Some Bloomsbury interviews and memories - 20th-century philosophy

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 1997 by Wilfred Stone

WS What kind of man was Shove?

CB [Amused] He was a Cambridge mathematician and full of fun. One time Shove called for Mrs. Bagenal, then at the Slade School of Art, in a top hat. Lady Diana Manners was continually called for by gentlemen in such regalia. Shove and Mrs. Bagenal then went down the street and into a sandwich bar. A great lark - typical of Shove. To go back. I think the Apostles are more important as influences on Forster than Bloomsbury as such.

WS What about David Garnett?

CB Garnett wouldn't know much about Forster back then. He didn't go to Cambridge.

WS Which of Forster's novels do you like best?

CB Howards End. [No particular reason given.]

WS Do you think you influenced Forster in any way?

CB I don't think so.

WS Who, in your opinion, is the greatest Bloomsbury artist, that is, painter?

CB There's only one - Duncan Grant. [Strange, I thought, that he didn't mention Vanessa Bell, to whom he had been married!]

WS Who's the greatest writer?

CB Virginia Woolf. But Lytton Strachey should not be underestimated.

WS Why do you think Forster left so much unresolved - unconnected - in his novels, the main issues unresolved?

CB Well, he was brought up by women - by his mother and aunts. [Perhaps he meant by this puzzling answer that Forster wasn't masculine enough to bring it off.]

WS Forster has sometimes spoken of A Passage to India a little scornfully. Do you think it is (1) because it was popular and (2) because people prize it for its political theme? If true, isn't it a little snobbish to dislike it for those reasons?

CB [Laughing] Yes, inverted snobbery.

I then tried to direct the interview to aesthetic matters and began by asking what he thought of Ben Shahn, whose The Shape of Content (1957) was just then making a small splash. This went nowhere. Bell simply begged off by saying he was no longer "up-to-date." So I turned to his own aesthetic theorizing.

WS Do you think your emphasis on "significant form" and nonrepresentational values in art bears any comparison with Forster's emphasis on "rhythm" and his scorn of "story" in Aspects of the Novel?

CB Well, I don't know. No aesthetic theory is invulnerable. [Again, a strange response. He seemed either not to understand the question or not to care. I got the impression that the whole subject of aesthetics bored him and that he no longer cared to defend his own theories - or else he just wanted to forget them.]

Bell (along with the smiling Mrs. Bagenal) seemed to enjoy the visit but didn't seem anxious to prolong it. I had intended to stick to 7:30 p.m., as his letter had suggested, but at 7:15 he stood up, so I took the hint - though there had been no lag in the conversation. I was, however, more than ready to go. It had not been a very edifying exchange, since no idea seemed to catch fire, but that was probably as much my fault as his.

His final words were: "See Lucas and Sheppard. Sheppard would like you." [Why, I never found out, since I never went to see him.] My notes conclude: "an unsubtle man, but by no means senile - just an old squire who laughs a lot and somehow got tied up in art."