A CAMBRIDGE LOVE STORY - INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN SELLERS
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell’s lover and one of the artists feature in Firebird
Firebird tells the story of the romance between renowned Bloomsbury economist and Fellow at Cambridge, Maynard Keynes and the flamboyant Russian ballerina and celebrity Lydia Lopokova. The richly imagined tale is the second Bloomsbury-inspired novel by Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at St Andrews, Susan Sellers. Her first novel Vanessa and Virginia was editor’s pick for The New York Times and has been translated into sixteen languages.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Susan to pick her brains about her latest masterpiece and find out more about how she was able to breathe life into one of the most interesting (and peculiar) love stories of the 20th century.
What first attracted you to the Keynes-Lopokova love story? And what compelled you to want to write about it?
“I’ve always been interested in Bloomsbury, particularly its women artists. I’d already written about Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell and how pioneering they both were in their respective fields of writing and painting.“I’d done some reading about the Russian dancer Lydia Lopokova and of course knew that she went on to marry the Bloomsbury economist Maynard Keynes. In fact, she and Maynard spent a great deal of time in Cambridge, where Keynes was a Fellow at King’s. They lived just opposite the Arts Theatre which incidentally Keynes founded.
“But it was only when I started researching Lydia in more detail that my imagination was fired. She had such an extraordinary life – pupil of the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg, then in 1910 travelling to Europe with the Russian Ballet to dance starring roles, breaking her contract and touring America where she not only danced but acted on Broadway….
“Then in 1921 she was back dancing in London where Keynes saw her and was so taken with her that apparently he attended every performance.
“When that particular production ended in financial ruin Keynes arranged for her to move into Bloomsbury – much to the surprise of his friends.
“This was the other thing that really intrigued me. The Bloomsbury Group were well-known not only for their championing of art, but also for believing that everyone had the right to love as they chose – a belief that was shocking at the time. And yet several members of Bloomsbury including Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell were horrified at the idea that Keynes might marry Lydia.
“So one of my motives for writing was to try to discover why”.
Why did you choose to explore the relationship through the form of fiction and particularly the novel as opposed to a biographical format?
“When we read biography, we expect everything in it to be grounded in fact. One of my challenges was that although we do have plenty of evidence – we have letters, in the case of Virginia Woolf’s diary entries, photographs – that evidence only takes us so far.
“The magic of fiction is partly the way it can bring people and what happens to them to life on the page so the reader feels they are there too. But it’s also a medium in which it’s possible to explore all the things we don’t know and will never know imaginatively and creatively.
“As a result it can sometimes suggest answers that help fill in the blanks.
“For example, it was only as I worked on a passage where I imagine Vanessa Bell painting and Lydia interrupting her that I really understood why Lydia’s personality – which was noisy and exuberant, she adored gossip and throwing parties that often went on all night – might have been such a challenge for Vanessa, who struggled to carve out enough quiet time for herself to paint”.
How would you describe your creative process for this project and where did your research take you?
“I’ve been working on Bloomsbury for a long time, so I already knew many of the sources, but I supplemented this with fresh research, including exploring the Maynard and Lydia Keynes’ archive which is held by King’s College here in Cambridge.
“But I also needed to know other things, like the geography of St Petersburg and the historical and political situation in Russia at the turn of the last century - and of course I needed to learn about dance. This I did partly through reading everything I could about the Imperial Ballet and the famous Ballets Russes but also by talking to dancers and watching dancers rehearse.
“And because in writing fiction you are trying to bring everything to life, I even took a few dance lessons so I would have a sense of what it might actually feel like.
“I always feel a pressure when I’m writing about real people and real historical events to know as much as I can, although I inevitably find that as I draft there are more and more things I need to research.
“For example, although I read everything I could find about Lydia’s early life in St Petersburg, I quickly realised I had no idea whether the type of apartment her family occupied would have had running water (Lydia’s father was a theatre usher so the family was not wealthy, in fact one of the motives for auditioning his children for the Ballet School was that if they were successful the Tsar would feed, house and clothe them and pay for their education).
“So, the first draft inevitably involves a sort of stop/start as I do more research, though by the time I come to the second or third draft I try to leave the research behind and focus on the fiction I am writing.
“Once the novel is finished, I always check to ensure that nothing in it is contrary to what we know, even if sometimes my imaginings and inventions have only a tangential relationship to the actual evidence”.
Would you describe Firebird as the natural succession to your first Bloomsbury novel Vanessa and Virginia?
“In some ways I suppose it is, though the books are very different. In Vanessa and Virginia I imagine Vanessa Bell reflecting back on her life with her sister Virginia after Virginia’s death, going through everything that has happened. As a result, it’s much more personal and up close.
“Firebird by contrast has a huge cast of characters and a vast geographical frame. There are scenes set in St Petersburg, Paris, Spain and America as well as London and Sussex (where both Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell had houses and where the Keynes eventually settled) and of course Cambridge.
“As well as many well-known Bloomsbury figures, the characters include the famous Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, dancers Lydia worked with like Anna Pavlova (whose ballet shoes she stole!) and Nijinsky, other artists like Picasso and Stravinsky (with whom she had an affair), some of the servants - who were vital but are so often left out of the accounts”.
What's next for you in your writing career? Can we expect another Bloomsbury-inspired novel?
“I don’t know. “I am drawn to interesting women – particularly women who’ve somehow defied the expectations of their time as to what a woman’s life should be – but I’m still waiting to find who that will be.
After all, once I start, I’m likely to be living very intimately with them for some considerable time”.
Sellers intricately fashions a materialisation of the Keynes-Lopokova story and the worlds they inhabit. Firebird provides admission into the tangled and fascinating world of Bloomsbury sect and its intrigues. The colourful celebration of one of the Bloomsbury’s most compelling and unexpected couple defies expectation. Never before has a book been so hard to put down. I wanted to lose myself in each richly imagined and detailed chapter whilst at the same time savouring the enthralling literary experience.
This immersive novel is a treat for any Bloomsbury enthusiast and is a ‘should-read’ for those who are yet to discover the wonder of this stimulating creative movement and its legacy. I can hardly wait to see what Sellers comes up with next. Let’s hope indeed it is a third instalment.
Interview by Tia Byer
