'Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury' by Alison Light

and the Servants

An Intimate History

of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury

Alison Light

Bloomsbury: 376 pp., $30

LET US pause for a moment and imagine literature without Bloomsbury. That group of writers, philosophers and artists occupies a fertile spot in our minds.

Questions like: Is it possible to have a happy marriage without fidelity to one's spouse, how much freedom of spirit does an artist need in order to create, how much cross-fertilization of ideas among friends, how much money to be free?

These queries (and many others) disappear into that dark hole, forever unanswered. We do know that these people were prolific; generous with their process and with the conversations that bubbled among them for decades and on into new generations. So something was working. Between Virginia Woolf's diaries, her books and the thousands of books about Bloomsbury, it's possible to really know a great deal about how she thought, the decisions she faced and the issues she struggled with. It's a fair question: Do we really need another book on Bloomsbury?

The answer is, resoundingly, yes. Especially "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants." Aside from the prurient and too-deep interests of fanatics like myself (a lifelong interest in details sordid and philosophical that rivals my daughter's fascination with "Gossip Girl"), the fact remains: Without servants, there would have been no Bloomsbury.

Virginia did not learn to cook until 1929, when she was 47. She wrote proudly to her friend Vita Sackville-West that cooking made her "free forever of cooks. I cooked veal cutlets and cake today. I assure you it is better than writing these idiotic books."

In all fairness, few houses in London in the first third of the 20th century had any labor-saving devices, much less flush toilets. Emptying the chamber pots (often up and down several flights of stairs) was the equivalent of window washing in our time. It is also true that Virginia and her siblings grew up in a turbulent household. Virginia's mother, Julia, died in 1895. Virginia's older half sister, Stella, died two years later. Her half brother, George Duckworth, was regularly making sexual advances. There were five live-in servants, including Sophie Farrell, who raised the girls and stayed with the family for 15 years.