Page 18 - Studio International - November 1973

There was very little even in French or German, remote which we read about in the papers but in London - I found them rather oppressive -
The only way to keep up, if one wanted to know we did not really take in. And even a thing like but in Cambridge a great many of the
what was happening - even confining oneself to the general strike in 1926, my last term at Bloomsbury figures were regular visitors to
French art - was to go every year in the spring school, was treated very largely as a sort of joke Cambridge, particularly Forster and the
to Paris and to go up and down the rue de la and one's elder brothers and one's parents went Stracheys, and of course Keynes was there all
Boëtie, and to look at what was to be seen at the and did curious things; but it did not impinge as the time in residence, and there were others.
dealers. There would almost certainly be the a real event on us at all. I suspect that this They affected us mainly through a body to
latest works of Picasso at Paul Rosenberg; there probably was the last time that this could have which I think it is no longer indecent to refer to
would be the latest Matisses at Bernheim Jeune happened. It was before the slump of 1929, it in public - it has now been written about so
and there would be the Purists at Léonce was before unemployment, it was before much in print - namely the Society of Apostles.
Rosenberg, and so on. There was only one Fascism in Germany, and we lived this The Apostles had been in the previous
journal which told one anything at all, that was extraordinarily protected existence, very generation of dominant importance in
L'Amour de l'art, a rather amateurish paper - contented but absolutely unreal. You might Bloomsbury. Almost all the Bloomsbury figures,
the other more important periodical, Cahiers think that this was because we were terribly rich except one or two like Raymond Mortimer who
d'art, did not start till 1927 - and it really was or something; not at all, we were not any of us had been at Oxford, were members of the
very difficult indeed to become well-informed well off, but our own family system and the Apostles, and their view of life was very largely
about contemporary art. On the central school system provided a sort of shell into which formulated in the discussions there, under the
European art there was certainly nothing we could retreat and where we were extremely distant influence of Moore and the more
available except a few German books and they happy. And this lack of reality continued, as far immediate influences of Frank Ramsay and the
were hardly to be found in this country. as I was concerned, and also as far as Louis literary figures. I think that in my generation
However, by going to Paris fairly frequently we was concerned, when we both left in '26 and he the importance had become less great, for if one
did manage to see a good deal, and we came went with a classical scholarship to Oxford and I heard people like Forster and Strachey and
back possessed, rather surprisingly, I think, went to Cambridge with one in Mathematics. particularly Dickenson talking about it, it was
looking back, with a great desire to proselytize. Life at Cambridge was to an extraordinary clear that the Saturday evening meeting of the
It was not merely that we wanted to enjoy these extent for me an extension of life at Apostles was the centre of their life, and that
things ourselves, but we were determined to Marlborough. The ideas that we had been everything was regulated according to this, and
put the good news about, so to speak, partly absorbing about art and literature were really everything that was non-Apostolic was in some
perhaps to exasperate the other boys and already based on Bloomsbury and although all way inferior. The Apostles were never primarily
masters at school, but partly genuinely. And we these figures were remote to me - I think I had interested in the arts - though by definition they
did this through papers read to the Anonymous just met Roger Fry - their ideas were very were prepared to discuss any subject - and on
Society, an occasional article in the Marlburian - firmly implanted in all of us, so that going to the whole my own activities lay very largely
there was a very enlightened editor at that time - Cambridge and coming into contact with these outside it. Those of us who were interested in
and also we used to make exhibitions of coloured people was only a direct extension. Certainly the the visual arts occasionally expressed our views
prints - the big colour prints of Piper and unreality, in the sense of detachment from in written form. We founded a short-lived
Haufstaengl-were just beginning to appear - and politics and the world in general, was continued journal called The Venture. Actually one of the
we used to borrow them from the bookseller partly because Bloomsbury was the dominant best things about it was that it was intended
Zwemmer and show them in the gymnasium, force in Cambridge at that time, and with very to be short-lived. It was planned only to
which was the only room where this kind of few exceptions, Bloomsbury were not interested publish it for two years, on the grounds that I
thing could be shown; and as you can imagine, in politics. The exceptions were Leonard Woolf think are sound, that undergraduate journals
this did not give pleasure to the art master who and Goldie Lowes-Dickenson, but they were should be ephemeral. They represent a
would have much preferred to have exhibitions interested in politics in quite different ways : particular generation and nothing is sadder than
of his own watercolours. Woolf was an active socialist, whereas Lowes- to see them lingering on getting deader and
Music we knew almost nothing about - none Dickenson was interested in a much more deader till finally they actually die.
of us was at all expert in music - but that did not abstract way in projects such as the League of The Venture now, I must say, looks a very
mean we were any the less dogmatic. We knew Nations; but he I think was the least influential jejune work. It was edited by Robin Fedden,
that Bach, Handel and Mozart were good, and of the Bloomsbury Group, and Leonard Woolf Michael Redgrave and myself, and it was really,
we knew above all that Wagner was bad - did not come to Cambridge very much. And as Louis McNeice remarked in his review of it
establishment, romantic, all the things that we then of course there was Keynes. Keynes was a at the time when it first appeared, dangerously
thought were most wicked - and just towards very great puzzle to us. He was deeply involved safe. It would not commit itself on anything. It
the end of my time at Marlborough, about in worldly matters, even in finance, and he was was safe and Georgian and respectable on the
1925-26, we were beginning to know about the a practical man. This was regarded as a very literary side, and it contained articles by me on
Russian Ballet and came to love Stravinsky - up useful thing by his college, of which he was the art side, on German Baroque architecture,
to Les Noces - and even (a little later) the early Senior Bursar, but it was regarded by the strict on Bruegel and on Cubism. I did go so far as to
Prokofief. Needless to say we did not approve of Bloomsbury figures as being somewhat make an attack on what I thought was the
the more romantic ballets such as Sylphides or eccentric. The philosophy of the Bloomsbury over-sophistication of certain kinds of modern
Spectre de la Rose. group was that of G. E. Moore, which they all art but in a very timid way. Exactly at the same
- On looking back, I think the most striking absorbed directly or indirectly, that is to moment Bill Empson, Hugh Sykes-Davies and
feature about this whole period at Marlborough say states of mind were the only things that others published a rival journal called
was its complete unreality, and the fact that we mattered and direct action was of quite Experiment which was very much more
lived in this little self-contained world of art and secondary importance. His philosophy was interesting, much more venturesome than the
literature, with no awareness of what was taking absorbed by the whole of the next generation, Venture. It lasted longer and it did contain a lot
place in the outside world at all. Politics was but most explicitly by Frank Ramsay, whose of genuinely experimental verse and prose and
simply a subject never discussed at all, and what name is probably forgotten because he died ideas. It was much the more positive and
happened to be going on at that time in Europe young, but who was a very brilliant creative journal of the two.
was no concern of ours. Inflation in Germany mathematician and a philosopher in the Moore My own views on the arts continued to be
merely meant that one could get an incredibly tradition. very much influenced by Roger Fry and Clive
cheap holiday! Fascism in Italy was something I never myself moved in Bloomsbury circles Bell and the only thing one can say is that we did
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