David Garnett | |
|---|---|
 Garnett in 1920, byLady Ottoline Morrell | |
| Born | (1892-03-09)9 March 1892 Brighton,East Sussex, England |
| Died | 17 February 1981(1981-02-17) (aged 88) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 6, includingAmaryllis Garnett andHenrietta Garnett |
| Parents |
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David Garnett (9 March 1892 – 17 February 1981) was an English writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.
Garnett was born inBrighton,East Sussex, the only child of writer, critic and publisherEdward Garnett and his wifeConstance Clara Black, a translator of Russian. His paternalgrandfather andgreat-grandfather both worked at what is now theBritish Library, then within theBritish Museum.[1]
Encouraged by his father, he gained his first paid work at the age of eleven, drawing a map entitled "NEW SEA and the BEVIS COUNTRY", signed "D. G. fecit", to illustrate a new edition ofBevis, a boy's adventure story byRichard Jefferies. For this he received five shillings from the publisherGerald Duckworth, for whom his father was a reader. He was then sent as a day boy to a prep school called Westerham, five miles from the Cearne, being expected to travel there daily on a scaled-down version of apenny-farthing bicycle which had been owned by his uncle Arthur Garnett as a boy, wearing a beret. As a result of this, the other boys gave him the name "Onions".[2]
In 1905, Garnett’s mother moved into a rented flat inHampstead, from where he began to attendUniversity College School inGower Street, London, travelling there daily by horse-drawn tram. In his time between school and university, Garnett befriendedVinayak Damodar Savarkar, then inBrixton Prison, and devised an unsuccessful attempt to spring him from the jail. He spent July and August 1910 in Germany, to learn the language, and then in October was admitted to theRoyal College of Science inSouth Kensington, a department ofImperial College, London, to study zoology and botany, where he was taught byJ. B. Farmer,Adam Sedgwick, andClifford Dobell.[2]
As aconscientious objector in theFirst World War, Garnett worked on fruit farms inSuffolk andSussex with his loverDuncan Grant.[citation needed]
Needing money, in 1919 Garnett wrote a sensational novel calledDope Darling: A Story of Cocaine, set during the First World War, which tells the story of an affair between a young medical student and a night-club singer and drug addict called Claire Plowman. According to a biographer of Garnett, Claire bore a striking resemblance toBetty May, with a nod toLilian Shelley. For this, he used thepen name of Leda Burke.[3]
A prominent member of theBloomsbury Group, Garnett received literary recognition when his novelLady into Fox, anallegoricalfantasy,[4] was awarded the 1922James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. He ran a bookshop near theBritish Museum withFrancis Birrell during the 1920s. He also founded (withFrancis Meynell) theNonesuch Press. He wrote the novelAspects of Love (1955), on which the laterAndrew Lloyd Webbermusical of the same name would be based.[1]
Garnett published a memoir,The Golden Echo in 1953.[5] Subsequently, he wrote two further volumes under the titleThe Golden Echo with subtitlesThe Flowers of the Forest (1955),[6] andThe Familiar Faces (1962).[7] In this memoir, Garnett described the English literary circles he moved among, including the Bloomsbury group.[1]
He first married, in 1921, the illustrator Rachel Alice "Ray" Marshall (1891–1940), sister of the translator and diaristFrances Partridge. He and Ray, whose woodcuts appear in some of Garnett's books, had two sons, the older of whom was Richard Garnett (1923–2013), the writer.[8] Rachel Garnett died of breast cancer in 1940.
Garnett wasbisexual, as were several members of the artistic and literaryBloomsbury Group, and he had affairs withFrancis Birrell andDuncan Grant. On 25 December 1918 he was present at the birth of Grant's daughter byVanessa Bell,Angelica, who was accepted by Vanessa's husbandClive Bell. Shortly afterwards he wrote to a friend: "I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?" On 8 May 1942, when Angelica was in her early twenties, they did marry, to the horror of her parents. She did not find out until much later that her husband had been a lover of her father. The Garnetts lived atHilton Hall, nearSt Ives inHuntingdonshire, where David Garnett had a farm with a herd ofJersey cows, an orchard, a swimming pool, sculptures, and adovehouse.[9]
They had four daughters: in order,Amaryllis,Henrietta, and the twins Nerissa and Frances; eventually the couple separated. Amaryllis was an actress who had a small part inHarold Pinter's film adaptation ofThe Go-Between (1971). She drowned in the Thames, aged 29. Henrietta (1945–2019) marriedLytton Burgo Partridge, the nephew of her father's first wife Ray, but was left a widow with a newborn infant when she was 18;[10] she oversaw the legacies of both David Garnett and Duncan Grant. Nerissa Garnett (1946–2004) was an artist, ceramicist, and photographer. Fanny (Frances) Garnett moved to France where she became a farmer.
After his separation from Angelica, Garnett moved to France and lived in the grounds at theChâteau de Charry,Montcuq (nearCahors), in a house leased to him by the owners, Jo and Angela d'Urville.[11] Garnett continued to write and lived there until his death in 1981.[12]
