gone out and hunted down any last surviving soul that might have known some of the Bloomsbury set.  At 100, Anne Olivier Bell is the widow of Quentin Bell, Vanessa Bell's son and the very first biographer of Virginia Woolf.

I am so ready.  Now ask yourself, why is there no Bloomsbury theme park?  Think about it...replicas of Sissinghurst and Charleston, of Omega workshop and Hogarth Press, tea rooms with Vanessa Bell pottery, and of course a bookshop. 

Famous Food Friday --Bloomsbury

You might think that you know EVERYTHING, yes, everything there is to know about that merry band at Bloomsbury.  You know who slept with whom, who wanted to sleep with whom, who shouldn't have slept with whom, and on and on.  You have read all the letters, diaries, and biographies.  You have visited their houses in person, online, and in books.  There is absolutely NOTHING you don't know about Bloomsbury.

WAIT...

There is something you don't know.  While the literary ensemble that has become its own growth industry few have taken more than a passing look at the food of Bloomsbury.  I mean, after all that sleeping around, they had to have quite an appetite. Well, actually, there has been some peeking into the culinary exploits of the literary gang.  Several years ago, we wrote about a little self-published booklet about Grace Higgens.  Grace at Charleston featured memories and recipes from the housekeeper of Vanessa Bell.

Recently, Stewart MacKay wrote a slim biography of Grace Higgens, The Angel of Charleston.  Expanding on Grace's memories, and her correspondence, MacKay looked at references to Higgens in the many memoirs and letters of others at Bloomsbury, as well as the memories of Vanessa Bell's children and grandchildren.  While Higgens and Bell had moved past the rigors of the traditional Edwardian upstairs/downstairs dichotomy, there was still a broad chasm between the life of the very privileged Bell and her housekeeper. 

In an interview with the BBC, Higgens spoke about her time with Vanessa Bell.




When we last visited the kitchens of Bloomsbury we wrote:

"Grace at Charleston, though small, is the closest thing to a Bloomsbury cookbook there is, an I find it to be a treasure." 

A treasure, yes, but now we are blessed with mother lode of treasures, The Bloomsbury Cookbook.   Jans Ondaatje Rolls has produced one of the most beautiful and literary cookbooks ever.  She has combed the archives of the Charleston Trust and many other sources to assemble a cookbook that reflects the food of Bloomsbury.

Let's face facts, there was very little cooking actually done by the Bloomsbury group as they were occupied with sleeping around, painting, writing, dancing, gardening, and other things.  But they always had dinner and they were writing about it and painting it with reckless abandon.

Ondaatje Rolls has artfully gathered together the paintings and writing that frame the food.  The recipes have been drawn from actual cooks for Bloomsbury like Grace Higgens and from hand written recipes from the collections of Angelica Garret and Helen Anrep and Lydia Lopokova. When an event is recounted with no direct recipe attribution, Rolls uses the popular cookbooks of the day to recreate the recipe or she makes her own.

 The Bloomsbury Cookbook is a truly memorable work of art.  It is filled to the brim with painting and photographs.  There are excerpts from memoirs and novels.  There are hand written recipes and memories.  And there is food.  If you are a fan of any one of these literary characters or a fan of cookbooks, this book will blow you away.  One cannot merely pick it up, flip though it and set it back down.  Every time you pick it up, your mind swims in the information.  It is all at once a book of literary criticism, an art book, a culinary history, a recipe book, and a whole lot of fun.

Mark Gertler Portrait of a Girl Wearing Blue [Dora Carrington], 1912

 One of my favorite characters at Bloomsbury was Dora Carrington.  It seems that Carrington was quite the master of the kitchen.  Sadly, her collection of recipes has been lost, but the memory of them lingers.  David Garnett wrote of Carrington:

"Her cowslip wine was nectar, her sloe gin unequaled.  Then the jams, bottled fruit and vegetables, chutneys, pickles,preserves.  Her pickled pears were a revelation.  The making of these was part of Carrington's secret life."

A similar sloe gin comes from the pages of Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery.  

Sloe Gin

Half fill clean, dry wine bottles with the fruit [sloes] previously pricked with a darning needle.  add to each, 1 oz of crushed barley-sugar, a little noyeau, or 2 or 3 drops of essence of almonds.  Fill the bottles with good unsweetened gin,cork them securely, and allow them to remain in a moderately warm place for 3 months.  At the end of this time strain the liqueur through fine muslin or filtering paper until quite clear, then bottle it, cork securely, and store away in a cool, dry place until required for use.

