The Hogarth Press

The Hogarth Press

And speaking of The Persephone Post...

They recently published a painting called The Printer c. 1915 by Laura Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968) and asked: "Can anyone tell us if this unwieldy looking machine is the same kind of thing as the 'small handpress' Leonard and Virginia Woolf bought in Holborn one March afternoon in 1917 in order to set up the Hogarth Press?"



Well it was not as large and unwieldy as the image in The Printer, but it was a good-sized platen jobber, probably the Minerva. There is some confusion as Leonard Woolf wrote in a letter that he believed the press was an "Eclipse model" which was a much smaller press.



The actual Hogarth Press press now resides at Sissinghurst Castle. When Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson bought Sissinghurst, Leonard and Virginia gave them the press as a housewarming gift. It was the first piece of furniture installed at Sissinghurst.

Virginia Woolf Setting Type: ink and graphite drawing, n.d. Richard Kennedy

Richard Kennedy began working at the Hogarth Press at age 16 and worked there from 1926 to 1930. In the above drawings, Virginia Woolf is seen setting the type for Herbert Palmer’s poems. In 1972 Kennedy compiled his memories and drawing of that time into a book entitled, A Boy at the Hogarth Press.

During the heyday of the Hogarth Press 525 books were published. Of those books only a scant 34 were actually published on the platen jobber. The rest were published by commercial publishers.

If you are interested in the Hogarth Press, J.H.Willis published an exhaustive study entitled Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-41.

Inheritance

Knole in 1709

The Bolter had caused such a scandal that it is no wonder her great-granddaughter had never heard of her. In fact in Sackville family lore, she is rarely mentioned. What the Sackville's inevitably talk about in every generation is their family estate, Knole.

The Venitian Room

In fact, the current custodian of the Knole legend, Robert Sackville-West, has written a history of the house entitled, Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackville's.



Knole got it's start in 1456 at the hands of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, and was passed and leased and rented for 100 years until finally in 1605 the Crown sold it to Roland White for approximately 221 pounds. Two days later he sold it to Thomas Sackville for 2,500 pounds. For the next thirteen generations, Knole would remain in the hands of a single family, though not without some excitement.

Knole is probably best known for the one Sackville who did not receive Knole as an inheritance, Vita Sackville-West. Vita would write one of the best books on English country houses about Knole.


Vita was completely enamored of her stately home but, at the time, the laws of primogeniture prevented her from inheriting the house. When her father Lionel died in 1930, the estate passed to her uncle, Charles. If there was to be any solace from her loss, Vita was immortalized in Virginia Woolf's Orlando, as the title character who was able to transcend gender.

Knole in the 1920's

Here is a brief "tangled family tree" interlude...

Charles (1870-1962)
Vita (1892-19620
Idina (1893-1955)

...were all contemporaries.

Knole in the 1920's

Charles, in an attempt to keep Knole viable, turned most of the property over to the National Trust.

His title would go to his son Eddy. (At this point I will tell you that there is a wonderful bio of Eddy by Michael De-la Noy, because he is such a lively character. In fact, Nancy Mitford made him into Uncle Davey in The Pursuit of Love. Which makes one wonder, if the Sackville's hadn't been around, would Nancy Mitford have become a writer?... but I digress.)

Childless, Eddy passed the title to his nephew Lionel who fathered five daughters, and you don't have to ask Vita what that meant, so Lionel's nephew, Robert, became the current 7th Lord Sackville and the author of Inheritance.

Knole today

In an age when most large family estates in England have long since been sold to rock stars and sheiks, it is somewhat comforting to see Knole in the hands of the public.

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.

Happy Birthday -- Virginia Woolf

Today is Virginia Woolf's Birthday. In honor of that occasion Paste Magazine's List of the Day features 10 songs in celebration of the event. A soundtrack for her life.


Here's their list:

1. “Virginia Woolf” by the Indigo Girls
2. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Jimmy Smith
3. “Paris” by Regina Spektor
4. “To the Lighthouse” by Patrick Wolf
5. “Rapture” by Laura Veirs
6. “Virginia” by Marissa Nadler
7. “Shakespeare’s Sister” by The Smiths
8. “It’s Magnetic” by Assembly Now
9. “Waves” by Princeton
10. “The Waydown” by Modest Mouse