Angelica Garnett - Family Background

Family Background

Angelica Garnett was born at Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex on Christmas day 1918. She was the daughter of the painters 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 Bell's 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”.