[Vwoolf] Two Google Alerts about Bloomsbury--Reviews of Clive Bell and This Dark Country

Wed Sep 1 16:30:26 EDT 2021

I agree, Sarah, that the reviewer (who, astonishingly, teaches at Johns Hopkins!) invents things that are not there, and makes errors of fact in her review of my biography of Clive Bell, but I try not to engage with these kinds of reviews as I see them as a symptom of the ineradicable laziness of the anti-Bloomsbury crowd.  And I take a sort of Wildean view that there is no such thing as bad publicity, at least as far as book reviews go!

When Kathryn Hughes reviewed Clive Bell in the Guardian I was informed by someone who certainly knows whereof he speaks that she typically is very negative about Bloomsbury.  So I got off very lightly.

The Bloomsbury-servants issue is so tedious. I wonder who cleans Kathryn Hughes’s house and for how much. The kind of anachronistic bs that is spouted on the issue of how VW and VB treated their servants (and, of course, no one now calls their housekeeper a ‘servant’ despite that being just what they are) is just more of the endless anti-Bloomsbury axe that middle-class English pontificators grind endlessly. IMHO it’s just liberal white guilt.

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Sarah M. Hall via Vwoolf
Sent: Wednesday, September 1, 2021 2:35 PM
To: vwoolf listerve <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>; Neverow, Vara S. <neverowv1 at southernct.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Two Google Alerts about Bloomsbury--Reviews of Clive Bell and This Dark Country

Thanks, Vara, for pointing these out. I have to say that both annoyed me considerably. Look away now anyone who has an aversion to a review of a review (normally I'd join you).

In the Birrell article, Kathryn Hughes, though a seasoned Guardian writer, makes tries to score some very lazy class points by observing that Vanessa Bell's servants had to work hard and were underpaid. This was not a feature solely of Bell's household. However much we dislike the fact, that's how capitalism works: people pay others to do jobs they can't or would prefer not to do: more often than not, they don't pay them enough. And Woolf not knowing Winifred Gill's name is probably because, at the time, Gill was a shop assistant not an artist.

The Yahoo News piece is even worse. 'Their house [46 Gordon Square] became a magnet for cultural elites such as D.H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Picasso, and others.' Dubious grammar and even more dubious assertions. But the real insult is the vast underestimation of Mark Hussey's biography: 'gossipy and willy-nilly' is about the polar opposite of my reading experience: did the reviewer read a different book?

On Wednesday, 1 September 2021, 17:20:18 BST, Neverow, Vara S. via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> > wrote: 

Greetings.

Below are links to two reviews: Mark Hussey's Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism (this review is from the Washington Examiner) and Rebecca Birrell's This Dark Country (published in The Guardian).

I hope they are of interest.

Best,

Vara

 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/news.yahoo.com/funny-little-creature-twitching-pink-030000412.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACXbCr_kB0hgoNWNTsM8ceIS2DuNLOCe-rJwRfal6bzuaZCCWg3hjQcQzxrxi_cjVna41TZPHorQPG5fGWOluRr9HqEt-Xys3fyJ4v5MketYiFsp7xRNAHefNbgxuOh23F_PmfTj7Ru84uScZVNritxX1Jkh2YFtWc88_h2caQYn__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5L5GzQ5gc$> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://news.yahoo.com/funny-little-creature-twitching-pink-030000412.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACXbCr_kB0hgoNWNTsM8ceIS2DuNLOCe-rJwRfal6bzuaZCCWg3hjQcQzxrxi_cjVna41TZPHorQPG5fGWOluRr9HqEt-Xys3fyJ4v5MketYiFsp7xRNAHefNbgxuOh23F_PmfTj7Ru84uScZVNritxX1Jkh2YFtWc88_h2caQYn__;!!KGKeukY!hadBMVOX5Z1G3O2SPqmmYk4JkDLh3UkKg8yN1UUiUF4FzXZgNlsAuFfET9I9pqhwsHQ$ 

 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/news.yahoo.com/funny-little-creature-twitching-pink-030000412.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACXbCr_kB0hgoNWNTsM8ceIS2DuNLOCe-rJwRfal6bzuaZCCWg3hjQcQzxrxi_cjVna41TZPHorQPG5fGWOluRr9HqEt-Xys3fyJ4v5MketYiFsp7xRNAHefNbgxuOh23F_PmfTj7Ru84uScZVNritxX1Jkh2YFtWc88_h2caQYn__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5L5GzQ5gc$> 

That funny little creature twitching his pink skin <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/news.yahoo.com/funny-little-creature-twitching-pink-030000412.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACXbCr_kB0hgoNWNTsM8ceIS2DuNLOCe-rJwRfal6bzuaZCCWg3hjQcQzxrxi_cjVna41TZPHorQPG5fGWOluRr9HqEt-Xys3fyJ4v5MketYiFsp7xRNAHefNbgxuOh23F_PmfTj7Ru84uScZVNritxX1Jkh2YFtWc88_h2caQYn__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5L5GzQ5gc$> 

With his receding hairline, Clive Bell was not especially attractive and felt socially inferior to his wife, her family, and his friends and lovers, who made snide remarks about him.

news.yahoo.com

 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/20/this-dark-country-by-rebecca-birrell-review-bloomsburys-female-artists__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5LReHQZ_w$> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/20/this-dark-country-by-rebecca-birrell-review-bloomsburys-female-artists__;!!KGKeukY!hadBMVOX5Z1G3O2SPqmmYk4JkDLh3UkKg8yN1UUiUF4FzXZgNlsAuFfET9I9dldRxiA$ 

 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/20/this-dark-country-by-rebecca-birrell-review-bloomsburys-female-artists__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5LReHQZ_w$> 

This Dark Country by Rebecca Birrell review – Bloomsbury’s female artists | Art and design books | The Guardian <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/20/this-dark-country-by-rebecca-birrell-review-bloomsburys-female-artists__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5LReHQZ_w$> 

Whether painting apples or Staffordshire dogs, these British female artists saw a radical side to domestic life According to Rebecca Birrell, there was nothing remotely still about the still lifes ...

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.theguardian.com__;!!KGKeukY!hadBMVOX5Z1G3O2SPqmmYk4JkDLh3UkKg8yN1UUiUF4FzXZgNlsAuFfET9I9i-5Kz04$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.theguardian.com__;!!KGKeukY!lmdTA7T3MZEOHDBSU6N9isPZ0e94UdlzzZWBNq-QknxkXgpysx-zdD2fHX5LiBBET0g$> 

Vara Neverow
Professor, English Department and Women's and Gender Studies Program

Managing Editor, Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu <mailto:neverowv1 at southernct.edu> 

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