[Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf and British Fascism

[Mark Hussey]

Is it really accurate to say Leslie Stephen was "a truly tyrannical father
who violently opposed the education of women"? Julia Stephen was certainly
opposed to institutionalized education for women, but Leslie seems to have
been more open to the idea. And VW did take university courses, and was not
taught by governesses.

 

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Jeannette
Smyth
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2014 11:43 PM
To: VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [Vwoolf] Virginia Woolf and British Fascism

 

Dear Friends:

 

The six brilliant Mitford sisters, and how they grew, is my
flavor-of-the-month, inspired by the death of the youngest, Deborah, Duchess
of Devonshire, aged 94.

 

In reading the de Courcy biography of Diana, the fascist, I was interested
to see how many of Diana's Bright Young Things sphere intersected with
Bloomsbury. This would have been before she married Oswald Mosely, leader of
the British fascists. Mosley gave Vita Sackville-West "the creeps" but she
wrote a gardening column for his New Party publication -- in Gordon Square,
where VW and her siblings lived after the death of Leslie Stephen, probably
the founding locus of Bloomsbury. Harold Nicolson, Sackvile-West's husband,
was Mosely's editor at Action and suggested grey shirts as a uniform for
Mosely's thugs. The Prince of Wales looked kindly on the New Party; the best
man at the Duke of Windsor's wedding was the cuckolded husband of one of
Mosley's girlfriends, Baba, the sister of Mosely's late wife. This man,
Fruity Metcalfe, as an equerry to the prince, attended a Mosely discussion
group called the January Club in 1934.

 

Diana's first husband, Bryan Guiness, lent Carrington the gun with which she
committed suicide after Lytton Strachey's death. Diana and Bryan loved the
Ham Spray menage of Carrington, Strachey, Ralph Partridge and Frances
Marshall, lived nearby and entertained them frequently. 

 

As the most beautiful, one of the richest and most intelligent girls in
London, Diana was as much a catch for the hostesses like Emerald Cunard who
were also chasing Virginia. Even very peripheral characters in the life of
VW -- like Professor Joad, the common law husband of one of the Hogarth
Press assistants, Marjorie Joad -- turns up as an avid supporter of Mosely's
New Party.

 

Most interestingly, I thought, while Mosely was still  member of the
political establishment, the saintly socialist Beatrice Webb (like everyone
else) in 1924 called Mosely "the most brilliant man in the House of
Commons....the perfect politcian and the perfect gentleman....a Disrealian
gentleman-democrat." By the time he was in government, she was calling him
an arrogant aristocrat. I must say that the thought of Beatrice Webb -- who
told VW, as you will recall, that marriage was a waste pipe for the emotions
-- falling for Mosely's notorious sexual charisma makes me like her better.

 

Other Bloomsbury associates like Eddie Marsh were part of the Mitford
sisters' younger days. Their education reminded me of nothing so much as
Virginia Woolf's -- a truly tyrannical father whp violently opposed the
education of women, the girls' education was funded literally by their
mother's egg money. Lady Redesdale sent eggs weekly to her husband's club.
JThe girls, like Woolf, were educated by 15 governesses -- few lasted more
than a few days in the Redesdales' home. Pam, Nancy and Diana, the older
girls, had the free run of an enormous well-stocked library, where their
Eton-educated brother Tom was also free to play the piano and help guide
their reading of the classics. This library was sold when the Redesdales'
downsized, so the younger girls -- Unity, Jessica and Deborah -- grew up
pining and crying to go to boarding school.

 

It is interesting to think what a prophylactic against fascism that Leonard
Woolf's committed, fact-based socialism was for Bloomsbury.

 

Jeannette Smyth

 

 

 

 

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