VIRGINIA WOOLF, MELIAN STAWELL, AND BLOOMSBURY

Born into an elite Australian colonial family, she received great early encouragement in her education, had access to a home library, and studied at Melbourne University and then Cambridge. In what Levenback calls a gratuitous hostility to Melian Stawell, Vanessa chides Fry about a possible liaison between the two, with references to withered breasts and hard beds, ending with "am I nasty enough yet?" As with the few references in Woolf's letters, Melian Stawell seems to have been yet another stock figure in games of words between the friends, easy to offend and not central to their inner world. A Fry painting of the German war generals appeared on the cover of Melian Stawell's book The Price of Freedom (1918) and subsequently became also the cover of Levenback's own book.