Angelica Garnett
| Angelica Garnett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Angelica Vanessa Bell 25 December 1918 Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex |
| Died | 4 May 2012 (aged 93) Aix-en-Provence |
| Spouse(s) | David Garnett (separated/widowed) |
| Children | Amaryllis Garnett Henrietta Garnett Nerissa Garnett Frances Garnett |
| Family |
Vanessa Bell (mother) Clive Bell (father) Duncan Grant (biological father) Julian Bell (brother) Quentin Bell (brother) Virginia Woolf (aunt) |
Angelica Vanessa Garnett, née Bell (25 December 1918 – 4 May 2012), was a British writer, painter and artist. She was the author of the memoir Deceived with Kindness (1984), an account of her experience growing up at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group.
Angelica Garnett was born at Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex on Christmas Day 1918. She was the daughter of the painter Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell; her aunt was Virginia Woolf.
Until the summer of 1937, when Garnett was 18, she believed that her father was Clive Bell, Vanessa's husband, rather than the mostly homosexual Grant, although the reality was an open secret within their immediate Bloomsbury circle. In fact, although there was no official separation or divorce, the Bells' marriage had come to an end in 1916. In that year Vanessa rented Charleston Farmhouse from the Gage estate, so that Duncan Grant, with whom she had fallen in love, and his friend and lover, David "Bunny" Garnett, could work there as farm labourers –both were conscientious objectors. Grant and Vanessa Bell continued to live together after the presumed end of their sexual relationship. Clive Bell would visit at weekends.
When Vanessa Bell informed her daughter of her true parentage she advised her not to talk about it. The deception avoided servant gossip and preserved the possibility of a legacy from Clive Bell's father who had settled allowances on his grandchildren. Angelica grew up believing that two of those grandchildren, Vanessa and Clive's sons, Julian Bell, who was killed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, and the art historian Quentin Bell, were her brothers, rather than her half-brothers. Vanessa comforted herself with the idea that her daughter had two fathers; "in reality," Angelica wrote, "I had none".
Angelica Garnett grew up at Charleston, indulged by her mother and surrounded by the artists, writers and intellectuals of the Bloomsbury Group. After her 14th birthday, Virginia Woolf gave Angelica a clothing budget of £100 a year.
At the age of 10 she was sent to boarding school at Langford Grove in Essex. She left without any qualifications, spent several months living in Rome and in 1935 moved for a time to Paris, staying with the artist Zoum Walter and her writer husband Francois. In 1936 Angelica went to the London Theatre Studio to train, briefly, as an actress under Michel Saint-Denis and George Devine. She changed to the study of art at the Euston Road School, where she was taught by William Coldstream and Victor Pasmore, the latter of whom apparently reduced her to tears.
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