The Bloomsbury Group
Shortly after the death of her father, Leslie Stephen, Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, with her sister, Vanessa and brother, Adrian, sold their home in London and moved to Bloomsbury. Living the privileged life in early childhood, Virginia, Vanessa and Adrian enjoyed a deep connection to modernist literary writers of the early 1900's.
The Bloomsbury Group was a network of friends, relatives and associates of London society shattering old traditional modes and expressions of societal life among upperclass English. Writers like Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Roger Fry, Desmond MacCarthy, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes and Virginia's future husband, Leonard Woolf, comprised a group of essayists, writers, artists, art critics and the politically involved. The existentialist tone of the Bloomsbury Group was not unlike that of American Beatniks of the 1950's. Many in the group were educated at Cambridge which became an interconnecting link between members.
Virginia Woolf and Horace de Vere Cole, Hoaxers
Virginia Woolf by 1910, had already suffered a mental breakdown with the death of her mother, Julie Prinsep Stephen, in 1895, when Virginia was just 13 years old. Two years later, Virginia's half-sister died leaving Virginia inconsolable. With the death of her father in 1904, Virginia was institutionalized. Her life was a series of constant ups and downs emotionally. Her biography alludes to sexual abuse by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth.
Early on, Virginia took advantage of her father's massive library which began her love of writing. William Horace de Vere Cole, a Cambridge undergraduate and member of London society won a reputation as a British prankster. He is suspected of being the source of the now famous "Piltdown Man" hoax, claiming to have discovered formerly unknown skeletal remains of an undiscovered early human. Cole's pranks are the stuff of which legends are made. While at Cambridge, he made an "official" visit to there in the disguise of the "Sultan of Zanzibar".
On his honeymoon, while vacationing at the Piazza de San Marco in Venice, he dropped horse manure from a balcony window reachable only by Venetian boat. He spoke before the Labor Party, after deliberately having misdirected a prime minister whereupon, Cole gave a conflicting speech before members of parliament. His pranks became widely known for their satirical flavor as well as for their depth of deception.
The Dreadnought Hoax
With Cole as the ring leader, Virginia Woolf, her brother, Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton and artist Duncan Grant, the group disguised themselves, replete with dark makeup and Abyssinian costume, as Abyssianian royals. Cole inveigled the crew of the HMS Dreadnought, a royal Navy flagship, into giving them a grand tour of the Dreadnought.
On February 10, 1910, the HMS Dreadnought was moored in Weymouth in Dorset England. Cole deigned to send his accomplice with a telegram to the Dreadnought stating the crew should prepare for a visit of royal princes of Abyssinia aboard ship. Cole took the trouble to insure the telegram was signed by then Under-Secretary of Foreign Office, Sir Charles Hardinge. At London's Paddington Station, Cole and his accomplices, in disguise, demanded a train to Weymouth, whereupon a VIP coach was provided to the hoaxers.
At dockside, they were given an honor guard. They spoke in a broken Latin with invented words and distributed cards in Swahili, peppering their awe with the words, "Bunga, Bunga".
Revealing The Hoax
Arriving back in London, the group revealed their ruse. Embarrassed, the Royal Navy demanded their arrests. But as Cole was eager to remind them, no laws had been broken. Ironically, in 1915 during WWI, the HMS Dreadnought rammed a German submarine. One mysterious telegram of congratulations bore two words, "Bunga, Bunga!".
 |
