Ford Knows What’s What
Have a listen/look at the conversation I had with the lovely
over at where we discussed the birth of Qstack, conversations with characters…and pen names?!Mr. Troy Ford and the Birth of a Community
Also, I had my turn at the inestimable
’s 8 Questions series this week. It’s a quick read you can find HERE. A million thanks to Eleanor—check out her first book, A Perfect Explanation, and the review I wrote on Goodreads.
“Substack has turned on a light for many of us.
The path from “Once upon a time” to “Congratulations Published Author” is so mysterious and fearsome that many lose their way.” -me
CURRENTLY READING: Eleanor’s new serial novel, Fallout - Read her Introduction, or plunge right in to the Prologue.
In September of 2022, I had the chance to visit the two iconic residences of the Bloomsbury Group—Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House; and nearby Charleston Farmhouse, which Mrs. Woolf’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, shared variously with her husband, her lover, his various lovers, their sundry children, and other notable friends.
Yes, it was perhaps a little unseemly to ask, despite my whispering, if the nice docent at Monk’s House might know the exact route by which Virginia had set out to the River Ouse in order to accomplish her tragic mission—I had a mind to follow in her penultimate footsteps, I explained, minus the stones in my pockets of course.
This guide conveyed, very cheerfully I thought, the particular path that the Woolfs’ maid indicated the lady of the house had taken when Leonard Woolf returned on that fateful day of 28 March 1941 to find his wife missing.
It was information the docent had shared before, it was clear; she expressed with some regret that it was no longer possible to trace that baleful journey as the intervening fields from the house to the river had since been sectioned and closed.
The following domestic intrigue unfolded the next day at Charleston Farmhouse, where another docent struck an entirely less indulgent tone.
The Poison Cup
There comes a moment in every docent’s career, no doubt, when a patron fails to swallow the proffered program.
Charleston Farmhouse at least has the means to station a different guide in every room, rather than yoke hapless volunteers to the various groups who take the tour, short though it is, of the Bloomsbury Group’s country headquarters tucked under a shoulder of the South Downs of East Sussex.
A “good size” by most any family’s standards, Charleston is still just a handful of rooms downstairs and up, big enough for four adults, their revolving cast of lovers, and the few heathen children which resulted from these unions.
But one can only pretend surprise so many times to the same salacious scandal from each of these docents in their respective rooms: Yes, yes, baby Angelica married her father’s former gay lover, Bunny, fulfilling his own ridiculous prophecy at her crib-side that he would someday marry “it”—how droll.
Visitors unfamiliar with Bloomsbury lore might have cause to clutch pearls at this cradle-robbing nugget, but I all but ruined the delivery of the same punchline for the third time in a day when I called out across the upstairs salon at the very moment of its thrice-born delivery.
“Who painted this picture?” I asked from the far corner by the writing desk.
The dowager was not amused by my interruption. “That is by Vanessa Bell herself,” she said with curdled lip.
Reluctantly, she hastened now to explain the early still life of poppies and various vessels came before the group’s wider interest in Post-Impressionism and the later abstracted style for which they were most well-known.
But of course there was a story.
“The poppies—two white, one scarlet—are thought to depict the Bells themselves,” she continued archly, “and Mrs. Bell’s sister, with whom it was rumored her husband was having a flirtation.” (Haha, Mrs. Bell’s sister, “The Temptress.”)
“After the birth of their first son, Mrs. Bell’s focus had naturally turned to motherhood, and it is thought that she imbued in this still life her feelings about the dalliance developing in the vacuum of her marital bed, and so: the medicinal jar, the vial. The poison cup.” [BOLD ITALICS MINE!]
“Poison cup?!” I exclaimed.
The lady regarded me with serpentine antipathy.
“Is that really a thing, a ‘poison cup’...?” I asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well I mean, is there such a thing as an actual poison cup? Did she say it was a poison cup? Or is that just your, you know, docent’s patter?”
I really did want to know! It sounded practically Florentine, this “poison cup”—even Borgian. Where could one get a poison cup? Did they still make them? Could one just waltz into The Poison Cup Shoppe and ask for one, or was there some sort of, I don’t know—code? ASPIRING NOVELISTS NEED TO KNOW!
The lady frowned. “I imagine there has been some scholarship on the subject,” she averred indefinitely, and to my evident disappointment she inquired, “Why?”
“Well I think I need one,” I said.
“And what would you do with it?” she asked.
“Dream.”
At which our group was ushered gratefully from the room.
*pilgrimage Fuck sake.
Well. Didn’t know it till reading this, but now I need a poison cup, too!