Barbara Hiles

Barbara Hiles Bagenal (1891-1984) was an artist associated with members of the Bloomsbury Group, primarily Vanessa Bell and Saxon Sydney-Turner. She was a long-time friend of fellow "Bohemian" and artist Dora Carrington.

Associated with Lady Ottoline Morrell and her circle that included the Bloomsbury Group by 1915. Perhaps most famously known for tenting on the lawn of Vanessa Bell's Charleston property (which she shared with Duncan Grant) in 1917. In a letter Bell wrote to her sister Virginia Woolf from Charleston on 23 July 1917 she notes:

"...We have had a terrific party here for the week-end. Clive and Mary, Saxon, who suddenly telegraphed to ask if he could come and is still here, and Barbara in her tent, who spent most of the time here. I don't know how long she means to stay there. She said a week or two, but I strongly suspect she'll stay all the summer. As long as she doesn't bring all the world about our ears I don't mind, as she's very independent, but one's rather at the mercy of people if they choose to camp at one's door..."

Despite the offer from Saxon Sydney-Turner Hiles decided to marry Nick Bagenal, although Hiles proposed that Sydney-Turner remain her lover in an open relationship between the three of them. Bell refers to this in several letters, one offering advice to the heartbroken Sydney-Turner, and then an exchange with her sister sharing the gossip of the day:

VW to VB on 29 January 1918:

"Think of the three of them discussing the question over the stove in her studio and Nick saying 'No, Saxon: you must marry her;' and Saxon refusing to be happy save in their happiness, and Barbara suggesting copulation with each on alternate nights."

VB to VW on 13 February 1918:

"I suppose if you're ill I shan't get more gossip yet, though Duncan and I laughed over the last batch until we nearly cried. Have you seen Saxon lately? He writes rather melancholy letters, poor old thing, though very high-minded of course and full of the most unselfish problems. I think your description of the conversation a trois must have been exactly true to life. Lord, what characters. I myself think Barbara has behaved idiotically and will live to regret it, but there's no use saying so now. But how anyone with the imagination of an owl can conceive of life as she conceives it passes me — half the year with one, half with the other, a child by each, etc., and no one to have any jealousy or cause for complaint, and she like a looking-glass in the middle, reflecting each in turn. Poor old Saxon of course sees that it won't be so. He will be too like the poor old bachelor, faithful and solitary in Gt. Ormond St. long after we're all dead, supporting Barbara's children (by Nick) I daresay."

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