‘“What you need to do is to get behind the counter, Richard.” My Uncle George was speaking on the beach at Carbis Bay, St. Ives.’

So begins Richard Kennedy’s delightful memoir A Boy at the Hogarth Press. It is 1928 and the counter in question is that of the publishing house run by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Uncle George, a distinguished architect, had met Leonard Woolf at the Cranium Club and, learning that he was on the look-out for a likely young man, had persuaded him to take on his sixteen-year-old nephew as an apprentice.

Kennedy’s amusing account, published in 1972, though pointing out certain ridiculous aspects of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s behaviour, is broadly speaking affectionate. Others come off less lightly. ‘Clive Bell boasted that he was unable to make a cup of tea – which aroused my contempt. He is the member of the Bloomsbury set I like the least.’ Kennedy reads Bell’s Civilization, ‘which describes people doing nothing but enjoy themselves while others work to support them.’ And then: ‘Quentin Bell, a red-headed young man, told me quite casually that he was taking up painting. No urge on his part to get behind the counter.’ In fact it was Richard Kennedy who, after his two years at the Press, went on to become an artist. His charming illustrations ornament A Boy at the Hogarth Press. This outcome was despite his Uncle George’s strictures: ‘I mentioned to my uncle my interest in drawing and the possibility that I might become an artist. My uncle replied that it was a positive duty on the part of any responsible person to discourage a young man or woman from taking up the arts: if they were any good they would do so anyway.’ If only more people took this line!

The Woolfs are kind enough to invite Richard Kennedy to Rodmell for the weekend. The visit is not an unmitigated success, nor Monk’s House the rural idyll one might imagine: ‘I got up early as LW had asked me if I liked rising early and I had assured him I did. The house was quite silent. There was rather a bad smell about, which I assumed came from the cesspool.’ And then Kennedy rather disgraces himself on a visit to Charleston. ‘We all went for a long walk over the Downs and then had a picnic. Vanessa Bell fell down a bank on her bottom and I guffawed with laughter, although no one else even smiled.’ After the picnic lunch, ‘We all straggled home over the Downs. LW stopped to have a pee in a very casual sort of way without attempting to have any sort of cover. I could see that this was a part of his super-rational way of living.’ The Woolfs drive him to the station to catch his train back to London. Cue another faux pas: ‘At Lewes we had tea in a rather dreary teashop. I said that I thought Julian Bell’s long hair looked sloppy and Mrs W said rather tartly that getting one’s hair cut was a terrible bore.’

David Jarman re-read A Boy at the Hogarth Press ahead of a visit to the exhibition on the Woolf’s publishing house at Charleston in Firle. He thoroughly enjoyed the experience.