Sketches In Pen and Ink by Vanessa Bell

Author:Vanessa Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Memories of Roger Fry

THERE is always a certain fascination in recalling the first time one saw anyone who later became one’s friend and it is J strange how frequently it is possible to do so, though probably at the time one was unaware of anything but the casual meeting with a stranger.1 How clearly after more than thirty years, for I suppose it was about the year 1902 or 1903, do I remember one summer afternoon in the Fellow’s Garden at King’s seeing across the lawn two tall figures walking together, the woman perhaps taller than the man and certainly looking so in her long straight dress. ‘Those are the Roger Frys,’ said Walter Headlam.2 I knew his name already as a lecturer on Italian art and perhaps that is why I remember the scene so clearly. But, hating lectures, I had never been to hear him, though he lectured very near us, I think in the small lecture hall attached to the Albert Hall and on a subject which must have interested me – also I had heard of him as the newest and most learned of young critics – but for some reason I did not go. So it was at Cambridge that I first saw him and that one vision is all I have of those days for we did not speak.

I think the next time must have been at dinner at Desmond’s3 and that was perhaps two years later – certainly it was after my father’s death in 1904. Desmond was living with his mother in Chelsea and asked me to dinner and I, feeling very nervous and shy, found myself sitting next to Roger Fry. He was vaguely associated in my mind with other terrifying figures of about the same age, all connected more or less with what then seemed the most go-ahead group in modern art, the New English Art Club.4 I knew Charles Furse, then lately dead, and had found him formidable and crushing. Slightly less so perhaps than Tonks who had taught or rather squashed me at the Slade. In fact all members of the New English Art Club seemed somehow to have the secret of the art universe within their grasp, a secret one was not worthy to learn, especially if one was that terrible low creature, a female painter. ‘He’s another of them’ I thought and prepared to be silent and afraid. But somehow I wasn’t – I must have ventured some remark and found it listened to and understood and felt encouraged to continue. Anyhow I was soon plunged headlong into a violent quarrel about Sargent.5 Everyone had succumbed to his genius – everyone without exception, except apparently Roger Fry. I had for long doubted, denied his merits, thought him vulgar, but had at last gone over with vehemence, overcome by what seemed such superb painting. It is easy to understand now and was perhaps inevitable – but how could it be that I was able to say what

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