Member: dwsact

To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed. They will champion the causes of life's underdogs, forging a society without class discrimination. They will supply humanity with music and beauty as it has never known. They will endure. Towards these ends I pledge my life's work. I will supply the children with tools and knowledge to overcome the obstacles. I will pass on the wisdom of my years and temper it with patience. I shall impact in each child the desire to fulfill his or her dream. I shall teach.
- - - Henry James

posted by theoldman at 8:32 am (EST) on Jul 31, 2009

Hi Dave , Actually my name is Joe . Fred is a Royal gentleman who reposes in my Genealogy Photo Archive http://www.deadfred.com .

Thanks for Friend Linkup :) Yes , Bloomsbury is my present focus and will be for some time. For about four years I was reading everything about Henry Brooks Adams even traveling to England to visit his haunts . Henry and his wife Mariam while living in Washington DC in the 1880s had become acquainted
with Lionel Sackville West and his Daughter Victoria . Victoria was the mother of Vita Sackville West. You no doubt know about the close friendship between Vita and Virginia Woolf.

My reading lead me to the Sackville Wests in particular Vita and Harold who I spent a good year. My interest in Bloomsbury peaked when one evening at Hogarth c1924? (might have been Rodmell) when Vita and Harold where visiting Virginia and Leonard. Nessa , Duncan,Roger and Lytton were there and Lytton made an untoward comment to Harold that shuttered any hope of continued friendship between them. My first reaction to the comment was " That SOB Strachey is a jerk!) But it was Strachey and his comment that got me hooked. About six months later I started devouring Bloomsbury ,I am now reading The Diary Of VW 1915 and Lytton Strachey Once I am through all the reading my wife and I will go to England for a long visit and do a Sackville West-Nicholson- Bloomsbury exursion.

Thats a fairly winded introduction above isn't it, but passion has a tendency to flow doesn't it!? MY interest in Bloomsbury is the incredibly different personalities, their rejection of Victorian/Edwardian Society and their introduction of a new view which is still effecting us. They were also tragic and brave which I suppose goes with the event. ( Fry & Post-Impressionism.)

Like you I have close friends from my childhood and many close acquaintances but none that have ever heard the term Bloomsbury. Some though have heard of Dora Carrington and Vita/Violet because of the Movies.

Regards
Joe Bott

posted by DeadFred at 4:12 pm (EST) on Jul 25, 2009