page_title: Julia Stephen
section_title: Relationships with family and household
hierarchical_section_title: Julia Stephen / Life / Relationships with family and household
caption_attribution_description: English: Sophie Farrell, cook to Julia and Leslie Stephen
context_page_description: Julia Prinsep Stephen was a celebrated Englishwoman, noted for her beauty as a Pre-Raphaelite model and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, members of the Bloomsbury Group.
  Julia Jackson was born in Calcutta to an Anglo-Indian family, and when she was two her mother and her two sisters moved back to England. She became the favourite model of her aunt, the celebrated photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who made more than 50 portraits of her. Through another maternal aunt, she became a frequent visitor at Little Holland House, then home to an important literary and artistic circle, and came to the attention of a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters who portrayed her in their work. Married to Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, in 1867 she was soon widowed with three infant children. Devastated, she turned to nursing, philanthropy and agnosticism, and found herself attracted to the writing and life of Leslie Stephen, with whom she shared a mutual friend in Anny Thackeray, his sister-in-law.
  After Leslie Stephen's wife died in 1875 he became close friends with Julia and they married in 1878.
context_section_description: Much of what is known about Julia Stephen comes from the viewpoint of her husband, Leslie Stephen, and her daughter, Virginia Woolf, although the latter had only just turned thirteen when her mother died. Woolf, who stated that "for we think back through our mothers if we are women", invoked the image of her mother repeatedly throughout her life in her diary, her letters and a number of her autobiographical essays, including Reminiscences (1908), 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921) and A Sketch of the Past (1940), frequently evoking her memories with the words "I see her ...". She also alludes to her childhood in her fictional writing. In To The Lighthouse (1927) the artist, Lily Briscoe, attempts to paint Mrs Ramsay, a complex character based on Julia Stephen, and repeatedly comments on the fact that she was "astonishingly beautiful". Her depiction of the life of the Ramsays in the Hebrides is an only thinly disguised account of the Stephens in Cornwall and the Godrevy Lighthouse they would visit there. But Woolf's understanding of her mother and family evolved considerably between 1907 and 1940, in which the somewhat distant, yet revered figure becomes more nuanced and filled in. While Vanessa was slightly older at fifteen when her mother died, her recollections are provided in her daughter, Angelica Garnett's memoir.
  As the youngest daughter, and last to marry, Julia was her mother's favourite daughter, in part due to her constant care of her mother who had many needs, and little time for maternal affection. With the premature death in 1881 of Maria Jackson's eldest daughter Adeline at 44, followed by that of her husband in 1887, she became increasingly hypochondriacal and an increasing demand on Julia's resources and necessitated her making frequent visits to Sussex as well as caring for her mother in her Hyde Park Gate Home, where she died on 2 April 1892. By contrast, Leslie Stephen observed that her father was an unobtrusive presence and "somehow he did not seem to count".
  Leslie Stephen writes about Julia "the noblest woman present" in tones of reverence in his Mausoleum Book, written for the children after her death. In that he was reminded of what was written about the Carlyles, and like Thomas Carlyle embarked on memorialising his wife. It was evident that he (and he was not alone in this) regarded her as a "beloved angel" and a saint, indeed as an agnostic, he had already sanctified her prior to their marriage, informing her that she replaced the Blessed Virgin. He describes her appearance as one in which her "beauty was of a kind which seems to imply—as most certainly did accompany—equal beauty of soul, refinement nobility, and tenderness of character". It is evident that she lived a life devoted both to her family and to the needs of others. Woolf drew a sharp distinction between her mother's work and "the mischievous philanthropy which other women practise so complacently and often with such disastrous results". She describes her degree of sympathy, engagement, judgement and decisiveness, and her sense of both irony and the absurd. She recalls trying to recapture "the clear round voice, or the sight of the beautiful figure, so upright and distinct, in its long shabby cloak, with the head held at a certain angle, so that the eye looked straight out at you". Julia's many domestic duties included sharing the education of the children with her husband. The girls were educated to a degree at home, while the boys were sent to private boys' boarding schools (known as public schools in the UK) and then university, as was the custom of the time. There was a small classroom off the back of the drawing room, with its many windows, which they found perfect for quiet writing and painting. Julia taught the children Latin, French and History, while Leslie taught them mathematics. They also received piano lessons.
  Julia dealt with her husband's depressive moods and his need for attention, which created resentment in her children, boosted his self-confidence, nursed her parents in their final illness, and had many commitments outside
caption: Sophie Farrell 1890
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