Writing a few posts on the Vanessa Bell exhibition in Lewes and some Chinese related items I did stumble across The Life and Letters of (Vanessa’s father) Leslie Stephen by Frederic William Maitland (1906). We tend to think of Stephen as the rather stern looking father of Vanessa and Virginia (and their brothers) though he was a pioneering academic, atheist and mountaineer. He died in 1904. Maitland’s short biography of Stephen includes the following:
‘His father settled at Wimbledon, and in February 1847 Leslie began to attend as a day-boy a school kept by Mr. Edelmann, where he had some seven or eight companions. He acquired some German, and was soon reading with enjoyment. He played cricket and rode his pony, being also much addicted to pets, including some Chinese mice. He could still look ‘very pretty* when dressed in the robes of a Chinese bride, unpacked from the curiosity box of a missionary.’
The anniversary of Bloody Saturday – August 14 1937 – and the bombing of the International Settlement and French Concession. A dreadful day of death and destruction I attempted to recreate in my Penguin China Special Bloody Saturday. I missed this story though, apocryphal perhaps (?), from John Stericker’s memoir A Tear for the Dragon…
Seems as soldiers mobilised to deal with the carnage of the bombing along the Bubbling Well Road, they came face-to-face with an….ostrich….Not something that happens everyday on Nanjing West Road!
The Exhibition Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on at Charleston in Lewes, East Sussex until September 21. A final Chinese-related note….
A later painting here of the studio at Charleston where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant worked for so many years (and Julian and Quentin in the previous post lived too). This portrait Interior with Duncan Grant, 1934 clearly shows a statue of Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy (etc) on the mantelpiece, where it remains on display today (see below). The statue was originally the property of Roger Fry.
Vanessa’s studio at Charleston as displayed today with Kuan Yin
The Exhibition Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on at Charleston in Lewes, East Sussex until September 21. A few Chinese-related notes….
Among the whole exhibition there is only one picture featuring Bell’s son Julian – though there is a large portrait of Bell as a young man painted by Vanessa placed prominently above her bed at Charleston. Nursery Tea (1912) shows Vanessa’s two young children, Julian (b. 1908) and, on the left, Quentin (b. 1910) with two nursemaids, almost certainly at the Bell family home, 46 Gordon Square. Julian is of course interesting to China Rhyming because in 1935 he went to China to teach English at Wuhan University where he had an affair with Ling Shuhua, the wife of Professor Chen Yuan (better known by his pen-name, Chen Xiying). It all blew up into a massive scandal, Bell returned home, went to Spain and was killed in the Civil War. Ling Shuhua (who incidentally grew up and became involved in the May 4th/New Culture Movement) on Shijia Hutong in Peking at the same time Wallis Simpson lived there briefly) later lived in England for many years. She communicated by letter with Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf, though they never met, but did become friends with Vita Sackville West – and hence a firm line of contact between China’s New Culture Movement and the Bloomsbury Group.
The Exhibition Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour is on at Charleston in Lewes, East Sussex until September 21. A few Chinese-related notes….
Included within the exhibition is Vanessa’s painting View from Gordon Square, 1909. It’s the view from the front windows of 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and show three apples in a Nankeen dish/bowl. The dish actually belonged originally to Sir Leslie Stephen and his wife Julia, Vanessa’s parents. Vanessa had moved to Gordon Square with her sister Virginia and brothers Thoby and Adrian in 1904.
The question is (for this blog at least) was the Nankeen bowl from China or a Chinoiserie item made in England. The Staffordshire potters Minton, following Spode, were producing “Nankeen Semi China” from the early 1800s inspired by genuine Chinese Nankeen porcelain.
Battersea Bookshop (Unit 74, Battersea Power Station, Circus Road South, London SW11 8B) – August 13th – I’ll be talking to Annelise Finnegan (Academic Director of Translation & Interpreting and Clinical Associate Professor, NYU) about her new translation of Tie Ning’s My Sister’s Red Shirt (Sinoist Books)
Zhang Yueran’s Woman, Seated (Sceptre), translated by Jeremy Tiang….
In Women, Seated, we enter the world of an elite Chinese family: A life of luxury, limitless power, and around-the-clock service, which includes their trusted nanny Yu Ling.
Slipping in and out of the shadows, careful to speak deferentially, meticulous in her care of their only son Kuan Kuan, Yu has served the family for years and knows their secrets. But little do they suspect that Yu has secrets of her own.
In the pressure-cooker political environment of China, the fates of even the most powerful families can reverse overnight. When Kuan Kuan’s father and grandfather are arrested and his socialite mother goes on the run, Yu is left behind to make a series of life-changing choices.
Will she be able to outrun her own past? How far will she go to claim what she considers her due?
A range of German illustrated postcards covering Weihai, the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory, Tsingtao (Qingdao), the Boxer Rebellion and German East Asian Expeditionary Corps dating back to 1898. These seem to have been produced in China, in Shandong and Peking, for mailing back to Germany, or collecting, mostly be members of the Ostasiatichen Expeditiekorps.
