IN SOME EARLYISH MONTH OF 1912, two sisters—Vanessa Bell (née Stephen) and Virginia Stephen (soon to be Woolf)—worked together quietly indoors. It’s convenient to imagine a fire roaring nearby. England in late winter or early spring calls to mind chill, dampness, probable rain. Yes, there must have been a fire. The younger, Virginia (yes, that Virginia Woolf), knit or crocheted while listing left in an enveloping orange armchair. Vanessa, older by just two and a half years, propped her modest canvas nearby and captured something there of her sister’s writerly focus, her weaving together of
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