If you are a fan of Bloomsbury, a fan of cookbooks, a fan of art you must add this to your reading list.

Dora at Doe Run Farm

I am a big fan of Dora Carrington as well as the Omega Workshops. One day I was flipping through a book of Carrington's art and came across a small woodcut illustration she had done at the Omega Workshops. The woodcut was done for David Garnett, whom she later painted.

David Garnett by Dora Carrinton, 1919

The woodcut was for David Garnett's honey.


I later found another version of the woodcut, this one printed in two colors.




We make honey here at Doe Run Farm... actually the bees make the honey and I just watch. I wanted a nice label for our honey and when I saw Carrington's label I knew I wanted it for our honey. So we appropriated the Garnett label as our own.



It is our homage to Carrington and to our bees.

Mrs. Woolf and the Servants

I am very fond of writings about domesticity. I also love those scamps at Bloomsbury. So when Alison Light published a book about Virginia Woolf AND her servants, well I was simply beside myself.
Mrs. Woolf and the Servants shines a light at the “downstairs “ of Bloomsbury’s “upstairs.”

As a child, I longed to live at Bloomsbury, well more pointedly Sissinghurst Castle with summers at Charleston. Virginia was always a bit too dour for me. As with most childhood fantasy, I longed for the imaginary Bloomsbury, where everyone slept with everyone else, children were raised communally, wine flowed and talk was of books, painting, and gardens. Tea was served promptly at 4 o’clock or perhaps 3:30 if we were idle or maybe 5 if we were planning a late supper.

In my fantasy, life was idyllic and all was right with universe. In my dreams I never saw the faces of the people who brought the tea, weeded the gardens, or ran out to fetch painting supplies. They never spoke, they never appeared, they were the ghosts of my story. In a way, they were ghosts in the Bloomsbury story.

Alison Light tells a striking story of life between the wars and the profound difference between “them” and “us.”

Nellie Boxall, Lottie Hope, Nelly Brittain, with Angelica Bell, 1922

Of her servant, Nellie Boxall, Virginia Woolf wrote:

“She is in a state nature; untrained; uneducated, to me almost incredibly without the power of analysis or logic; so that one sees a human mind wriggling undressed.”

Virginia Stephen, Julian Bell and Mabel Selwood at Studland Beach

Woolf and Boxall had a long and tumultuous relationship marked by fighting, firing, quitting and in the end a strange affection for each other. With all their liberalism in politics and lifestyles, the Bloomsbury set loved their live-in servants. The fact that they were paid sub-par wages, that they were treated much like chattel, that their lives were deemed somehow insignificant, never seemed to matter.

Thank-you note to Grace Higgens from Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf once got the idea of replacing Nellie Boxall with Grace Higgens, the maid and cook at Charleston. Instead, she sent Boxall to study with the famed French chef, Marcel Boulestin. You know my attachment to cookbooks and I would love to have a "Bloomsbury" edition, but alas, there exists no Nellie Boxall cookbook. It was often said that her ice creams and crème brûlées kept Virginia Woolf going.

Though Light's main focus is on Virginia Woolf, she gives a glimpse of other’s in the circle. Grace Higgens spent fifty years with Vanessa Bell’s family, often accompanying them to France. When Vanessa found herself alone, she often broke with strict etiquette and sat down to dinner with Grace. She told Virginia that Grace was “extraordinarily nice” but went on to say:

"She is, like all the uneducated, completely empty-headed really, and after a bit gets terribly on one’s nerves. …One has practically no common ground in common.”

Grace Higgens did keep a collection of recipes. The small booklet features her recipes and a nice introduction by Quentin Bell. Grace at Charleston is featured at Cookbook Of The Day.



It is ironic with Virginia Woolf's desire to have a "room of one's own" that she never envisioned such a room for the women who worked and lived with her. It is hard to imagine an era where such total disregard is practiced while preaching something entirely different. Well, not too hard to imagine, but still a bit disconcerting. The era between the wars fundamentally changed Britain. Education become more readily available and young women who in previous centuries were headed off to become the chattel of grand houses now saw the possibility of expanding work opportunities.

If you are fan of Virginia Woolf or domesticity or both, do give this book a read.