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UpSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS Charleston through John Higgens’ eyes As I arrived at the Higgens’ home I saw cut flowers for sale by the gate <strong>and</strong> realised my gift of Waitrose hyacinths was a poor choice. But while I was wondering how to dispose of the pot, John <strong>and</strong> his wife Diana were already waving a friendly hello. John is the only son of Grace Higgens, the loyal housekeeper of the Bloomsbury Group, who Quentin Bell christened the “guardian angel of Charleston”. The daughter of a Norfolk smallholder, 16-year-old Grace was hired as a housemaid to Vanessa Bell in 1920. Aged 30, she gave birth to John in ‘High Holborn,’ a bed-sit, three floors above the kitchen, where as a child he would use the painted cupboards as goalposts. As one of ‘The Click’ - the nickname given to staff at Gordon Square, the favourite hangingout location of the Bloomsbury set in London - Grace enjoyed travel opportunities, but she was also “expected to work <strong>and</strong> work <strong>and</strong> work”. However liberal Vanessa Bell’s attitude to art <strong>and</strong> sex, John thought her “staid, prim, <strong>and</strong> proper.” As employers, the group “were just Victorian.” John told me, “All the time she was at Charleston I can hardly remember my mother having a day off… they had to come first.” During the war, the group made Charleston their permanent home. Grace had to contend with a coke-fuelled Aga <strong>and</strong> an unreliable water supply. She would traipse up <strong>and</strong> down the “rough old flint <strong>and</strong> chalk road,” to buy groceries in <strong>Lewes</strong>, <strong>and</strong> across a cold concrete floor tending to dinner guests until late. The staff had to be a disappearing presence; “If anyone was in the dining room you had to go round the back, so you didn’t go past the windows while they were having their meals.” The British Library bought Grace’s diaries in 2007, but they reveal nothing salacious about her employers. John Maynard Keynes’ wife, the w w w. V I VA L e w e s . C o M Portrait of John Higgens by Vanessa Bell ballerina Lydia Lopokova, became a “great friend”, <strong>and</strong> Clive Bell introduced young Grace to the stockmarket, which helped her buy a house in Ringmer when she retired in 1970. John remembers sitting for Vanessa Bell twice, a portrait of him aged 4 was one of the first produced in the top studio. The next was for the Berwick Church Nativity; John is pictured alongside two workmen, of whom each lost an arm in threshing accidents. There might have been <strong>more</strong> sittings, had Bell been a little <strong>more</strong> patient, “I think Mrs Bell got frustrated, she would say, ‘Peter John, you can’t sit still for five minutes!’” John <strong>and</strong> Diana visit Charleston once a year but although it looks “as it was,” there is some life that can’t be preserved; “Duncan loved smoking, <strong>and</strong> he always had music blaring. When you go in the studio now, you don’t have the radio, or the fumes.” But although John has fond memories, he doesn’t miss living there, “I like to see it, I like to think of it, but I lived there 24 years, was brought up with these various people. I didn’t think anything of it.” Chloë King A selection of artworks belonging to Grace Higgens will be sold at Gorringes Auctioneers in <strong>Lewes</strong> on Thursday 13th May. For details contact Francesca Collin on 01273 472503. A r t 3 9