ABSTRACT
Virginia saw her sister Vanessa as of an "inviolable reticence" in her work and in her living. Married to Clive, an inveterate womanizer, she first loved Roger Fry, the art critic, with a passion that he returned and in the long run surpassed—the beauty of both was in their character and in their soul, as each remarked of the other, and in their ways of being. She then fell desperately and forever in love with Duncan Grant, the artist, erstwhile lover of Lytton Strachey, and a man of great kindness, vagueness, and artistic talent. Roger Fry can be seen to have taken for a while the role of Leslie Stephen in Vanessa's life, in part counseling her as an older male, fatherly and demanding. Until her involvement with Duncan Grant, younger by six years, Roger was the most important figure, for her art and herself.
